T-95 Tank Development

OK, this is all pure speculation on my behalf because I am not in a position to actually know for sure, however from the scraps I have been able to gather around the place from variable sources I will give a description of what I expect.

Crews:
First of all the three crew will be sitting side by side in the front of the hull under the heaviest armour on the tank, similar to the BMP-3 and BMD series, though in those cases it is the driver in the centre and gunners either side that operate either the bow machineguns or bow grenade launchers, whichever is fitted.
In the T-95 however all three positions will have large screen and hand and foot controls.
The T-95 has been described as a 24 hour tank, meaning it needs to be able to operate for very long periods with no down time. This means that operationally for most of the time one crew member will be sleeping or resting while the other two operate the vehicle. In combat of course when there are targets to shoot all three crew will be working, but during transit or in situations where a gunner is not needed two of the crew will be driver and commander, or for a stationary role the two crew can be gunner and commander.
All three positions will allow a person to drive, command, and operate the weapons.
All optics and electro-optics will display an outside view on the screens so compared to a normal tank where the commander from the top of the turret guided the driver from cover to cover the driver will get the commanders view and need only take general direction from the commander.
Very simply the job of the driver is to move the vehicle from covered position to covered position as quickly as possible.
The job of the commander is to make sure they are heading in the right direction and to search for targets and threats. When targets are found they are handed off to the gunner to engage while the commander looks for other targets and threats to the vehicle. A greater threat appearing might warrant a change of target and the turning of the heaviest frontal armour towards it for survivability purposes.
The gunner shoots at targets till they are confirmed destroyed. Targets are determined by the commander with a better view of the whole battlefield while the gunner has a limited angle view of higher magnification.
A fourth crewman will be in the rear area that helps with maintainence of the vehicle.

Propulsion:
Comments about this vehicle being state of the art and pushing technology colour my thoughts below.
I think the vehicle will have electric drive motors for propulsion with a large capacitor bank to store power. Main propulsion will be a gas turbine which is small and powerful and actually fuel efficient if not used as a direct power supply.
Turret power supply has traditionally been by gas turbine because in the electricity generating role they can be operated at a fuel efficient speed and are small and light.
Use in the T-80 as a main engine makes it very inefficient because it spends most of its time under load and at very high revs.
As a power supply for electric motors it will be much more efficient and easier to get a lot more power than an equivelent diesel motor.
The electric power system might actually make that new electric armour the British are working on much easier to impliment too, and any future development in electromagnetic guns will also need a mature reliable source of electricity.
I don't think the T-95 will see "transfer power to guns and get ready for a shot. then transfer power back to shields and engines and lets get out of here", but I think it will be a big step towards that.

I have seen a model of an external main gun tank called the T-74 that had a 30mm gun mounted with the main gun that could be elevated to very high angles so I would suspect the T-95 might have that, and with the BTR-82A having the new 30mm ammo with the special fusing to allow airbursts over the target I would expect the T-95 to have the same.

The current new model T-90 (Burlak) seems to have an added Black Eagle like turret bustle autoloader (for longer rounds) in addition to its under turret auto loader and I would suspect the T-95 might have a small bustle for long penetrators too.

The Gun:
I would expect the main gun to be either 150mm or 155mm in calibre simply to avoid confusion.
During WWII there were problems with supply where non military people are conscripted into the army during a long war that don't understand that 122mm artillery rounds and 122mm Grad rockets are different things and a regiment of 122mm Grad trucks can't use 500 x 122mm artillery shells.
When the first BMP came out the west assumed it was a 76.2mm gun because that was standard.
The thing was that the ammo it fired had nothing in common with any 76.2mm weapons in service at that time so they made it a 73mm smoothbore.

However I also think that the first T-95s might be equipped with 125mm main guns simply to reduce the numbers of main tank gun ammo types in service.
Once the 100mm (T-54 and T-55) and 115mm (T-62) has been all used up or given away or destroyed then just having two ammo types should be a big improvement over what they have now.

The increase in calibre should make the HEAT round the gun fires much more effective and also make much more room for propellent and electronics for the gun tube launched ATGM. This leads me to think that a fire and forget top attack weapon with imaging infrared and MMW (milimetre wave) radar seeking missiles could be used out to 8-10km.

I also think that the vehicle should also be able to carry and launch its own UAV to give itself its own aerial view of itself and its surroundings.

Sensors:
I have read that in addition to existing sensors (ie thermal sight, laser channel for guiding missiles, electro optics) that low-light television channel, near infra-red, two-band thermal (3-5 and 8-12 nm), mmw channel radar, and a lidar channel. (Lidar is basically a laser radar using a laser with a vibrating mirror to create a line like beam that can be scanned back and forth with a laser sensor to detect the reflections from enemy optics and other things with precise range and angular information.
I have read that all these sensors will generate their own information which will be fused together to create a precise picture of what is.
I have heard that the vehicle will have an outer layer of ERA that can be activated by the sensors before an impact to increase the standoff distance of the "intercept".
Something based on ARENA or DROZD-2 could be used or perhaps even a combination of both or perhaps something even newer.
Both ARENA and DROZD used MMW radar to detect incoming threats so with MMW radar included in the sensor suite something like either system could be fitted with minimal extra weight.
I would expect the T-95 to be fully netcentric with all sorts of datalinks with command and other assets like UAVs and attack helos and APCs/MICVs.

The final thing I would like to say is that rumours of it being revealed or not are largely based on a company wanting to reveal what it is working on to get customers and investment set against the Russian government not wanting to reveal a new system that would really only work well within a fully netcentric armed force.
The Burlak seems to have a new digital battlespace management system and radio communications suite along with a modern land navigation suite.

Now that GLONASS is becoming fully operational and as more netcentric capable elements enter service it is starting to make more sense to start introducing the T-95.

After thinking some more about how the T-95 will fit in to the Russian Army I began to think about where they will want to use it.

At the moment they have tank heavy units and infantry heavy units called tank divisions and motor rifle divisions respectively.
They also have different standards of each unit where the higher standard units have BMPs 1, 2, and 3, and superior tanks like the T-64, T-80, and now I suppose T-90 and the lower standard units have BTR 60,70,and 80 APCs and older tanks like T-62s, and T-72s.
I refer to lower standard but I really should just say different standard as a unit operating in areas where there are good roads that need to cover large areas or areas where there are a lot of land mines then the BTR is probably a better way to travel.

Based on this I could see two types of vehicle structures.

If Russia can get rid of all its obsolete tanks and other vehicles and goes for an all new force, then for most units the MBT will be the T-90 (hopefully the Burlak model). It makes sense therefore that the self propelled artillery that operates with these units remains 2S19 which is based on the T-90 chassis. The Armoured troop transport should be a mix of the BMP-3M (or BMP-4) and the BTR-82 and BTR-82A and the BTR-T which is also based on the T-90 chassis could be the standard fire support vehicle.
For the more expensive units perhaps specialised for urban combat the T-95 could be used as the MBT with the self propelled artillery therefore being the Coalition (twin 152mm guns mounted on T-95 chassis). The commonality of chassis should make operation of different types easier to manage.
Now for the armoured troop transport I would suggest that the T-95 chassis be modified along the lines of the BMP-T. Assuming I am guessing right about the engine setup with the T-95 with a gas turbine generating electricity to electric drive motors and capacitor storage banks then there is no complex transmission, just electric motors and gearing so the gas turbine and capacitor banks could be moved around inside the chassis without much problem. This would mean a heavy APC with a ramp rear door to enter and exit should be easier to create than with a standard tank design where the motor and gearbox and transmission etc are pretty much fixed without a major redesign.
The firs support vehicle could also be based on the T-95 for vehicle commonality with a wider range of armament options, perhaps including 57mm S-60 instead of 30mm, and maybe an 82mm automatic mortar or something but with genuine external controlable gun turrets.

For light mobile units there is already the VDV with the Sprut for the tank, the BMD-4 for MICV, and perhaps Vodnik for APC and Vena for self propelled artillery.

For Naval forces there is the T-90 tank, the 2S19 SPA, the BMP-3M/-4 MICV and BTR-82/-82A and BTR-T

Well it sounds to me like the problem is that the Russian defence department has changed its mind about what it wanted for the T-95 program.
It always said that the T-95 program was too expensive and that the T-90 would form the backbone of the Russian tank forces, so I would interpret this as being a case that they want to get the T-90 into a model that can be the standard model for the next 5 or so years worth of production with older model T-90s being upgraded to this standard and older vehicles being withdrawn from service. This is not going to be cheap because of the expensive vision devices and electronics involved so delaying funding for the T-95 for 2-3 years or so will allow its technology to mature and any remaining problems be resolved.

I don't think you could compare the Black Eagle with the T-95, as the Black Eagle was a concept tank that had an autoloader that worked but the rest was a mockup.
The T-95 has been in development for some time, though without much money for most of the time.

What doesn't it have in common? It was the direct competitor to the Nizhny Tagil tank project. It never existed because it never had the opportunity to get off the ground. Omsktransmash went bankrupt.

The Black Eagle never existed as a workable tank, though the turret bustle autoloader was completed and its design was handed over to the maker of the T-90 and it appears to be going to be part of the new turret.
The T-95 on the other hand was a project at the only tank factory in Russia that is operational and building tanks.
It should have better funding and is more likely to be closer to a production example for that reason.

I have spoken to someone on the internet who told me that the T-95 was rejected as being old fashioned cold war too heavy a tank and that the upgrade of the T-90 was to go ahead and the T-95 was going to be revealed for its export potential.

I would extrapolate from that that if a foreign partner is interested in developing the T-95 further that the Russian Army might become interested in what results... like Pantsir.

If the T-95 is too heavy and expensive then the Leclerc is just as heavy and probably just as expensive or more so.

The black eagle was a mockup only. A shell.

It was developed by a company that has no production capacity in Russia and it is based on a tank (the T-80) which is seen in Russia as being Ukrainian.

Regarding crew survivability in Russian and Soviet tanks they were certainly no perfect, because they often stored ammo in the crew compartment, however many modern tanks still do this.
The turret base auto loaders are armoured and located in the best protected area of the tank and were rarely hit in combat.
The problem was actually the loose rounds in the crew compartment catching fire and sympathetic detonations that destroy the tank.
From what I have read during the second Chechen conflict tankers practised only carrying ammo in the autoloader and had a lot less problems.

The company that designed the Black Eagle passed all their technical designs to the company that makes the T-90 and will make the T-95, and this clearly shows in the design of the Burlak upgrade of the T-90.
The Burlak design adds a rear turret bustle autoloader as well as an auto loader in the base of the turret so 22 rounds are carried below the turret and a further 31 can be carried in the turret rear seperated from the crew.

I think I guessed here previously that they might go for a gas turbine electric powered vehicle.

Gas turbine powered tanks are notorious for their fuel consumption, the first tank with gas turbine propulsion was the T-80 and it cost quite a lot to run, as did the later M1 Abrams.

The situation there was made worse because the gas turbine was directly delivering power, whereas the ideal set up would have the gas turbine directly generating electric power with electric motors driving the vehicle. This means that the gas turbine can be continuously run at an efficient RPM instead a continuously variable RPM to meet the needs of the terrain being crossed and the gear the tank was in.

Most power stations that use diesel fuel use gas turbines because they are compact and powerful and efficient at generating power.

Once you separate them from the transmission they are efficient.

BTW mention of ARMATA is interesting...:

First, these are the level of protection of the main tank, designed for combat in direct contact with the enemy. They will come into service of heavy type formations.
The second family of vehicles with a BMPs level protection the formations for action in difficult terrain and in areas of coastal waters will be equipped with these, also they may commission raids behind enemy lines, as well as fight with small-size (portable) anti-tank detachments of the enemy.
The third family of vehicles is expected to be on the basis of military automobile technology in an armored version with mounted advanced types of weapons, including precision and based on new physical principles, systems and command, C4ISR, EW, etc.
Planning the improvement of military equipment within the medium term, we clearly envision what should be the facing as the Army in 10-15 years. To this end, participating in drafting the state armaments program for 2011-2020, the main leitmotif of which should be to create a weapon system that meets the requirements of the XXI century.
Now the Army plans to carry this out in two stages. In the first (2011-2015) the main focus will be on procurement of modern armaments and military equipment items, especially for rocket and artillery units, reconnaissance, electronic warfare and communications, and automated control systems for tactical level. While continuing to develop a new family of platforms such as light (Typhoon), medium ("Boomerang" and "Kurganets-25") and heavy ("Armata").

Also comments on a thread Vlad posted about the E300 chassis made me take notice... the design was supposed to allow front, mid, or rear engine position. Think about it. An electric motor means no gears or transmission needed and you could place the Gas Turbine engine whereever you wanted... you could even put it in the back of the turret if you wanted a heavy APC with rear ramp doors.

Things should be very interesting in the next few years to see what they come up with.

The T-95 was said to be expensive because of all the foreign components... perhaps high power electric motors were one of those foreign expensive items?

Think of a normal petrol driven car.

You have an engine that transfers mechanical energy via a drive shaft and a transmission and a differential to the wheels.
The transmission allows you to use gearing so that you can go slow with the engine turning fast but the wheels go round slower and you can go fast with a high gear where the engine goes and the wheels go faster. You can also choose a reverse gear where the engine goes the same way it always goes but the wheels go backwards.
The differential is for when you turn. If you think about it as you turn, the wheels on the inside of the turn do not travel as far as the wheels on the outside of the turn. If both wheels are powered that means both wheels will be turning at the same rate so the inner wheels will spin because they are forced to turn the same amount as the wheels on the outside of the turn.
A differential simply allows the outer wheels to turn more and the inner wheels to turn less.

Edit: you would also add the complication of a gear box too, which becomes a little redundant for an electric drive vehicle.

For this new tank rip out the engine, the drive shaft, the transmission, and the diff. On each wheel you put a powerful electric motor to turn the wheel and drive the vehicle forward or backward.
Now to power this vehicle you need a reliable power source and the simplest way to get that is to take a small powerful gas turbine engine and connect it to another electric motor. The gas turbine doesn't need a transmission or gears or anything, just a direct connection to an electric motor. When you put an electric current through an electric motor it spins a shaft that you can put a wheel or propeller or whatever on. If you attach a gas turbine motor to the shaft and use the gas turbine motor to spin the shaft on an electric motor it becomes a dynamo that generates electricity. This electricity can be directly wired to a capacitor bank and a battery bank to store electrical charge and it can also be sent directly to the electric motors on the wheels to move the vehicle.
The only connection between the power pack (which is the gas turbine and electric generator) is electrical cables so you can put the power pack in the front, the middle, or the rear of the vehicle.
You could mount it in the roof or the floor or a turret position if you wanted... gas turbines can be quite compact things.

Because there is no mechanical connection to the wheels the gas turbine can be kept at an energy efficent rpm which greatly improves fuel efficiency.

Most hydraulic systems in the tank could be replaced with electric.
The potential for electric armour, and even plasma guns suddenly becomes much more viable. Very simply a plasma gun replaces the solid propellent with a much hotter material that offers the potential enormous boost in muzzle velocities.
The propellent could be a liquid made up of two or more components that might be poisonous separately but not flammable. You could store these liquids separately in the turret so there is little chance they will contribute to a fire (because they need to be mixed first). Squirt an amount of each fluid into the barrel behind a round and then zap it with an enormous charge of electricity to turn it into a plasma. Different rounds could have different charges depending on the weight of the round and the velocity required. A particular target might warrant a higher propellent charge, whereas most shots might even need a reduced charge which should extend the barrel life.
The safety of moving such a dangerous thing as ammo propellent and separating it out into two non flammable materials would greatly improve safety for operations and for reloading the tank. An RPG hit on such a tank would not even cause a fire.

Should also add that especially with wheeled vehicles if you drive up a hill you are using electrical power... when you get to the top of the hill and start down the other side, not only are you not using electrical power to go down, you actually generate power because your momentum and the down slope will allow you to stop supplying electricity to the electric motors to keep driving you forward. If the slope is steep enough you might be able to maintain speed by no sending any power to the electric motors... and an electric motor with its drive shaft spinning is a dynamo or electric generator adding power to your capacitors/batteries.
The wheels can have brakes fitted or you can use electrical power for the equivelent of engine braking.

An enormous benefit will be lack of noise... for a stealth approach turn off the gas turbine and use batteries to sneak around at night. A gas turbine is actually much quieter than a diesel engine anyway. Its main faults are it generates a lot of heat, and it uses much more fuel than a diesel because it lacks torque and compensates with rpm. This compensation is bad for fuel efficiency.
Eliminating the mechanical stress of acceleration on the gas turbine however and just using it for power generation means it can be made much more efficient. Also increasing power of a gas turbine will be much easier than increasing the power of a diesel.

An example would be the 11,500hp gas turbine in the Mi-26 could make a super tank power plant with lasers and defence shields to make luke skywalker cry. An 11,500hp diesel would need a ship to carry it.

The gas turbine used in the T-80 was a multifuel gas turbine and could run on petrol, kerosene, diesel, benzine or any mixtures of the above.

The jet engines of the Su-25 can also run on diesel too.

Regarding logistics a gas turbine is smaller and simpler to maintain and operate.

The problems with them are they like clean air, they burn lots of fuel if they are the direct power source, and they generate a lot of hot air.

Soviet helos had all sorts of complex dust filters fitted to them to operate in all sorts of environments and they seemed to be quite successful.

Diesels generate heat too.

Gat turbines are smaller, and lighter than diesels... which is why jet engines are so popular in aircraft... because their compact size and light weight are useful for aircraft... especially helicopters.

Regarding a diesel engine with a generator as a power pack that would still work but the diesel will be much larger and heavier and actually less fuel efficient than a good gas turbine engine.

The new electric drive system would be a complete change for the Army logistics system too.

Many tanks already have auxiliary power units to provide power when the tank is not moving so that the main engine doesn't need to be running to power the optics and electronics. This saves a lot of fuel over the life time of the target and 99% of the time that APU uses a small gas turbine engine to generate the power to run the electronics etc. To generate electrical power the gas turbine is the most common solution.