[Official] Armata Discussion thread #5

miketheterrible wrote:People die all the time. We had people day at my previous workplace.  And it isn't nearly as dangerous as working in a weapons plant.

Shit happens

Its the law of big numbers - incidents with infinitesimal chances would eventually happen given enough trials, and UVZ is a pretty large employer of people. If you really want to keep people from dying in the plants you can always just shut down the plants *points at head* - can't have people dying in the workplace if there is no workplace

Amusing they are trying to blame low wages for accidents... I would think lax attitude to safety would be more of a factor in how often accidents happen... unless the low wages make the workers feel expendable so they take more risks... but I doubt that.

Certain jobs can be very dangerous and when you are dealing with seriously heavy equipment or large things that can fall then obviously the risk of death becomes significant.

Here in New Zealand you read about farmers out in the back blocks who roll their tractors and get pinned under them and perhaps drown in water filled ditches or get burned to death when the fuel spills everywhere and ignites on the hot engine or they just starve to death over a period of days or weeks because no one knows they are trapped.

The logging industry and construction industries are also areas with high rates of fatalities... despite heavy safety controls and checks...

Does anyone have an idea as to how the T-14's crew capsule achieves 900+mm RHAe without ERA?

It does not appear to have that much space for composite armour.

The-thing-next-door wrote:Does anyone have an idea as to how the T-14's crew capsule achieves 900+mm RHAe without ERA?

It does not appear to have that much space for composite armour.

Because the weight shaved off from the unmanned turret through a significant reduction of it's volume (removing space for the crew where the gun is), which would allow more flexibility in armoring the crew compartment. Also don't forget that the T-14 is significantly larger than the T-90, by at least 25%.

That e1.ru site is owned by the Hearst corporation. They own tons of the big name outlets. Makes you wonder.

Some of what was in the article is concerning but some frankly isn't and comes with working in such a dangerous environment. Also low wages isn't just a problem for ruskies. We have issues with this here.

magnumcromagnon wrote:

The-thing-next-door wrote:Does anyone have an idea as to how the T-14's crew capsule achieves 900+mm RHAe without ERA?

It does not appear to have that much space for composite armour.

Because the weight shaved off from the unmanned turret through a significant reduction of it's volume (removing space for the crew where the gun is), which would allow more flexibility in armoring the crew compartment. Also don't forget that the T-14 is significantly larger than the T-90, by at least 25%.

I am talking about the thickness off the composite armour block in the front of the hull, it does not appear to be very thick (space between the driver's hatch and ERA).

Though it could have a cutout for the driver's hatch like the T-64/72/80 did.

Its not.

The Chassis is longer so the nose angles can be improved to present more actual material needing to be penetrated.

Obviously in addition to base armour that ERA and APS needs to be taken into consideration too.

GarryB wrote:Obviously in addition to base armour that ERA and APS needs to be taken into consideration too.

The reason I want to have some idea of what the base armour is that I need to know what it is on it's own in order to evaluate the tank's protection as a whole.

The-thing-next-door wrote:
The reason I want to have some idea of what the base armour is that I need to know what it is on it's own in order to evaluate the tank's protection as a whole.

Such an assessment would be incomplete and misleading. Russian tank armor is not base composite armor (more like NERA) + ERA like Western tank armor is where ERA is but an afterthought meant to pad the protection levels if the penetration capabilities of the main threats gets too close for comfort, but a complex mutually reinforcing system designed so that the preceding layers would impart effects on the long rod penetrator that is exploited upon and exacerbated by the succeeding layers. Think the yawing and fragmentation action of the K-5 ERA in combination with the bulging layer base armor which further enhances the effect. You can't have one, but not the other as its simply not designed that way.

Knowing the base armour would give a better idea of how well the Armata will perform against multiple shot/ rapid fire weapons or against sustained fire.

AFAIK the armour on their new vehicles is modular and is intended to be upgraded and improved over the operational livespan of the vehicles.

The added problem is the the armour isn't rolled homogeneous armour... in one of the threads they talked about stretched fibre metal armour improving protection by 20-30% over normal armour and using less metal so you get more tanks per ton of high quality steel armour.

Other factors like an APS system that makes the kinetic penetrators yaw means different thicknesses have different meanings... an APS that tumbles a 120mm gun state of the art APFSDS round might not offer enough protection for a Tigr class vehicle as the energy of the round will still penetrate the light base armour... but fractionally thicker armour... say a BMP-3 might be enough to stop it from the front for instance.

Equally a penetrator that is already yawing after being intercepted by the APS might mean the NERA is even more effective so instead of reducing penetration by 300mm it might cut the penetration by 600mm, so when it hits the base armour on paper it might be that it should penetrate 300mm, but because the round has yawed and further disrupted by the NERA that it is going sideways so it barely makes a dent in the main armour...

Armour is funny like that.

On paper it might have penetration resistance to penetrations from APFSDS rounds but what the penetrator is made of and how it is shaped will effect how it penetrates but also how the protection layers perform.

On the Leopard IIs we hear all sorts of stuff about sheet metal structures with mostly empty space simulate a 2.5m thick piece of rolled hardened armour... but if such protection could stop everything then during the Gulf War in 1991 when 120mm penetrators penetrated T-72s and T-55s right through... front to rear through the engines and out into the sand behind the target tank... isn't that the same thing... in fact it is worse because the frontal plate on a Leo 2A7 or whatever it is called wont be as thick as the frontal armour of a T-72 because there simply is not enough physical room for any heavy armour in addition to that empty space.

Multi hits except hits directly on hits make no difference normally... if you hit an armoured plate with an equivalent thickness of 500mm twice with rounds that can penetrate 400mm neither round will penetrate.

The-thing-next-door wrote:Knowing the base armour would give a better idea of how well the Armata will perform against multiple shot/ rapid fire weapons or against sustained fire.

That's not really a practical concern given the effective dispersion on static, never mind moving targets at combat relevant ranges. You'd have to get real close just to land those close shots and that's against a target that could kill you at any ranges he can see you.

The thing is that the media claimed a 900+ RHA equivalent level of protection for the "crew compartment". I want to try and find out if the composite armour provides that level of protection.

900+mm without ERA combined with advanced ERA is very different to 900+mm with ERA which is quite frankly underwhelming for a tank like the T-14 which only needs one block of armour and not two or more like a conventional tank.

The-thing-next-door wrote:The thing is that the media claimed a 900+ RHA equivalent level of protection for the "crew compartment". I want to try and find out if the composite armour provides that level of protection.

900+mm without ERA combined with advanced ERA is very different to 900+mm with ERA which is quite frankly underwhelming for a tank like the T-14 which only needs one block of armour and not two or more like a conventional tank.

Why on Earth would you think that UVZ or the Ru MOD would ever actually reveal realistic figures of the of armor of their AFV's? Mindstorm has already explained in the past that these 'armor figures' are highly guarded secrets in the Federation, and elsewhere. What your speculating is purely supposition, and don't use supposition interchangeably with suppository.

magnumcromagnon wrote:
Why on Earth would you think that UVZ or the Ru MOD would ever actually reveal realistic figures of the of armor of their AFV's? Mindstorm has already explained in the past that these 'armor figures' are highly guarded secrets in the Federation, and elsewhere. What your speculating is purely supposition, and don't use supposition interchangeably with suppository.

I know that I will not get a very accurate idea of what it's level of protection is, what I am trying to do is get a vague idea of how much composite armour it might have.

The thing is that we can get a vague idea of what its armour protection might be (range of possible protection levels depending on the efficacy of the composite armour used) if we can estimate the thickness and shape of it's composite armour block. For instance if we look at the T-90's turret we can see that the flat sections of the front are not very thick and thus probably offer less protection than is desirable (unless Russian composite armour is exceptionally protective compared to it's western equivalents) we can also see that since the BMPT's turret front has approximately the same LOS thickness as the T-72B hill armour that it's protection is probably between 450 and 650 mm RHA equivalent, not accurate by any means but, infinitely better than simply saying it provides CEKPETHO millimetres of rolled homogenous armour equivalent against redacted.

Essentially a tank with a thick composite block will likely be better protected than one with a thin composite block, I just want a rough idea of how thick the T-14's is and if possible to have a rough estimate of it's shape.

The-thing-next-door wrote:The thing is that the media claimed a 900+ RHA equivalent level of protection for the "crew compartment". I want to try and find out if the composite armour provides that level of protection.

900+mm without ERA combined with advanced ERA is very different to 900+mm with ERA which is quite frankly underwhelming for a tank like the T-14 which only needs one block of armour and not two or more like a conventional tank.

The figure 900-950 mm RHA against KE for the turret front (with Relikt) was given to Putin by a UVZ representative when describing the protection of a T-90MS. The Russians would never use the tank nor its export configuration armor so its a safe bet that this number is more or less truthful. Do you really think the Russians would have just about the same protection level for their own domestic variant of the T-90M, nevermind the T-14? Or that the Germans would go ahead and design a brand new spanking gun and its attendant ammo line, an insanely expensive project just to defeat this level of protection?

The-thing-next-door wrote:

The thing is that we can get a vague idea of what its armour protection might be (range of possible protection levels depending on the efficacy of the composite armour used) if we can estimate the thickness and shape of it's composite armour block. For instance if we look at the T-90's turret we can see that the flat sections of the front are not very thick and thus probably offer less protection than is desirable (unless Russian composite armour is exceptionally protective compared to it's western equivalents) we can also see that since the BMPT's turret front has approximately the same LOS thickness as the T-72B hill armour that it's protection is probably between 450 and 650 mm RHA equivalent, not accurate by any means but, infinitely better than simply saying it provides CEKPETHO millimetres of rolled homogenous armour equivalent against redacted.

Essentially a tank with a thick composite block will likely be better protected than one with a thin composite block, I just want a rough idea of how thick the T-14's is and if possible to have a rough estimate of it's shape.

Again it simply does not work that way. Of all the armor types available, heavy ERA provides the most effective protection based on the per mass, and thickness basis. If you are optimizing for the highest protection levels possible given certain volume and weight restrictions then its definitely a good idea to allocate more of both for the ERA rather than the less effective base armor.

lyle6 wrote:

Again it simply does not work that way. Of all the armor types available, heavy ERA provides the most effective protection based on the per mass, and thickness basis. If you are optimizing for the highest protection levels possible given certain volume and weight restrictions then its definitely a good idea to allocate more of both for the ERA rather than the less effective base armor.

Only in theory, in reality if your base armour is not enough on it's own then you tank will be entirely dependent on ERA and will need to go back to base to be resupplied after every single encounter to get more ERA.

If it has good base armour or not is the difference between a tank with a triple layered defence and a tank that is reliant on the first two layers of it's defence, both of which will likely be depleted rapidly and I have my doubts about the possibility of maintaining a perfect supply chain in the third world war.

The-thing-next-door wrote:

Only in theory, in reality if your base armour is not enough on it's own then you tank will be entirely dependent on ERA and will need to go back to base to be resupplied after every single encounter to get more ERA.

If it has good base armour or not is the difference between a tank with a triple layered defence and a tank that is reliant on the first two layers of it's defence, both of which will likely be depleted rapidly and I have my doubts about the possibility of maintaining a perfect supply chain in the third world war.

The base armor is not nearly as resilient to withstand multiple hits as you suggest. Most modern tank base armor is made up internally of NERA - sandwiches of very thin metal plates backed up by elastics with some ceramics interjected to introduce spall to disrupt shaped charge jets. The impact of a penetrator to the metal plate and subsequent rebounding effect would vaporize that elastic layer, drastically reducing the effectiveness of the array to successive impacts as its basically just spaced steel at that point on and would have to be replaced, just like ERA.

lyle6 wrote:

The base armor is not nearly as resilient to withstand multiple hits as you suggest. Most modern tank base armor is made up internally of NERA - sandwiches of very thin metal plates backed up by elastics with some ceramics interjected to introduce spall to disrupt shaped charge jets. The impact of a penetrator to the metal plate and subsequent rebounding effect would vaporize that elastic layer, drastically reducing the effectiveness of the array to successive impacts as its basically just spaced steel at that point on and would have to be replaced, just like ERA.

Obviously no armour outside of science fiction can resist multiple APFSDS strikes within a few centimetres of each other as there will always be a hole in the material, the question then becomes how large an area of the armour is compromised by a hit.

I doubt a properly designed NERA array would suffer damage that affects a large radius around the point of impact, obviously there will be holes in the plates and t he backing will be damaged, but I cannot imagine that the area compromised would extend past a 75-100mm radius around the point of impact.

The thing with the Russian heavy ERA is that the modules are massive and seem to cover between a tenth and a fifth of the armour they are attached to which in terms of surviving multiple hits is terrible and as I said I sincerely doubt that they will have enough space ERA to supply their entire tank fleet throughout the entire duration of WWIII.