[Official] Armata Discussion thread #5

If the APFSDS round is already Yawing before it hits the armour then what hole are your talking about.

Look at targets from a tank firing range and show me how often repeated hits on stationary targets get close to each other?

Against a moving target the chances would be much lower still and again it ignores the effect of APS and how that ERA works...

Does anyone here have evidence of NERA arrays being rendered ineffective by repeated hits? Obviously they will be damaged, but I see no reason why something like the T-72B's "reflecting plates" would be degraded nearly as much as say a T-72B-3's Kontakt-5 panels.

Obviously if a tank relies on ceramic plates (not sure if any do) then its armour will be degraded rather quickly (though I have seen videos of Russian ceramic bodyarmour surviving multiple AP hits) so it should not be impossible to design ceramic array elements that only allow for localised damage, though that said the same may be true for more advanced reactive armour.

Many here seem to disregard the consideration that the area of armour compromised by a hit will result in an ever increasing probability of the penetration of the next hit, for instance say that 1/5 of a tanks frontal profile is not protected against APFSDS then the first hit has a 20% probability of penetrating, if that hit then compromises another 1/5 (perhaps a little unrealistic) of the tanks frontal profile then the next hit will have a 40% probability of penetrating the tank. While perhaps too simple for practical application this equation should illustrate my point, that being that the survivability of a tanks defensive measures is not something you can dismiss when analysing a tanks survivability.

lyle6 wrote:

And as GarryB and I keep on banging on, dispersion is a thing. If you can reliably target the same spot there'd be no need for tandem warheads and such. Nor would there be a requirement for LRPs to penetrate the enemy armor in its entirety when one can just shoot the same spot again and again until it eventually goes through.

You clearly missed my point, I never said that NERA would not be degraded by APFSDS impacts, nor did I claim that tanks could hit the exact same spot repeatedly. My point was about the degree to which armour was degraded by an impact and the effect of this on the probability of the next hit being a penetration.

Armour that can limit the compromised area to within 100-150mm of the point of impact is better than armour that will be rendered ineffective within 200-300mm of the point of impact, thus we can conclude that a tank with more durable armour will have a higher survivability due to the coverage of it's armour being more difficult to degrade.

Does anyone here have evidence of NERA arrays being rendered ineffective by repeated hits?

You are asking one hell of a question there... it is like saying how do people perform under pressure.

Early forms of ERA essentially tried to use explosives to move layers of metal at a similar speed to the penetrator which of course was a plasma beam of metal in the form of a vapour to give it mass.

Early ERA cells were big because the idea was to essentially push a sheet of metal into the path of the penetrator at high speed so the penetrator hit the tile and then was penetrating a sheet of metal equivalent to the thickness of the box, and the metal could be made quite hard and high quality so it adds several cms of metal protection with a sheet that might only be a few mms thick.

The problem was that tile had one charge of HE so if it was hit again it essentially just became a spaced armour tile rather than an ERA tile... the latter being much more effective.

The designs go better and better with less and less explosive being used till we got to the point where it was effective against kinetic penetrators as well, and with less explosive it could then be used on lighter vehicles too... the HE charges means the tiles didn't deform at all and didn't set off nearby tiles either which also made it more effective too.

NERA eliminates the explosive content and just allows the internal materials to shift around with the impact to try to shear the penetrators tip... as you can imagine the difference in energy needed to drive a sharpened pencil through your hand is rather less than the energy needed to drive the blunt end of the pencil through your hand... the sharpened tip makes it much easier by breaking the skin and pushing aside the flesh and bones etc etc. The blunt end will still penetrate but will need a lot more energy to do so and with a penetrating anti armour weapon there is no where for any extra energy to come from except with a multistage HEAT round perhaps.

What I am trying to say is that NERA uses different designs and mechanisms to undermine the penetration performance of the penetrator... some designs will work better on some penetrators... early ERA didn't work against kinetic rods, newer ERA and NERA does, but without specifics it is almost impossible to say because the attempted penetration might be close to a previous attempted and failed penetration, but does that stop the NERA from working, or might it even make it work better on that type of penetrator.

One of the reasons they developed NERA is to make it better able to deal with multiple hits.

Armour like ceramic can stop rounds but tends to be shattered and turned into a powder in doing so, so while early ceramic armours for body armour were tested the Soviets went with metal armour and kevlar because it was better with multiple hits. Later ceramic armours allowed multiple hits quite close together... but the Kevlar and other materials holding the armour together often meant a second hit where a first hit had been made would protect the wearer simply because the second bullet had to penetrate the body of the first bullet, which would stop most pistol bullets anyway.

Even Gatling guns firing 12 thousands rounds a minute don't hit the same place twice most of the time... especially from a moving aircraft.

Obviously they will be damaged, but I see no reason why something like the T-72B's "reflecting plates" would be degraded nearly as much as say a T-72B-3's Kontakt-5 panels.

By reflecting plates do you mean those things on the side that open out... that is not ERA or NERA... it is essentially spaced armour. and multiple penetrations should not matter.

Obviously if a tank relies on ceramic plates (not sure if any do) then its armour will be degraded rather quickly (though I have seen videos of Russian ceramic bodyarmour surviving multiple AP hits) so it should not be impossible to design ceramic array elements that only allow for localised damage, though that said the same may be true for more advanced reactive armour.

New ceramic armours often localise the damage and allow multiple stops of threats.

Most tank armour is modular and can be removed and replaced in the field... the chances of a lot of hits in exactly the same place against a moving target is pretty low... but in combat an enemy is always going to try to target the weakest points where one shot might be lethal like firing down from a building for instance.

Many here seem to disregard the consideration that the area of armour compromised by a hit will result in an ever increasing probability of the penetration of the next hit,

You would think so, but there are cases of tanks getting hit with literally dozens of RPGs and continuing to operate... this is often because the people attacking the tanks were not aware of weak spots... or from the direction they could fire there were no weak spots because the tanks crew used the right tactics.

The key is to not get hit a lot so it wont matter.

Obviously it is one think to know the internals of a tank and know where to hit it to kill it, but in the fear and dust of a real battlefield with adrenaline pumping, an RPG is not a precision weapon that lets you pick and choose where you hit it.

RPGs are normally fired in large volleys at armour to achieve kills and for every successful kill there are thousands of misses and failures to penetrate... and of course the vast majority of RPGs are fired at things other than tanks anyway.

While perhaps too simple for practical application this equation should illustrate my point, that being that the survivability of a tanks defensive measures is not something you can dismiss when analysing a tanks survivability.

I think you are being rather optimistic in your belief that you can choose where to hit a target like this...

You clearly missed my point, I never said that NERA would not be degraded by APFSDS impacts, nor did I claim that tanks could hit the exact same spot repeatedly. My point was about the degree to which armour was degraded by an impact and the effect of this on the probability of the next hit being a penetration.

If your round is going through an existing hole in the armour then the second shot should have an easier time of it except if the hole was created by a DU kinetic round and the second round now has to penetrate the length of a DU penetrator.

The odds of an arrow penetrating the length of an arrow and then going through the target would be so unlikely to think it probably wont happen.

A penetrator that does not penetrate might shatter or be deflected so there might not be a hole to travel through.

Armour that can limit the compromised area to within 100-150mm of the point of impact is better than armour that will be rendered ineffective within 200-300mm of the point of impact, thus we can conclude that a tank with more durable armour will have a higher survivability due to the coverage of it's armour being more difficult to degrade.

You are assuming the so called hits even reach the armour and are not stopped with APS or ERA or simple smoke grenades and reversing.

Even if we had experts in the field discussion this it will all be conjecture and surmise and guess work.

GarryB wrote:One of the reasons they developed NERA is to make it better able to deal with multiple hits.

Hence a tank with sufficient NERA to stop enemy APFSDS rounds will be a lot better than a tank that relies on ERA to degrade the performance of enemy rounds.

While something like the T-90M is well protected when you count the ERA but, how well protected do you think it will be when most of that ERA has already detonated?

Armour like ceramic can stop rounds but tends to be shattered and turned into a powder in doing so, so while early ceramic armours for body armour were tested the Soviets went with metal armour and kevlar because it was better with multiple hits.

The exact same reason I am suggesting that relying on ERA is foolish.

By reflecting plates do you mean those things on the side that open out... that is not ERA or NERA... it is essentially spaced armour. and multiple penetrations should not matter.

I was talking about the composite armour of the T-72B's turret.

You would think so, but there are cases of tanks getting hit with literally dozens of RPGs and continuing to operate... this is often because the people attacking the tanks were not aware of weak spots... or from the direction they could fire there were no weak spots because the tanks crew used the right tactics.
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Could a light tank with some ERA have survived the same situation?

I think you are being rather optimistic in your belief that you can choose where to hit a target like this...

I was suggesting that as ERA panels detonated the tank would be increasingly likely to be hit in an area not protected by ERA and that if a tank relied on ERA that it's protection would then be compromised.

I never claimed that enemy gunners could hit "weakspots" but, rather that after a few hits a tanks ERA coverage would be poor resulting in a higher probability. of a penetrating hit if that tank relied on ERA for protection.

lyle6 wrote:The problem with designing for multi-hit capability is one of trade-offs. To incorporate multi-hit capability would require that the armor be overbuilt to withstand single hits. Against smaller calibre LRPs and shoulder fired ATGM SCJs this is relatively easy, since you can just scale down the technology designed for full tank calibre LRPs and heavy ATGMs. But for the full sized versions serving as the benchmark for newly develope armor - no way are you managing it without giving up something significant in turn. And that's where ERA and APS comes in, at least for the Russians so they don't have to make that kind of compromise and look at what it gave them - tanks that have excellent mobility tactical, operational, and strategic, and could even be afforded by developing countries.

Oh yes they have cheap easy to deploy cannon fodder that have vastly inferior protection levels to projects from the late 70's, great if you need to quickly arm your police force, but of questionable value in mechanised warfare.

If your tanks lack survivability you cannot deploy them against what they cannot hope to survive, the army will need to rely on its Smerch batteries, helicopters and the airforce to destroy all of the enemy tanks before they can even consider sending in their own. What next? Equip the entire army with nothing but pistols because the RVSN will be relied upon to kill all of the enemy soldiers before the army is deployed?

In contrasst the M1 Abrams is one such tank that doesn't employ ERA for its protection. And its stupidly heavy for what it does that it can't be transported to where its needed, and needs billions further in infrastructure upgrades just to allow just this one vehicle type some level of mobility. Its also stupidly expensive, since among other things, it requires significant amounts of highly resilient, but relatively low weight armor materials like titanium for its armor to keep within relaxed weight constraints. The added considerations for NBC material handling for the DU content probably adds up to that number as well. Its a failure before it even exited the gates, but that's ok since it does so well in WT

It is an poorly designed, inefficient and primitive vehicle with sub par firepower, but at least it can take a few hits. A tank with similar specifications but created using Russian tank design methodology (prior to gorbie/yeltsin tank design incompetence) would alleviate many of the issues you mentioned.

Hence a tank with sufficient NERA to stop enemy APFSDS rounds will be a lot better than a tank that relies on ERA to degrade the performance of enemy rounds.

Yes, but that is unattainable because once they find out your armour stops their rounds they make new more powerful rounds that your armour can no longer stop.

It does not matter if enemy rounds are stopped by ERA or NERA or APS or base armour... all of these work together to make the tank better protected, and improvements in each field benefit the tank crew as each component can be improved or upgraded.

While something like the T-90M is well protected when you count the ERA but, how well protected do you think it will be when most of that ERA has already detonated?

It really depends... is most of the ERA gone in the first seconds of contact because there are 30 enemies with RPGs repeatedly firing at your tank which is getting overwhelmed and keeps running away... or have you killed 10 enemy tanks and have been hit 6-8 times in the process of killing those enemy tanks...

ERA is relatively cheap and trivial to replace so if you have lost half your ERA coverage head back to your support area and get a few new tiles put on in place of the damaged ones and then head back into combat... ERA tiles are cheap and simple to replace it is not the end of the world if you lose some or most of them... that is them doing their job.

Equally while you are there you can grab some more main gun ammo and reload the APS with munitions too and also smoke grenades and MG ammo.

Real combat is not a video game... I think it is amusing you worrying about losing ERA tiles when one hit to the tracks means you bail and abandon your tank and let the engineers recover it... no sitting for 30 seconds while it automatically repairs.

Depending on the conflict you might remain in the tank because that is actually safest and maintain fire against the enemy while help is sent.

The exact same reason I am suggesting that relying on ERA is foolish.

No one is relying on ERA. ERA serves a purpose... compared with the protection it adds it is cheap and light and simple and easy to replace in the field... unbolt and discard the old tiles and bolt on new tiles and you are ready to go...

I was talking about the composite armour of the T-72B's turret.

It depends on angles and depths of penetration and of course what is hitting it... small arms fire will bounce off and wont leave a scratch. Heavier rounds might leave marks and some will penetrate no matter what.

With ERA on top it makes it harder to penetrate but does not make it impossible... but then the rear of the turret could be penetrated by many modern anti armour weapons.

Could a light tank with some ERA have survived the same situation?

If they could there would be no value in heavier vehicles.

I was suggesting that as ERA panels detonated the tank would be increasingly likely to be hit in an area not protected by ERA and that if a tank relied on ERA that it's protection would then be compromised.

ERA panels on light vehicles is only a more recent thing because ERA reduces penetration but does not stop the penetrator... you need significant base armour behind the ERA to actually stop those rounds. When you see ERA on BMPs it is normally attached to composite external armour boxes.

No Soviet tank relied on ERA or APS, but using both is the most sensible thing with Nakidka over the outside...

One wont stop a HEAT round or APFSDS but the combination of different measures works best and is the most effective.

I never claimed that enemy gunners could hit "weakspots" but, rather that after a few hits a tanks ERA coverage would be poor resulting in a higher probability. of a penetrating hit if that tank relied on ERA for protection.

A vehicle with ERA that has been hit 20 times is still in a better position protection wise than the same vehicle with no ERA where many of those 20 hits might have penetrated the tank armour and killed crew members.

Having to hit a tank multiple times just to get a chance to penetrate sounds like the perfect tank protection to me...

In contrasst the M1 Abrams is one such tank that doesn't employ ERA for its protection. And its stupidly heavy for what it does that it can't be transported to where its needed, and needs billions further in infrastructure upgrades just to allow just this one vehicle type some level of mobility. Its also stupidly expensive, since among other things, it requires significant amounts of highly resilient, but relatively low weight armor materials like titanium for its armor to keep within relaxed weight constraints.

Not to mention the Americans couldn't come up with a diesel engine powerful enough to move it around the battlefield so they converted a helicopter gas turbine engine to power it... creating a huge IR signature and burning fuel that OPEC countries dream everyone needed for their tanks...

Oh yes they have cheap easy to deploy cannon fodder that have vastly inferior protection levels to projects from the late 70's, great if you need to quickly arm your police force, but of questionable value in mechanised warfare.

The T-90 held up just fine against the TOW in Syria the fact that it did not fare so well in Chechnia is more a reflection of the level of knowledge the Chechens had of Soviet military equipment.

If Iraqis had been trained in the US Army and were provided all the anti armour equipment Russia had at its disposal in the late 1990s and 2000s, then no Abrams tank would have survived... and all their helicopters would be shot down too.

If your tanks lack survivability you cannot deploy them against what they cannot hope to survive, the army will need to rely on its Smerch batteries, helicopters and the airforce to destroy all of the enemy tanks before they can even consider sending in their own.

Which is obviously something for HATO to be really scared about because their tanks simply are not better than upgraded T-72s let alone T-90s or Armata T-14s.

Equip the entire army with nothing but pistols because the RVSN will be relied upon to kill all of the enemy soldiers before the army is deployed?

You seem to have the wrong end of the stick... it is the HATO forces that have to keep their tanks in air conditioned and heated tents, it is HATO forces that lack a brand new tank design... their newest ones are from the early 1980s... and while they have a few samples of impressively expensive anti tank weapons... they really don't have enormous numbers of them because they are expensive and they certainly don't have the air defence capacity to protect their anti armour helicopters and CAS jets, let alone bring down new Russian helicopters and jets that are getting all new missiles and capabilities.

ERA is a simple cheap add on level of protection that just makes their vehicles harder to deal with using new and existing ammo for HATO.

HATO doesn't use it because there is no profit in Cheap.

Ironic when the next evolution of HATO is cheap drone swarms... note that word cheap... by the time they have spent billions on this the cheap will be omitted like it was from the F-35 programme which snowballed out of control too... and they will be talking about 10 drones working together as being a drone swarm... scary scary...

The real funny thing is that a drone swarm is both high tech... which the Russians have proved they can do now... and needs to be affordable to be used in the numbers needed to be effective... and both Russia and China can do Cheap too... HATO should be afraid... HATO should be looking at not calling Russia and China enemy so much... but they wont because the US is in charge and they don't want to make money and grow and develop...

It is an poorly designed, inefficient and primitive vehicle with sub par firepower, but at least it can take a few hits

One ancient Konkurs hit to the side of the turret takes them out.

One shot to the track would immobilise them just like any other tank.

A tank with similar specifications but created using Russian tank design methodology (prior to gorbie/yeltsin tank design incompetence) would alleviate many of the issues you mentioned.

Russia wouldn't make a tank that heavy.... look at T-14... that is the tank they make.

Tradeoffs. are. a . thing. You can keep on insisting on whatever it is that tickles your fancy but sooner or later it would have to concede to reality.

Which is why ERA is amazing... it is relatively cheap... anyone who can use a spanner can fit it or remove it... it is not very heavy... and it adds protection to tank armour... it isn't perfect... there is a chance a round could hit the join between two plates and neither works properly... the point is that it is there to improve the protection of the tank, but no one expects it to make it invincible.

Last Time i checked the t-14 topic , people were still using hindsight and 3rd grader logic to find "flaws" on that tank. Like automation bad and remote turret bad.

Has the situation gotten any better ? I sort of lost hope a while ago.

If HATO wants to go to a 130mm round it is likely going to be too heavy to manually load in the confines of a turret so everyone will be looking at autoloaders, so they should become acceptable technology the way other Soviet innovations became acceptable like gas turbine engines and smoothbore main guns...

I think new HATO programmes to produce new generation tank replacements for existing vehicles is making many HATO fanboys realise there is a performance and technology gap.

What is most amusing is that most still don't realise the Armata is a vehicle family, so it is not just HATO tanks that are obsolete....

Atmosphere wrote:Last Time i checked the t-14 topic , people were still using hindsight and 3rd grader logic to find "flaws" on that tank. Like automation bad and remote turret bad.

Has the situation gotten any better ? I sort of lost hope a while ago.

Yeah, it's gotten better

Stolen from GRU from Otvaga.

Pretty good rate of fire....

Western idiots really believed Armata (especially the T-14) wasn't coming in to service! Word of advice, never rely on any Western source about the Russian military....that's like building a skyscraper on a foundation of wet toilet paper!

Kazan tank school is studying t-14 tanks on the Armata platform

PapaDragon wrote:

Atmosphere wrote:Last Time i checked the t-14 topic , people were still using hindsight and 3rd grader logic to find "flaws" on that tank. Like automation bad and remote turret bad.

Has the situation gotten any better ? I sort of lost hope a while ago.

Yeah, it's gotten better

So the T-14 may be more or less free from the Su-57's "media mud".

By the way, as per request of the ministry of defense , the T-14 can infact be optionally manned (gunner) if the Turret is damaged.

Atmosphere wrote:...By the way, as per request of the ministry of defense , the T-14 can infact be optionally manned (gunner) if the Turret is damaged.

I don't think that's true, there's not enough space in there and the turret interior would be a death trap

It would be like sitting in a giant meat grinder