[Official] Armata Discussion thread #5

lyle6 wrote:UVZ better be working overtime on cranking out that export version. Lots of countries waving checkbooks waiting for it to drop.

Speaking of models:

Wow.... nice find... is it accurate?

For those not understanding this is models of the T-14 and T-95 side by side, the T-95 also had an unmanned turret but as you can see had a rear turret mounted independently elevating 30mm 2A42 cannon with what appears to be a rifle calibre machine gun mounted on top of it so for instance when operating in a built up area it could elevate the 30mm cannon to shoot at enemy troops on the roof of buildings.

The ammo for the 30mm gun located in the rear turret bustle... it turns with the turret and the main gun but can be elevated to much greater angles as shown by its location and design... and should be able to depress to hit enemy troops up close in basement apartments too...

Would therefore expect the gunners and commanders sights should therefore be able to look both up and down from the horizontal to take advantage of this capability.

PapaDragon wrote:
They should drop couple of hundred T-14s on Russian Army first before chasing checkbooks

>marginal profits from MoD orders and very stringent requirements
I sleep
>export customers paying through the nose for a legally downgraded product
Real shit

GarryB wrote:
Wow.... nice find... is it accurate?

For those not understanding this is models of the T-14 and T-95 side by side, the T-95 also had an unmanned turret but as you can see had a rear turret mounted independently elevating 30mm 2A42 cannon with what appears to be a rifle calibre machine gun mounted on top of it so for instance when operating in a built up area it could elevate the 30mm cannon to shoot at enemy troops on the roof of buildings.

The ammo for the 30mm gun located in the rear turret bustle... it turns with the turret and the main gun but can be elevated to much greater angles as shown by its location and design... and should be able to depress to hit enemy troops up close in basement apartments too...

Would therefore expect the gunners and commanders sights should therefore be able to look both up and down from the horizontal to take advantage of this capability.

The T-95 never entered service so it never received a T-xx designation, just the Object 195 industrial code.

But yeah both models should be pretty accurate, at least with regards to the dimensions. I could see some weird detailing going on but if you don't look too closely it won't bother you. Much.

I suspect that the 195 turret can be installed in the Armata chassis.   I know that they can have a different depth not visible outside.
But the modularity objective was there before either project.   They wouldn't just waste resources dabbling.   The gun on the 195 turret
is apparently 152 mm if the renders are correct.   So a 152 mm version of the "T-14" exists already.

The 152 mm gun was a powerful gun, but its simply outdated. Improvements in gun and ammo would have allowed for upscale performance for legacy calibers anyway (except for the hand-loaded 120x570 ammo, that one's just ngmi, since the limitation is on what the manpower can handle, not the gun), so in the future we might be looking at a T-14M with an ETC 125 mm gun that could punch as hard as the old 152 mm gun without any of the disadvantages associated with the larger caliber.

Big_Gazza wrote:
...and if the NATOstani exceptionalists ever manage to field a MBT that the 125mm gun can't handle, the Russians can always upgrade the T-14s unmanned turret and introduce a modernised 152mm.

As I've said the 125 mm caliber still has enormous potential and simply copying what NATO has done to squeeze every potential out of their outdated gun and ammo system would allow for similar dramatic increases in performance as well. The Russians still use Aluminium sabots for instance, and a simple replacement with a much lighter composite sabot can easily allow for higher muzzle velocities without changing anything else. Older Russian sabots also use this weird in between design between a ring sabot and a double ramp sabot with protrusions at the front and back to center the projectile and this is causing enormous localized erosion and ate at the barrel life if the pressure wasn't otherwise artificially capped. Later Russian sabots like the one in use for the T-14 compatible APFSDS use a more conventional 3 petal double ramp sabot which might have a larger parasitic mass associated with it, but does let up massively on the barrel erosion and further improves the stability of the sub-projectile in the transition to open flight.

Big_Gazza wrote:
Thats what makes the Armata family such a great upgrade for the Russian army - its ability to support (r)evolutionary upgrades well into the future.

Its the first time the Russians have designed a tank that's designed to last intentionally for 50 years of service at least. Their previous designs were great for the most part, boasting similar performance to vehicles that are much larger and heavier, but this came at the cost of modularity. It was basically impossible to implement massive upgrades to tanks without significantly redesigning and replacing most components and that's how you end up fielding 3 concurrent lines of MBTs which could've been implemented as block upgrades instead.

The same innovation applies to 152 mm guns as 125 mm guns. If the extra energy gives a battlefield advantage, then it is not a waste of
time.

kvs wrote:The same innovation applies to 152 mm guns as 125 mm guns.    If the extra energy gives a battlefield advantage, then it is not a waste of
time.  

Up to a point that's true. Thing is the new 125 mm gun can fire projectiles of the same length as the 152 mm gun anyway just at a slightly lower muzzle velocity. The larger parasitic mass of the larger 152 mm sabot more than making up for the increase in overall energy by consuming a larger proportion of the energy balance. Thus the penetration performance of the 152 mm APFSDS would not really improve much from the 125 mm, unless you go wack and go for a redesigned autoloader with far longer projectiles. If NATO implements tanks with similar post-penetration survivability enhancements as the T-14 its probably a good idea to have more ammo on hand to finish the job as well.

I would think an EM type weapon would start with very light penetrators going enormous speeds so I would expect 125mm guns to be far too large a calibre... I would expect something a similar calibre to the calibre of the APFSDS rounds themselves... 40mm-50mm or so, which might mean you need a secondary gun for HE... a similar position to the start of WWII where some tanks had small calibre anti tank guns or larger calibre artillery short guns and machine guns for infantry support.

There is plenty of future potential for different calibres and even types of round... with modern digital systems in a modern tank would an EMP round that explodes within 10m of a tank that totally disables everything including the engine digital control systems etc be a politically correct way of dealing with enemy vehicles and equipment... ie take out the weapon without killing the crew?

Hahaha reminds me of that non lethal crap that was so popular in the west in the 1990s and early 2000s... that stuff you spray on protesters that thickens and then hardens and becomes solid and encases them so they can't move... or if it covers their face suffocates and kills them. Nonlethal my arse.

There have been projects with ramjet powered kinetic rounds with some ability to manouver in flight... no need to loop the loop or anything but following a moving target a few degrees is normally plenty... scramjet powered ones even more interesting...

GarryB wrote: I would think an EM type weapon would start with very light penetrators going enormous speeds so I would expect 125mm guns to be far too large a calibre... I would expect something a similar calibre to the calibre of the APFSDS rounds themselves... 40mm-50mm or so, which might mean you need a secondary gun for HE... a similar position to the start of WWII where some tanks had small calibre anti tank guns or larger calibre artillery short guns and machine guns for infantry support.

Strictly speaking electrothermal-chemical (ETC) guns are not EM guns like railguns and coilguns as the projectile's kinetic energy comes from hot expanding gases (which partially turns to plasma in this case) instead of electromagnetic action. As such they would still be subject to stress limitations of the gun which is mostly avoided by upscaling to a larger caliber to reduce the pressure significantly.

GarryB wrote:
There is plenty of future potential for different calibres and even types of round... with modern digital systems in a modern tank would an EMP round that explodes within 10m of a tank that totally disables everything including the engine digital control systems etc be a politically correct way of dealing with enemy vehicles and equipment... ie take out the weapon without killing the crew?

Hahaha reminds me of that non lethal crap that was so popular in the west in the 1990s and early 2000s... that stuff you spray on protesters that thickens and then hardens and becomes solid and encases them so they can't move... or if it covers their face suffocates and kills them.  Nonlethal my arse.

There have been projects with ramjet powered kinetic rounds with some ability to manouver in flight... no need to loop the loop or anything but following a moving target a few degrees is normally plenty...  scramjet powered ones even more interesting...

The T-14's advanced robotic FCS should be more than accurate to hit individual weak spots on the target like the mantlet, even while moving. Technically most APFSDS are accurate enough for this (0.2 mils deviation vs. say the 40cmx50cm sized mantlet of the Leopard 2) - its just that even with autotracker involved the gunner still has to do the fine laying himself if he wants to do aimed shots at sections of the target silhouette. You would have to be a really skilled gunner to even land such pinpoint shots at a moving target especially considering the conditions he would have to take the shot in. Why not cut out the middleman and have the onboard computer control the engagement on its own?

limb wrote:
ETCs on tanks are and will always be star trek tier fantasy. Dozens of billions of $ have been invested in them since the 80s by both the US and Russia and all that has been achieved is marginally better velocity and pressure for dozens of times the cost. For one, there is simply no plasma ignited propellant that physically exists or has been discovered that would actually significantly improve muzzle velocity of an APFSDS compared to conventional propellant guns. It us just sci fi fantasy wishful thinking that it will be discovered, similar how its sci fi BS thinking that battery technology to power tank mounted railguns will be discovered.

You sound so sure about that - are you a leading plasma physicist or thermo-chemist by any chance? Or are you just pulling stuff from your rear as usual? Because out here in the real world, several countries including Russia have found the technology feasible enough that they are pouring resources into its development. It might take a while, which is not a big deal, since the gun system of the T-14 is more than overkill for everything within the next 15 years, and will not stand still when NATO's next gen MBTs are introduced either so it will serve for at least 10 more years before it gets too long in the tooth. That's 25 years, Russia developed its own highly competitive stealth fighter and has it ready for serial production in what, half that time so it should be more than plenty enough time to develop a new gun based on novel principles.

lyle6 wrote:

limb wrote:
ETCs on tanks are and will always be star trek tier fantasy. Dozens of billions of $ have been invested in them since the 80s by both the US and Russia and all that has been achieved is marginally better velocity and pressure for dozens of times the cost. For one, there is simply no plasma ignited propellant that physically exists or has been discovered that would actually significantly improve muzzle velocity of an APFSDS compared to conventional propellant guns. It us just sci fi fantasy wishful thinking that it will be discovered, similar how its sci fi BS thinking that battery technology to power tank mounted railguns will be discovered.

You sound so sure about that - are you a leading plasma physicist or thermo-chemist by any chance? Or are you just pulling stuff from your rear as usual? Because out here in the real world, several countries including Russia have found the technology feasible enough that they are pouring resources into its development. It might take a while, which is not a big deal, since the gun system of the T-14 is more than overkill for everything within the next 15 years, and will not stand still when NATO's next gen MBTs are introduced either so it will serve for at least 10 more years before it gets too long in the tooth. That's 25 years, Russia developed its own highly competitive stealth fighter and has it ready for serial production in what, half that time so it should be more than plenty enough time to develop a new gun based on novel principles.

That's a very weak line of argument. Chemical reaction energies are well known. There are no magic undiscovered elements with vast differences in electronegativity that
would open a new realm of explosive energy. The periodic table of the elements is the mother constraint on chemistry. This is why nuclear bombs were developed.
Releasing energy from strong force interactions is another ball game. So if we are going to appeal to "technology" to give us higher muzzle velocities then either we
develop nuclear propellants or we change the concept of the tank or howitzer gun. For example,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light-gas_gun

Even though this is a lab tool, it is not excluded from being applied to tank guns.

kvs wrote:
That's a very weak line of argument.   Chemical reaction energies are well known.   There are no magic undiscovered elements with vast differences in electronegativity that
would open a new realm of explosive energy.   The periodic table of the elements is the mother constraint on chemistry.   This is why nuclear bombs were developed.  
Releasing energy from strong force interactions is another ball game.   So if we are going to appeal to "technology" to give us higher muzzle velocities then either we
develop nuclear propellants or we change the concept of the tank or howitzer gun.    For example,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light-gas_gun

Even though this is a lab tool, it is not excluded from being applied to tank guns.

ETC guns simply offer a level of control of the rate of ignition beyond that you can bake in the design of the propellant charge. This shouldn't come as a surprise, but solid propellants don't burn cleanly and in many cases the projectile makes it out of the barrel before complete combustion has occurred. If you can guarantee a higher proportion of the charge is actually burned that automatically would significantly increase the muzzle velocity without changing anything else. Since you can control the rate of ignition you can also control for the peak and sustaining pressure, ensuring that you can get the best acceleration performance without physically destroying your barrel in the process. Of course since you are using a plasma ignition you can theoretically even use substances that can only be reliably ignited by the higher energy plasma, like LOVA propellants, which are in very insensitive to shock and heat, making it a great choice for tanks that don't have the ammo isolated from the crew.

The propellent of the Coalition 152mm calibre gun is microwaved to improve combustion... going from 70km range shots to reportedly 180kms will require a lot of changes, but then they are working on the leading edge.

The AI in a T-14 is probably going to be as sophisticated as the AI in a 5th gen fighter and maybe it can use sensor information to detect and identify targets using a library of 3D models in radar and optical and IR frequency ranges so it automatically works out what the target is so it can look at the angle the target presents itself at and can work out the most effective location from that angle and that distance to target. If the target happens to turn then the target point might shift dramatically perhaps.

Regarding anti armour performance I remember reading in the mid 1990s an article in the German magazine Military Technology which essentially capped the speed for kinetic penetrators at about 3km/s and that their tests showed that any increase in speed above that does not result in significant increases in penetration, and that instead of making the rounds go faster that making them heavier at that stage was the best way to improve armour penetration performance with any sort of efficiency.

The tank has traditionally be a heavy direct fire gun used for shooting at enemy soft targets and enemy hard targets. It is not normally used for indirect fire.

As such, retaining a 125mm smoothbore gun perhaps steps forward could include drone target detection and extending the gun range to 10km or more where a scramjet powered kinetic round might leave the barrel at 2km/s but is accelerated in flight to maybe 3km/h and steered on to target for impact at ranges of 10-20km... perhaps climbing to a moderate height and then coming down at an angle of 30-40 degrees on the target which would reduce the performance of angled armour and give a better view of the target for precision aiming and terminal attack.

Obviously larger calibre rounds would make scramjet design easier and allow more fuel to be carried but the enormous velocities involved mean it would not have the chance to run for very long anyway... even if it just maintained speed at 2km/s for ten seconds it would reach 20km distance...

The round could be designed to be a solid penetrator down the core with the scramjet and control surfaces scabbed on the outside where engine thrust overcomes drag and maintains speed while the integrity of the penetrator is maintained because the central core is one piece.

As mentioned Russian guns and ammo should be sufficient for the job at the moment and tactics like IIR guided top attack weapons can further aide the situation by attacking weaker areas, so there is plenty of scope for development.

Working on EM weapons at the very least should involve work and progress in areas that would be useful for other things across a wide range of areas like electric vehicles, more powerful electric motors, new types of magnets, and electrical storage and transfer options and capacities.

Even just electric armour... it does not need to be perfect super armour... it might only be useful against a few different types of threats, but over time it can be improved and expanded and made more useful while also smaller and lighter and cheaper.

GarryB wrote:The propellent of the Coalition 152mm calibre gun is microwaved to improve combustion... going from 70km range shots to reportedly 180kms will require a lot of changes, but then they are working on the leading edge.

Enhanced range is infinitely more important for artillery than it is for tanks. For tank guns much of the performance increases over its lifetime would have to come from the ammo itself.

GarryB wrote:
The AI in a T-14 is probably going to be as sophisticated as the AI in a 5th gen fighter and maybe it can use sensor information to detect and identify targets using a library of 3D models in radar and optical and IR frequency ranges so it automatically works out what the target is so it can look at the angle the target presents itself at and can work out the most effective location from that angle and that distance to target. If the target happens to turn then the target point might shift dramatically perhaps.

Exactly. An FCS that can reliably bypass the heaviest armor head-on is a death sentence for every tank out there. The sole exception being the T-14, which never had a weak spot in its frontal armor that can be exploited in the first place.

GarryB wrote:
Regarding anti armour performance I remember reading in the mid 1990s an article in the German magazine Military Technology which essentially capped the speed for kinetic penetrators at about 3km/s and that their tests showed that any increase in speed above that does not result in significant increases in penetration, and that instead of making the rounds go faster that making them heavier at that stage was the best way to improve armour penetration performance with any sort of efficiency.

Longer not heavier. The longer a projectile the more armor it could penetrate before it is fully eroded. At the same time the faster the impact velocity is, the higher the penetration gets but up to the hydrodynamic limit. Once you hit that limit, penetration is proportional to the length and the relative density of the penetrator with the target.

GarryB wrote:
As such, retaining a 125mm smoothbore gun perhaps steps forward could include drone target detection and extending the gun range to 10km or more where a scramjet powered kinetic round might leave the barrel at 2km/s but is accelerated in flight to maybe 3km/h and steered on to target for impact at ranges of 10-20km... perhaps climbing to a moderate height and then coming down at an angle of 30-40 degrees on the target which would reduce the performance of angled armour and give a better view of the target for precision aiming and terminal attack.

The T-14 is going to operate in tight-knit coordination with supporting units, so it could act as a highly resilient spotter for artillery. There is nothing out there that can stop a Krasnopol shell through the roof. Most roof armor are too thin and would cave on impact.

It makes sense to use missiles instead of shells if we want more speed and features like EMP rounds.   Detonating one at max range near
the ground is less effective than at the peak of the parabolic trajectory.   Missiles also do not have the range limitations of tank shells.

The shell capacity of a tank is not a factor of 10 larger than some vehicle of similar size equipped with short range missiles with vastly
more range and flexibility.  Such missiles can take out other tanks without them even being able to engage.   Before a gun barrel race
there will be a tactical missile race.

kvs wrote:It makes sense to use missiles instead of shells if we want more speed and features like EMP rounds.   Detonating one at max range near
the ground is less effective than at the peak of the parabolic trajectory.   Missiles also do not have the range limitations of tank shells.

The shell capacity of a tank is not a factor of 10 larger than some vehicle of similar size equipped with short range missiles with vastly
more range and flexibility.  Such missiles can take out other tanks without them even being able to engage.   Before a gun barrel race
there will be a tactical missile race.

Its not, but the cost differential is. A single reload could end costing about the same as another tank altogether, which is great if all your targets are tanks or are as expensive as tanks, but it just isn't the case. There could be a case made for a missile based tank destroyer, but replacing the high velocity gun as the tank's main armament? No way.

The 152 mm gun was a powerful gun, but its simply outdated. Improvements in gun and ammo would have allowed for upscale performance for legacy calibers anyway (except for the hand-loaded 120x570 ammo, that one's just ngmi, since the limitation is on what the manpower can handle, not the gun), so in the future we might be looking at a T-14M with an ETC 125 mm gun that could punch as hard as the old 152 mm gun without any of the disadvantages associated with the larger caliber.

But if all the new technology and ammo types applied to 125mm rounds were applied to the 152mm gun then it would be even more able to deal with future improvements to western tanks at useful ranges?

You say the 152mm gun is outdated but it is not as old as either the 125mm or 120mm smooth bores currently widely in use...

Obviously the issue with the size of the ammo is there, but clever solutions could be applied... for instance binary or even trinary liquid propellent, or a binary propellent that also needs to be microwaved in the gun chamber to perform as a propellent could mean you just carry the sabot and penetrator... in fact a 152mm HE round would be overkill much of the time so some sabot 125mm HE rounds that are just current 125mm HE frag rounds with a sabot liner to fill the barrel could be used to minimise the internal space they take up... perhaps 2-4 big HE rounds for hard targets and of course 152mm HEAT rounds offer better penetration than 125mm rounds but Sabot to allow the 125mm HEAT ammo to be used as a cheaper option on less well protected targets, and of course 125mm and 115mm and 122mm and 120mm guided rounds, plus the 152mm rounds designed for artillery and for this tank gun could also be used.

They could deploy them in small numbers as a long range tank like they used to use heavy tanks for.

Enhanced range is infinitely more important for artillery than it is for tanks.

Very true, but being able to destroy enemy ground vehicles at any range you can see them would be useful.... their thermal IR sights and MMW radars on their helicopters reach beyond 10kms at the moment, so being able to aim a guided scramjet powered APFSDS round at a target 6-8km away and have it be able to steer a tiny amount either side of the aim point to follow a moving target would be a very valuable type of ammo.

For tank guns much of the performance increases over its lifetime would have to come from the ammo itself.

Very true, but different types of protection improve armour performance, so if HATO ever got off its high horse and went for 70 ton tanks with their all powerful composite armour, and added APS that worked on APFSDS rounds and also added ERA that also worked on APFSDS then standard rounds just might not cut it... applying existing improvements to a 152mm gun will be much quicker and easier than trying to work out some new way to improve 125mm guns.

Being clever with the ammo could alleviate most of the issues with ammo storage, but at the end of the day having 30 rounds that will penetrate is more useful than having 60 rounds that might not... and we are not talking about that much of a penalty with the bigger calibre because their normal tanks normally carry about 40 rounds.

Exactly. An FCS that can reliably bypass the heaviest armor head-on is a death sentence for every tank out there. The sole exception being the T-14, which never had a weak spot in its frontal armor that can be exploited in the first place.

Every tank has weak spots... blow off either track and it is not a 10 second penalty and using one repair kit so you can start driving around the battlefield any more.

Of course they have mentioned new vehicles that reload tanks in the field... if they are tank based there is no reason why you couldn't design them to be able to hook up to a tracked or engine out tank and tow it off the battlefield while that tank is able to fire.

Their armoured recovery version of the Armata could be sent out as soon as a tank or vehicle transmits that it is immobilised and it could drive to the immobilised vehicle and tow it out of there while it continues firing and defending itself and other nearby vehicles also help defend it...

Longer not heavier.

Unless you make it thinner, then longer is heavier.

At the same time the faster the impact velocity is, the higher the penetration gets but up to the hydrodynamic limit.

That is what I am saying as you increase velocity then the penetration increases, but it reaches a limit... and that limit is about 3km/s.

Increasing energy to increase speed above about 3km/s is a waste of energy because it does not increase penetration enough to warrant that extra energy.

It makes more sense to make the penetrator heavier... making the penetrator heavier reduces the speed of the projectile but also improves penetration.

There could be a case made for a missile based tank destroyer, but replacing the high velocity gun as the tank's main armament? No way.

Missile tanks are not a solution... the IT-1 and IT-2 proved that pretty conclusively... but the concept is rather interesting.

An EMP rocket with an effective radius of 2km could be loaded up by Grad and Smerch units and be fired over a large area with rockets spaced to blank out large groups of enemy forces... obviously with smaller effective radii you need more rockets, so 200m or so then a single Grad vehicle could target a front line.... but then they might even be useful against minefields...

But where's the log?

Good question... the self recovery log is missing...