[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....

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

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.

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.

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.

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.  

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.

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...

lyle6 wrote: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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Russian_Patriot_ wrote:Beautiful T-14 Armata

flamming_python wrote:...But where's the log?