[Official] Armata Discussion thread #5

GarryB wrote:
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?

The 2A82-1M with the latest ammo is already overkill against anything NATO can come up with. The 2A83 even more so. We don't even know if NATO would even continue the trend of uber heavy armor when for all we know in 20 years time they would be rolling with lightweight FCS vehicles revamped. Happened before, with the German Leopard 1 eschewing heavy armor in favor of superior tactical mobility, and we might be seeing some resurgence with the USM abandoning their Abrams. Who knows, maybe NATO got the message that it doesn't matter if your tank is monstrously armored if it can't even get to the fight in time or ever

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You say the 152mm gun is outdated but it is not as old as either the 125mm or 120mm smooth bores currently widely in use...

The 2A83 gun was designed alongside the 2A82 gun actually, so both guns use pretty much the same technology. They might even share the same projectiles judging from the few photographs of Grifel and Vacuum APFSDS.

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

Heavy tanks as a classification are obsolete. Their last heavy tank was the IS-3, and it wasn't any better than the T-55 which replaced it.

GarryB wrote:
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.

It sounds like something that could do double duty as a SHORAD even. I like it.

GarryB wrote:
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.

I hope the Russians don't simply brute force their way in - leave that to the Americans. An APFSDS with a tip that could bypass heavy ERA and graphite shielding to reduce the RCS against APS (a la Have Dash), segmented penetrator cores to deal with multilayer NERA array, and possibly PELE segments near the tail section to add insult to injury, the works. Make it happen Rosatom  

GarryB wrote:
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.

The extra 8 rounds are significant, especially when there is no option to replenish the autoloader without pulling back from the fight.

The 2A82-1M with the latest ammo is already overkill against anything NATO can come up with.

Overkill just means useful at greater ranges, which is a good thing if it is not too inconvenient... like say the rounds were so big it could only carry four rounds.

Who knows, maybe NATO got the message that it doesn't matter if your tank is monstrously armored if it can't even get to the fight in time or ever

Well keeping the 152mm gun and updating it along with the 125mm might force their hand to go for stealth and camouflage and lighter cheaper more mobile vehicles because vehicles that can shrug off a 152mm hit will be 100+ tons and just not practical.

The 2A83 gun was designed alongside the 2A82 gun actually, so both guns use pretty much the same technology. They might even share the same projectiles judging from the few photographs of Grifel and Vacuum APFSDS.

Commonality makes sense.

Heavy tanks as a classification are obsolete.

Only because they didn't develop heavy guns for them so you ended up with a T-10 with a 122mm rifled tank gun as the heavy tank and the T-62 with a 115mm smoothbore that penetrated more armour at greater ranges.

With the T-64 it got worse because the T-64 had armour that was as good as or better than the heavy T-10M and also a much better 125mm smoothbore gun.

If they had kept developing the heavy tank it might have remained relevant with heavier armour and a bigger gun for specific situations and special uses... but most countries had ATGMs for long range heavy armour penetration roles.

I hope the Russians don't simply brute force their way in - leave that to the Americans. An APFSDS with a tip that could bypass heavy ERA and graphite shielding to reduce the RCS against APS (a la Have Dash), segmented penetrator cores to deal with multilayer NERA array, and possibly PELE segments near the tail section to add insult to injury, the works. Make it happen Rosatom

I would think a light cannon or HMG round (30mm or 14.5mm) round with a plastic aerodynamic nose fairing to maintain a good trajectory in flight but a front face made up of angled corner reflectors to give it a RCS of a much larger object could be fired at enemy tanks in bursts to trigger and expend APS systems and damage ERA boxes with some incendiary content too would be a useful thing... certainly a 57mm round could be used out to enormous distances and perhaps filled with some sort of material that just burns and gives off thick black or white smoke so you get an IR signature and a smoke trail to spot the target on the battlefield. perhaps a thermite mixture that burns super hot and melts through the ERA blocks and hull of the vehicle?

The extra 8 rounds are significant, especially when there is no option to replenish the autoloader without pulling back from the fight.

Russian experience in Chechnia against basically a peer enemy showed that only loading the 22 rounds in the autoloader and not carrying any other ammo in the crew compartment solved the losing their turret problems they had before in their tanks... which means they were prepared to sacrifice half their ammo load for safety.

Losing 8 rounds to get rounds much more likely to get the job done first time is worth it.

They stopped making more heavy tanks because of strategic mobility concerns.

They stopped developing heavy tanks too so the Main Battle Tanks just got better armour and better guns and the heavy tank concept lost any meaning.

Other heavy tank prototypes also went pretty much nowhere for much the same reasons.

Well they are introducing the T-14, but there will be a Kurganets amphibious medium tank called B-something, and a Boomerang based wheeled medium tank called K-something, and of course they already have the Sprut 2S25 amphibious light tracked tank and its upgrades... and they will likely have a two hull arctic tractor DT-30 type tank vehicle too I expect.

In this context the T-14 is already the heavy tank, but another vehicle... perhaps T-24 or something with the 152mm gun, but like the T-10M the rifle calibre machine guns would need to be replaced with weapons that have a greater effective range like Kord HMGs or 23x115mm KPB cannon, or 40mm grenade launchers or a 30mm cannon... or a combination of different ones... or all of them.

The real skill of the Russians is to in practical terms create better protected tanks that are 20 tons lighter than their western equivalent...

There is no prize for the heaviest tank, in fact it creates lots of problems moving forward.

I realise there is contention about better protected, but they really introduced ERA first in a wide spread manner and their APS systems offer protection from angles where western tanks are only weakly protected.

152mm gun is being considered for the T-14 Armata. So that will add to the weight.

The gun itself wont be that much heavier, and it was designed from the outset to carry it as the standard gun.

That being said, bigger guns on MBTs (152mm instead of 135mm) doesn't serve much purpose.

It is an essential reaction to a significant improvement in deployed enemy armour that the current calibre has become marginal or is unable to cope with.

A bit like the upgrade from 76.2mm to 85mm for the T-34 during WWII.

It is not something you do for fun because it is expensive and a pain to change calibre.

GarryB wrote:
Overkill just means useful at greater ranges, which is a good thing if it is not too inconvenient... like say the rounds were so big it could only carry four rounds.

Designing for effective ranges of up to 2 km is plenty enough. There's not nearly enough flat open expanses in Europe to justify the extended range performance, plus you already have guided rounds for the task.

GarryB wrote:
Well keeping the 152mm gun and updating it along with the 125mm might force their hand to go for stealth and camouflage and lighter cheaper more mobile vehicles  because vehicles that can shrug off a 152mm hit will be 100+ tons and just not practical.

The current NATO heavy tank paradigm against the 125 mm does not work either. The latest M1A2Cs and Leopard 2A7s might not even be able to take advantage of much of NATO's available overland transportation infrastructure, and if they can't even make it to battle they are less than useless.

GarryB wrote:
Commonality makes sense.

And a lot of it went into making the new 125 mm gun almost as capable as the 152 mm gun especially in terms of penetration. No less than 900 mm RHA by the 2A82 compared to 1000 mm RHA from the 2A83 gun is nothing to sneer at, and its even more impressive when the former is half the weight and has more than double the service life and performs at the same level of the cold war 140 mm guns.

GarryB wrote:
Only because they didn't develop heavy guns for them so you ended up with a T-10 with a 122mm rifled tank gun as the heavy tank and the T-62 with a 115mm smoothbore that penetrated more armour at greater ranges.

With the T-64 it got worse because the T-64 had armour that was as good as or better than the heavy T-10M and also a much better 125mm smoothbore gun.

If they had kept developing the heavy tank it might have remained relevant with heavier armour and a bigger gun for specific situations and special uses... but most countries had ATGMs for long range heavy armour penetration roles.

The last proper heavy tanks died out when the guns that overtook armor were then being mounted on increasingly lighter vehicles. The all around protection that made heavy tanks what they were just wasn't possible anymore given the state of automotive technology then. Nowadays its looking like even the heavier MBTs are finding it increasingly difficult to keep up with the arms race against ever improving anti-armor weaponry and eventually something has to give. With the T-14, its the turret, NATO tanks, probably the crew's survivability lol.

   
I would think a light cannon or HMG round (30mm or 14.5mm) round with a plastic aerodynamic nose fairing to maintain a good trajectory in flight but a front face made up of angled corner reflectors to give it a RCS of a much larger object could be fired at enemy tanks in bursts to trigger and expend APS systems and damage ERA boxes with some incendiary content too would be a useful thing... certainly a 57mm round could be used out to enormous distances and perhaps filled with some sort of material that just burns and gives off thick black or white smoke so you get an IR signature and a smoke trail to spot the target on the battlefield.  perhaps a thermite mixture that burns super hot and melts through the ERA blocks and hull of the vehicle?

I thought the same too but then again why do you want to obscure your view of the target or give him some warning time? With a stealthy APFSDS shot he might not even be able spot you attacking at all - one blip in the thermals which could be anything really and a second later your tank gets wrecked.    

GarryB wrote:
Russian experience in Chechnia against basically a peer enemy showed that only loading the 22 rounds in the autoloader and not carrying any other ammo in the crew compartment solved the losing their turret problems they had before in their tanks... which means they were prepared to sacrifice half their ammo load for safety.

Losing 8 rounds to get rounds much more likely to get the job done first time is worth it.

The armor that might even have a chance at stopping the latest 125 mm APFSDS would be prohibitively bulky and heavy - think the monstrosity that is the M1 CATTB. Then again, the new 125 mm gun still has significant room for growth - change the sabot material to a much lighter composite for instance and watch as its muzzle velocity skyrocket.

lancelot wrote:Yup. The T-14 is already heavier than the T-10 used to be.
I wonder if with modern Russian infrastructure even heavier tanks couldn't come back into consideration.

They've updated road and rail standards to allow for heavier vehicles, naturally, before they even considered taking on heavier vehicles like the Armata family of AFVs. For roads its not even the tanks that drive the capacity but the much heavier trucks for primary logistics. Same for railways.

GarryB wrote:The real skill of the Russians is to in practical terms create better protected tanks that are 20 tons lighter than their western equivalent...

There is no prize for the heaviest tank, in fact it creates lots of problems moving forward.

I realise there is contention about better protected, but they really introduced ERA first in a wide spread manner and their APS systems offer protection from angles where western tanks are only weakly protected.

That the Afghanit APS covers the sides when the turret is in the neutral position is no accident. The front is covered by heavy multilayer armor that would take a much more powerful gun to crack open so it doesn't need the added protection of the APS as much. Instead the APS is focused towards the wings of the frontal arc from the turret so any shot is intercepted and degraded before engaging the side armor at high obliquity, minimizing the chances of a hit. After intercepting a hit the T-14 can then readjust its hull to face further more incoming rounds with its heavy armor, and in the meantime it would only take a slight nudge of the turret to present a new interceptor for a new threat. Very efficient and kept the weight of the vehicle significantly in check. Compare that to the Abrams lol 3 tons of Trophy + counterweights stupidity.

GarryB wrote:
The gun itself wont be that much heavier, and it was designed from the outset to carry it as the standard gun.

The 2A83 gun is nearly twice as heavy as the 2A82 gun: 5000 kg vs 2700 kg. You also have to uprate the fire control mechanisms to take up the higher mass of the gun.

GarryB wrote:
It is an essential reaction to a significant improvement in deployed enemy armour that the current calibre has become marginal or is unable to cope with.

A bit like the upgrade from 76.2mm to 85mm for the T-34 during WWII.

It is not something you do for fun because it is expensive and a pain to change calibre.

The new 125 mm gun has been significantly improved compared to its earlier iterations. Its a lot closer to the old 140 mm gun in performance than the previous 125 mm guns.

How decent are the posts and people over at paralay.iboards? Reason asking is I've heard of some new info I havent heard elsewhere concerning Armata. I have heard of engine troubles but also heard this has largely been rectified. One thing I did hear though is potential troubles during testing of the APS for Armata. Anyone know if this is true? I know also the complaints about lack of top attack protection but this can be debated.

What do you guys know about the latest info on Armata? Is 2022 still the date when it will enter serial production? What about the engine and APS?

Also about the armor on the turret. Saw some images supposedly pointing out the armor but it only looks to be 15/20 mm thick. I have a feeling this isn't the armor as it is supposed to defend against autocannon fire.

TMA1 wrote:How decent are the posts and people over at paralay.iboards? Reason asking is I've heard of some new info I havent heard elsewhere concerning Armata. I have heard of engine troubles but also heard this has largely been rectified. One thing I did hear though is potential troubles during testing of the APS for Armata. Anyone know if this is true? I know also the complaints about lack of top attack protection but this can be debated.

Anything new gets disseminated to the English boards just as quickly so unless you are really fluent in Russian its really not big of a deal if you skip paralay, otvaga or balancers or god forbid wm.

TMA1 wrote:
What do you guys know about the latest info on Armata? Is 2022 still the date when it will enter serial production? What about the engine and APS?

Still undergoing state trials last I heard. No real rush either since T-90M production is in full swing.

TMA1 wrote:
Also about the armor on the turret. Saw some images supposedly pointing out the armor but it only looks to be 15/20 mm thick. I have a feeling this isn't the armor as it is supposed to defend against autocannon fire.

That's no armor but the composite cowling to reduce the turret's thermal and radar signature.

Apfsds don't need bigger gun but longer projectiles or increased speed.

Longer means heavier... unless you mean longer and thinner... and too thin and they become more likely to snap or shear.

To launch a longer and heavier projectile means higher pressure gun at the same speeds.

Longer barrels can improve performance of existing ammo but longer barrels create their own problems.

Increasing calibre has been the preferred solution in the past... but there will be an upper limit...

152mm would need bigger shells so less rounds carried.

WWII light Russian tanks carried about 140 x 45mm shells, but a T-34 with 100 shells in the L-34 76.2mm equipped tanks carried less but they were effective to longer ranges than the smaller calibre less powerful rounds.

If the 45mm rounds didn't penetrate it didn't matter how many you could carry...

They would change all the production lines and supply would be more difficult and cost will be bigger too. And what advantage does it bring ? None unless you plane to use HE shells always. But then you have solething called Msta-S for that role.

They could get away with two tank gun calibres... for years they had a lot more than just two... there was 125mm or course, but they also had 122mm calibre with the T-10s and T-10Ms, and 115mm smoothbore with their T-62s, not to mention the 100mm smoothbores of their towed MT-12 anti tank guns, and the 100mm rifled guns of the T-54/55s, and the T-34/85s they had in reserve with 85mm guns... I believe sharing the same ammo as the ASU-85s used by their airborne forces...

That is 6 non interchangable calibres... right now they have it pretty good... but adding a 152mm smoothbore calibre wont sink the boat.

They could deploy a couple of units of 152mm gun equipped Armatas for special break through operations... as I mentioned they could carry a lot of extra rounds if they use Sabots for smaller calibre rounds like the 125mm HE Frag rounds... because the 125mm rounds are two piece they could slide a sleeve around the HE projectile like a sabot that is designed to break apart when it leaves the muzzle, and use a normal propellent charge to launch it... the sabot is just a gas seal and does not need to be the full length of the round so it could be slipped on as part of the loading process so you could carry a lot more of the smaller calibre HE rounds that could be pushed through the sabot as it is loaded so it is loaded into the chamber fitted with the sabot to form a seal around the projectile in the larger barrel. The 125mm HE rounds will likely be shorter than the new 152mm HE rounds which means you might be able to stack them lengthwise too.

With the idea of shorter smaller calibre rounds you could develop very short HE rounds of full calibre... poor aerodynamics but they are used at short range anyway. You could stack 3-4 in each round tray and they could still be heavy enough to do sufficient damage to the target most of the time.

Designing for effective ranges of up to 2 km is plenty enough.

On the Combat Approved episode for the upgraded T-90 the targets were at 5km for stationary targets from a stationary and moving tank.

There's not nearly enough flat open expanses in Europe to justify the extended range performance, plus you already have guided rounds for the task.

With skilled planning and positioning I am sure there are opportunities for greater distance shots.

The current NATO heavy tank paradigm against the 125 mm does not work either. The latest M1A2Cs and Leopard 2A7s might not even be able to take advantage of much of NATO's available overland transportation infrastructure, and if they can't even make it to battle they are less than useless.

Introducing the heavier gun.... even just in small numbers... maybe even adding them to one of the lighter more mobile forces perhaps, would mean HATO would have to make the decision to go for heavier tanks or perhaps smaller lighter tanks in large numbers.... a drone swarm where every 10th vehicle has a human crew perhaps... who knows with those HATO kooks.

And a lot of it went into making the new 125 mm gun almost as capable as the 152 mm gun especially in terms of penetration. No less than 900 mm RHA by the 2A82 compared to 1000 mm RHA from the 2A83 gun is nothing to sneer at, and its even more impressive when the former is half the weight and has more than double the service life and performs at the same level of the cold war 140 mm guns.

But then doesn't it form a feed back loop.... the things done to the 125mm gun to achieve near 152mm gun performance could then be applied to the 152mm gun to extend its performance even further couldn't it?

Of course there are new experimental developments they can probably look at that are only at the start of their capacity... all very exciting.

With the T-14, its the turret, NATO tanks, probably the crew's survivability lol.

Giving up the heavily armoured turret was a choice that could be made with lots of cameras and optics and virtual reality systems... the biggest block to the unmanned turret was giving up that viewing position that gave you a 360 degree view around the battlefield from a decent height that allowed you to see the ground around your vehicle. A tethered drone could do an even better job and with thermal cameras and radar and taking power from the vehicle through the tether and also communicating with the tank via fibre optic cable via the tether the drone can hover for as long as the tank has power and radio emissions would be limited to radar, but could be kept low level.

Imagine the faces of an enemy that spots the drone and comes barging through the bushes expecting a nerd with a van using the drone and coming face to face with a squad of four Armata tanks... and they of course saw you coming...

I thought the same too but then again why do you want to obscure your view of the target or give him some warning time? With a stealthy APFSDS shot he might not even be able spot you attacking at all - one blip in the thermals which could be anything really and a second later your tank gets wrecked.

I was thinking more in terms of an enemy formation of tanks all with APS systems active and working...

A 14.5mm HMG with rounds optimised with plastic aerodynamic fairings with a rear mounted metal projectile with a front face with corner reflectors carved into it to generate a RCS of 150-200mm diameter objects... 5.6km from the target you could angle up the gun and fire long bursts launching hundreds of rounds at the targets and those APS systems will have to react to every round that is on target in case it is not a HMG round and is actually an incoming Kornet...

Fire on the enemy armour a couple of times... this ammo is inert and relatively cheap.... they will either soon run out of munitions or be forced to turn them off to prevent wasting those munitions. Monitor the attacks and if they stop defending themselves launch a volley of real ATGMs... when you ATGMs are half way there fire a burst of these jammer rounds... then everyone should move to avoid being shelled.

Then again, the new 125 mm gun still has significant room for growth - change the sabot material to a much lighter composite for instance and watch as its muzzle velocity skyrocket.

Well if there is still room for growth then why not. Didn't someone mention they use Aluminium Sabots... their new cannon rounds use a plastic driving band to reduce wear and reduce friction to increase muzzle velocity without any other changes to the ammo, so perhaps a plastic Sabot could be something to consider too... or at least plastic contact points around the sabot to reduce friction.

The 2A83 gun is nearly twice as heavy as the 2A82 gun: 5000 kg vs 2700 kg. You also have to uprate the fire control mechanisms to take up the higher mass of the gun.

Yeah, as I wrote it wouldn't be that much heavier I knew that would not be true because it is not just a larger tube really it is everything...

On the positive side they were talking about all electric drive which would remove a lot of high pressure hydraulic stuff which is heavy and vulnerable to fire.

What do you guys know about the latest info on Armata? Is 2022 still the date when it will enter serial production? What about the engine and APS?

The fact of the matter is that the upgraded T-90 is as good as any current peer opponent tank already and the T-14 is the next step up... for which HATO countries have nothing in sight this decade.

The T-14 really makes sense when it is fully introduced into Armata brigades... there is no huge gap where they are going to get walked all over if they don't get it into service right now... same deal with the Su-57... the Su-35 and soon MiG-35 are both excellent fighters which only lack proper stealth... which is what the Su-57 provides along with the S-70 of course... which should be able to operate with Su-35s and Su-30s upgraded to Su-35 level and MiG-35s.

There is a numbers issue but look at the whole picture their airforce is extra... their air power is just part of the defence... they have an entire IADS which their aircraft are a part and their Air Force and their Army and their Navy each has their own IADS which communicate with each other and work together.

In HATO the air forces are the IADS based on AWACS aircraft and ground based radar but nothing like what Russia has.

HATO IADS using aircraft for both attack and defence, so in a conflict with Russia a lot of that attack potential is going to get blunted against that IADS, and much of the attack potential will be being used in defence to try to stop long range hypersonic and low flying subsonic ground attack missiles... and if they start destroying airfields that air based defence is going to struggle in attack and defence...

All those numbers of aircraft will be busy both attacking and defending... how safe are those tanks going to be on the ground below them?

Moving a sufficient force of armour towards a Russian border will not go unnoticed and the first thing that will happen when it attacks is likely a serious number of volleys of Smerch rockets with top attack anti armour munitions that will literally decimate their numbers before combat even begins... and it only gets worse from there...

The_Observer wrote: Russian Industry and Trade Minister Denis Manturov: Amata Serial Production to Start Next Year

MOSCOW, July 5. /TASS/. The serial production of Russia’s latest T-14 ‘Armata’ tank will begin next year, Russian Industry and Trade Minister Denis Manturov told TASS on Monday.

"The [tank’s] state trials will come to a close next year. It will actively go into serial production from next year," the minister said.

https://tass.com/defense/1310465?utm_source=twitter.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=smm_social_share

TMA1 wrote:How decent are the posts and people over at paralay.iboards? Reason asking is I've heard of some new info I havent heard elsewhere concerning Armata. I have heard of engine troubles but also heard this has largely been rectified. One thing I did hear though is potential troubles during testing of the APS for Armata. Anyone know if this is true? I know also the complaints about lack of top attack protection but this can be debated.

What do you guys know about the latest info on Armata? Is 2022 still the date when it will enter serial production? What about the engine and APS?

Also about the armor on the turret. Saw some images supposedly pointing out the armor but it only looks to be 15/20 mm thick. I have a feeling this isn't the armor as it is supposed to defend against autocannon fire.

Awesome! Thanks bro.

GarryB wrote:

Longer means heavier... unless you mean longer and thinner... and too thin and they become more likely to snap or shear.

To launch a longer and heavier projectile means higher pressure gun at the same speeds.

Longer barrels can improve performance of existing ammo but longer barrels create their own problems.

Increasing calibre has been the preferred solution in the past... but there will be an upper limit...

The trick is to reach a high enough velocity that the penetrator gouges a wide enough channel that the penetrator, even snapped or flexed out of line would not hit the walls of the channel. The higher the velocity the more inefficient penetration actually becomes - basically the majority of the energy would be spent in making a larger hole instead of a deeper one. Thing is lots of flexible armors like NERA work by continually feeding in material to the penetrator sort of like what the spring board on a swimming pool does when somebody jumps of it; obviously this wouldn't work if the air gap is too large and the penetrator keeps on plowing through more armor in front nearly unimpeded.

GarryB wrote:
They could deploy a couple of units of 152mm gun equipped Armatas for special break through operations... as I mentioned they could carry a lot of extra rounds if they use Sabots for smaller calibre rounds like the 125mm HE Frag rounds... because the 125mm rounds are two piece they could slide a sleeve around the HE projectile like a sabot that is designed to break apart when it leaves the muzzle, and use a normal propellent charge to launch it... the sabot is just a gas seal and does not need to be the full length of the round so it could be slipped on as part of the loading process so you could carry a lot more of the smaller calibre HE rounds that could be pushed through the sabot as it is loaded so it is loaded into the chamber fitted with the sabot to form a seal around the projectile in the larger barrel.  The 125mm HE rounds will likely be shorter than the new 152mm HE rounds which means you might be able to stack them lengthwise too.

With the idea of shorter smaller calibre rounds you could develop very short HE rounds of full calibre... poor aerodynamics but they are used at short range anyway.  You could stack 3-4 in each round tray and they could still be heavy enough to do sufficient damage to the target most of the time.

That was the idea with the Object 195 back then: It would act as the strong breakthrough tank to neutralize heavily armored targets while the T-90 provided infantry support and spearheaded exploitation operations on account of their superior mobility.

They changed that up with Armata: specifically the HIFV would take on the role of the T-90 which is great because it carries its own squad of infantry to battle. The T-90 might have the superior vision to spot targets across expansive sight lines but infantry provide the extra set of eyes for targets that the tank might miss especially in closer ranges. The larger autocannon is also arguably the better fire support weapon on account of the deeper magazines enabling much more lenient and longer duration fires than possible with a larger calibre. The MBT and HIFV are also similarly mobile so they could go everywhere they could while providing mutual support.

GarryB wrote:
On the Combat Approved episode for the upgraded T-90 the targets were at 5km for stationary targets from a stationary and moving tank.

These are inanimate target practise; certainly you wouldn't expect real targets to behave similarly. Certainly the first few times you might get away with sniping several tanks, but eventually they would wisen up and adapt accordingly.

GarryB wrote:
With skilled planning and positioning I am sure there are opportunities for greater distance shots.

It takes two to tango. Competent NATO planners would seek to avoid terrain which affords their opponents great advantages, as well as making use of other arms like airpower to erode such advantages.

GarryB wrote:
Introducing the heavier gun.... even just in small numbers... maybe even adding them to one of the lighter more mobile forces perhaps, would mean HATO would have to make the decision to go for heavier tanks or perhaps smaller lighter tanks in large numbers.... a drone swarm where every 10th vehicle has a human crew perhaps... who knows with those HATO kooks.

I'd really like to see them try for a super heavy tank. Maus was such a great tank - for the Soviets that is. But most likely they would just abandon the heavy calibre guns and try to go for a reincarnation of the missile carrier tank. Until they have problems with arming the damn things that is, but then again NATO always did have more money than sense.

GarryB wrote:
But then doesn't it form a feed back loop.... the things done to the 125mm gun to achieve near 152mm gun performance could then be applied to the 152mm gun to extend its performance even further couldn't it?

Of course there are new experimental developments they can probably look at that are only at the start of their capacity... all very exciting.

Yes, but there comes a point where you just penetrate the enemy tanks cleanly from front to back, and while visually impressive, I doubt it makes much military sense to achieve such levels of overmatch.

GarryB wrote:
Giving up the heavily armoured turret was a choice that could be made with lots of cameras and optics and virtual reality systems... the biggest block to the unmanned turret was giving up that viewing position that gave you a 360 degree view around the battlefield from a decent height that allowed you to see the ground around your vehicle. A tethered drone could do an even better job and with thermal cameras and radar and taking power from the vehicle through the tether and also communicating with the tank via fibre optic cable via the tether the drone can hover for as long as the tank has power and radio emissions would be limited to radar, but could be kept low level.

Imagine the faces of an enemy that spots the drone and comes barging through the bushes expecting a nerd with a van using the drone and coming face to face with a squad of four Armata tanks... and they of course saw you coming...

Another often unmentioned requirement for the T-14 is the much higher degree of reliability of its systems compared to the more conventional types. Rather obvious, since the crew has no way of accessing the rest of the tank trapped in the crew capsule - so they can't perform any of the trouble-shooting or manual backups that crews of more conventional tanks could do in case of system failures. I'd hazard a guess state trials are taking much longer because they are trying to break the same machines designed to last much, much longer than normal tanks in operation before they could proceed any further.

GarryB wrote:
I was thinking more in terms of an enemy formation of tanks all with APS systems active and working...

A 14.5mm HMG with rounds optimised with plastic aerodynamic fairings with a rear mounted metal projectile with a front face with corner reflectors carved into it to generate a RCS of 150-200mm diameter objects... 5.6km from the target you could angle up the gun and fire long bursts launching hundreds of rounds at the targets and those APS systems will have to react to every round that is on target in case it is not a HMG round and is actually an incoming Kornet...

Fire on the enemy armour a couple of times... this ammo is inert and relatively cheap.... they will either soon run out of munitions or be forced to turn them off to prevent wasting those munitions. Monitor the attacks and if they stop defending themselves launch a volley of real ATGMs... when you ATGMs are half way there  fire a burst of these jammer rounds... then everyone should move to avoid being shelled.

Problem is any halfway decent tank is going to detect you firing at them - thermals are so sensitive they can even detect rifle muzzle flashes form miles away - and then shoot right back at you. You really don't want any reply as much as possible, since even a non-penetrating hit runs the risk of damaging valuable external systems, like the gun or the optics, or the tracks. An F-kill or a M-kill still takes your tank out of the fight and that would simply not do.

GarryB wrote:
Well if there is still room for growth then why not. Didn't someone mention they use Aluminium Sabots... their new cannon rounds use a plastic driving band to reduce wear and reduce friction to increase muzzle velocity without any other changes to the ammo, so perhaps a plastic Sabot could be something to consider too... or at least plastic contact points around the sabot to reduce friction.

Composite sabots, segmented penetrators, improved alloys, there's lots of avenues to explore, really.

GarryB wrote:
Yeah, as I wrote it wouldn't be that much heavier I knew that would not be true because it is not just a larger tube really it is everything...

On the positive side they were talking about all electric drive which would remove a lot of high pressure hydraulic stuff which is heavy and vulnerable to fire.

Lots of people faun on the Abrams enclosed ammo storage, but ignore all the exposed hydraulics (the whinny you hear on Abrams internal vids). The fluid is supposed to have a high flame temp, but the problem is when the container is punctured the fluid is leaked at high pressure and is atomised, so it burns anyway. The vehicle also has rather generous fuel tanks for its size, only problem is its the more flammable jet fuel kind. Battle damage of any kind to the fuel tanks with incendiaries and the whole thing is pretty much a goner.

Because increasing range meant something. A 125mm already fires at the limits of the possible. Where would you need a gun that can fire more than 3km away ?

Not every battle will be fought in Europe. And they train at 5km range targets.

Two bits of information to suggest they want to be able to hit targets as far away as possible and to be able to kill them at that range.

Even in the desert this situation won't happen. In the rare occasions it happens they have atgm that can engage any tank.

If ATGMs could replace tanks they already would have.

What they need is increase the muzzle velocity and in order to do so they need EM guns.

Early model EM guns are likely to be much less effective than current weapons... it will be a while before they get to the level of useful, or even preferable.

The T-10 was not an MBT. MBTs are offshoots of medium tanks in WW2.

If it was in a western army or german army it would be a MBT.

In the Soviet army it was classified as a heavy in the same way their KV-1 was called a heavy but was the same weight as (later) comparable German and western medium tanks.

The T-26 light, T-34 medium, KV-1 heavy during WWII, the KV-1s were too slow and often broke down in the early models so they arrived to battle late, the T-26s were too thinly armoured to last long and often had mechanical problems too... so normally the T-34 arrived and fought alone... it was the default MBT... but no one in the west would admit to that.

Production was cut down until they made the IS later.

The problem with heavy tanks in every armed force is that not a lot of them were actually made, and especially in the Soviet Army when for quite some time the T-34 actually had a better gun than the old gun fitted to the KV-1 it just made sense to focus on producing more T-34s... especially when they swung into the offensive later in the war where the slower KVs often got left behind.

A lot of different guns were tried for heavy tanks in late WW2 but they basically settled on the 130mm for the largest heavy and super heavy tanks in Germany and the Soviet Union.

You might be playing war thunder too much... they liked the naval 100mm gun which had excellent penetration, but they settled on the 122mm because it had a much better HE shell.

Anything that required more than that you just called up artillery and air support... because there was not likely to be a lot of them.

I think there is a better chance of a larger caliber entering service in NATO, probably 140mm, because of huge T-14 frontal armor.

Adopting a 140mm gun would be interesting because the rounds will be too big to remain one piece, but if they do then they will have to go with an autoloader.

The resistance to autoloaders is amusing in the west.... but only in the Army... western navies embraced autoloading big guns ages ago...

These are inanimate target practise; certainly you wouldn't expect real targets to behave similarly. Certainly the first few times you might get away with sniping several tanks, but eventually they would wisen up and adapt accordingly.

I don't think they were pretending anything other than the effective range against stationary targets.

They did fire one missile while on the move and its ability to manouver in flight should allow it to hit a moving target.

It takes two to tango. Competent NATO planners would seek to avoid terrain which affords their opponents great advantages, as well as making use of other arms like airpower to erode such advantages.

And of course HATO will have the advantage of being the aggressors and therefore able to choose the places of battle...

I'd really like to see them try for a super heavy tank. Maus was such a great tank - for the Soviets that is. But most likely they would just abandon the heavy calibre guns and try to go for a reincarnation of the missile carrier tank. Until they have problems with arming the damn things that is, but then again NATO always did have more money than sense.

Well to be fair I would think a super gun in a large tank they could think outside the box.

If this is supposed to be an attacking tank with a main gun with enormous range and power then perhaps a fixed forward firing gun could be used in a low sillouette vehicle... perhaps with a rear turret mounted smaller lighter gun... a 57mm or perhaps a 100mm version of that grenade launcher 57mm round that should be effective against any non tank armour.

The big gun could have a linkless beltless feed with limited elevation and traverse with perhaps a 10 round ammo feed system attached to the breach of the gun to allow 10 rapid shots, perhaps of two different round types from auto loaders which are fed from a main ammo store...

Yes, but there comes a point where you just penetrate the enemy tanks cleanly from front to back, and while visually impressive, I doubt it makes much military sense to achieve such levels of overmatch.

But that is the beauty, because when you are not fighting peer enemies then you can load APHE rounds that will devastate the enemy armour from BTR/BMP up to MBT. With modern technology smart fuses can be used so that they can be smart rounds that could be set to proximity air burst, impact, and penetration HE with settings for log bunkers, BMP armour, or old generation tank armour, or window pane for a conventional truck or MRAP.

I'd hazard a guess state trials are taking much longer because they are trying to break the same machines designed to last much, much longer than normal tanks in operation before they could proceed any further.

With modern systems there are all sorts of variables and different situations they need to check and test for... it is so much better to be thorough and get this right than do it the microsoft way and let your customer beta test everything for you...

Problem is any halfway decent tank is going to detect you firing at them - thermals are so sensitive they can even detect rifle muzzle flashes form miles away - and then shoot right back at you.

The thing is that you don't need direct line of sight... I would expect you could and indeed should fire from behind frontal cover and then move... these are fully automatic weapons so firing off a 50 round belt from multiple vehicles should be relatively straight forward... you are aiming at targets that are 2 x 3 x 5-6m and it really does not matter if many are going to miss... certainly firing from 4-5km then most will likely miss, but the point is to weaken the target force even if it just forces them to close up.

If you have a battalion of BTRs with 14.5mm guns or even BTR-82As with 30mm cannon... a 20mm sabot round with a flat metal face but a plastic aerodynamic nose with corner reflectors... the first 20 rounds in every vehicle... could use ballistic computers to aim and fire at a far away group of enemy armour and all fire together and then be ready to move out for an attack or whatever they were doing.

only problem is its the more flammable jet fuel kind.

HIgh octane... a type of kerosene?

I know most new Soviet and Russian tanks can burn any mixtures of anything...

Battle damage of any kind to the fuel tanks with incendiaries and the whole thing is pretty much a goner.

That is so true... people bollock on about armour but if you fill the crew compartment with ammo and fuel and the crew compartment gets penetrated then everyone dies.

Ironically with less armour but ammo stored in a wet locker out of the path of the penetrating ammo and there can be injuries and maybe a death or two but someone walks away...

The biggest problems with the T-34 was hatch size was normally too small or the hatch was too heavy for one man to lift in terms of fatalities...

GarryB wrote:
And of course HATO will have the advantage of being the aggressors and therefore able to choose the places of battle...

Its not actually. Russia will still beat them to the punch as they could mobilize, far, far more quickly than NATO - even the Eastern flank states who are the first to receive a Russian offensive and ostensibly are the ones most prepared. Since forces have shrunk significantly since the Cold war there is exponentially lot more room for maneuvering which I'm certain any competent Russian commander will exploit to the fullest.

GarryB wrote:
Well to be fair I would think a super gun in a large tank they could think outside the box.

If this is supposed to be an attacking tank with a main gun with enormous range and power then perhaps a fixed forward firing gun could be used in a low sillouette vehicle... perhaps with a rear turret mounted smaller lighter gun... a 57mm or perhaps a 100mm version of that grenade launcher 57mm round that should be effective against any non tank armour.

The big gun could have a linkless beltless feed with limited elevation and traverse with perhaps a 10 round ammo feed system attached to the breach of the gun to allow 10 rapid shots, perhaps of two different round types from auto loaders which are fed from a main ammo store...

Casemates lack the flexibility afforded by the turret to simultaneously attack one targets in one direction while moving in the other. Its a non-starter if you want a tank that can spearhead the offensive since the turret allows the tank to engage multiple pop-up targets if not simultaneously but in rapid succession without compromising movement. A turret would also allow a tank on the defense to use its mobility to perform snap-shots while cycling through multiple keyhole positions, significantly reducing the chances of any effective enemy response, since the tank would only be exposed for as long as it takes to fire a round then its out of sight immediately after.

GarryB wrote:
But that is the beauty, because when you are not fighting peer enemies then you can load APHE rounds that will devastate the enemy armour from BTR/BMP up to MBT. With modern technology smart fuses can be used so that they can be smart rounds that could be set to proximity air burst, impact, and penetration HE with settings for log bunkers, BMP armour, or old generation tank armour, or window pane for a conventional truck or MRAP.

The HE-frag shell already does that. About the only thing the normal HE-frag can't catastrophically destroy in one hit are MBTs, and that is if they are hit on the frontal turret and hull, anywhere else and they'd brew up just the same. There is no feasible way to make a full calibre AP shell that could penetrate even old cold war tanks - there was a retarded 120 mm gun that shot APBC shells but those were merely laughed at by Soviet composite armor of the time.

GarryB wrote:
With modern systems there are all sorts of variables and different situations they need to check and test for... it is so much better to be thorough and get this right than do it the microsoft way and let your customer beta test everything for you...

Its not "efficient" though. Certainly not for the company's shareholder value.  

GarryB wrote:
The thing is that you don't need direct line of sight... I would expect you could and indeed should fire from behind frontal cover and then move... these are fully automatic weapons so firing off a 50 round belt from multiple vehicles should be relatively straight forward... you are aiming at targets that are 2 x 3 x 5-6m and it really does not matter if many are going to miss... certainly firing from 4-5km then most will likely miss, but the point is to weaken the target force even if it just forces them to close up.

If you have a battalion of BTRs with 14.5mm guns or even BTR-82As with 30mm cannon... a 20mm sabot round with a flat metal face but a plastic aerodynamic nose with corner reflectors... the first 20 rounds in every vehicle... could use ballistic computers to aim and fire at a far away group of enemy armour and all fire together and then be ready to move out for an attack or whatever they were doing.

HMGs and autocannons are fairly flat shooting up to 2 km and very much LOS. I'm not exactly sure you can do precision plunging fire to that extent that you can hit a tank sized target with most of a burst. Artillery regularly miss by tens to even hundreds of meters but that's ok since their shells are effective at up to a hundred or so meters anyway, which isn't the same case with really oversized bullets.

GarryB wrote:
HIgh octane... a type of kerosene?

I know most new Soviet and Russian tanks can burn any mixtures of anything...

JP-8, which is jet fuel or kerosene. The Russians use diesel for their tanks which significantly improved post-penetration survivability since diesel is quite hard to ignite at least compared to kerosene.

GarryB wrote:
That is so true... people bollock on about armour but if you fill the crew compartment with ammo and fuel and the crew compartment gets penetrated then everyone dies.

Ironically with less armour but ammo stored in a wet locker out of the path of the penetrating ammo and there can be injuries and maybe a death or two but someone walks away...

The biggest problems with the T-34 was hatch size was normally too small or the hatch was too heavy for one man to lift in terms of fatalities...

IIRC the hatch was ok if you weren't wearing winter gear - quite the oversight.

Casemates lack the flexibility afforded by the turret to simultaneously attack one targets in one direction while moving in the other.

Traditionally it was used to mount a much bigger gun in a vehicle than could be afforded with that vehicles size...

For instance the T-34 was designed with a 76.2mm gun in mind, it could fit an 85mm gun, but to get an even bigger gun like a 100mm gun it would need serious redesign... or a fixed gun in a fixed gun structure... where it actually gave up its turret and got a lower sillouette and became more a tank destroyer rather than a tank.

What I am saying is that the fixed gun solution was to allow smaller vehicles to remain useful with guns too big to fit in turrets in them... that was in the past.

For the Future you could use an auto loader with a rear mounted gun in a vehicle that is small... with two crew in the front with cameras for visibility and the new fancy engine transmissions that allow a tank to spin on the spot with one track going forward and one going backwards, and with active suspension to allow super elevation and super depression on a gun that can elevate and depress and move left and right a little already.

Its a non-starter if you want a tank that can spearhead the offensive since the turret allows the tank to engage multiple pop-up targets if not simultaneously but in rapid succession without compromising movement.

For a defensive vehicle then shooting from a near stationary position, and moving between shots, but being smaller than an average tank.

The point of the fixed gun is to allow a very powerful gun to be used so using it in close quarters would not be the plan.

A turret would also allow a tank on the defense to use its mobility to perform snap-shots while cycling through multiple keyhole positions, significantly reducing the chances of any effective enemy response, since the tank would only be exposed for as long as it takes to fire a round then its out of sight immediately after.

Yes, I know a turret is useful on a tank.... this might be something they do to T-54s and T-55s as an upgrade or modification... perhaps turn them around with the engine moved to the front, crew in the middle (2 man crew), and gun mount with autoloader at the rear... 152mm guns for some as a tank destroyer and 160mm mortar for a new artillery support vehicle... though it would probably use a loading vehicle for most of its ammo...

Its not "efficient" though. Certainly not for the company's shareholder value.

The customers cooperated... and paid top dollar to be the first guinea pigs... mad.

HMGs and autocannons are fairly flat shooting up to 2 km and very much LOS. I'm not exactly sure you can do precision plunging fire to that extent that you can hit a tank sized target with most of a burst. Artillery regularly miss by tens to even hundreds of meters but that's ok since their shells are effective at up to a hundred or so meters anyway, which isn't the same case with really oversized bullets.

That is why I was specifically talking about 4-5km range where the HMG shells would be subsonic like many ATGMs...

IIRC the hatch was ok if you weren't wearing winter gear - quite the oversight.

Ironically these days the problem would be body weight... 100 years ago poor people were skinny... these days they are fat...

GarryB wrote:
Traditionally it was used to mount a much bigger gun in a vehicle than could be afforded with that vehicles size...

For instance the T-34 was designed with a 76.2mm gun in mind, it could fit an 85mm gun, but to get an even bigger gun like a 100mm gun it would need serious redesign... or a fixed gun in a fixed gun structure... where it actually gave up its turret and got a lower sillouette and became more a tank destroyer rather than a tank.

What I am saying is that the fixed gun solution was to allow smaller vehicles to remain useful with guns too big to fit in turrets in them... that was in the past.

For the Future you could use an auto loader with a rear mounted gun in a vehicle that is small... with two crew in the front with cameras for visibility and the new fancy engine transmissions that allow a tank to spin on the spot with one track going forward and one going backwards, and with active suspension to allow super elevation and super depression on a gun that can elevate and depress and move left and right a little already.

I'm not sure why you would need an even bigger gun when the upgraded gun is more than enough. The 2A82-1M is sufficiently future-proofed: it should be able to shoot at least 1200 mm long projectiles, having inherited the autoloader from the Object 195, which is far more in excess of what you would need to defeat upgraded NATO MBTs.

GarryB wrote:
For a defensive vehicle then shooting from a near stationary position, and moving between shots, but being smaller than an average tank.

The point of the fixed gun is to allow a very powerful gun to be used so using it in close quarters would not be the plan.

If we're to go by actual numbers, most casemate designs were actually utilized in the close quarters infantry support roles with the larger gun packing a much larger HE shell for the task than otherwise is possible.

GarryB wrote:
Yes, I know a turret is useful on a tank.... this might be something they do to T-54s and T-55s as an upgrade or modification... perhaps turn them around with the engine moved to the front, crew in the middle (2 man crew), and gun mount with autoloader at the rear... 152mm guns for some as a tank destroyer and 160mm mortar for a new artillery support vehicle... though it would probably use a loading vehicle for most of its ammo...

If push really came to shove I think you can still force the 152 mm gun on the T-54/55 turret. They managed it with a modified T-80, and the T-54/55 is actually much roomier compared to the T-64/72/80. Only problem is the paper thin armor.

GarryB wrote:
Ironically these days the problem would be body weight... 100 years ago poor people were skinny... these days they are fat...

The push towards larger vehicles is driven in large part by much taller crewmembers.

Hole wrote:

I really like how thin the gun looks on the T-14. Its almost like its holding a lance instead of a massive tank gun.