In the context of breaking the then delicate deadlock between weapon and armor, 10% of an increase in penetration is huge.
A 10% increase in pen is nothing, the variation in penetration on the front of a target from the weakest spot to the strongest spot might be 50%... if you do a good job and get an angle on the enemy then shooting from the side or rear 10% doesn't mean anything either.
You would probably get more than 10% variation in penetration depending on the quality of the ammo and materials and the variation in quality of target armour... especially if they made it from US steel that had been proof tested by that woman...
The cost of nuclear radiation all over the battlefield is too high a cost compared with just firing again.
NATO MBTs are basically stretching the limits of what is physically feasible for the existing transportation infrastructure.
Based on the experience of this conflict the chances of Russian forces fighting HATO forces are slim to very low, and experience with HATO vehicles in various places around the world after the initial shock was over and they started to look at the designs for weak spots they started finding them quickly and easily enough.
Konkurs to the rear turret bustle on an Abrams worked just fine... as an example.
Think of the last 10 years: NATO MBTs have to contend with merely 600 mm long shafts from the outdated T-72/90 style gun system, but even they are already bloated.
They were even confident they had significant margins to account for Russian anti-armor developments in the near future.
The same people who thought stinger would clear the skies of Russian aircraft and Javelin would blunt any Russian armour advance when used in a guerilla type conflict style the Russians could not counter with scorched earth rolling artillery solutions they would use in WWIII in hostile territory.
The Ukraine was the ideal situation because Russia didn't want to just flatten everything and HATO weapons still failed.
But then the Russians introduced the Armata, and then all of a sudden NATO tanks have to defend against 900 mm long APFSDS shafts fired at significantly higher muzzle velocities.
That's at least 50% increase in penetration performance almost overnight!
That is true, but western tank armour has not changed much since the cold war... are they waiting for it to enter service... and when it does are they just going to accept defeat and start looking at smaller more affordable two man tanks instead that can be easier to deploy and transport... go for mobility and fire power instead.
Then you're putting an extra 10% added bonus penetration with just a change in shaft material as the cherry on top.
For the west DU is waste, for Russia it is fuel for nuclear power stations... the west can put it in their ammo and armour or they can bury it... Russia has uses for that stuff... that does not include turning their shooting ranges into nuclear fall out sites.
Nobody can manage to improve the protection by more than 50% under super tight margins for weight and volume without resorting to drastic changes in internal arrangement or use of left-field technology like anti-APFSDS APS.
Which will force them to do something smarter than just adding 20 tons to the weight of their tanks.
It does. But not nearly enough to overpower the extreme efficacy of complex armors against shaped-charge jets.
But you have to ask yourself... are western armours amazingly effective against shaped charge warheads, or is it a case that the bullshit lies about the performance of western ATGMs in terms of HEAT penetration might be why they fail to penetrate their own tanks, because Konkurs seems to perform well on western tanks in actual combat.
There is an episode of Combat Approved showing the Khrisantema and a solid block of steel that is 1m by 1m by 1m which is penetrated cleanly by the Khrisantema...
And warhead diameter is just one factor. Compared to missiles, HEAT shells are let down by the lack of available space for additional standoff.
Designers can be quite clever in that regard too...
For a larger diameter shaped charge, you need a longer standoff distance to properly develop the jet.
That is correct, but look closely at that HEAT round... most of the front is empty space... plenty of room for an extendable probe like the ones used on the Ataka missiles...
In fact if you wanted to get clever you could use a laser proximity fuse as used on AAMs to get it to detonate at a suitable distance...
The form factor for a 125 mm HEAT shell is just too tight to allow for a proper standoff.
So you are saying 125mm HEAT are useless?
Spool shaped sabots are typically 50% of the shaft by weight. Double that and you have 1:1 parasitic mass to payload.
So what?
Do you think the APFSDS for the 152mm gun is less powerful than the 125mm round?
They are not using the 152mm round because they say the 125mm round can already do the job, but are you suggesting that the 152mm round has worse performance than the 125mm round?
Really?
You need more than double the energy for the projectile assembly to even begin to see marginal improvements.
And that is the point... they can't put double the energy down a 125mm tube, but they can down a 152mm tube... that is why they go to bigger calibres instead of keeping the same calibre and increasing the propellent size and pressure.
Keeping the same calibre and using more propellent means you wear out the barrel too quickly.
That's why the 152 mm smoothbore is double the weight with 1/3 the lifespan of the improved 125 mm gun.
It is also why it is much more powerful and why they bothered developing it in the first place.
But neither the purchase of the T-14 nor the purchase of the T-90M will make it possible to replace the T-72B3 of various modifications (not within that period), already delivered in the amount of about 2,000 vehicles, as the basis of the tank fleet of the Russian Armed Forces, he believes
But if the Russians can only upgrade 50 tanks per year how long have they been upgrading those T-72s... I guess they must have started upgrading them 40 years ago, but then they are also upgrading T-90s and T-80s and even T-62s... maybe the have the capacity to make and upgrade more tanks than some assume.
Looking at this conventionnal war, it is dumb to think tanks attack tanks.
Tanks will engage all sorts of targets on the battlefield but enemy tanks will likely be their top priority just for their own safety.