[Official] Armata Discussion thread #6

And the gap is only going to become bigger as the Russian MIC consolidates even further while Europe deindustrializes.

Bullseye.
People who are crying a river about the matter lack any serious perspective, and that is a sad observation.
Sorry folks, you really, really don't.

Some of you are just infused in the western propaganda, even not realizing that - I suppose the language or time/effort barrier is the issue here.

kvs objectively is disgusted by the fact that Russkie produce ONLY 2 tanks a day

Bro, it is still more PRODUCED tanks than the whole NATO made in the last fukin' DECADE

In a DAY.

There is not a single PRODUCTION line for tanks running in the whole of Europe, the US, Canada etc.
Not sure if Turks are not doing something around Altai, but hardly believe in that.
Not a single piece of Leclerce, L2, Ch2, M1, Ariete, PT-91, T-72 is being PRODUCED.

Can they?
Well ... sure. But how to switch from a 1 pcs a month refurbish to 2 pcs a day production?
Who will do that?
Physically.
Where are the skilled&trained personnel to carry heavy industry jobs, in Europe that considered this work not fancy for the last two bloody decades at least?
Who will supply tens of subcomponents, having the very same issue?
How much will that cost, in Europe lacking any serious resources and forced to import 80% of the industry needs?

Well .. sue they can.
It will take time. Years.
It will take money. Billions.

And guess who lacks the time, and who lacks the money?

The most amazing thing is that Russia has only 150 million people and world's fifth economy. NATO is over 900 million population.

Look at the thing from a positive perspective.
This land was heavily exploited for the last 30 years. Decapitalization rates are sky high.
In most of the cases it will be really much more cost effective to build that brand new, with new concepts and whole development system.

The west was super butt hurt when the Soviets led the way by introducing smoothbore main tank guns... would be too inaccurate... they are doing it because it is cheaper so they can build ten times more tanks than we have and try to compete with our sniper tanks by trying to machine gun or submachine gun them and overwhelm them with less accurate fire... storm them... get in close... within 1-2km where even inaccurate guns get hits anyway.

Of course all that was bullshit butt hurt... the irony is that it was obvious... most HEAT rounds were fin stabilised and all APFSDS rounds were fin stabilised so were getting no accuracy benefit from their guns rifling anyway..... absurd...

Sorry dude, I am not even going to bother to watch that video... it looks like the usual shit.

My guess is that the west will claim the T-14 is a step backwards and real future tanks will be fully remote controlled and completely unmanned.

Well with all the crew in the hull the main issue for making the T-14 is situational awareness... which needs to be sorted... most tank commanders prefer to risk getting shot by having their heads sticking out of the turret hatch because the alternative is driving around blind.

Down in the hull the drivers of tanks generally have a rather poor view of the battlefield and rely on the commander giving them driving instructions to move from cover to cover... but in the T-14 the same optics that gives the commander a good turret top view of the battlefield can also be viewed by the driver and gunner which should make its situational awareness very very good... better than a standard tank even because they all get an optimal view.

The point is that this amazing view is also used by the APS system to detect threats but it could be sent to a van 100km away as easily as it could be to the crew inside the vehicle so remote operation starts to make sense.

With no crew to kill the areas of the tank that need heavy protection decrease dramatically... ammo, fuel, and engine and gun loading mechanism... which means the vehicle can be much smaller and lighter and therefore cheaper.

One of the ironies of a combat robot is that people are stupid... they see a robot coming at them and their immediate thought is to shoot it in the head... because in a human that is where the brain is... destroying that and the human is useless... but a robot is not a human even if it might have human form... there might be nothing at all inside the robot head so you could riddle it with bullets and the robot will keep coming... the brain and batteries might be in the groin, or duplicated in each shoulder or the chest cavity with heavy armour.

The point is that a robot tank might not be vulnerable to the normal kill shots on a conventional tank.

The T-14 has an armoured capsule at the front hull with all the crew... on a robot version the armoured capsule might be around the engine and ammo storage areas and fuel. The turret might be huge but also largely empty and you could shoot away to your hearts content and not hit anything important because nothing important is located there.

The huge turret might be rings and rings of upwardly firing ARENA munitions with Drozd munitions around the base of the turret, and other launchers located all over the place for instance....

A robot vehicle with optical and radar and acoustic sensors to detect enemy fire and locate its source and transmit that info back to HQ to mark on a live map showing where the next artillery barrage should be directed to...

Its ammo stores could be tripled but wired to be all detonated if the vehicle is immobilised or disabled and no longer able to make it back to base...

ERA panels could have claymore blocks attached to the outside and manually detonated as it approaches enemy troops... under the nakidka fabric camouflage who could tell there are MON 300s fixed there... and underneath have ERA bricks too...

They  already had three man tanks in service and this was going to be a two man tank, but they realised that a two man crew could not operate 24/7 on a battlefield in any capacity at all so with the Armata they went for a three man crew where on a 24 hour battlefield one crewman can take a rest for 6 hours while the other two are "driver and commander" with the commander able to look and fire the weapons and the driver able to move the vehicle.

No matter what the time of day all three crew have had 6 hours sleep in the last 24 hours, which is probably about as good as you could hope for.

Obviously during busy times all three crew can be "on duty".

This two man 24 hour tank has not been implemented, and I think a no man tank makes more sense but of course routine maintenance requires about four men per tank, with the fourth man at the moment being at a higher level so in the field they can't do all the maintenance and operational stuff.

Of course in the real world you don't hold down a keyboard key and keep the vehicle stationary for 35 seconds to fix a damaged gun breach or a destroyed track...

If the tank wont move you abandon it... if it wont fire or you can't see you drive back to a rear area and get it fixed.

When you abandon it you rely on follow up forces to recover your tank and then fix it.

Not just the engine, but I seem to remember it being called a power pack because it includes other components and parts that are not normally part of an engine as such.