[Official] Armata Discussion thread #6

I've seen worse capstone proposals.

Ramjets also make for expensive ammo. Russia doesn't want scarce silver bullets, they want mass producible wooden stakes that will **** any number of opponents.

A ramjet is one of the most simple jet designs... there are not spinning blades or disks, I suspect the real core of the problem is that in the 1-2 seconds of flight from the tank to the target there is little opportunity for the ramjet to do very much other than countering the extra drag the ramjet section would create and as its top speed at sea level might only be mach three which is actually rather slower by half the speed of a simple APFSDS core then they likely decided it wasn't really worth it.

Having a scramjet powered penetrator changes things though if the velocity can be increased and maintained so for short range shots out to about 5km normal current APFSDS rounds already do the job... but with drone support detecting targets 10km or more away you could fire a scramjet powered APFSDS round at an elevation of perhaps 10 or more degrees and have it steer to hit a target spotted by a drone... you could use a vectored thrust exhaust nozzle for the scramjet motor for low drag steering without external control surfaces and if it can be made to fly at 2km per second it would be very potent... Zircon flies at 3km/s at altitude...

This concept might be interesting for helicopter launched missiles designed to hit and kill targets at the 20-40km flight distances where the first 20km of flight is accelerating to a speed where the kinetic metal core becomes effective. At shorter ranges then just use conventional missiles already in use with HEAT warheads.

Cost is a factor, but I think they are deliberately leaving this ace in the hole for when they really need a massive almost overnight surge in anti-armor capability.

Cost is certainly a factor but if we look at history when they developed gun tube launched guided missiles they didn't get rid of conventional rounds and just have missile tanks like the Sheridan was designed to do. They had about 8 missiles per ammo load and I would expect if they had 15km range scramjet powered APFSDS rounds they would likely only carry a half dozen of them per tank load too as many targets detected at such range would be soft targets for which APFSDS would not be particularly suitable anyway.

The T-14 needs an APS that can INTERCEPT top attacks from ATGMs, loitering munitions, and artillery. Artillery fire has disabled a lot of tanks in this war.

Bill2 and Javelin and Copperhead and Excalibr are not new systems so I would expect the T-14s APS system can deal with top attack weapons.

They are also working on mini SAMs of about 10kgs with active radar homing and a 3kg warhead to deal with artillery (tube and rocket) and other types of enemy delivered munitions... which would also include drones etc... though I suspect 23mm airburst shells would be widely deployed to deal with the majority of enemy drones.

I believe that what Murakhovskiy is talking about is that they scrapped plans to form experimental unit with Armata tanks for deployment to SMO zone.

I rather suspect they realised that T-14 is no super tank and that the things that will destroy their current tanks and current western tanks will also be a threat to T-14s as well, and all the BS about Leopard IIs and now Challenger IIs and soon Abrams tanks that the publicity would not be worth it...

They can continue to draw conclusions from the equipment they are using now and develop new tactics with new technologies they can add to their new vehicle families as they mature.

I have seen an ARENA drawing showing munitions defending from direct line of sight weapons and also diving top attack weapons but I don't know if it has been implemented or not.

It is certainly not difficult or complex... most of the diving weapons are not moving at anything like the speed of direct fire weapons so the interception should not be that complex.

This is the usual drawing:



This is the other one which launches fragments horizontally and vertically for direct and diving top attack threats:



If you look at the sensors for Armata you can see it covers threats from above:



and there is this drawing as well:



Which is clearly the old ARENA system with the sensor tower and the direct fire threats defeated by munitions launched up into the air to send fragments downwards in the path of the incoming threat which reduces the danger to nearby friendlies because the fragments of the interceptor are directed down into the ground... but the other munition is directing fragments upwards at a diving target.

I guess the problem is the scud issue, when patriots were used to intercept modified scud missiles in desert storm even the few that hit the target failed to stop the missile because they would shred the engine and fuel tanks but the warhead would fall intact and do damage anyway.

A horizontal threat might be driven into the ground or have its angle of attack shifted to make it much less effective while a falling warhead needs to be set off prematurely or destroyed to effectively stop it.

I rather have confidence that they have cracked it and don't want to say because why would you tell the west that Javelin is useless and not just because of camouflage or DIRCM laser jammers jamming the optical guidance... a laser seeker is also optical guidance...

new electronics hoping for optics

Would assume operational practise with the northern military district as well as limited testing in Ukraine would allow them to find any problems or issues that prevent them operating the way they want to operate them... this is rather good news.

The robotic turret is such an unfair advantage.

On one hand it allows the vehicle to stay at an optimum weight class without sacrificing protection. The hull citadel is as well protected as ever because it is no longer competing with the turret in the limited armor mass fraction.

On the other it perfects the very same terrain hugging techniques that mask the previously vulnerable hull. Because while in a static hull down or jockeying between firing points you still need to expose the turret momentarily, but if its unmanned, it doesn't really matter much if the turret is exposed or not. You're not risking anything significant beyond the expendable combat package, so fire away.

Actually it sounds like a hybrid active IR device... the enemy would detect its use because of the IR laser being used, but most of the time... who cares.

In a sense it is effectively and optical Lidar system, but then they have laser radar systems too which are also very interesting and create 3D models of the scene around the sensor in real time.

GarryB wrote:Actually it sounds like a hybrid active IR device... the enemy would detect its use because of the IR laser being used, but most of the time... who cares.

In a sense it is effectively and optical Lidar system, but then they have laser radar systems too which are also very interesting and create 3D models of the scene around the sensor in real time.

The LWIR optics mounted on current vehicles already provide very good detection, but poor resolution, especially at extreme ranges. A NIR sensor with active laser illumination should provide that resolution required for actually identifying target for destruction. And since you're already trained on the target getting detected yourself shouldn't be a problem since you already have a weapon pointed at him. Just squeeze the trigger.

If it really bothers people the illuminator doesn't even have to be on the same vehicle. A drone can lase for the tank and it just so happens that this is also a very viable guidance means for the types of weapons that can reach out to targets beyond CQB ranges.

This Volna 9 lens refreshed my memories

Feel like a 15 y/o again, thank you

Video has embedded Russian subs. Turn on auto-translate for English.

The future plans for air defence seem to be 2S38 which is currently based on a BMP-3 chassis but in the future of course will be based on Armata and Kurganets and Boomerang and Typhoon and DT-30 chassis.

The 23mm airburst rounds have been recently mentioned because they are the smallest calibre they have such rounds in so far, but they have 57mm air burst and 30mm air burst rounds already AFAIK.

The 30mm airburst rounds will likely be used for a variety of uses including by BMPs and helicopters as well as air defence guns because an airburst of rounds above a group of soldiers is more effective than the rounds exploding as they hit the ground.

The 23mm rounds will likely be cheaper than the larger calibre rounds so can probably be produced and deployed in large numbers, which of course would be important for air defence against drones which can appear anywhere.

The 23mm shell fired by the 23 x 152mm AA guns is the same projectile as that used in the aircraft carried 23mm guns like the Hind in the turret and gun pod so any air burst rounds for the Shilka and ZU-23-2 could also be loaded into the guns of the Hind and MiG-21 and aircraft mounted gun pods and also carried by the MiG-31.

The new 57mm AA gun rounds probably are big enough to be able to use airburst shells against conventional aircraft targets. The fragments and size of the HE charge in a 23mm round would probably only really damage small light drone targets made of plastic or cardboard...

Why would an MBT require a sensor with a detection range many times greater than the engagement range of its weapons?

Doesn't make a lot of sense.

An MBT is primarily occupied with the close quarter battle. Here engagements are decided not in luxurious minutes but sparse seconds - an APFSDS arrow will take but one in typical encounter distances. The T-14 will have its hands full controlling this tactical knife fight to offer processing time on targets much further back.

The problems of very small RCS targets or zero RCS targets are likely better solved with LIDAR.... or laser radar, because even the most powerful radar that can detect a cardboard drone will also detect birds and large insects and all sorts of other crap that will overwhelm the system.

Equally an active laser detection system cannot be detect hundreds of kms away by platforms like JSTARS which could use radar emissions from T-14 tanks to precisely locate them on the battlefield and to plan and coordinate attacks on said vehicles.

That is the reason the APS system for T-14 includes an optical component.

thegopnik wrote:The tank can share tactical information of what its radars can see with other air defense units in which what those air defense radars cant see. There is a radar horizon limit with radars which I fully understand https://www.translatorscafe.com/unit-converter/en-US/calculator/radar-horizon/ Say that you have an S-500 placed 500kms away from the enemy location you need to go to and the T-14 armata with PICs give it a 100km tracking range. The enemy aircraft is flying 600kms away from the from the S-500 at a flight altitude of 1 km. This limits the S-500 radars from tracking it since its range will only be 137kms. However a T-14 was around the area, shares the radar data with the S-500 and the S-500 uses its 600km range SAMs to knock it down.

It won't happen as you describe it anyway, because an MBT's maneuver scheme requires frequent bursts of movements between cover and concealment while only making sightlines on the attack. This makes an MBT a very poor radio station even ignoring all the logistics associated with merging these two incongrous roles together.

Not that the MBT even needs a radar to act as a recon element, because as the spear tip of the maneuver force the MBT is expected to generate the vast majority of enemy contacts. Not only is armor leading the way physically, its also dangerous enough to provoke a greater reaction than other types of probing action because an armored column can very easily punch through all but well prepared and supported opposition. You can't ignore it either or you will have tanks running rampant in your rear.

What we know so far:
>32 round capacity
Beats the crap out of any autoloader apart from the M1 TTB autoloader, which has 44 but very anemic 120x570mm  cartridges.
>Maximum projectile length is 1100mm. Current Vacuum-1/2 are 900mm projectiles with 25x780mm DU/WHA cores - similar to the M829A4/3. A 30:1 aspect ratio seems to be the optimal for flight stability and terminal ballistics reasons.

>Uses 152x500mm propellant charges
NATO Rh120 use 140x570mm propellant charges but a sizeable volume is occupied by the projectile and sabot.
When you take into account the integral propellant charge that seats the projectile the available chamber volume can very easily reach 140mm main gun levels.
Its clear that the 2A82-1M isn't just a straightforward upgrade, its a stealth jump in caliber without changing calibers
>10-12 rpm
Perfectly adequate. But with zero possibility of human limbs in the way can be further increased still.
>situated below the turret ring
Perfectly safe in hull down against direct fire and protected by an overkill hull citadel.

Dasha doesn't' know this, but the T-14 with the chipped paint participated in the SMO.
A brave hohol cyborg died chipping that paint.

T-16 and other engineering vehicles:

Dasha is a perfect example of a person completely deluded by commercials.
She never visited any military base for anything else other than unga buga, that's sure

You mean Bunga Bunga?
RIP Berlusconi.