T-72 ΜΒΤ modernisation and variants #2

Russia has no equivalent to the MMP akeron(already given to ukros) or spike NLOS. Both blow the metis and kornet respectively out of the water.

Spike is even slower than Javelin and would be horribly vulnerable to countermeasures like dazzling lasers.

SHTORA would probably be effective against Spike.

Metis and Kornet are cheap enough that they could make so many that over a year into the conflict they still have plenty.

America... a country able to print money with no consequences has run out of Javelins and is currently supplying ancient TOW missiles from storage.

Sometimes having the smart sophisticated weapon is not an advantage at all.

Smoke and optical dazzlers....

SHTORA is a suite of equipment that included laser dazzlers as well as smoke grenade launchers and laser sensors.

If SHTORA is useless against an optically guided ATGM because the optically guided missile does not emit laser or other energy to alert the target vehicle and the system can't detect missiles in flight then perhaps someone could explain how the system worked against wire guided missiles like Milan and TOW.

The dazzling system with the two large IR emitters on the front of the T-90 defeated TOW and Milan and other wire guided missiles because the control system of those missiles used what is called a gionometer... an IR sensor that was also pointed at the target along with the main sight that the gunner used to track the target by putting the crosshairs on the target vehicle. The gionometer detected the IR flares in the tail of the missile and detected the locational difference from where the IR flare was and where the target was (where the crosshair was placed in the field of view).

The missile guidance used the visible difference between the IR flare and the centre of the crosshair to command the missile to manouver to centre itself on the crosshair and maintain that position in flight to impact... as long as that is maintained and the crosshair remains on the target tank the missile will either run out of fuel or it will hit the target.

The dazzlers were like spot lights in the IR wavelength which meant the guidance system of the wire guided missile could not locate the outgoing missile and they generally flew into the ground no where near the target.

The point is that this doesn't work of the system can't detect enemy missiles incoming... which it could.

What has changed is that the west does not use wire guided missiles any more so the role of the dazzler has changed from overwhelming a gionometer to overwhelming and optical sensor... which means it has probably gone from using big box shaped IR LEDs with enormous heatsinks to much smaller IR lasers which you can see on the new vehicles.... positioned each side of the main gun in roughly the same locations as the old dazzlers...

You can point the laser 10m away from the tank while the missile travels and target the tank during the last few seconds.

If you point a laser 10m away from the tank the intense reflections will set off the laser warning system just as easily if it was pointed directly at the tank.

With laser beam riding missiles the laser beam is a fraction of the power of western lazer guided weapons because a laser beam riding missile looks back and the launch platform directly at the laser beam... the laser does not reflect off anything... so at 8.5km with a Kornet-EM the laser is travelling 8.5km.

A laser homing Hellfire however at 8km range when you launch the missile the laser beam has travelled from the launch helicopter 8km to the target and the reflected laser light needs to be seen from the helicopter another 8km away so that laser light needs to travel 16km for the missile to lock on and that is effected by what colour the target is and how shiny it is and how much rain and smoke and dust or snow there is between the helicopter and the target.

With a laser beam riding missile you can aim 10m high so the missile will fly clear of fences and bushes and small trees and telephone wires etcetc and then drop down on target for the last few hundred metres.

Note Soviet and Russian laser guided bombs and rockets only home for the last one second of flight for powered rockets and missiles and the last 3 seconds of flight for unpowered bombs, so the time to launch smoke and for it to deploy is rather short... it also means they actually aim to hit their targets and use the guidance system to make the hit more precise.

Certainly systems only work when they are turned on.

Remind me of the Javelin penetration, 500 mm?

Funny you say that because Javelin relies on a heat lock of the target and from front on the heat signature of the tank is going to be rather different from the view from above because that rack and those ERA blocks wont be heated like the gun barrel or engine might be heated.

Javelins penetration is about 750mm, but an ERA block and then a half metre air gap and then the ERA blocks of the turret roof and then the turret roof armour might be effective... assuming the Javelin holds lock to start with.

During tests they had to heat shooting range target tanks with big banks of hair driers so they could get a lock on their targets in test conditions.

I would say an ERA block would actually be effective against hand grenades dropped from drones too... which is more likely why they are used... but it would also stop the snow and the rain as well.

Instead of adding extra weight could have placed a new APS instead. Would have been able to neutralise any ATGM.

Would an APS system be effective against hand grenades dropped from drones?

Suggests the threat is drones and small munitions to me.

Lol. Ok.

Without a proper lock it is a less powerful Metis-M system costing about the same as a house in the west.

Its 750mm armour penetration performance is not great against ERA...