T-72 ΜΒΤ modernisation and variants #2

Russia is threatened by NATO from the Western side, China has no such enemies from the land side.

Ironically with that logic the US should have lots of light tanks too but has the opposite.

Sadly some countries don't understand common sense or logic...

The Type 15 is just one tank type the Chinese make, just as the Sprut is designed for very specific operations too.

No it is not. It's a tank hunter. As long as it is hidden and sees targets first it will be ok. Once spoted it is dead. 30mm guns can take it out easily.

It actually is not a tank hunter... their tank hunters have missiles... the Sprut is heavy direct fire power used to support troops... in this case airborne or amphibious forces deep behind enemy lines where enemy heavy tanks are not common and might be found individually rather than in large groups.

It is a replacement for the ASU-85 with a much more potent weapon... they could have used a smoothbore 100mm gun like that used with the MT-12 towed anti tank gun but they went for a long recoil full calibre full power tank gun for ammo commonality and raw power and range.

In a conventional conflict like that in the Ukraine they are using upgraded T-72s, but that wont always be possible depending on terrain... before the ground froze the Sprut would actually be an excellent vehicle because enemy vehicles with 30mm cannon would not be driving around much either.

Its turret is gonna fly much hicher than t-72 because of its rounds stored inside the hull. For that matter type 15 is way better protecting its crew.

The ammo on the Type 15 is exposed and vulnerable in the turret bustle so is more likely to take a hit and catch fire... whether the crew survive or not the tank is out of action... the Chechens used RPG teams together with SVD and PKM armed troops so anyone bailing out of a vehicle is dead anyway with those sort of tactics.

Opposite actually.it's the sprut sd that is unprotected and vulnerable. Any vehicle that mout a gun can penetrate it and explode its round inside the hull vapourazing the crew.

Where is the ammo... and will 25mm or 30mm ammo reach it?

Any idiot with an RPG can see the bit bulging rear turret area and hit that easily enough and boom... there are reasons the Black Eagle and Rogata T-72 upgrades were rejected.

T-34s with turret bustles were destroyed in WWII by enemy troops putting satchel charged under the turret bustle... ignore the lesson and keep making turret bustles?

Is it an advantage to be parachutable ? How long would a sprout sd last behind enemy lines facing artillery and rpg ? That thing need one 30mm round to explode and send its crew to the moon.

Soviet and Russian Airborne forces are fully mechanised for the purpose of being dropped in the middle of nowhere where there are no enemy air defences... once everything has landed they mount up and drive at high speed to the actual target... could be an airfield that will have some form of SAM to defend it from a VDV landing and probably a couple of light vehicles and troops for perimeter security... BMD-4s and Spruts would obliterate them and once taken and secured the airfield can be used to land heavier vehicles which can then start preparing to repulse the counter attack the enemy are preparing to deal with the landing.

Will there be spruts taken out... of course there will but can the Type 15 do what the Sprut does... not really.

Mobility speed and fire power.... or do you think the SAS are stupid fighting in the desert with jeeps with no armour protection at all that a pistol bullet will kill the driver and stop the vehicle.

Just look at all the bmd in ukraine that were just easy targets. Sprut sd is based on their design.

Easy targets... wiped out were they... totally obliterated... Russian forces never got to Kiev... they were destroyed on sight... yeah right.

BMDs are useless because their armour is too weak and western special forces in dune buggies are bullet proof and invincible with a couple of machine guns mounted on them and no protection from dust let alone bullets or fragments.

Type 15 is made for chinese mountainous areas where it will face smaller vehicles than him and is protected against the guns it can face there, the biggest being 30mm guns.

In mountains your biggest threats are drones and long range ATGMs and of course artillery... guided weapons that would destroy the Type 15 fairly easily at distances the Type 15 wont even know it is under attack.

Type 15 is better designed for its role and you can always add armor in bricks.

It is a light tank if you add more armour to make it a bloody normal tank you will find it weighs more than a normal tank but all of a sudden the transmission and suspension is overloaded and it is a piece of crap.

You misunderstand the idea of a light tank.

Light tanks are vulnerable to enemy vehicles... there are no vehicles that are not... even a 180 ton Maus would be dead meat today against RPGs.

Not really. Even in WW2 when they used armor piercing high explosives crews used to survive. Heat and apfsds just penetrate in a tinny line... By keeping the munitions out of the crew compartement the type 15 and m1a2 crews are quite safe compare to tanks with munitions inside.

When hit tank commanders don't hit the F key for fire suppression or the T key to repair tracks and engines etc... when you get a substantial hit the crew bail out... normally a fire starts and will burn till it gets hot enough that the fuel and the ammo explodes... when either explodes then blast doors and blow out panels wont do shit.

It you are in the path of the penetration you will get injured or killed, but even if you don't get a scratch the inside of the tank becomes uninhabitable and everyone gets out or remains there and dies because a box filled with ammo and fuel will always burn and explode.

Separating the crew from the ammo and putting it all together makes the crew much safer and means it takes longer for the tank to explode but they almost always explode or burn out.

A crew that stays and fights the fire normally dies in the explosion.

No they are not. Sprut is for VDV to be dropped and face real tanks.

Bullshit... the Sprut is to be used as a tank to assault enemy positions, but the enemy positions are deep behind enemy lines so the number of tanks and armoured vehicles will be low or zero... they will be used the way we see T-90s used in this conflict with their thermals spotting enemy positions to be engaged with direct fire HE frag rounds.

Type 15 is for mountains where even bmp will struggle.

T-55s and T-62s and T-72s did just fine in Afghanistan.

And would be better armed and armoured than the Type 15.... with upgrades.

Who cares about the 125mm gun. 30mm rounds can easily go through the sprut SD. First to shot wins. And actually the apfsds may not even kill in a first shot. Against light target the round may just go through and damage nothing important. In the same time a 30mm gun will deliver 20 rounds and touch its 125 shells leading to a catastrophic explosion.

Tanks often hit tanks in the turret... funny you think the 30mm rounds that can easily penetrate the Sprut are not APDS rounds... a tank is a compact container filled with crew and ammo and fuel... an APFSDS hit to the turret of the Type 15 will likely hit the turret bustle ammo so it wont just go through. The 105mm round might take out a crew member but a turret hit wont get ammo.

The Sprut will be operating with BMDs which will also have 30mm and soon 57mm cannon.

European countries are moving to larger calibres too, because some 30mm cannon struggle with BMP targets especially with add on armour modules.

Those max range fight don't occure that much. At close range a 30mm gun may be quicker.

In mountains they do.

In fact a big problem in the mountains is being able to see enemy troops and not being able to hit them because they are 3-4km away and small arms and even HMGs struggle at that range.

For the Soviets the 23mm towed cannon and of course mortars were valuable in that regard but they also had dug in positions for tanks to operate in an artillery role and also ATGMs and anti armour weapons like SPG-9 recoilless rifles could reach out and touch with HE frag ammo.

Maybe Russia should license the DTC10-125 sabot from China. It outperforms svinets and fits in regular autoloaders...

From that comment alone I know you are a fanboy that does not know what they are talking about.

Do you actually think it is a competition and the gun with the highest penetrating round wins the war?

How did the Taliban beat all of HATO in that case?

All of the current Russian tank and ATGM and RPG range of weapons would destroy any western tank they care to send.

The British are now bleating that Kiev can't send their Challenger II tanks anywhere where they could be captured... hahaha... have they not been paying attention?

The silly guy who doesn't know anything about tanks or warfare in general is calling me a fanboy? That's comical.

Russian rounds will penetrate any western tank sent to the Ukraine, but you think Russia needs to panic buy a Chinese round you claim is better than any Russian round we know or don't know about... Fanboy.

Do you think Russia wants to spend the time and money to modify autoloaders to fit new rounds?

They already have. The Autoloader for the T-14 for when it is armed with a 152mm round suggests they have flexibility in the lengths of the penetrators they use.

You don't think they'd be happy with a round that outperforms the tungsten svinets yet fits in every t-64/72/80/90 autoloader? Knowing you, because Russia can never do any wrong, you probably think they willingly chose to waste time and resources modifying them.

Chinese claiming their round has x penetration is just a claim and means very little. You first have to establish that Russian rounds are not good enough and in need of replacement, which you have not done.

You think it's fanboyism to have the most effective round possible that works in the largest number of vehicles without modification? It really seems like you haven't thought this one through.

Fanboyism is demanding your mom buy the highest spec gameboy because that will mean it will have better specs than any of your friends... a few extra Hz of CPU processing power is more important to you than the fact that all your friends bought the cheaper machine with better games, so you can't play the same games your friends play but you have the superior hardware and that was the point of the whole exercise.

Also I think Russia should buy Chinese military equipment particularly for the navy until they can fully develop their own stuff. Would be awesome seeing Russia have one or two of those new Chinese aircraft carriers.

Russia has a carrier and barely has enough large long range ships to operate with it... buying more fixed wing carriers would be a waste of time and getting China to make them would take funds away from Russias shipbuilding capacity which needs support and funding too.

There's some information. Hopefully the poor guy who posted the information is alive and not in a Chinese prison.

He should be in prison... giving away military secrets to brag and improve the specs of his vehicles in a computer game... what a dick.

The lower penetration reported by CCTV may be intentionally meant to obfuscate the DTC10-125 ammunition’s real capabilities to foreign observers.

The numbers released are given by the Chinese... this guy supposedly leaked numbers and numbers were officially released and are different.... do you think it is possible that the numbers released for the Russian rounds are conservative and the secret numbers from field testing might be better and comparable to this Chinese round?

There was talk of the new tank gun used by the T-90AM was generating muzzle velocities of 2km per second, which is about 200m/s faster than previous rounds which suggests improve propellent and chamber design... how would that effect the performance of all existing rounds.

If these western tanks are dribbled into the theatre they likely wont even see a Russian tank... if they are held back around Kiev, or locations where Lithium or Titanium are located then air power will likely take them out... I very much doubt they will be massed up and used for an offensive, but if they try then they will end up like the Germans in WWII with their super tanks that broke down before they got to the battle when they first arrived to the front line.

And how could the soviets have possibly known the structure of the abrams and leopard 2 composite armor for them to make this assumption? Also the M1(1980) hull armor array is far mor adavnced than the T-72A or T-64B. It has reflective plate design filled with ceramics which are classified to this day , while the T-72A and T-64Bs just had 2 RHA plates primitively sandwiching textolite.

Nuclear bomb design at the end of WWII was super super secret too... but the managed to find out quite a lot about that too.