New Russian Tank to Have Remotely Controlled Gun
16:37 26/03/2012
MOSCOW, March 26 (RIA Novosti)
Tags: Russian Defense Ministry, Russia
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Russia’s future main battle tank (MBT) will be equipped with a remotely controlled gun, the Izvestia newspaper said on Monday citing a defense industry source.

The gun will be digitally controlled by a crewmember located in a separate compartment, which would be made from composite materials and protected by multi-layered armor. The crew compartment will be also isolated from the motor compartment to increase survivability on the battlefield.

The secret project, dubbed Armata, has been approved by the Russian Defense Ministry. It is being implemented by the tank manufacturer Uralvagonzavod in Russia’s Urals region.

Work from other projects, including Object 195 and Black Eagle, will be incorporated in Armata's design.

The prototype of Armata MBT is expected to be ready by 2013. The first deliveries to the Russian Armed Forces are scheduled for 2015.

Russian experts believe that the appearance of the remotely controlled gun would eventually lead to the development of a fully robotic tank which could be deployed as part of a spearhead in the offensive.

http://www.en.ria.ru/mlitary_news/20120326/172401704.html

It is interesting that with the talk about Armata program they have mentioned the new families of vehicles for the different brigade types and they seem to have changed what was said before.

Previously there was Armata in the heavy brigades, Kurganets-25 as the tracked vehicle in the medium brigades and Boomerang as the wheeled vehicle in the medium brigade (rear ramp door, 25 ton weight and amphibious), and the wheeled Typhoon in the light brigades.

The Armata came in two different models, one with the engine at the rear for use as a tank or artillery (is MSTA/coalition type vehicle) and one with the engine at the front with a ramp rear door for IFV use.

The Kurganets-25 was to have a special Navy version designed and made that could handle rough sea operation and beach landing (as opposed to the standard level of amphibious capability which allowed operation in rivers and lakes only).

The Boomerang AFAIK was going to come in one model.

The Typhoon was going to come in a few versions with 4 and 6 wheel configurations.

The weight restrictions means that they were going to use more exotic and expensive materials to make the armour of the Boomerang and Typhoon and Kurganets-25 to give them very good performance against anti armour weapons.

I rather suspect that the idea of separating the Typhoon and Boomerang designs was that the focus of Typhoon was on speed and firepower, while the Boomerang will have speed and mobility on roads it will also be much heavier and better protected.

The recent reports I have read suggest that Typhoon is now a modified (lighter, smaller) Boomerang, so the families are Tracked: Armata for heavy, Kurganets-25 for medium, Wheeled: Boomerang for medium and Boomerang light for light.

It suggests to me that perhaps Boomerang might have a modular armour package and in the light brigades a lighter armour suite could be fitted.

In terms of logistics that would be a very good thing because the whole idea behind these vehicle families is to shorten the logistics and support tail of a brigade. With every vehicle in a brigade based on the same vehicle type using the same engines and standard weapons it becomes easier.

I rather suspect they will capitalise on this by making a medium brigade either wheeled or tracked but not both.

That means that all the vehicles in a wheeled brigade... whether it s a light wheeled brigade (which all light brigades will be) or a medium wheeled brigade (as opposed to medium brigades with Kurganets-25s which would be tracked) will be Boomerang based vehicles.

It is important to keep in mind that despite their descriptions the Armata is not a Tank, Kurganets-25 is not a BMP and Boomerang is not a BTR. They are all everything.

The electronics and sensors and weapons will be unified, so the air defence vehicle in a heavy brigade will be based on the Armata chassis, but the systems and sensors will be the same as the air defence vehicle in the Light Brigade.

It is all together possible that the weapons might be different.

Eventually the Armata will be fitted with a 152mm calibre smoothbore main gun and there is very little chance that it might be fitted to a Boomerang in a light brigade, but the 18 ton Sprut on a BMD-3 chassis can use a 125mm gun so the light brigade Boomerang might get that weapon on an 18 ton chassis... its electronics and sights and sensors will be the same as the equipment in the Armata.

With artillery in the Armata heavy brigades the main artillery vehicle will be coalition with a huge 152mm gun (though it might only have one gun to reduce the turret size to make it more air mobile), but the Light Brigades will likely not need nor want such a giant so they might have a 120mm mortar vehicle instead but based on the Boomerang chassis.

For Air Defence the Heavy Brigades will have Pantsir-S1 on an Armata chassis, the light brigade Boomerang might have a smaller and cheaper system like SOSNA-R laser beam riding missiles.

Etc etc.

The electronic suites have been developed independently of the vehicles and are fully standardised, which means they can probably be included as upgrades for previous generation vehicles to improve their performance and unify a range of different vehicles to allow practise and preparation for tactics that will be possible with the new vehicles.

It means all the vehicles within one brigade will have similar protection and mobility to all the other vehicles so it will be harder to pick off the light vehicles first...

I think it is very exciting.

They seem to be calling the Boomerangs Boomerang-25 and Boomerang-10 which is likely their operational weights.

I would expect the Boomerang 10 to be split into maybe 6 and 4 wheeled versions like the Typhoon did, though perhaps the Boomerang 10 and the Boomerang 25 will be in many ways BRDM-2 and BTR-80, except of course the BTR-80 was about 14 tons and the Boomerang in the medium brigades will be 25 ton.

Equally although the Boomerang 10 will be a 10 ton vehicle I suspect it will use advanced modular armour and likely NERA type armour and possibly active protection systems as standard and will be rather better protected than a BRDM-2 with better access, and of course the BRDM-2 was a scout car and the BTR-80 was an APC, while these Boomerangs will be entire families of vehicles from artillery, tank, IFV, air defence, engineering, recon, etc etc.

Well 65tons Armata. Thats a monster in making.

The 65 ton Armata will likely be the Coalition artillery vehicle rather than the tank, which will likely be in the 55 ton range.

With a remote turret (note both the coalition and the tank will have unmanned turrets) the need for frontal armour on the turret of the tank is gone so most of the armour on the Armata will be around the front hull area where the crew sit.

http://english.ruvr.ru/2012_03_26/69675961/

Russian armoured vehicles to roll on single platform

Russia is the first to be switching to a uniform combat platform in three major types of ground vehicles, which will presumably make them easier and cheaper to build and maintain, while their modular design will allow to develop different systems, depending on their purpose. The first platforms of this kind of modular design will be produced in two to three years.

Russia’s Defense Ministry has approved the design of a new heavy crawler platform for the Russian armed forces, says Major General Alexander Shevchenko, Chief of General Tank Automotive Directorate. The development of “perspective technologies” for the Russian military is now going through a major transformation. And what comes out of this can forever change the country’s army.

“Standardization can simplify both the maintenance and combat application of the military hardware, increase modularity in its design, including possible usage of versatiletarget modules on chassis to meet different objectives. All platforms have the so-called “open architecture” avionics to make it easier to add new systems,” says Viktor Murakhovsky, an expert on armoured vehicles. “Different hardware complexes can be built on the basis of a single sighting-system node by adjusting the number of various observation channels to create a system for a combat, reconnaissance or a command vehicle.”

A new versatile armoured platform, “Armata,” is expected to “set to rights” the Russian armoured forces, plagued by chassis and components of every stripe. The most popular tank, the T-72, and its upgrade, the T-90, will be revamped to stay in the Russian army, except for its first-line units , which are to be equipped with the cutting-edge “Armata” by 2015 to 2025. But the T-90 won’t disappear for good as its recent modification, known as the T-90S, is in fact set to keep its export market. It was announced that the T-90S will make its reappearance at the upcoming Defexpo-2012 show in India.

The Russian armed forces will have as many as four versatile base platforms: the “Armata” crawler platform for heavy tanks, infantry fighting vehicles and other types of motorized infantry brigades weighing up to 65 tons. Among other projects are the “Kurganets-25” medium crawler platform in the 25-ton range and two wheeled platforms – a medium 25-ton and a light 10-ton platform of the “Bumerang” family.

The idea to build modular-design platforms was up in the air for quite a while. The collapse of the Soviet Union crippled the production of already existing hardware and stalled its further development. The West was the next in line to dip its toes in this water, with the American line of the “Stryker” wheeled combat vehicles and a whole family of Medium Tactical Vehicles (FMTV) clearly coming off the charts.

Still, no Western army ever considered bringing all vehicles of all weight classes onto a single, unified platform. The US tried to grapple with this task in its modernization program called Future Combat Systems (FCS), which was cancelled after over-ambitious plans of the US military command to outfit its vesicles with cutting-edge equipment threatened to drain its funds.

Russia had it easier, having had to learn from the FCS example, which proved that any sweeping modernization can only bust the budget. In this sense, Russian armoured vehicles, which are capable of employing both the existing equipment and systems that are still under development, have much more chances to come off the blueprints and into reality.

Well to be honest the real differences is that the West was looking for a single family vehicle to do everything, whereas the Russians are planning four families in three different weight groups.

The other issue is that the wests funding is diminishing with fleets of vehicles that range from a little outdated to good enough while the Russian funding is increasing but the majority of the fleet could do with upgrading or replacing.

This means the Russians are in a far better place to require fundamentally new vehicles of improved performance that eliminate the fundamental flaws of existing vehicle types.

Right now in a Russian heavy tank brigade there will be a large number of tanks, but there will also be IFVs and all sorts of other vehicles.

Lets assume it is not a front line unit there will likely be T-72s as the MBTs, and there will be a mix of BMP-1s and BMP-2s in the IFV platoons and also BTR-80s. The Air defence units will have SA-8s and SA-9s or perhaps SA-13s for the missile units and Tunguska or Shilka for the gun units, while the artillery units will have trucks carrying Grads and 2S1 or perhaps 2S3 SPGs. The command vehicles will be loosely based on the MTLB, and the recon unit will likely be a mix of BMPs and tanks.

As you can probably tell from that list we are talking about a wide range of vehicle chassis and engine types in one brigade.

What they are planning to do is to change from all those different chassis types for all those different vehicles and just use one vehicle chassis type per Brigade.

This means in a heavy tank brigade there will be Armata tanks and Armata IFVs and Armata 152mm artillery vehicles. All the vehicles will have tank level armour and tank level mobility and will share parts and engines so the logistics tail is streamlined and simplified... they will only need parts and tools and testing equipment for the engine used by the Armata. There will be a front engined Armata for IFV and APC use, and a rear engined Armata for tank and artillery and other uses.

It will be the same for the Medium Brigade... there will be tank medium brigades and motorrifle medium brigades, but to follow through with the concept of improving logistics and support there will be tracked medium tank brigades and wheeled medium tank brigades and tracked motor rifle medium brigades and wheeled motor rifle medium brigades.

There will not be heavy wheeled brigades of tank or motorrifle units because there is no wheeled version of Armata.

There will be no light tracked tank or motorrifle brigades because there will be no tracked version of the Boomerang-10.

For those that are not familiar a tank brigade and a motor rifle brigade both have tanks and both have infantry in armoured transporters, the difference is the proportion. A tank brigade tends to have three battalions of tanks and one of infantry in IFVs, while a motor rifle brigade has three battalions of IFVs and one or two of tanks. It will also have a sniper platoon and 2 tube artillery battalions and one rocket artillery battalion and perhaps two air defence battalions where one is missiles only like SA-15 or SA-8, and the other will have guns like a Tunguska battalion, and of course a recon battalion etc etc.

A motor rifle brigade might have an a much larger engineering unit to lay minefields and will also likely have an anti tank missile battalion that uses ATGM vehicles like Shturm-S or the new Kornet-EM.

[quote="GarryB"]They seem to be calling the Boomerangs Boomerang-25 and Boomerang-10 which is likely their operational weights.

I saw some picture I think for the Typhoon with 6 wheeled. Is it the right picture of the Typhoon that now will call light Boomerange?

http://vif2ne.ru/nvk/forum/archive/2247/2247301.htm

GarryB wrote:

The Armata came in two different models, one with the engine at the rear for use as a tank or artillery (is MSTA/coalition type vehicle) and one with the engine at the front with a ramp rear door for IFV use.

I think a better idea is to keep the engine in front of the tank, it will give extra protacion for the tank's crew. Keep a small door at the back of it to leave the tank. it will be helpful if the tank get hit. The artillery and infantry must have a rear door.

Thanks for the pics AJ-47, man, that sure is one nice looking vehicle.

Edit: Although like Garry said, it is not Armata.

I saw some picture I think for the Typhoon with 6 wheeled. Is it the right picture of the Typhoon that now will call light Boomerange?

No, that is the Kamaz Taifun. The Typhoon was a concept vehicle family which seems to have been replaced by a smaller and lighter version of Boomerang.

The idea of the families of vehicle bases is to improve commonality and reduce the logistics tail of units.

The original plan split the problem into four families which basically equated to a T-90 tank chassis, a BMP like chassis, a BTR like chassis and a light vehicle... say a BRDM-2 like chassis.

The difference or course is that these will be from scratch new designs based on experience with existing types, so they got the codenames of Armata, Kurganets-25, Boomerang, and Typhoon... the first two tracked vehicles and the last two wheeled vehicles.

It seems that they have decided that for better commonality... and because the Kurganets factory was making all the lighter vehicles, while UVZ makes the Armata, that making the lightest vehicle family different from the Boomerang was a waste and that a lighter version of Boomerang would further improve commonality and simplify things.

This means that the Typhoon has been replaced by a lighter version of the Boomerang design.

Note all the vehicles will be heavier than their predecessors... Armata tanks will be about 7-8 tons heavier than T-90AMs, and at 25 tons the Kurganets-25 and Boomerang-25 will be about 7-8 tons heavier than the BMP-3 and 10 tons heavier than the BTR-80 they are replacing. The Boomerang-10 will be 10 tons, which is about 3-4 tons heavier than a BRDM-2.

I think a better idea is to keep the engine in front of the tank, it will give extra protacion for the tank's crew. Keep a small door at the back of it to leave the tank. it will be helpful if the tank get hit. The artillery and infantry must have a rear door.

The Infantry vehicle will certainly use the front engined model, but the Artillery vehicle and the tank model both have unmanned turrets so the crew are in the hull. If you put them in the back of the vehicle they will be surrounded by the thinnest armour on the vehicle...

The idea of putting an engine in front of them sounds like a good idea on paper but in practise it is a very stupid idea.

Engines are not made of high strength hard armour metals and offer very little protection from anything more than small arms fire. A 50 cal rifle round will punch straight through an engine block and still do a lot of damage... for a 120mm APFSDS round it will have even less effect. Worse a penetration of the engine could immobilise the vehicle and with all the fuel lines and oil could start a fire, while offering no protection at all for the vehicle or crew.

The other issue of course is IR signature... a big 1,400+ hp engine generates a lot of heat and sticking it in the front of your vehicle makes you an easy to spot target on the battlefield and interferes with your thermal sights as well.

The Russians are not new to front mounted engines in vehicles... the BMP-1 and BMP-2 both have front mounted engines... they know what ineffective armour they provide.

BTW thanks for the pictures... I only had pictures of computer models of that model... like this:

Mr.Kalishnikov47 wrote:Thanks for the pics AJ-47, man, that sure is one nice looking vehicle.

Edit: Although like Garry said, it is not Armata.

Sorry I thought that might be the right one

GarryB wrote:

I saw some picture I think for the Typhoon with 6 wheeled. Is it the right picture of the Typhoon that now will call light Boomerange?

No, that is the Kamaz Taifun. The Typhoon was a concept vehicle family which seems to have been replaced by a smaller and lighter version of Boomerang.

The idea of the families of vehicle bases is to improve commonality and reduce the logistics tail of units.

The original plan split the problem into four families which basically equated to a T-90 tank chassis, a BMP like chassis, a BTR like chassis and a light vehicle... say a BRDM-2 like chassis.

The difference or course is that these will be from scratch new designs based on experience with existing types, so they got the codenames of Armata, Kurganets-25, Boomerang, and Typhoon... the first two tracked vehicles and the last two wheeled vehicles.

It seems that they have decided that for better commonality... and because the Kurganets factory was making all the lighter vehicles, while UVZ makes the Armata, that making the lightest vehicle family different from the Boomerang was a waste and that a lighter version of Boomerang would further improve commonality and simplify things.

This means that the Typhoon has been replaced by a lighter version of the Boomerang design.

Note all the vehicles will be heavier than their predecessors... Armata tanks will be about 7-8 tons heavier than T-90AMs, and at 25 tons the Kurganets-25 and Boomerang-25 will be about 7-8 tons heavier than the BMP-3 and 10 tons heavier than the BTR-80 they are replacing. The Boomerang-10 will be 10 tons, which is about 3-4 tons heavier than a BRDM-2.

***Thanks for that and for sharing with us your knowledge.

I think a better idea is to keep the engine in front of the tank, it will give extra protacion for the tank's crew. Keep a small door at the back of it to leave the tank. it will be helpful if the tank get hit. The artillery and infantry must have a rear door.

The Infantry vehicle will certainly use the front engined model, but the Artillery vehicle and the tank model both have unmanned turrets so the crew are in the hull. If you put them in the back of the vehicle they will be surrounded by the thinnest armour on the vehicle...

The idea of putting an engine in front of them sounds like a good idea on paper but in practise it is a very stupid idea.

Engines are not made of high strength hard armour metals and offer very little protection from anything more than small arms fire. A 50 cal rifle round will punch straight through an engine block and still do a lot of damage... for a 120mm APFSDS round it will have even less effect. Worse a penetration of the engine could immobilise the vehicle and with all the fuel lines and oil could start a fire, while offering no protection at all for the vehicle or crew.

The other issue of course is IR signature... a big 1,400+ hp engine generates a lot of heat and sticking it in the front of your vehicle makes you an easy to spot target on the battlefield and interferes with your thermal sights as well.

The Russians are not new to front mounted engines in vehicles... the BMP-1 and BMP-2 both have front mounted engines... they know what ineffective armour they provide.

BTW thanks for the pictures... I only had pictures of computer models of that model... like this:

****Can't agree with you on that. The Israelis has the most protected tank in the world and his name is Merkava. It's a 70 ton tank that we start engineering after the war in 1973. A lot of tanks get hit, but our repair crew fixed them very quick and send them back to fight. The problem we had was, from were to get the crew to replace the soldiers that get hit.

After the war Israel start engineering a new tank, we checked every tank that get hit, and we found that most of the hits come from an area of 120 degrees around the front of the tank. One of the lessons from that study, was to protect the crew by all means, and for that the engine, transmission, and everything we could use to protect the crew, we put it in front of the tank and it was saving many lives in the wars to come. By moving the engine to the front, and by getting a small door at the back of the tank, it's allow the crew to get out of the tank, if it get hit. It's not easy for a wounded soldier to get himself out trough the hatch in the roof of the turret, and if they can't do that, you know what will happen, and that's without talking about enemy fire.

All what you say about shouting on the tank, as nothing to do with this tank, the only thing that can penetrate his armor is very sophisticated ATGM. To defend against ATGM we have the “TROPHY” system.

Hope you understand my point.

Link for the Trophy:
http://defense-update.com/products/t/trophy.htm

Link for the Merkava
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merkava

One more question, I like the RWS with the 14.5 mm HMG on the roof of the Taifun, and don't understand why the T-90 don't have it.

Sorry I thought that might be the right one

Interesting pictures anyway... thanks for posting them.

***Thanks for that and for sharing with us your knowledge.

This is all subject to change of course with any new information, but it is as clear a picture as I can make with the info available.

****Can't agree with you on that.

And we can discuss it of course and at the end of that discussion we don't have to agree that one or the other is right and therefore the other is wrong because there is no right or wrong when it comes to tank design for the most part.

The Israelis has the most protected tank in the world and his name is Merkava.

They claim to have the best protected tank but there is no independent confirmation one way or the other.

Keep in mind that the Merkava has a manned turret. Armata has an external gun and no people in the turret.

The heaviest armour on a modern MBT is the front of the turret, which has been found to be the most common place for a tank to be hit.

The Armata can dispense with heavy armour on its turret as there are no crew or ammo to protect above the turret ring.

Below the turret ring there is lots of ammo but no crew so a side penetration from the middle to the rear of the Armata will not kill or injure the crew either.

The design of the Armata is for all the heaviest armour protection to be around the very front area where the three crew sit... the point is that with three crew in the front hull if you wanted to put an engine there then you move the turret to the rear and put the crew in the centre of the vehicle which means a much larger area of roof for the engine and crew... which would be vulnerable to top attack weapons and require the heavy armour to be extended back to cover both the engine and the crew.

The engine itself is not made of armour strength/Armour hard metals so as an armour it is not very effective.

More importantly it runs very very hot and has lots of tubes with fuel and oil running through it that can easily catch fire.

The Russians have analysed their own experiences in combat and have said publicly that there will be front and rear engined versions of the Armata. The Tank version with an unmanned turret is very unlikely to have a front mounted engine unless the crew are in the very rear of the vehicle under fairly thin armour... unless you are suggesting all round heavy armour which would be very very inefficient and result in a 90 ton tank.

Thin armour at the front with the engine with the turret in the middle and the crew at the rear under the heaviest armour wouldn't work either as thin front armour with an engine behind it would be as weak as thin rear armour with an engine in front of it.

In terms of protection of the crew I think the Armata will be better protected than the Merkava, because from the front the Merkava has heavy frontal armour and then an engine, then driver then turret and then storage space for ammo or men or empty space and then medium rear armour... which means from the back there is not so much between the incoming penetrator and the crew, with the crew spread in the hull and turret.

With Armata it will have heavy frontal armour with an armoured capsule with three crew side by side (front and back armour protection separating crew from ammo and fuel0, then the turret then at the back the engine and then the rear armour.

Add the usual ERA and APS as well as things like Shtora that is a passive protection system and I think the use of the front engined version is not needed for the tank or Coalition.

It's not easy for a wounded soldier to get himself out trough the hatch in the roof of the turret, and if they can't do that, you know what will happen, and that's without talking about enemy fire.

The Armata will be surrounded by vehicles with similar levels of firepower and armour protection.

The three crew in the Armata all sit side by side and can help each other to get out if necessary.

Hope you understand my point.

I am not saying you are wrong, I merely am pointing out reasons they chose not to do it the way Israel decided to do it. Doesn't mean the Merkava is bad or the Armata is perfect, or vice versa.

The reality is that it doesn't matter what you do the enemy will always try to find a weak point and exploit it.

The Russian solution likely has a seriously steep frontal armour angle that has the frontal armour glacis covering the top of the crew seating area so the frontal armour acts as both frontal and roof armour so the threat to the crew from top attack weapons is minimised as there are not many top attack munitions that can penetrate frontal armour with ERA on top.

Obviously you would expect they will have an APS system modified to deal with top attack weapons and of course soft kill systems like Shtora and Nakidka will also be used to maximise protection.

One more question, I like the RWS with the 14.5 mm HMG on the roof of the Taifun, and don't understand why the T-90 don't have it.

Based on what I have read the choice to use the PKT was a combination of increased ammo capacity and reduced vibration, and a change in tactics. There is a rumour that in addition to a 125mm gun the Armata will also have a 30mm cannon in an external mount to deal with helicopters and other aircraft and other targets previously engaged with the 12.7mm gun. This means any small remote control gun setup just needs to deal with very close range elusive targets that tanks so often have trouble dealing with.
Hense the PKT on the T-90AM doesn't elevate particularly high... something like 40-45 degrees, but offers a good field of view and is largely slaved to the commanders panoramic sight so what he is looking at he can pretty much shoot at straight away.

(note they describe the Armata as a combination of features from the T-95 and the Black Eagle, now the T-95 is believed to have had a 30mm cannon fitted).

Also note that while most helicopter launched ATGMs these days outrange a 30mm cannon, with Nakidka and clever tactics like hiding in buildings the opportunities to shoot back would generally be quite good... especially as with modern Thermals the Tank will most likely see the helo before the helo sees the tank...

With a PKT they could probably have a 2,000 round belt of ammo, but with 14.5mm then they would probably only carry perhaps 300-500 rounds though I think you will agree they are significantly more powerful...

If the armament will not be adequately protected by a thick armourmed belt,it had better be a simple "drop in module",i forsee hordes of f-killed tanks cluttering repair depots,Russians are not known to be the speediest mechanics.

If being able to shoot the gun out on an external gun mount was that easy then shooting off a track, or actually hitting the gun barrel on an Abrams could be used as a tactic to defeat a use tank force.

The reality is that precision hits simply don't happen... lets face it... if they could choose to aim for the tank gun they could also choose to hit the lower hull armour on the tank which is always the thinnest forward facing part of the tank of any decent dimension...

The more armour you use to protect the empty turret the less weight you can put in the armour around the crew and the engine.

If the enemy finds they can't kill the crew and have to resort to trying to disable the vehicle then I think the Tank designers have succeeded, because while the enemy is trying to hit weak points in its armour it will be firing back at you...