Should Russia build 80+ ton Ηeavy Tanks?

The-thing-next-door wrote:Note I suggested use as an elite fore and only for a small number of heavy tanks to be produced (300-500) not thousands like the 1940s Soviet Union and A heavy tank will simply be imune to 120/140/whatever natards develop so it will not get sniped

And if the pressure per squere cm is the same as on the Armata it will not sink into anything that the Armata would no sink into aswell excluding barges and bridges ofcourse but since its a heavy tank it does not need to be easily transported you have MBTs for that

There is no such thing as being completely immune to any weapon. Even the heaviest Soviet heavies during and after GPW had weakpoints near the turret ring area, which is the center mass of the tank and the most likely to get hit when fired upon. It would be simply impossible to make any hypothetical future heavy tank immune enough to make it worth the costs, not even if they were crewed by the most elite of the elite. Better to save that money and invest in a better training regimen for regular tank crews so that future tank companies and platoons can use their tanks more intelligently.

Ground pressure is not the most important thing when talking about mobility. A long and narrow tank begets longer tracks, and longer tracks add a great deal of resistance when trying to turn the tank. Same with the width of the tracks. Even if you stuck a super powerful engine in there to make up for the loss in mobility, you'd get a hotter heat signature, and that makes your heavy tank an even more inviting target, especially now that drones are in vogue. Better to improve the stealthiness of current tanks like the T-72 and T-14 so that they can get the first shot off and hopefully cripple the opposition with minimal losses.

Why does eaveryone intantly assume that a nuclear war will be the result of an escalation? I hear alot of people talking about polititains not caring about the their poeple but ultimatley they need intact countries to sustan their lifestyle they would more likely flee to south america than start a nuclear war in the event of a complete Russian victory.

And withe no ABM treaty eaveryone can make as many of the damn things as they want potentialy resulting in niether side being able to deliver its 2000 nuclear weapons and a large part of us nukes rely on old b52s even Russias nuclear arsenal is not 100% ICBM baced so there is good reason to maintain superiority on the ground and not just in the realm of missiles. (whitch Russia is doing very well soon Russia should have the best ABM defence on the planet aswell as even better air defence and ICBM systems) While it may not be the case now it could easily be in 10-20 years that ABMs outpace ICBMs resulting in a need for conventional armies once more.

The T-14 Armata is by far the best tank on this planet but more power is alway better than less 1 80 ton heavy tank could be as effective as 3 T-14s so to fight 100 M1a2s you would need 30 T-14s but only 10 80 ton heavy tanks therefore justifying the increased cost and difficulty of opperation and a heavy tank deos not have to operate in eavery single type of terrain the T-14 does because it will be the main tank while a heavy tank will be an elite unit capable of turning the tide of battle when you are hoplesly outnumbered. Have any of you read about just how effective a good heavy tank was in WW2 5 KV-1s once destroyed a whole wermacht armored column and sustaind 0 casualtys.

As for the 55 ton weight limit well the T-34/76 1941 weighed 26.5 tons the T-54 weighed 36 tons the T-72B weighs 44.5 tons and the T-14 Armata weighs over 50 tons weight reducuction methouds are outpaced by comabt requirements so unless Russia develops gravity altering tech they tanks will likely continue to get heavier the reason Russian tanks are light is that Russian engineers are superior to their western counterparts.

Russia not only needs superior missiles but ergently needs complete superiority on the ground to eavery nato country combined as to win any potential war scenario. The navy needs destroyers aswell airforce is less important.

Armata is years, if not a good decade from operational.

Says you.

Russia already has plenty of vehicles and having more right now is not a good way to spend money.

Armata doesn't exist right now, other as a set of few prototype MBTs and alleged limited production batch (confirmed by no solid evidence).

Of course it exists. Denial not a good way to live your life, but if you must....

Gloriously breaking down in the middle of Red Square during parade.

Nothing ever fails in the west though does it...

The US talked and talked about vehicle family approach to new armoured vehicles and what happened... I mean really... what happened?

They spend almost a trillion dollars a year on weapons, they have armour manufacturers who export all round the world, where is their new tank concept... M1A6? M1A8? talk about not existing.... on this thread we are ridiculing the idea of a 80-100 ton tank as being stupid and wasteful and pointless... ignoring the elephant in the room.... the 70+ ton Abrams in service with the US.

The T-90 manages to be at least as good in every department yet is 30 tons lighter and you whine the Russians don't have anything to replace it with yet....

Kinda sad really.

Why does eaveryone intantly assume that a nuclear war will be the result of an escalation?

Because that is the only direction both sides can escalate to.

I hear alot of people talking about polititains not caring about the their poeple but ultimatley they need intact countries to sustan their lifestyle they would more likely flee to south america than start a nuclear war in the event of a complete Russian victory.

There would not be complete victory for either side. There will just be lots of deaths for both sides.

The T-14 Armata is by far the best tank on this planet but more power is alway better than less 1 80 ton heavy tank could be as effective as 3 T-14s so to fight 100 M1a2s you would need 30 T-14s but only 10 80 ton heavy tanks therefore justifying the increased cost and difficulty of opperation and

That is just stupid... using that logic if you detect 500 Abrams tanks driving on a front and you send 50 T-100s to intercept what happens if 10 of them hit mines, and 4 of them break down and another 10 get stuck.

Even if every shot does not penetrate the fire from 10 enemy tanks against your one tank will eventually find a weak point... even if it is just destroying your optics or tracks or communications.

Have any of you read about just how effective a good heavy tank was in WW2 5 KV-1s once destroyed a whole wermacht armored column and sustaind 0 casualtys.

The KV-1 and the T-34 and the various JS tanks surprised the Germans several times, but pretty soon tactics were developed to deal with them.

50mm cap guns were replaced with very powerful 88mm and larger calibre high velocity guns... do you think today would be any different?

80-100 tons is only 10-30 tons heavier than a late model Abrams and that much extra armour does not make any tank invulnerable to todays weapons from 360 degrees.

The only tank design I have ever seen designed with 360 degree protection was the German Maus with 250mm armour front, sides, and rear and it was 180 tons.

Its top speed was about 6 miles an hour and it shattered windows as it rolled through villages.

It had a main gun of 128mm calibre and the tiny coaxial gun was the huge 88mm gun of the Tiger II (as opposed to the smaller much less powerful 88mm of the Tiger I).

Now that they have APS systems that can intercept APFSDS rounds they don't need 100 ton tanks because existing armour will stop anything that the APS has intercepted and destabilised.

[quote="GarryB"]

The only tank design I have ever seen designed with 360 degree protection was the German Maus with 250mm armour front, sides, and rear and it was 180 tons.

Its top speed was about 6 miles an hour and it shattered windows as it rolled through villages.

It had a main gun of 128mm calibre and the tiny coaxial gun was the huge 88mm gun of the Tiger II (as opposed to the smaller much less powerful 88mm of the Tiger I).

Now that they have APS systems that can intercept APFSDS rounds they don't need 100 ton tanks because existing armour will stop anything that the APS has intercepted and destabilised.

The maus is not the only all round protected tank there is the KV-1 and T-34.

Also the maus had 200mm on the frontal hull and 220 on the front of the turret and Its coaxial cannon was a 75mm learn your wunderwaffe.

As I see it, there are gonna be 2 versions of T-14: with 125mm canon and with 152mm one. The 152mm. version will be more than enough for heavy tank purposes.

Sent from Topic'it App

The maus is not the only all round protected tank there is the KV-1 and T-34.

The KV-1 and the T-34 were not 360 degree protected tanks.. the 88m flak gun could penetrate both vehicles from the sides or rear, though it did have serious trouble penetrating a KV-1 from the front.

At the time the standard anti armour guns were small calibre high velocity rounds like the 37mm, 45mm, and 50mm guns very widely used at the time.

Other calibres used for different purposes like the 88mm AA gun and indeed Soviet 85mm gun for the same purpose could penetrate both vehicles.

105mm howitzers and larger artillery pieces could also do serious damage to both vehicles too with direct hits.

Also the maus had 200mm on the frontal hull and 220 on the front of the turret and Its coaxial cannon was a 75mm learn your wunderwaffe.

It was a total fucking waste of time and money and energy... the money and energy and metal and resources wasted on this vehicle and many others like it were a total waste. I wont say it cost the Germans the war because the war was already lost.

Such super weapons were created in desperation at the shock that the French had Char tanks that were superior in armour to German tanks at the start of the war, while the lowly backward Soviets had such amazing tanks as the T-34 and the KV-1.

Look at the profile of the Panther and the T-34 and you will see that apart from the reverse rear hull angle slope they are almost identical...

The two main differences was that the Panther had a poorer HE round and a much better anti armour round, while for every Panther built they made about 20 T-34s of various types... so it really was the Panther that needed the better armour piercing round because the odds were pretty good a T-34 would not meet a Panther in combat but the opposite could not be said to be true.

As I see it, there are gonna be 2 versions of T-14: with 125mm canon and with 152mm one. The 152mm. version will be more than enough for heavy tank purposes.

NATO already has plus 65 ton vehicles that are called MBTs but are really becoming heavy tanks.

The 152mm gun is very powerful but further limits performance in terms of ammo capacity, rate of fire, and cost per round, so I rather suspect that it is plan B and plan B will be introduced if NATO introduces 80+ ton tanks. If it does not then they will likely to continue to use the smaller but still very powerful 125mm guns and new ammo.

The 88mm flak 36 was static and could only be used against attacking tanks and A heavy tank does not have to be immune to all enemy weapons that would be like the nazis trying to make the tiger immune to the 305mm battleship guns the Soviets used on them.

First problem to address, speaking of armoured vehicles masses, is the amount of fuel needed to run them.

It could seem a minor problem when looking at short lived wars such the two Gulf wars, or hybrid/COIN operations such as in Afghanistan.

The day a war is foreseen and logistically planned against a peer opponent, on a very large theatre of operations, fuel consumption gains a whole new nature, and both logistic and operational nightmares arise.

Logistic support is paramount, no adequate logistic support equals to severely reduced operational freedom, or no operational capability at all.

An 80 tons tank would be a logistical nightmare, just to get running a behemot that could be immobilized by a direct hit of a small caliber cannon in a track, by hitting a mine, having the engine disabled by a SFF submunition released by artillery, MLRSs and so on, just the same way a 50or 60 tons MBT could.

At the very same time, many more bridges would no longer support armoured vehicles' transits, minor roads could just collapse under the weight, and even open terrain could become more tricky to cross.

It's not that other countries made their MBTs lightheartedly heavier and heavier update after update. They made so only when forced to by opponents' evolution

Please don't forget that western tanks of future will be lighter! The new Leopard 3 is expected 40 - 50 tons. The reason is simply...higher mobility, more economic because less fuel.

Tanks are so effective not only of armour, but also of mobilty. High mobilty is a guarantor for not being easy hit. And modern APS makes it easy to avoid 80+ tons monsters.

Azi wrote:Please don't forget that western tanks of future will be lighter! The new Leopard 3 is expected 40 - 50 tons. The reason is simply...higher mobility, more economic because less fuel.

Tanks are so effective not only of armour, but also of mobilty. High mobilty is a guarantor for not being easy hit. And modern APS makes it easy to avoid 80+ tons monsters.

They might build another peice of crap like leopard 1 in witch they just give up on trying to protect agains Russian tank guns.

If this is true than Russia probably does not need to worry about the leopard 3 (sinister grin) nato tank design is very poorley optimised so in order to compete with the Armata they woud need a 70+ ton tank.

The-thing-next-door wrote:
They might build another peice of crap like leopard 1 in witch they just give up on trying to protect agains Russian tank guns.

If this is true than Russia probably does not need to worry about the leopard 3 (sinister grin) nato tank design is very poorley optimised so in order to compete with the Armata they woud need a 70+ ton tank.

ATM the M1A2SEP v3 is heavier than ever before, and more of the weight is from the armour because they made lots of efforts to lighten the tank. Replacing shielded copper wires with fiber optic cables, switching out some steel plates for titanium, etc. The latest Leopard 2 modifications are also heavier than ever before. Leopard 3 may become a lighter tank, but it may also no longer be a manually loaded tank and it could be a smaller tank as well.

The 88mm flak 36 was static and could only be used against attacking tanks and A heavy tank does not have to be immune to all enemy weapons that would be like the nazis trying to make the tiger immune to the 305mm battleship guns the Soviets used on them.

Heavy tanks have to be immune to the majority of enemy anti tank weapons likely to be on the battlefield.

Early KV-1s were not very mobile at all and were often used statically anyway.

In the first days of the great patriotic war there were plenty of stories of KV-1s holding up german forces... one famous one in a marshy area seems to in the back of my memory where a KV-1 was positioned at the fork in the road and held off a german force for two days. They fired their standard 50mm anti armour rounds which just bounced off. They used some 105mm guns to little effect and they were destroyed. They moved up some 88s and lost several tanks who were distracting the KV while they were set up. The 88mm gun finally ended up firing quite a few rounds at the KV of which 6 rounds hit but only two actually penetrated.

When they went up to inspect the vehicle the turret started to turn. Overnight they had placed satchel charges against the tracks and the gun to no effect.

At the very same time, many more bridges would no longer support armoured vehicles' transits, minor roads could just collapse under the weight, and even open terrain could become more tricky to cross.

And equally an enemy could make their territory unfriendly to such vehicles fairly easily... dams and rivers flooded to soften the ground to restrict vehicle travel to roads only. Bridges designed NOT to take very heavy vehicles. A rain storm could saturate an area and make it completely impassable by heavy vehicles.

It's not that other countries made their MBTs lightheartedly heavier and heavier update after update. They made so only when forced to by opponents' evolution

Many armchair generals make the mistake of comparing armour with armour and guns with guns, but you design your armour to protect your vehicles against the standard weapons of the enemy.

If the enemy is a third world country with no heavy armour then an argument could be made in using much lighter cheaper more mobile vehicles that use communications and air and artillery support to be much more effective than a slow expensive heavy force.

Russian armour and Soviet armour is smaller because they went for a smaller crew of three with an autoloader. This means less required internal volume which means less surface area to protect.

The Armata takes this a step further by putting all the heavy armour in the crew compartment in the front of the hull so the turret can be made much much lighter.

The Kurganets and the Boomerang make the same design choices too.

Nobody could afford a force of all tank vehicles.. the armata force will only be a fraction of the future Russian Army... maybe 20 percent, with perhaps the remaining 80 percent being made up of 20 percent very light forces in Typhoon based vehicles, and the other 60 percent being split 50/50 wheeled and tracked medium armoured vehicles with kurganets and boomerang.

Before you claim lack of protection keep in mind that in a motor rifle or tank brigade if you count all the armoured vehicles the MBT only included 30-90 odd vehicles out of several hundred of various types including command and recon and troop transport etc etc.

Leopard 3 may become a lighter tank, but it may also no longer be a manually loaded tank and it could be a smaller tank as well.

Yes.... I am looking forward to seeing the next generation NATO tank with an autoloader and all the crew in the hull under the heaviest armour.

I love the way the west leads in armour design...

I remember the west claiming that smooth bore guns will just be too inaccurate to be useful when the 115mm gun entered service on the T-62 and that auto loaders removed arms more than it loaded guns when such a system was mounted on the T-64.

I wish to understand your mindset, Garry. How could you say this:

GarryB wrote:
Yes.... I am looking forward to seeing the next generation NATO tank with an autoloader and all the crew in the hull under the heaviest armour.

I love the way the west leads in armour design...

And then say this?

GarryB wrote:
Many armchair generals make the mistake of comparing armour with armour and guns with guns, but you design your armour to protect your vehicles against the standard weapons of the enemy.

I remember the west claiming that smooth bore guns will just be too inaccurate to be useful when the 115mm gun entered service on the T-62 and that auto loaders removed arms more than it loaded guns when such a system was mounted on the T-64.

"The West" isn't a monolith. If you dig further, you'll find that independent amateur journalists and authors made such claims 98% of the time, and most of them were simply Cold War myths that got spread around when the armour enthusiast community migrated to Usenet forums in the 90's. Heck, the old myth about APFSDS rounds punching through tanks and creating a vacuum that turns people inside out or sucked people through the holes comes from this old website from 1998, which got spread around in the years after. Sadly, I wasn't able to find who started the myth that autoloaders eat arms, but I'm pretty sure that it was started in the 90's, when info about Soviet armour started trickling in. Some of the info has now been confirmed, some has been disproven, but back then, people just filled in the gaps with what little they had.

Every magazine I rad about armour in the 1970s and 1980s talked about the autoloaders of Soviet vehicles being a serious danger to their crew.... it was mantra.... you mention something that could be perceived as superior and then you shoot it down with a lie...

They had autoloaders but those autoloaders never worked properly and actually did harm to the crew.

Smoothbores are inaccurate for the same reason... the Soviets had them and NATO didn't.... why?

Must be because they are inaccurate.

Couldn't possibly be because a smoothbore gun is much more efficient with the types of ammo a tank would find useful like HEAT and APFSDS and good enough for rounds that need rifling like HE Frag.

You probably already know spinning a HEAT round reduces its effectiveness and you can't spin an APFSDS round fast enough to stabilise it so it needs fins anyway.

A smoothbore gun is logical but how do you explain why the Soviets have it and we don't?

They don't care about their soldiers so accuracy is not as important as rate of fire or something like that.

NATO has adopted a smoothbore since because it makes sense.. even the British are looking at dropping their HESH rounds making rifling unnecessary...

France has already adopted an autoloader and other countries are doing the same.

If they increase the size of their gun they will likely need an autoloader anyway.

Why not predict they will also copy other things the Russians are doing and of course claim it was their idea in the first place....

GarryB wrote:Every magazine I rad about armour in the 1970s and 1980s talked about the autoloaders of Soviet vehicles being a serious danger to their crew.... it was mantra.... you mention something that could be perceived as superior and then you shoot it down with a lie...

They had autoloaders but those autoloaders never worked properly and actually did harm to the crew.

Smoothbores are inaccurate for the same reason... the Soviets had them and NATO didn't.... why?

Must be because they are inaccurate.

Couldn't possibly be because a smoothbore gun is much more efficient with the types of ammo a tank would find useful like HEAT and APFSDS and good enough for rounds that need rifling like HE Frag.

You probably already know spinning a HEAT round reduces its effectiveness and you can't spin an APFSDS round fast enough to stabilise it so it needs fins anyway.

A smoothbore gun is logical but how do you explain why the Soviets have it and we don't?

They don't care about their soldiers so accuracy is not as important as rate of fire or something like that.

NATO has adopted a smoothbore since because it makes sense.. even the British are looking at dropping their HESH rounds making rifling unnecessary...

France has already adopted an autoloader and other countries are doing the same.

If they increase the size of their gun they will likely need an autoloader anyway.

Why not predict they will also copy other things the Russians are doing and of course claim it was their idea in the first place....

You cannot expect every magazine article from the 70's and 80's to have even 50% accurate information, seeing as the T-64 and T-72 were still very mysterious at the time. The T-72 was still being called "T-70", IIRC, and Soviet counter-intelligence was spreading disinformation as well. Also, nobody knew that the T-80 would just be an incremental improvement over the T-64. Everyone thought that it was the next big future tank project. That was the level of knowledge people had back in the 70's and 80's. The people that were active at that era like Jim Warford can tell you exactly what I mean. The U.S Army knew what the 115mm on the T-62 was capable of, and the TRADOC bulletins and documents they published in the 70's show this. The cannon was said to have phenomenal penetration, great accuracy and the highest velocity of any tank round in the world... but such high praise never reached the ears of civilian journalists and enthusiasts at the time because those TRADOC booklets were only declassified in the late 80's. The general understanding among the armour enthusiast community started shifting drastically in the 90's because of how much more information there was, and so suddenly. And then, of course, there was Desert Storm and the assault on Grozny, and even more myths came out of that, which have now been dispelled because more information is available since the 90's... That's just how things are. There is no maliciousness behind this.

And let us not forget that a slew of Russian authors started publishing their works on Soviet armour in the 90's and early 00's, which got picked up in the West. As I said, the general understanding among the armour enthusiast community shifted during that time.

I'd like to see the magazines you speak of, if it is not too much trouble. I am very interesting in what started this myth, myself.

You cannot expect every magazine article from the 70's and 80's to have even 50% accurate information, seeing as the T-64 and T-72 were still very mysterious at the time.

Every mention of the autoloaders included a comment about removing arms...some actually mentioned it was a rumour and others talked about how it might have been a problem with the T-64s and that is why they were not mass produced like the T-72s, suggesting the T-72 did not have arm wrenching capabilities, but that was not examined... they were more interested in why there were not more T-64s made rather than why the Soviets clearly had no health and safety concerns regarding their equipment. Armless tank crew are hardly going to be very effective in battle... especially without immediate medical attention.

Ironically for a country that does not care about its soldiers it sure got them armoured transport faster than the west did... but even then cheap simple BTRs were criticised, yet compared with trucks they were much better.

The T-72 was still being called "T-70", IIRC, and Soviet counter-intelligence was spreading disinformation as well.

When there is a lack of accurate information the rule of thumb is that any rumour that sounds too good to be true is, and anything that sounds negative must be true.

On this basis any suggestion that the autoloader might allow them to make their tanks smaller and better armoured must be propaganda and any rumours of removing arms must be totally true...

Also, nobody knew that the T-80 would just be an incremental improvement over the T-64. Everyone thought that it was the next big future tank project.

That is not the way i remember it... most western experts at the time thought the T-64 was a failure because it was not exported and not produced in huge numbers, while the T-72 was produced in large numbers and was seen as the standard Soviet tank.

The U.S Army knew what the 115mm on the T-62 was capable of, and the TRADOC bulletins and documents they published in the 70's show this. The cannon was said to have phenomenal penetration, great accuracy and the highest velocity of any tank round in the world... but such high praise never reached the ears of civilian journalists and enthusiasts at the time because those TRADOC booklets were only declassified in the late 80's.

Released information was that the 115mm was a mistake they should not have bothered with and that the T-62 was a failure that was more likely to explode when hit than the T-55 it was supposed to replace.

There is no maliciousness behind this.

Of course not.. the Soviets were Americas best buddies... they would never put down the other sides technology choices...

I'd like to see the magazines you speak of, if it is not too much trouble. I am very interesting in what started this myth, myself.

Go to a second hand book store and look for any book about tanks from the 70s or 80s and they can't mention Soviet tank autoloaders without mentioning losing arms. For inaccurate smoothbore guns you need to look to the 1970s because by the early 80s the west had a 120mm smoothbore, but any British source of information about tank guns will spell out how rifled tank guns are superior in accuracy every time...

GarryB wrote:

Every mention of the autoloaders included a comment about removing arms...some actually mentioned it was a rumour and others talked about how it might have been a problem with the T-64s and that is why they were not mass produced like the T-72s, suggesting the T-72 did not have arm wrenching capabilities, but that was not examined... they were more interested in why there were not more T-64s made rather than why the Soviets clearly had no health and safety concerns regarding their equipment.  Armless tank crew are hardly going to be very effective in battle... especially without immediate medical attention.

And such myths are usually started by one guy and maybe his friends, and I gave you the example of the old website that said that APFSDS rounds turn tank crews inside out and suck them through the hole in the tank. How many times has that been repeated by idiots in the forums?

GarryB wrote:

When there is a lack of accurate information the rule of thumb is that any rumour that sounds too good to be true is, and anything that sounds negative must be true.

On this basis any suggestion that the autoloader might allow them to make their tanks smaller and better armoured must be propaganda and any rumours of removing arms must be totally true...

Wow, you really make some good contributions to this forum...

GarryB wrote:

That is not the way i remember it... most western experts at the time thought the T-64 was a failure because it was not exported and not produced in huge numbers, while the T-72 was produced in large numbers and was seen as the standard Soviet tank.

I don't see how that contradicts what I said.

Interlinked wrote:Also, nobody knew that the T-80 would just be an incremental improvement over the T-64. Everyone thought that it was the next big future tank project.

GarryB wrote:

Released information was that the 115mm was a mistake they should not have bothered with and that the T-62 was a failure that was more likely to explode when hit than the T-55 it was supposed to replace.

And people back then thought that APFSDS could only be fired from a smoothbore, so when the T-55 got APFSDS as well, the 115mm was seen as redundant. We now know that that is not the case, but people back then did not.

GarryB wrote:

Of course not.. the Soviets were Americas best buddies... they would never put down the other sides technology choices...

Yes, and America downplayed the Soviet threat so that Congress would have no reason to approve funding for lucrative defense projects...

GarryB wrote:

Go to a second hand book store and look for any book about tanks from the 70s or 80s and they can't mention Soviet tank autoloaders without mentioning losing arms. For inaccurate smoothbore guns you need to look to the 1970s because by the early 80s the west had a 120mm smoothbore, but any British source of information about tank guns will spell out how rifled tank guns are superior in accuracy every time...

You need to be more specific. I have a bunch of books from the 80's I inherited from my dad, and I've never found any mention of autoloaders eating arms. Tom Clancy is infamous for popularizing the trope of the exploding Soviet tank, but I can't recall anything more specific than that, though I wouldn't be surprised if he started the autoloader myth.

Interlinked wrote: Tom Clancy is infamous for popularizing the trope of the exploding Soviet tank, but I recall anything more specific than that, though I wouldn't be surprised if he started the autoloader myth.

Since Vietnam and Israeli wars the T-55 and PRC clones were easy to take out. Quite notorious actually, and the advent of T-62 didn't help much.

KiloGolf wrote:

Since Vietnam and Israeli wars the T-55 and PRC clones were easy to take out. Quite notorious actually, and the advent of T-62 didn't help much.

I covered that in my T-54 article.

To put it briefly, a large number of NVA T-54 tanks were lost to LAWs when they drove down city streets single file without infantry support, and a large number were lost to air attack from gunships and fighter-bombers. A few dozen more were lost to TOW missiles in April 1972.




Wikipedia mentioned some T-54 losses in passing in the T-54 article, but it's incomplete and is a half-truth at best.

"The NVA and ARVN engaged each other with tanks for the first time during Operation Lam Son 719, in February 1971. During that battle, 17 M41 light tanks of the ARVN 1st Armored Brigade destroyed 22 NVA-tanks, 6 T-54 and 16 PT-76, at no loss to themselves,[21][22][full citation needed] but the friendly units lost 5 M41s and 25 APCs.[23]"

The truth is that the ARVN 1st Armored Brigade was supported by gunships armed with anti-tank rocket pods which strafed the NVA tanks from the sides. This is mentioned in "Vietnam War: The New Legion, Volume 2 by Vinh Truong, an ex-ARVN soldier. Here's an excerpt:

"Some troop elements had done conspicuously better than others. The ARVN armored units had been especially early in the operation the 1st Squadron, 11th Armored Cavalry had encountered NVA elements in a fight at southern Fire Base 31 and performed brilliantly, destroying six enemy T-54 tanks and sixteen PT-76s without any friendly losses in the first major tank-to-tank engagement of the war, but of course with our gunship air cover supported joint-strafing with the both flank-sides [of our helicopters] equipped [with] two 19-shot 2.75-inch antitank rocket pods. Today by chance we got the record shooting into the POL pipe-line at random burned all of them for a while right after NVA shut-off the pipes."

By "2.75-inch antitank rocket pods", the author is referring to Hydra 70 rockets. There were two 19-round rocket pods on each wing of their gunships, and they attacked the NVA T-54s by strafing them with these rockets. With this new information, the ARVN victory suddenly seems much less impressive.


The most interesting thing about the Vietnamese experience is that the NVA did pretty well against the PRC invasion in the Sino-Vietnamese war. In fact, the Vietnamese incurred disproportionately high losses on the Chinese invaders, who were mostly using Type 69 light tanks with some Type 59s. The NVA only had T-34-85s in the North along the border with China. Most of their T-54s and Type 59s were in the South, dealing with the Khmer Rouge and maintaining order in Saigon.

In the Middle East, Arab losses were extremely high, but at least half of their losses were due to the crews prematurely abandoning their tanks. At the start of the Yom Kippur war, the Syrians invaded the Golan Heights with 1300-1400 tanks, and the Egyptians crossed the Suez Canal with around 1000 tanks, and retreated with an unknown quantity, so we don't know their exact losses. After the war, the Israelis had 1000 T-54 and T-62 tanks in their inventory, and they had 444 of these in active service as "Tiran" tanks. That would mean that both the Syrians and Egyptians had lost at least half of their initial fleet, but unless they lost the other half as well, it's quite likely that most of their losses were recoverable.

Vietnam communists had an air force, they just implemented a very particular doctrine. They weren't interested in air support for their folks.
That was their choice. The fact that their tanks got trashed by... M41 (    ) is a major embarrassment.

Interlinked wrote:That would mean that both the Syrians and Egyptians had lost at least half of their initial fleet, but unless they lost the other half as well, it's quite likely that most of their losses were recoverable.

50% recoverable is not a great number either.



Those NVA tankers fought the LAW and the LAW won.

It's not something you can blame the T-54 and T-62 for, and that's the point.

Being recoverable means that they could be operational with some repairs. This points to an inability to consolidate territorial gains and a lack of a mature support system, not inferior tanks, which survived just fine.

KiloGolf wrote:Vietnam communists had an air force, they just implemented a very particular doctrine. They weren't interested in air support for their folks.
That was their choice. The fact that their tanks got trashed by... M41 (    ) is a major embarrassment.

Interlinked wrote:That would mean that both the Syrians and Egyptians had lost at least half of their initial fleet, but unless they lost the other half as well, it's quite likely that most of their losses were recoverable.

50% recoverable is not a great number either.



Those NVA tankers fought the LAW and the LAW won.

If you had read the post you would know that they lost to helicopter mounted HEAT rockets to the side not to M41 light tanks.

As for losing tanks to infantry launchers in a city that sounds vaugley familliar...oh wait M1a1 abrams and leopard 2s have been lost that way. Maby tanks in general do not perform well in cities and maby you should get some treatment for your indoctrination.

The T-54/55 was superior to its western equivilents that is what matters. You should probably go to the T-54/55 topic if you want to discuss it.

The days of a tank depending on its weight and armour to protect it are long gone. It's all about soft and hard defensive systems the improvements in armour these days is normally weight saving exercise. At the end of the day the best defence for a tank is not being hit in the first place and that comes down to 3 things soft and hard defensive systems and skill of the crew that's what you need. No matter how much armour or weight a tank is the enemy can and will and for cheaper develop and missile to destroy it and that will be more likely be fired from a ATGW system mounted on a 4x4. And missiles can be fired outside the range of any tank gun. So I think T-72, T-90, and armata will be enough for many years.