General Main Battle Tank Technology Thread:

Turkish-Indonesian "medium" tank Harimau at the exhibition Indo Defense 2018













https://bmpd.livejournal.com/3410184.html

New turret for the Challenger 2 tank

At the Defense Exhibition Defense and Security Equipment International (DSEI) 2019, held in London from September 10 to 13, 2019, the British joint venture Rheinmetall BAE Systems Land (RBSL), recently created by the German group Rheinmetall and the BAE Systems corporation, presented a demonstrator of the radical modernization of the British main tank Challenger 2 for the long-running program of the British army Challenger 2 Life Extension Project (LEP). RBSL's proposal is to install a new turret on the tank with the Rheinmetall Rh 120 L55A1 120 mm smoothbore tank gun.

 At the DSEI-2019, a tank demonstrator is displayed, equipped with a new turret model (the actual tower developer is Rheinmetall). The upgraded tank will also be equipped with completely new fire control, surveillance and communication systems, and the DM11 programmable high-explosive fragmentation round will be included in the ammunition of the new 120 mm smoothbore gun. 1200 hp diesel engine perkins It is also supposed to be replaced by a German MTU of 1,500 hp.











https://bmpd.livejournal.com/3769240.html

I couldn't find the right thread for that video so I put it here.



It is a good explaination of how leo 2A5 add on protection works on the turret. Contrary to what I thought it is not "armor" but a "trap" for APFSDS. That doesn't add a value in millimeters to the protection and if you have a long enough apfsds it is useless and the protection value falls to that of leo 2A4. The t-14 new rounds should be able to counter that effect.

Hahahaha.... nice try... but that is just crap.

Are you trying to say that to protect a tank from any sheet metal structure a metre from the surface armour will yaw the penetrator and make it ineffective?

Really?

So can you please explain how APFSDS rounds were shown to penetrate the frontal armour of monkey model Iraqi T-72s during Desert Storm and were also able to exit the rear of the vehicle... through the engine compartment and out the back of the vehicle?

That is just bullshit.

I do agree that angled plate is only effective against full calibre armour penetrators by deflecting their path and causing them to bounce or ricochet, but sabot rounds don't bounce or ricochet... even after passing through things... otherwise sitting your tank behind any structure at all would make it safe.

The new Afghansti APS system uses directed explosions to yaw APFSDS rounds to render them ineffective, but I am seriously doubting this contraption on Leopard tanks does that too.

Well it's not like germans would lie and put into service something that doesn't work. It was tested against nato rounds which are longer than russian ones (that are in service). I can't argue on that as I have no knowledge about this technology. I thought it was full of hard metals at first and it ended up being empty add on.

The other nice thing is that it is very good against HEAT missiles. It's a 1m spaced armor that degrade significantly the penetration capability the warehead.

Except most HEAT warheads would be directed at the sides or rear of tanks... even Konkurs penetrated Abrams turrets in such situations.

Well it's not like germans would lie and put into service something that doesn't work.

The west lied for decades about their super powerful ATGMs... Milan and TOW could penetrate metres of armour it seems.

Spaced armour simply isn't that effective... but it is light and it is cheap... so who is getting screwed because Leopards are not cheap tanks...

If you want to yaw an APFSDS projectile, wouldn't holy armour work better than thin steel plates, ie steel
plates with closely spaced holes about the diameter of the expected enemy projectile. Then the long rod or projectile would probably hit an edge of the hole, causing resistance on one side of the projectile with no resistance on the other side, causing yaw. The Israelis used this as side protection on their M113's as I recall.

I have seen grazing penetrations of tank turrets that gouged a channel about a metre long in the near horizontal top of a turret... if that didn't make it yaw then plates with holes in them wont either.

Have seen lots of designs including with metal balls packed inside a space where they can move with the initial impact, and I have seen layered armour types designed to slide and shear off the sharp tip of a penetrator... the most effective were the heavy ERA designs that did just that... guillotined the tip of the penetrator so that it had to waste a lot of energy penetrating with a blunt tip. At the speeds it is moving it still penetrates, but not as efficiently as it needs to forge itself a new tip on the main armour.

Armour plate with holes in it as the huge advantage of obviously being lighter than a solid sheet of metal, and if you layer them you can cover more area with less weight and less cost in metal, but it is really only effective against full calibre rounds like HMG ammo because full calibre rounds readily yaw which renders their penetration performance down to near zero against armour that would not normally stop that sort of round.

Perforated steel planking is used for makeshift airfields to allow heavy vehicles to operate in places that would otherwise get too muddy too quickly to be useful... so there would be an abundance of metal sheets with holes in it laying around to be pinched and used in fixed positions...

People have no physical intuition about what a sabot projectile sees. It basically sees soft targets (even if they are hardened
steel) and a husk is the least likely to induce any trajectory deviation. A meter thick plate of armor would have much more
impact on disrupting the sabot trajectory much like a bullet fired through gelatin. The interior of the solid armor becomes an
echo chamber of shock waves that can focus and resonate. A husk like the one shown is basically invisible to the sabot.

The so-called arrowhead-spahed armour modules covering the frontal arc of the turret are made of laminated armour. They consist of three parts: the disturber, the disrupter (which is intended to break the KE-penetrator) and the absorber (which absorbs the splinters of the broken penetrator).

Hole wrote:The so-called arrowhead-spahed armour modules covering the frontal arc of the turret are made of laminated armour. They consist of three parts: the disturber, the disrupter (which is intended to break the KE-penetrator) and the absorber (which absorbs the splinters of the broken penetrator).

That's the claim, but the photo shows an object which has walls too thin to matter. In fact, the photo indicates fraud. Since
any serious laminated armor would have substantial amounts of ceramics. A thin layer of ceramics is pointless.

Tests of the 130-mm Rheinmetall tank gun

The German group Rheinmetall has distributed photos and videos of tests of its promising 130-mm smooth-bore L51 tank gun installed in a new turret with an automatic loader on the chassis of the British main tank Challenger 2. This combination was created as part of another proposal for the long-running program of the British army to modernize these tanks Challenger 2 Life Extension Programe (LEP). A prototype of a promising 130-mm smoothbore tank gun Rheinmetall L51, installed in a new turret with an automatic loader on the chassis of the British main tank Challenger 2 (c) frame from Rheinmetall video

Recall that in 2019, the British joint venture Rheinmetall BAE Systems Land (RBSL), created by Rheinmetall and BAE Systems Corporation, presented a demonstrator of the modernization option for the British Challenger 2 tank under the British Army Challenger 2 Life Extension Project (LEP) with the installation of a new tower with 120 -mm smoothbore tank gun Rheinmetall Rh 120 L55A1 (the actual developer of the tower itself is also Rheinmetall). Now a variant with the promising 130-mm L51 tank gun, which is being developed by Rheinmetall, is also presented, although the likelihood of the British choosing a new 130-mm cannon, which is actually only in the initial stage of development, seems unlikely.

Rheinmetall's advanced 130mm smoothbore tank gun, originally designated Next Generation (NG) 130, was first presented at Eurosatory 2016 in Paris in June 2016. Field tests of the first prototype ("technology demonstrator") of the 130-mm cannon began in 2019, and a Rheinmetall spokesman reported that by November 2019, about 80 rounds of the first prototype gun had been fired at the range, and that the production of the second had begun. a prototype gun with certain design changes.

The developer said the 130mm gun has a 51 caliber (L51) barrel and uses new high-strength steel and a chrome-plated barrel. The gun is equipped with a vertical wedge breech, an electric mechanism for firing a shot and an increased chamber volume, which allows the use of a larger charge to obtain a higher initial velocity and, therefore, higher armor penetration characteristics. According to the representative, the gun barrel has an insulating casing and a barrel bend control system. The barrel of the 130 mm cannon has an actual length of 6.63 m, and the total weight of the gun is 3000 kg, including retractable mechanisms, but without mounting elements for installation in the turret.

A spokesman for Rheinmetall stated that the chamber of the first experimental gun NG 130 has a volume of 15 liters and a design pressure of 880 MPa, but that “thanks to the experience and knowledge gained during testing in real time, this data will be changed in the next stage of development.”

First 130 -mm round, developed by Rheinmetall, is an APFSDS-T armor-piercing projectile with a detachable tray (APFSDS-T) with a semi-combustible sleeve, a new high-energy powder charge classified as insensitive to detonation, and a new improved long-length tungsten armor-piercing core with increased armor penetration.







https://bmpd.livejournal.com/4102586.html

https://www.zerohedge.com/technology/sci-fi-awesome-hypersonic-smart-bullet-fired-tank-downs-cruise-missile

"Smart bullet" for tanks.

"Sci-fi awesome" that will change the nature of tank warfare, and other dick stroking stories.

Tiny problem with that story is that it compares the cost of a high velocity gun fired round with the cost of a cruise missile, and a helicopter launched anti armour missile and a shoulder launched anti armour missile that wasn't that much cheaper than a hellfire but rather less capable in every way...

The point is that these very high velocity rounds are kinetic rounds so shooting down targets if they are guided works, but despite being much much cheaper than a Tomahawk missile these high velocity guns probably can't hit targets 1,500km away with a 400kg HE payload either... so it is not really that relevant.

If they are using it to shoot down subsonic cruise missiles then it might be relevant to compare the price of Patriot and ground launched AMRAAM and Stinger missiles I suppose...


BTW regarding German tank armour... in the Gulf War US troops claimed to have fully penetrated Iraqi monkey model T-72s... front hull armour... through the entire crew compartment and turret area, through the engine and out the rear of the vehicle... why don't their penetrators yaw with what would effectively be more than 2.5m of spaced armour...

Apparently they needed a lot of attempts to make the stunt work... guided ammo is known since old already and it is nice, but has its limitations.

Leave it to the Germans to deliver the expensive, over-engineered bespoke solution to a problem. This 130 mm Rheinmetall smoothbore might just have what it takes to crack the T-14, but I doubt customers would be thrilled when they learn how much more they would have to pay for this singular capability. Not only would they have to pay for the entire logistics of an entirely new proprietary calibre, they would have to either buy in the Franco-German MGCS (when it arrives), or invest in an extensive rebuild of legacy MBTs, which is not as expensive, but could still see the budgets of mid-size economies strained, especially when everyone is in the middle of a transitional period form legacy cold war equipment to new millennium designs.

Still, as capable as the gun looks, it seems to me the German designers made an inefficient (from my POV) design choice in the elongated cartridge. The dimensions of the cartridge would preclude stowage below the turret ring, which leaves only the bustle. The problem is, if you have main gun ammo in the bustle, you also have to have to armor the turret to the level you would have if there are crew members inside. This makes any attempt at an unmanned turret superfluous when its going be as heavy as a manned turret design anyways. Of course, the idea does have a merit: the 1.3 m long cartridge can potentially house a sub-projectile longer than 1 m, and with ammo stowage in the bustle you can fire at an absurd rate compared to dual-feed carousel autoloaders. Western tankers still stuck in the fulda gap mentally might think that worth the drawback of having a vehicle with less operational mobility, but I doubt the rest of the world would share that assessment.

Possible layouts of the next-gen American MBT:



https://twitter.com/TrompBK/status/1327744035071660032

Storing ammo in the turret means the turret needs to have heavy armour to protect the ammo.

Three things you need to protect in a tank... crew, ammo, and fuel.

The reason why you protect the crew is obvious.

You also have to protect the fuel and ammo because if they are hit and burn or explode the vehicle will be destroyed even if the heaviest armour can't be penetrated.

Also, having a projectile long and heavy and fast enough to penetrate armour does not mean it will... if the T-14s APS system intercepts the round and makes it yaw its penetration performance will drop dramatically... think of it like a nail going in to wood.

If you have the nail positioned perfectly and the hammer is heavy enough and moving fast enough it can push the nail right into the wood in one hit.

The problem is that if you angle the hit badly then all the energy from the hammer does not go into driving the nail into the wood any more the enormous amount of energy goes into bending the nail which collapses into a hook shape and is flattened against the wood.

With an APFSDS round the force is much greater and the "wood" is designed to resist penetration, so any yaw shatters the penetrator and it collapses and spreads out is impact over the surface of the armour making a full penetration impossible.

Think of taking a blunt pencil and pushing it into the palm of your hand. The flat end means the energy is spread out over an area instead of a small point so even a good amount of force wont break the skin.

Doing the same with the point of a needle (obviously don't do this... just think about it) and it can pierce the skin rather easily and the flesh as well, though it would have problem with bone. Turn it sideways and even being long and thin it likely wont break the skin again.

ERA generally works by shearing off that sharp tip, while the new Russian APS works by making hard penetrators yaw and tumble, and soft plasma penetrators like HEAT warheads get yawed and spread as well, though it is more like stopping the flow of water from a pipe with a very strong blast of wind and material from one side... so that when it hits the armour it is either going sideways if it is hard or it is a spray instead of a solid stream if it is plasma.

BTW and those thinking spaced armour stops HEAT warheads... have you heard of the TM-83... sometimes called a roadside mine.

It weighs 20kgs and is almost half a metre wide. It is a mine that is laid beside a road or track that can be used against targets up to 50m away. It makes a hole 8cm wide in the side of the target up to 40cm deep...

What's the weight of this version ? They are going wild like Nazi and their huge projects. A8 will be 100t if they keep like that.

APS means you can reduce the armor against HEAT and make it specifically against only APFSDS.

It may be a good tank but to use it will be quite a nightmare.

Isos wrote:What's the weight of this version ? They are going wild like Nazi and their huge project. A8 will be 100t if they keep like that.

APS means you can reduce the armor against HEAT and make it specifically against only APFSDS.

It may be a good tank but to use it will be quite a nightmare.

Dunno. Probably closer to 70 than 60 tons. Still, this further proves that the old saw about NATO tanks being impervious to ATGMs from the front is just unsubstantiated tosh. Why else would they bother with integrating the Trophy with difficulty when the base Leopard 2A7 has supposedly great armor on its own?

Don't confuse nato fanboys and the designers who are very aware of its weaknesses.

German Leopard 2 tanks will receive the Israeli Trophy active protection complex

Twitter user xmszeon's Object 499A Nota model.


Note the location of the coax (more like parallax, really) on the starboard side of the gun. The T-14 should have a gun at the same location only hidden behind the shroud and exposed with a tiny slit.

If ever some retard appears and says the current firepower suite of the Leopard 2s are in parity let alone overmatch versus modernized Russian armor:

Be it resolved by the Committee on Defense:

The Federal Government is requested,

to include in the 2021 budget the residual development and qualification of the 120mm KE2020Neo ammunition for the Leopard 2 CPC and to conclude a contract without delay. A report on implementation is to be submitted to the Defense Committee by March 31, 2021 at the latest.

Substantiation:

1. The L55 120mm tank gun system in use today in conjunction with the KE DM63 is no longer capable of successfully engaging the modernized portion of the Russian KPz fleet (several thousand vehicles) in the duel situation.

2. development of new 120 mm ammunition (KE2020Neo) would significantly reduce the capability gap to VJTF 2027 and provide the technological basis for closing this gap.

3. the current generation Leopard 2 main battle tank currently uses a KE ammunition with a penetrator technology dating back to 1995. modern reactive armor (Explosive Reactive Armour; ERA) such as the 3rd generation ERA (Relikt), which are and will be retrofitted to Russian main battle tanks even of older design (e.g.use in KPz T72B3, KPz T90M/MS), can no longer be successfully engaged with the existing KE ammunition. Therefore, there is an acute capability gap of the entire Leopard fleet in Germany and in the worldwide 120 mm user community including all NATO partners.

https://dip21.bundestag.de/dip21/btd/19/233/1923326.pdf
pp. 5-6

lyle6 wrote:If ever some retard appears and says the current firepower suite of the Leopard 2s are in parity let alone overmatch versus modernized Russian armor:

Be it resolved by the Committee on Defense:

The Federal Government is requested,

to include in the 2021 budget the residual development and qualification of the 120mm KE2020Neo ammunition for the Leopard 2 CPC and to conclude a contract without delay. A report on implementation is to be submitted to the Defense Committee by March 31, 2021 at the latest.

Substantiation:

1. The L55 120mm tank gun system in use today in conjunction with the KE DM63 is no longer capable of successfully engaging the modernized portion of the Russian KPz fleet (several thousand vehicles) in the duel situation.

2. development of new 120 mm ammunition (KE2020Neo) would significantly reduce the capability gap to VJTF 2027 and provide the technological basis for closing this gap.

3. the current generation Leopard 2 main battle tank currently uses a KE ammunition with a penetrator technology dating back to 1995. modern reactive armor (Explosive Reactive Armour; ERA) such as the 3rd generation ERA (Relikt), which are and will be retrofitted to Russian main battle tanks even of older design (e.g.use in KPz T72B3, KPz T90M/MS), can no longer be successfully engaged with the existing KE ammunition. Therefore, there is an acute capability gap of the entire Leopard fleet in Germany and in the worldwide 120 mm user community including all NATO partners.

https://dip21.bundestag.de/dip21/btd/19/233/1923326.pdf
pp. 5-6

Thanks lyle6 for the interesting document.

Anyway this is a situation going on since a long while for western tank ammunitions designers; in the frontal projection, at tactically relevant distances, theirs most advanced tank's main gun subcaliber kinetic and cumulative ammunitions would have a very hard time in penetrating the latest modified (beginning of 2000 years ) "Контакт-5" in combination with realtively outdated passive armor composition let alone modern domestic armor compostition with "Реликт".

As said also in the same document the projected KE2020Neo ammunition (around 20% improvement over DM63) will only partially reduce the penetration potential gap against "Реликт" - it will represent an intermediate step and the technological basis for the exaustion of the potential of the 120 mm caliber guns -.

The main problem for them is that, after "Реликт", two entire gerations of dynamic protections has been completed in domestic scientifical Institutions of the field ,the second of which (barely calssifiable for working mechanism in the same class of K-5 or Реликт) will be mass produced in the new line of unified armoured vehicles family and begun already research for a third generation after "Реликт".

Within some years, very likely, also theirs researchs on 130 mm main guns will be quickly redirected toward 140 mm caliber.