2S25 Sprut-SD

Heavy recoil act, will make a second shot slower.

Since the armor is light I would think it could really benefit from an APS system.

Heavy recoil act, will make a second shot slower.

Not really... it is better to have a full power gun able to take on any enemy armour than to have a reduced power weapon that doesn't shake the vehicle around so much.

The sights are stabilised and the gun is automatically loaded... the level of recoil will depend on the round being fired... firing a missile has almost no recoil at all... firing HVAPFSDS rounds has the most...

Since the armor is light I would think it could really benefit from an APS system.

I agree, though this is an airborne tank... if it is fighting it out against HATO front line first line tanks then something went very wrong...

calripson wrote:Since the armor is light I would think it could really benefit from an APS system.

Спрут-СДМ is one of the less understood Federation's Ground Forces combat vehicle in terms of concept of operation and this cause a lot of misconceptions to be spelled around its characteristics.

Спрут-СДМ is NOT an assault vehicle leading the road for infantry operations (so believe those considering it a "light tank") it is instead a "deepness" highly mobile second line fire station used for battlefield control and point suppression of key enemy element ,particularly highly-protected or time-sensitive ones.

In practical those vehicles have the same role of sniper's squads in infantry operations: selective destruction, from stand-off range, of the most important enemy targets coming from covered positions and changing immediately position

One of the key improvements required precisely by the Ministery was , above an increase of the overall protection, the possibility to receive targets positional update from unified battle control network reducing drastrically the time to shot at those targets starting from not line of sight positions.  

Its role do NOT involve confronting heavily armoured enemy vehicles , a battle that Спрут-СДМ willl lose in wide majority of the instances, except for situational and accurately prepared ambush's situations…..anyway with an high amount of risks involved.

Those vehicles will move continously, fully out of line of sight, well behind the slowly advancing infantry units, wayting to receive from the unified battlefield control and communication network system the positional data of enemy key assets ,at example anti-tanks squads in reinforced positions or enemy IFVs or ICVs intermittently going in and out of coverage to shot on the advacing infantry.

At this point the Спрут-СДМ with the most efficient round for that particular target already loaded (an hypervelocity 1760 m/s muzzle APFSDS, a 5 km capable guided missile with cumulative or thermobaric warhead, or a HE-FRAG round even with programmable explosion) and the positional data already loaded in the ballistic computer, exit for few seconds from cover to complete the fire collimation and shot ; then it egress and change quickly position to frustrate eventual artillery barrages aimed at its former position.

In a short time an enemy devoid of the coverage of heavily armoured vehicles or high stand-off counters will find itself deprived of all its infantry's support assets and will be completely overwhelmed by the fully supported enemy infantry forces.

Anything from an M3 Bradley, a Stryker ICV of any kind to the same future mobile protected firepower will find itself under tank-level fire (unguided and guided ammunitions) without any possibility to return fire cause the huge ballistic imbalance between theirs weapon system and Спрут-СДМ's one.

Needlessly to say the cabability to be transported and air-dropped (even under Ми-26s helicopters) literally anywhere behind enemy lines and at enormous distances from enemy air defence positions and to overcome rivers , lakes and even sea surfaces anywhere render almost impossible to the enemy to prepare ambush positions against them and greatly dilute theirs force concentration.

Mindstorm wrote:Anything from an M3 Bradley, a Stryker ICV of any kind to the same future mobile protected firepower will find itself under tank-level fire (unguided and guided ammunitions) without any possibility to return fire cause the huge ballistic imbalance between theirs weapon system and Спрут-СДМ's one.

What? Why do you even think that Stryker cannot return fire under those above mentioned conditions? Stryker returned fire with precision in Iraq when faced with ATGM fire. Stryker and Bradley has attacked troop carriers and infantry in fortified positions, successfully.

Moreover, Strykers and Bradleys are combined with overhead support from Apache helicopters equipped with similar guns and air-to-ground munitions to effectively neutralize enemy positions.

Over the years additional changes were made to the Stryker's suspension, the engine, the drive train and the on-board electronics, based on lessons learned since the Stryker first deployed to Iraq a dozen years ago. Now we are mounting a 30 mm cannon.

Even with a 30mm cannon do you not understand the ballistic gun imbalance against a vehicle armed with a stabilised 125mm gun?

Rushing third world countries armed with a few old model RPGs and no decent modern ATGMs is not the most amazing claim one could make...

Apaches and A-10s would not remain airborne long against a peer enemy either...

RTN wrote:What? Why do you even think that Stryker cannot return fire under those above mentioned conditions?

Simply because the 25 mm M242 Bushmaster of Bradley (i do not even take into account the 12,7 mmm M2 of Stryker) and also the XM813 30 mm gun experimental gun proposed for Stryker's up-gunning -with its mere 200 rounds / min. rate of fire - have an effective engagement range of 1500-1600 meters and moreover at that range the residual penetration potential will be absolutely insufficient to penetrate frontal armor of Спрут-СДМ.

On the other side a single APFSDS round from the 125 mm 2A75 at 3 km will still have enough residual potential to penetrate a Bradley from front to rear , it is not even a battle.

Even in a pure guided missile battle, the Спрут-СДМ will enjoy a wide advantage because its gun launched missile is not only significantly faster and boast a greater engagement range than anything a Bradley can mount but its guidance is also practically unjammable.

As said the only possibility for similar vehicles to engage successfully a Спрут-СДМ is in situations where ,for some reason, the system will be used in first line in the spearhead role or if caught in an ambush.

I have anyway already explained how the unique strategic and tactical mobility of the Спрут-СДМs render truly difficult even organize and concetrate force for the defence against them , leaving outside organize ambush .

Спрут-СДМs in facts do not need a major airfield very far from the front line in a friendly territory from where arrive in a theatre of operation, but can appear (togheter with highly mobile artillery ,air defense systems, IFVs , EW and masking systems, repair and resupply vehicles and fully equipped heavy infantry) literally anywhere in enemy first ,second and rear enemy echelon area and the capability to overcome rivers, lakes and even sea (like all other units of the ВДВ foces) render impossible to organize defense with artillery fire points and ATGM teams near main bridges.

RTN wrote:Stryker returned fire with precision in Iraq when faced with ATGM fire. Stryker and Bradley has attacked troop carriers and infantry in fortified positions, successfully.

They are absolutely incapable of the task, a pair of midly trained ATGM teams with older export version Корнет-Э, can completly paralize and inflict horrendous losses from stand-off on similar under gunned and self-channelled IFVs, ICVs (they are incapable to cross rivers ,lake and portion of sea and theirs off road mobility is very limited so organize ambush and concentrated fire points against them near bridges and road/tunnels is very simple)

US Army soldiers in 99% of the instances in Iraq have "resolved" those situations in the usual way : covering and calling in the suppoprt of CAD aircraft such as the A-10 or AH-64 helicopters and in fewer instances (usually with fixed enemy installations) F-15E or F-16s with Paveway bombs (or in fewer instances JDAMs), against an enemy capable to render those ground support air missions true suicide missions the only option for those largely outgunned forces would be to retreat with huge losses.

The discussion above is clearly not the best pick of a "fight" by RTN, in the example above the gap between platforms is simply crushing. US ground forces have never been in focus and probably never intended to engage serious enemies. Not even now, with the new, big advances made by Russia and the increasing probability of a confrontation on the European theater, we see a committed reaction. Quite logically, since US could never deploy the amount of ground troops needed in time and normally has no use of heavy ground forces in their colonial adventures. Air force / missiles and especially tactical nukes would the weapons of choice of NATO, would they really come to face the full weight of Russian military.

JohninMK wrote:Is the Sprut-SDM1 a tank to be used by the airborne forces or the general ground forces?

Would it be deployed mainly behind enemy lines or behind an advancing Russian front, perhaps on the flanks?

Is it in effect a very mobile, lightweight 125mm SPG?

Mindstorm has explained it very well above, Sprut relies on mobility to attack in the rear on lightly defended positions instead of facing enemy armoured formations. Makes full sense.

Mindstorm wrote: Спрут-СДМs in facts do not need a major airfield very far from the front line in a friendly territory from where arrive in a theatre of operation, but can appear (togheter with highly mobile artillery ,air defense systems, IFVs , EW and masking systems, repair and resupply vehicles and fully equipped heavy infantry) literally anywhere in enemy first ,second and rear enemy echelon area and the capability to overcome rivers, lakes and even sea (like all other units of the ВДВ foces) render impossible to organize defense with artillery fire points and ATGM teams near main bridges.

First you suggested that the U.S only fights against third world states and now this is what you said:

literally anywhere in enemy first ,second and rear enemy echelon area

This is NOT going to happen if the enemy is U.S or China. You will not be able to land Sprut or heavy artillery behind U.S lines undetected.

Russia too has not fought a peer rival since WWII. The Soviet Union's foray in Afghanistan ended in disaster.

The Soviet Union's foray in Afghanistan ended in disaster.

So just because the Soviets decided to withdraw from Afghanistan it is considered a disaster according to your narrative? So when the US completely withdraw its occupation forces from Afghanistan by your same logic it is also a disaster or are you going to sugar coat it to make it look like a glorious success?

To add to what Mindstorm elaborated so brilliantly, in some articles the 2S25 was called a "mobile anti-tank gun" back in the mid-90´s.

Is the Sprut-SDM1 a tank to be used by the airborne forces or the general ground forces?

Airborne and possibly naval forces too...

Would it be deployed mainly behind enemy lines or behind an advancing Russian front, perhaps on the flanks?

Is it in effect a very mobile, lightweight 125mm SPG?

It is essentially the replacement for the ASU-57 and ASU-85.

This is NOT going to happen if the enemy is U.S or China. You will not be able to land Sprut or heavy artillery behind U.S lines undetected.

The point of being fully mechanised and armoured is that the VDV can be dropped in the middle of nowhere where there are no air defences or local armour... essentially no resistance. They would then form up into a mobile armoured force and drive to the target which might be an airfield or port 100-200km away... they can move at rather high speed because there will be very little resistance this far in the enemy rear... when they get to the airfield or port it will be so far in the rear it wont be expecting or prepared for a ground assault... so the air defences will be taken down and the ground forces overwhelmed and the airfield will then be used to fly in reinforcements to fight out against any reserves or force quickly prepared to attack them when they realise what is happening.

Remember this landing happened in the middle of no where... but what is their objectives... which of the 10 airfields nearby are they going to attack?

You have to try to defend them all while they just need to capture one to allow support forces and equipment to be flown in and landed...

Might not work very well against the US, but against Poland or Austria or a range of other hostile countries on Russias borders there is little they could do to stop it... why would Russia want to invade the US anyway?

Russia too has not fought a peer rival since WWII.

Georgia 8 8 8 was HATO trained and battle hardened we were told... they would cut through Russian forces like a hot knife through warm butter.

The Soviet Union's foray in Afghanistan ended in disaster.

Funny you say that... it was clear there was nothing to win and they left when that was obvious... when is the US leaving Afghanistan... Biden will send more troops in and that will violate the current agreement with the Taleban who will start killing US troops again and no doubt Biden will say it is because Putin is offering bounties on US soldiers and it is all Russias fault... and then sends more targets... oops soldiers to Afghanistan...

Did you call it a disaster... yeah...

To add to what Mindstorm elaborated so brilliantly, in some articles the 2S25 was called a "mobile anti-tank gun" back in the mid-90´s.

It replaces the ASU-85 essentially.... along with the elongated troop carrier model with Konkurs and Fagot ATGMs... though they might have Metis and Kornet by now.

RTN wrote:This is NOT going to happen if the enemy is U.S or China. You will not be able to land Sprut or heavy artillery behind U.S lines undetected.

And who said that those units will remain undetected ?

We are not yankees and therefore ,contrarely to them, we have never, ever, believed that against our major enemies our systems of any kind would operate remaining undetected.

We leave this ridiculous fairy tale and self-deluding notion to our over-ocean collagues, more concerned in stealing the greater fraction possible from the huge amount of american tax payer's moneys allocated to military industrial complex than to provide the most efficient systems for theirs nation's security against peer opponents.  

Since Soviet times up today we create missiles that theirs defense systems are aerodynamically totally incapable to intercept, submarines -and today unique UUVs and robotic torpedo- structurally (also under a mere material point of view) and kinematically capable to widely surpass those of our enemies rendering almost obsolete theirs underwater weapons , we create artillery systems widely surpassing in range and destructive potential anything in force with our opponents allowing to dominate the mere, hard spatial component of artillery duels, and so on with MBTs, air and space defense systems, EW and masking systems, mechanized equipment etc...

Leave theirs void marketing words such as "Joint-TM", "Situational Awareness-TM" "Dominance-TM" and other garbage electronic-related mantras confered to laughably underperforming systems shatter to pieces in a real war against a major opponents armed with systems surpassing them in almost all "hard" cardinal parameters.  

For ВДВ major operations this mean that the missions against 5-6 main forward OTAN airfields will begin contemporaneously with the attack on those airbases with few -no more than 8-10 long range missiles with optimized warheads (that are aerodynamically impossible to intercept for the weak western air defences) delivered by ground, naval or air forces aimed at damages all the the runaways rendering impossible any take-off for 24-72 hours.

The various ВДВ groups will come (within some years also with front line helicopters support with very long range weapons) at this point at low altitude on a vector farther from other OTAN's more internal airfields and delivering the air droppable forces at 80-100 km from theirs targetes air bases (usually 5-6 main airbases are attacked contemporaneusly by ВДВ) ,thanks to the fully mechanized equipment, within only a pair of hours from the air drop artillery barrages, БМД-4M's and Спрут-СДМs fire and 9М133ФМ-3 will devastate the air base before the ВДВ come -in to gain quickly control of the airfield.

That kind of attack is kinematically impossible to stop for OTAN forces cause theirs highly disfunctional force composition being totally devoid of entire class of highly mobile medium and short range air defenses (such as Бук-M2/M3, Панцирь-С/CM ,Тор-М2 etc...) and entrusting air defence role to….. aircraft !!!
This rended render theirs air-centric war machine nothing more than a high paying target ,easy to insulate and dismember for advanced and organized opponents.

RTN wrote:Russia too has not fought a peer rival since WWII. The Soviet Union's foray in Afghanistan ended in disaster.

When, after WWII, our operatives have fought directly and on domestic systems against the best western operatives such as :

1) Our air defense instructors against American pilots in Vietnam
2) Our pilots against the best American ones in Korea
3) Our air defense operators against Israeli pilots in Egypt in the Attrition War

they have always and invariately achieved an huge positive exchange ratio directly against the best our opponents had at the time and that in spite of operating in insulated little dispachment attached to largely disfuctional, not organized and under equipped forces of our allies.

The unique negative instance in this long history of success was an long prepared ambush by part of Isreali Aircraft against one of our air squadrons - that isreali pilots have never get the courage to fight openly, aircraft against aircraft in theirs incursions, how would had been forced to do if that was a real open conflict - where 4 МиГ-21МФ was downed and three pilots died cause the irresponsible imprudence of the leading captain that ordered to chase the fleeing Isreali aircraft-.
In all the other not-ambush clashs in the War of Attrition our pilots not suffered a single material or human loss and inflicted instead several to IAF in spite theirs aptitude at immediately escape when on the other side was Soviet МиГ-21МФ instead of Egyptian ones.


To the contrary of us instead, our western "partners" have always and only confronted, with their full forces always enjoying absurd numerical and technological advantage, immensely inferior enemies after WWII.

Arrow wrote:Mindstorm USA/NATO has an advantage in submarines. The US is building a huge number of Virginia class. This ship is very modern. In addition, the construction speed is impressive.

This is correct under a numerical point of view and i am the last person on this planet to understate the importance of quantity in military conflicts.

But in pure parametrical performance's terms a Virginia SSN is no match for a пр. 885M, OTAN submarines must enjoy a wide local numerical advantage in order to entrap a пр. 885M and avoid that it will engage, one at time each of them and escape immediately after.

Moreover domestic anti-submarine operations can rely on the presence of class of weapons without any western counterpart.

I refere particularly to anti-submarine missiles and specialized self-propelled submarine imitating ammunitions, that allow solutions in terms of engagement also a enormous distances, even only with third-party target positional data or in terms of evasion/disengagement or preparation of an ambush completely unavailable to western admirals.

Those solutions obviously do not cancel the huge weight that the great numerical inbalance between OTAN naval forces and Federation one will have in a potential conflict and therefore the structure of the ВМФ ,even more with the trend of the latest years, is strictly defensive in nature and cannot operate like a planetary level expeditionary force.

Most of the Virginia subs are needed to protect aircraft carriers.

BS, none of those vessels have even a decent AShM and all could be wiped out with the weapons available to the RF as of today. As to tanks and land forces, NATO has never had the slightest intention to fight Russia that way or has felt the need to "defend" their territories, hence the huge numerical advantage in armoured formations the Soviet Union had or the ridiculous readiness of many NATO forces today. NATO is mainly formed by boutique militaries for the interests of Western MIC and the prestige of their leadership.

The quality of HATO ships means nothing if they can't sail within 2,000km of Russian controlled airspace without the risk of being sunk.

The quality of HATO armour is similarly in doubt when you look at the depth and performance of Russian anti armour weapons of all types from rocket and cluster bomb delivered anti armour munitions through anti vehicle weapons of an enormous range of types...

Weight of numbers did not help the Chinese defeat the Japanese in WWII and the enormous numbers in the Soviet army did not immediately blunt and stop the German attack in Europe either... in fact the numbers were encircled and cut off and then captured with most of their equipment...

The British might not even have a new MBT, and the German models need air conditioned tents to keep them operational.

Any HATO armoured force would be enormously vulnerable to sensor fused top attack anti armour munitions the Russians had in service in the mid 1980s.

With newer systems it would be a turkey shoot.

"According to the plan, state tests of the newest airborne anti-tank gun Sprut-SDM1 should be completed by the end of 2022. In 2023, the vehicle should be put into service, and then its serial deliveries to the Airborne Forces will begin," the agency's source said.

https://ria.ru/20210106/tank-1592092830.html