Tank Warfare: Russian Armour vs Western Armour

Werewolf wrote:
To make direct conclusion we would need to test thermobaric weapons against tanks and see what damage they do to optics, cannon and APS and for the part that Thermobaric weapons used as Anti-aircraft weapon, they are not favorable because the shockwave is rather small in comperision with a HEF were fragments can fly several dozen meters and still make damage, where the Thermobaric warhead needs remote detonation at maximum of 10 m not counting in the split second delay after aerosol has formed itself.

true- i also forgot that thermobarics have delay when initial fuel cloud is ignited- a helos fan would blow quite a lot of the mixture away.

magnumcromagnon wrote:
The best weapon against APS would be moment of surprise and stealth,

funny how this mirrors overcoming ships defences now,

magnumcromagnon wrote:
the best and most cost effective solution would be cheap helicopter drones with TV guidance and directly linked to EFP's. A small drone with some ram coating would show up very small on a X-band AESA radar of a APS system, combined with the effect that the slow rate of flying speed would further disguise itself with birds, maybe even strap sythetic bird wings for further disguise.

for anti-tank teams- but for MBTs i think 23mm decoy round burst followed very shortly by apfsds would be adequate and cheap.

magnumcromagnon wrote:

KomissarBojanchev wrote:

kvs wrote:Thermobaric shells are not practical.   There is a reason why thermobaric bombs are huge.  The concept is to detonate a fuel aerosol in air.  You
need a lot of fuel to create the aerosol.   There are physical constraints and you can't simply replace the fuel with some high explosive variant
that can be packed more tightly and made to fit in a tank shell.

Then how is it done on the even tinier shmel and metis-M1 warheads?

He's referring to thermobaric shells against armor, you would need fairly large and heavy thermobaric weapon to do some seriously damage to any MBT...now compare that to HEAT warheads, where the Kornet's 152mm 10kg warhead against any MBT armor would be best described as a grown man jumping on top of a well shaken can of soda!

No you just automatically assume that. In fact I was refering to use against soft targets and against structures, and thermobaric blasts are far superior against them than HE of equal size ,I thought you got the context.

Or what you thought I'm some HESH fetishist?

runaway wrote:I think looks is important, "a Beautiful ship is often a great ship" and the same can often be said about tanks. T-34, Tiger, Panther, SU-100, T-72, M1 is good looking and good tanks. The Cromwell, M3 for example doesnt look good and werent any good either.
Perhaps they dont look good when you know they arent, but often if they look good they are.

M1 is NOT a good tank.

higurashihougi wrote:

runaway wrote:I think looks is important, "a Beautiful ship is often a great ship" and the same can often be said about tanks. T-34, Tiger, Panther, SU-100, T-72, M1 is good looking and good tanks. The Cromwell, M3 for example doesnt look good and werent any good either.
Perhaps they dont look good when you know they arent, but often if they look good they are.

M1 is NOT a good tank.

Yes it is.

And combat proved it repeatedly.

TR1 wrote:

higurashihougi wrote:

runaway wrote:I think looks is important, "a Beautiful ship is often a great ship" and the same can often be said about tanks. T-34, Tiger, Panther, SU-100, T-72, M1 is good looking and good tanks. The Cromwell, M3 for example doesnt look good and werent any good either.
Perhaps they dont look good when you know they arent, but often if they look good they are.

M1 is NOT a good tank.

Yes it is.

And combat proved it repeatedly.

A mediocre one actually when compared to Leopard2a6/7, Merkawa 4, T-90A/SM and even ZTZ-99A2.


In combat against old export equipment from untrained personal against a country that is was under sanctions more than 2 decades, hardly what anyone would call "Combat proven".

TR1 wrote:

higurashihougi wrote:

runaway wrote:I think looks is important, "a Beautiful ship is often a great ship" and the same can often be said about tanks. T-34, Tiger, Panther, SU-100, T-72, M1 is good looking and good tanks. The Cromwell, M3 for example doesnt look good and werent any good either.
Perhaps they dont look good when you know they arent, but often if they look good they are.

M1 is NOT a good tank.

Yes it is.

And combat proved it repeatedly.

Fighting against T-55/62 or naked monkey model T-72 are not enough to be solid evidences.

I can defeat a mouse or a cat, but that does not make me a strong human.

Werewolf wrote:

TR1 wrote:

higurashihougi wrote:

runaway wrote:I think looks is important, "a Beautiful ship is often a great ship" and the same can often be said about tanks. T-34, Tiger, Panther, SU-100, T-72, M1 is good looking and good tanks. The Cromwell, M3 for example doesnt look good and werent any good either.
Perhaps they dont look good when you know they arent, but often if they look good they are.

M1 is NOT a good tank.

Yes it is.

And combat proved it repeatedly.

A mediocre one actually when compared to Leopard2a6/7, Merkawa 4, T-90A/SM and even ZTZ-99A2.


In combat against old export equipment from untrained personal against a country that is was under sanctions more than 2 decades, hardly what anyone would call "Combat proven".

The others you mentioned are even less combat proven. M1 Abrams out of all the others; has been around the block a fair bit. In that generation, only the T-72B and T-80 have been in more shit.

Leopard 2? Long-range against some Talibs in Astan; armed with nothing more menacing than old RPG-7s no doubt
Merkava 4? Many got penetrated in that Hezzie ambush in Lebanon, albeit held up not too badly and none were really lost. Their only other combat experience is against rock-throwers in the Gaza strip.
T-90A? Smashed their way through a whole bunch of Chechens when they were cut off in Dagestan 1999, with no losses. But other than that one episode, nothing else AFAIK.
ZTZ-99? What the hell is that?

ZTZ-99? What the hell is that?

here

http://www.army-technology.com/projects/type99chinese-main/

flamming_python wrote:The others you mentioned are even less combat proven. M1 Abrams out of all the others; has been around the block a fair bit. In that generation, only the T-72B and T-80 have been in more shit.

Leopard 2? Long-range against some Talibs in Astan; armed with nothing more menacing than old RPG-7s no doubt
Merkava 4? Many got penetrated in that Hezzie ambush in Lebanon, albeit held up not too badly and none were really lost. Their only other combat experience is against rock-throwers in the Gaza strip.
T-90A? Smashed their way through a whole bunch of Chechens when they were cut off in Dagestan 1999, with no losses. But other than that one episode, nothing else AFAIK.

Actually unless a non-nuclear military conflict between BRICS and US occured, these MBTs won't have much chance to be "proven". Because most of the conflicts today and near future will be either inconventional and assymetrical (army vs guerilla, big country vs small country), or between 3rd world countries with modernized old weapons.

However with the series of idiocy named M16, SR-71, F-35, M1 Abrams,... etc etc I don't have much confidence in U.S. weapon makers.

So you unignored me again, was getting lonely for you?

flamming_python wrote:

The others you mentioned are even less combat proven. M1 Abrams out of all the others; has been around the block a fair bit. In that generation, only the T-72B and T-80 have been in more shit.

The only tanks that have even seen a glance of modern AT weaponary or anything that could be even associated with a Modern Battlefield, those tanks are designed for were T-72/80 and Merkawa 4. The rest of the tanks including M1 of all versions haven't seen much more than PG-7 warheads of 70's export production with 290mm RHAe penetration (monoblocks) and the biggest it saw in vast use was AT-4 Spigot with 350-400mm RHAe penetration against US Army only 4 incidents i can recall where Iraqi M1's have been engaged with modern weapons of RPG-29/7 (650-700mm RHAe) with Tandem shaped charge warhead and one incident with Kornet-E (1200mm RHAe) which destroyed M1A1 tanks or at least penetrated side armor and lower glacis of frontal arc, ripping of drivers leg. So how can any of those tanks be called "Combat proven" when all of those tanks were designed to fight real militaries with most modern Anti Tank weapons in much worse conditions while they hardly saw even insurgents with even capable weaponary dealing against them.

Combat proven is among those magic words amongst Chobham, Depleted Uranium, Fire and Forget used by online military armschair generals that barely know the subject they like to discuss and you should refrain from using such terminology in this way.

The comperision of military weapons and plattforms can only be compared in three ways that would actually have fair, realistic and basic concept of evaluation.

1. Technological and capability evaluation, rellying soley on implemented technologies, based on official data, analysis and research data of the entire system and each major subsystem and the capabilities those tanks have as an example like different Munitions, sensors, protection firepower of each munition and occuring targets/threats. Further the comperision of how two different tanks would fare under exact same circumstances against various enemies (targets and threats) and which of the tanks would fare better in how many situations to draw a conclusion of combat effeciency.


Basing this evaluation only for the purpose to compare and draw direct comperision of technology and capability, excluding logistical,financial and human influence out of the comperision.

2. A combat effeciency comperision with technological evaluation and its capabilities with the influence of country's (A vs B) logistical, financial, geographical and military assets capabilities and situation.

This comperision is quite extended but is the most realistic which evaluades more of countries capabilities than actual performance of tanks combat worthiness.

3. Combat effeciency only, all participants are bound to exact same resources (human, money for procurement, maintenance, deployment and supply chain) and based on the technological capabilities of eachs participants tank how each would fare in exact same situations of each enemies targets aswell as threats.

This comperision is the actual only comperision that would matter due the fair basis and direct evaluation process of the Combat effeciency, which is the exact point of weapons how effective they are in entire military relevant points Effeciency on battlefield aswell effeciency in logistical and finanical terms which all militaries even the spoiled and overbudgeted militaries are bound to in peace aswell war time.

flamming_python wrote:
Leopard 2? Long-range against some Talibs in Astan; armed with nothing more menacing than old RPG-7s no doubt
Merkava 4? Many got penetrated in that Hezzie ambush in Lebanon, albeit held up not too badly and none were really lost. Their only other combat experience is against rock-throwers in the Gaza strip.
T-90A? Smashed their way through a whole bunch of Chechens when they were cut off in Dagestan 1999, with no losses. But other than that one episode, nothing else AFAIK.
ZTZ-99? What the hell is that?

Yes and non of those incidents actually proofs the combat worthiness of those tanks when they are isolated from any opponents military engagements and technological level, since we are speaking about M1 Abrams tank, so it was designed to fight Soviet/Russian Army most modern and capable tank divions under Soviet military doctrine, but some iraqi sanctioned militaries and insurgents with monoblock shape charged weapons from 70's that just barely manage to penetrate side armor are not really any ground to proof to anyone the Combat worthness of those tanks since they were designed for much more than that.

You can't proof your worth as a boxer if you go as 110kg Schwarzenegger against 60kg weightclass highschool teens.

Werewolf wrote:So you unignored me again, was getting lonely for you?

Don't get excited, you're still on ignore; just made an exception for this discussion.

The only tanks that have even seen a glance of modern AT weaponary or anything that could be even associated with a Modern Battlefield, those tanks are designed for were T-72/80 and Merkawa 4. The rest of the tanks including M1 of all versions haven't seen much more than PG-7 warheads of 70's export production with 290mm RHAe penetration (monoblocks) and the biggest it saw in vast use was AT-4 Spigot with 350-400mm RHAe penetration against US Army only 4 incidents i can recall where Iraqi M1's have been engaged with modern weapons of RPG-29/7 (650-700mm RHAe) with Tandem shaped charge warhead and one incident with Kornet-E (1200mm RHAe) which destroyed M1A1 tanks or at least penetrated side armor and lower glacis of frontal arc, ripping of drivers leg. So how can any of those tanks be called "Combat proven" when all of those tanks were designed to fight real militaries with most modern Anti Tank weapons in much worse conditions while they hardly saw even insurgents with even capable weaponary dealing against them.

Combat proven is among those magic words amongst Chobham, Depleted Uranium, Fire and Forget used by online military armschair generals that barely know the subject they like to discuss and you should refrain from using such terminology in this way.

The comperision of military weapons and plattforms can only be compared in three ways that would actually have fair, realistic and basic concept of evaluation.

1. Technological and capability evaluation, rellying soley on implemented technologies, based on official data, analysis and research data of the entire system and each major subsystem and the capabilities those tanks have as an example like different Munitions, sensors, protection firepower of each munition and occuring targets/threats. Further the comperision of how two different tanks would fare under exact same circumstances against various enemies (targets and threats) and which of the tanks would fare better in how many situations to draw a conclusion of combat effeciency.


Basing this evaluation only for the purpose to compare and draw direct comperision of technology and capability, excluding logistical,financial and human influence out of the comperision.

2. A combat effeciency comperision with technological evaluation and its capabilities with the influence of country's (A vs B) logistical, financial, geographical and military assets capabilities and situation.

This comperision is quite extended but is the most realistic which evaluades more of countries capabilities than actual performance of tanks combat worthiness.

3. Combat effeciency only, all participants are bound to exact same resources (human, money for procurement, maintenance, deployment and supply chain) and based on the technological capabilities of eachs participants tank how each would fare in exact same situations of each enemies targets aswell as threats.

This comperision is the actual only comperision that would matter due the fair basis and direct evaluation process of the Combat effeciency, which is the exact point of weapons how effective they are in entire military relevant points Effeciency on battlefield aswell effeciency in logistical and finanical terms which all militaries even the spoiled and overbudgeted militaries are bound to in peace aswell war time.

This is of no relevance to how actually combat proven these tanks are

Yes and non of those incidents actually proofs the combat worthiness of those tanks when they are isolated from any opponents military engagements and technological level, since we are speaking about M1 Abrams tank, so it was designed to fight Soviet/Russian Army most modern and capable tank divions under Soviet military doctrine, but some iraqi sanctioned militaries and insurgents with monoblock shape charged weapons from 70's that just barely manage to penetrate side armor are not really any ground to proof to anyone the Combat worthness of those tanks since they were designed for much more than that.

You can't proof your worth as a boxer if you go as 110kg Schwarzenegger against 60kg weightclass highschool teens.

Quite right but for what it's worth; the M1 Abrams has still been through the mud so to speak a lot more than those other tanks; some of which have barely had their baptism of fire.

So far the M1 Abrams has held up well; so it's only fair to call it a good tank, until such time as we get more complete data to the contrary.

This is of no relevance to how actually combat proven these tanks are

^

You are very wrong on that part. Combat effeciency is the only relevance for any military technology and if "combat proven" is the only criteria that always defeats any other criteria like technological advancement or capability and therefore combat effeciency than the M1 is easily beaten by T-72/80 by T-55, Chieftain, M48/60, they all saw actual real and tough battlefields and also have accomplished quite a lot, but of course they are old and have no combat effiency to compare with todays modern tanks which means combat proven is not some magical or kingly specification that outdo actual combat effeciency and combat effeciency can be evaluaded without having real life scenarios of every possible situation, we have analysis and research data to base evaluation on.

Quite right but for what it's worth; the M1 Abrams has still been through the mud so to speak a lot more than those other tanks; some of which have barely had their baptism of fire.

So far the M1 Abrams has held up well; so it's only fair to call it a good tank, until such time as we get more complete data to the contrary.

That is how it is not done, don't measure something on the lowest possible bar but by the highest and the highest is not to fight some insurgents with ancient weapons but how combat effecient weapons are under their designed and purposed use.

TR1 wrote:

cracker wrote:It's right to say that the armata wheels are direct evolution of T-80 wheels? (or even simply T-80 ones)

By the way, someone can explain me the main difference between T-72/90 wheels, T-64 wheels and T-80 ones? I often read the T-80 has the "best"...


fantastic to see the tank retains the traditional integrated dozer blade!


By the way.... what's the secondary armament? I can't believe all the crap about an upper 30mm canon, it would be senseless and useless.... overburdening... Can we say for sure it's a coaxial PKT and a classic top turret PKT? or is the top gun a KORD? I kinda wish they finaly make a 12.7 coax instead of the 7.62

and for the 2A82, and the autoloader... can they accept standard 2A46 ammo??? would be really shitty if not.

The wheels look identical to T-80 as far as I am concerned.
2A82 can 100% use back-dated ammo. Otherwise it would be pointless.

Soviet tank wheel sizes don't matter terribly- the suspension differences are more substantial however.
T-80 does seem to drive the smoothest, but it has to do with engine as well.

Wheels do matter, T-72M1 managed to climb 1.2m concrete wall while T-80U failed, recently saw that in swedish tests. Centurion painfully managed to climb the 1.0m obstacle (when T-72 and T-80 did it like a pice of cake) and also failed miserably to climb the 1.2m.

How come the T-80U with such powerful torque couldn't do at least as well as the cheap ass monkey tank T-72M1? it must comes down to wheels, T-72 are much bigger and apparently it can help in some situations. Nonetheless, for the armata, they probably chose wisely the T-80 ones, maybe for weight issue.

And what about suspensions? T-72/ T-80 use the same torsion bar thing, and shock absorbers are on the same wheels (or maybe it's only true for T-90)... T-64 suspension was special and not too good if we believe the russians, and simply looking at videos... T-64 firing next to a T-72, the latter copes much better with the recoil.

Stealthflanker wrote:
Anyway, i wonder if Russian have any interest toward adjustable suspension. Thus it could take better advantage of terrain  like Japanese Type-90 or Korean K2.

and more expensive, more things that can break, more problems, more maintenance. The simpler the better. If the Armata has already -8 gun depression, it's already a good improvement over T-90 and olders.



And yes the M1 abrams is a good tank, a very good tank. It has many faults, but if the US make it work, then it's fine for them. The M1A3 should be a pretty good tank, if they adopt a diesel engine and manage to improve armor and amament without increasing weight. The fact it has no real HE rounds isn't a fault of the tank, it's a doctrine. Side hull armor is 50mm, + some 50-70mm skirts, and ERA if needed. Leopard 2 hull is somewhere between 30, 40 or 50mm, with worse skirts. Russian Tanks like T-90 and T-80 have 80mm hull + shitty rubber skirts, and ERA. I expect T-14 to improve that by making a spaced armour hull (50mm base + 20 or 30mm outter plate with 50 or 60mm air gap partially filled with rubber or something), + modular skirts with NERA or ERA. Maybe Armata even has 80mm base hull + outter plate.

flamming_python wrote:
T-90A? Smashed their way through a whole bunch of Chechens when they were cut off in Dagestan 1999, with no losses. But other than that one episode, nothing else AFAIK.

T-90 has never seen combat.

And ofc if we go by their logic, the T-80s combat reputation is miserable, and the T-72s only slightly less so.

T-64s and T-72s in Donbass have been blown up in some cases by far from modern anti-tank means....even recoil-less rifles in some cases.


At the end of the day, the Abrams has overall done far better against the same old RPG-7s that have been used against T-72s.
And that makes sense, being a newer tank and all.

TR1 wrote:
At the end of the day, the Abrams has overall done far better against the same old RPG-7s that have been used against T-72s.
And that makes sense, being a newer tank and all.

Militants operating in Al-Anbar have also released images of numerous attacks on other Abrams tanks, including ones involving a 9K11 Kornet ATGM, RPG-7 rocket-propelled grenade launchers

http://www.janes.com/article/39550/iraqi-abrams-losses-revealed


https://wikileaks.org/wiki/Talk:US_M1A1_tank_penetrated_in_Iraq_by_mystery_round,_Oct_2008

Since the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, with tanks in daily combat against the unexpectedly fierce insurgency, the Army says 80 of the 69-ton behemoths have been damaged so badly they had to be shipped back to the United States.

The Army will not discuss details of how tanks have been damaged by insurgents.

http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2005-03-29-abrams-tank-a_x.htm

And that proves....what?
We have plenty of video footage of Abrams being targeted by various RPGs, and it does about as well as you could expect a tank too.

Do I need to show all the images of blown up T-72s that have come up from every conflict it has been in?

Why is this debated kept in an infanitle way, completley ignoring facts, circumstances and weapons specifications and not discussing based on exact those things to have a fair comperision.

Abrams never even saw modern weaponary, while even on Donbass T-64/72 tanks see far more modern ammunition used against them far above the 290mm RHAe the iraqis have used against abrams. The T-72 can eat 1000 PG-7 warheads even to the side without getting penetrated, but of course compering apples with bananas is of course the way to compare things to trying to push a point of view dislocated from reality.

TR1 wrote:At the end of the day, the Abrams has overall done far better against the same old RPG-7s that have been used against T-72s.
And that makes sense, being a newer tank and all.

Which T-72 ? Naked T-72 Ural, monkey T-72 Babylon or T-72Bxx with ERA and etc etc ?

Western tanks aren't super armoured... they just separate the fuel and ammo from the crew compartment... which means the anti tank rounds have to actually hit crew to kill or injure them.

They don't seperate ammunition nor fuel from crew compartment, the only tank where ammunition is seperated but fuel kept is the Abrams.

Fuel pumps and fuel storage runs right through the crew compartment that is also the reason why they have halongas fire suppression system which is toxic to human body, but that is a concern for later.

Only russian tanks have strict fuel seperation from crew compartment all fuel tanks are outside above and along the tracks since they use paper cased ammunition and even a small fuel leak and ignition and the tank would be gone.

T-series fuel storage.

higurashihougi wrote:

TR1 wrote:At the end of the day, the Abrams has overall done far better against the same old RPG-7s that have been used against T-72s.
And that makes sense, being a newer tank and all.

Which T-72 ? Naked T-72 Ural, monkey T-72 Babylon or T-72Bxx with ERA and etc etc ?

Even fully ERA equipped Russian Army T-72Bs.

Those have blown up quite a few times themselves, from a single penetration too.

And no, no stories (true ones to be fair) of 14 hits on a single T-72 in Chechnya will change that.

TR1 wrote:

higurashihougi wrote:

TR1 wrote:At the end of the day, the Abrams has overall done far better against the same old RPG-7s that have been used against T-72s.
And that makes sense, being a newer tank and all.

Which T-72 ? Naked T-72 Ural, monkey T-72 Babylon or T-72Bxx with ERA and etc etc ?

Even fully ERA equipped Russian Army T-72Bs.

Those have blown up quite a few times themselves, from a single penetration too.

And no, no stories (true ones to be fair) of 14 hits on a single T-72 in Chechnya will change that.

Now you are pulling things out of your rear. Fully equipped T-72BV with (V=ERA) can not be penetrated with monoblock RPG-7 warheads the iraqis used and that is the entire comperision here which you again try to avoid, Abrams have never seen new weaponary except in handful incidents while Chechnya, Dagestan, Ukraine and Ingushetia they have seen modern tandem shaped charged weapons, it lacks totally any incidents to make even a comperision.