T-90 Main Battle Tank #2

Isos wrote:Indian t-90 battalion. Nice cammo for the desert.

That's two squadron worth of T-90! With curiously, one T-72 being thrown in per squadron. And that too without ERA tiles. Not sure why.

Hole wrote:

This may be why the chains on the turret are not adopted.

What shape do you think would be better?

Angled plate doesn't bounce APFSDS... only full calibre APHE rounds which are not longer used anyway.

Both surfaces of the V shape have ERA and then turret armour to penetrate through.

If the enemy wants to shoot the front of the turret they are welcome to because that is the strongest armoured area on tanks with turret crews... it would make more sense going for the gun barrel and penetrating through there...

The loading system is behind the gun so to hit it from the front you would have to penetrate the turret cheeks... the thickest armour on a T-90 series tank.

To reach the auto loader it would also pretty much have to go through either the gunner or commander.

Hole wrote:

So they replaced the LMG slaved to the commander sight, with Kord? Nice improvement, and I'm surprised it hasn't really been discussed.

It seems the problems with the vibrations are solved.

From Cyberspec's twitter:

"The T-90M at the parade preparations have a modified turret ring with additional armour welded on plus the screens. It was earlier pointed out as a potential weak spot"

So they replaced the LMG slaved to the commander sight, with Kord? Nice improvement, and I'm surprised it hasn't really been discussed.

It is interesting because a heavy calibre machine gun is a powerful weapon against light vehicles, but as the distance increases the space between the shots increases and if you don't hit you often don't kill.

I personally like grenade launchers as they are area weapons so even a single grenade amongst a group of enemy can injure multiple targets at once in a way that a burst of MG fire is less likely to.

A cluster of 4-5 grenades all landing together in a group creates a storm of fragments you can't avoid or evade either... even at 2.5km range a burst of 10 grenades will create an area of fragments that would be dangerous to any troops except those togged up to deal with IEDs... in comparison a 20 round burst against a group you might get one or two lucky hits with rifle or HMG calibre bullets.

The main problem with grenade launchers is the weight of the weapons and the ammo but on a vehicle that is not so important.

The 30-40mm grenade for tank commander is very powerfull but the LV makes its ammunitions unable to reach enemy quickly. Instead of that, the 7.62mm or 12.7mm MG with HV ammunitions can suppress enemy infantry immediately.

Would they extend the ATGM fire by the T-90 cannon ? now it's about 5 km.

Egypt could get T-90MS .Merkava 4 is firing ATGMs at 6-8 km ,that range is not official but is the range of the Larat missile which could be fitted on multiple ground launchers including Merkava .

Could it be an advantage for the Merkava ?

In theory the Sprinter should be able to be fired from the T-90 cannon as it is also a 125mm. It has about 12km range.

miketheterrible wrote:In theory the Sprinter should be able to be fired from the T-90 cannon as it is also a 125mm.  It has about 12km range.  

Interesting .

But targeting via direct line of sight at such long distance could be limited ? unless Russia develops a targeting method that employs satellites or airborne reconnaissance to pinpoint tanks beyond their visual scope .

Well, yeah. But there is a reason why they can connect to drones now. I imagine it's to help with recon and targeting.

But I doubt Israel's claims tbh.

miketheterrible wrote:Well, yeah. But there is a reason why they can connect to drones now. I imagine it's to help with recon and targeting.

But I doubt Israel's claims tbh.

Yes it's not official , the missile range is 8km but i doubt it could be fire from a Tank from that range unless they have a proper scope or by using UAVs .

I think the current practical range of the ATGMs launched by tanks is about 5km as with the Russian T-90 .

The 30-40mm grenade for tank commander is very powerfull but the LV makes its ammunitions unable to reach enemy quickly. Instead of that, the 7.62mm or 12.7mm MG with HV ammunitions can suppress enemy infantry immediately.

From more than 1km away you are not going to hear it coming in time for it to matter. After the first rounds detonate to the last rounds of a 10 round burst you will either have found cover or be injured or dead.

In comparison 12.7mm rounds and 7.62mm rounds need to make contact with the target so a 20-50 round burst spread over an area of 20-30m means at best you might injure someone if you are lucky. In comparison to 20-50 lethal fragments that MGs can deliver 5-10 grenades will shower the target area with thousands of small very high speed fragments... nowhere would be safe...

Do you not recognise the difference?

At 2km if you can see a target to shoot firing 20-50 round with a mounted machine gun means you might get a hit on that target if it is human sized in the first burst.... if it is a car or vehicle you might get one or two hits but you will have no control over whether those hits go through the windscreen and kill the driver or if they go right through the tailgate area and do very little damage except punch neat holes in... through... and out.

At the same range grenades landing on the ground can be 2m away from the target and shower the target in lethal fragments.

Would they extend the ATGM fire by the T-90 cannon ? now it's about 5 km.

Egypt could get T-90MS .Merkava 4 is firing ATGMs at 6-8 km ,that range is not official but is the range of the Larat missile which could be fitted on multiple ground launchers including Merkava .

Could it be an advantage for the Merkava ?

The current gun tube launched ATGM for the Russian forces has a range of about 12km AFAIK.

Same gun.

Not sure they would actually use it to such ranges however in normal combat...

But targeting via direct line of sight at such long distance could be limited ? unless Russia develops a targeting method that employs satellites or airborne reconnaissance to pinpoint tanks beyond their visual scope .

Their other missile, Sokol-1, uses laser homing with an optical head... you basically fire the missile up into the air in the direction of the target and as it climbs it ejects its nose seeker cover and starts looking for a laser reflection... it is fired in coordination with a drone or other platform or special forces who after a certain amount of time after the round is fired marks the target with a laser beam... the missile detects the laser on the target and then acquires the target using video imaging... after marking the target the laser can then be turned off and the missile attacks the target on its own. It could also detect and engage moving targets using video image processing like modern cameras have face detection...

The current missile is called Sokol-5 and I don't know much about it...

I think the current practical range of the ATGMs launched by tanks is about 5km as with the Russian T-90 .

I think in most practical situations targets wont be engaged at distances much greater than 5km... if you need to engage at greater distances then they have 122mm and 152mm artillery rounds that can reach out much further than 10km anyway.

Moreover both atgm can't do a lot from the front to both tanks.

A diving top attack missile could take out any tank as long as it can get past its APS system.

Egypt can always order the Arena for its t-90.

ARENA and SHTORA make sense...

Dedicated missile vehicles like Krisantema with radar for day night all weather capability makes rather more sense for long range target engagements... their missiles are faster and would probably be cheaper...

GarryB wrote:From more than 1km away you are not going to hear it coming in time for it to matter. After the first rounds detonate to the last rounds of a 10 round burst you will either have found cover or be injured or dead.

In comparison 12.7mm rounds and 7.62mm rounds need to make contact with the target so a 20-50 round burst spread over an area of 20-30m means at best you might injure someone if you are lucky. In comparison to 20-50 lethal fragments that MGs can deliver 5-10 grenades will shower the target area with thousands of small very high speed fragments... nowhere would be safe...

Do you not recognise the difference?

At 2km if you can see a target to shoot firing 20-50 round with a mounted machine gun means you might get a hit on that target if it is human sized in the first burst.... if it is a car or vehicle you might get one or two hits but you will have no control over whether those hits go through the windscreen and kill the driver or if they go right through the tailgate area and do very little damage except punch neat holes in... through... and out.

At the same range grenades landing on the ground can be 2m away from the target and shower the target in lethal fragments.

To reach a target at 1,000m, a grenade ammunition will take at least 10s while a 7.62mm or 12.7mm ammunition will take a little over 1s. That is a huge different for moving targets including infantry.

To reach a target at 1,000m, a grenade ammunition will take at least 10s while a 7.62mm or 12.7mm ammunition will take a little over 1s. That is a huge different for moving targets including infantry.

That is not true.

A standard rifle 7.62mm round approaches subsonic speeds at about 800m to 1km depending on its weight and shape and initial speed... drag on a projectile moving at supersonic speed is enormous so it slows down very very rapidly. Once it gets to subsonic speeds the mass of the projectile and the shape of its rear end suddenly become the important factors in drag.

The best example is a golf ball which never achieves supersonic speed but in terms of drag is a useful example.

A ball is a poor shape for a projectile, but it can be hit consistently and bounces consistently.

A smooth ball that is 2cm across has a drag profile 2cm across because the surface air comes straight off it and forms drag in flight.

Cover it in tiny dimples however and you disturb the surface flow of air over the body surface of the ball which energises it and makes it attach, so instead of the air hitting the front and moving around the surface of the ball and coming over in a perfect circle 2cm across the air attaches to the surface and travels further round the ball so effectively it leaves the ball surface further round the surface of the ball perhaps at a few mms inside the outside diameter of the ball so the effective surface area of the ball might become 1.5cm... it means much less drag... the ball maintains speed better and so it travels further for a given period of time in the air.

A smooth ball and a dimpled ball fired from a cannon at the same pressure should go the same distance but the dimpled ball goes further every time because of reduced drag.

And it is not because the dimples reduce weight... if you added a lead centre to the dimpled golf ball it would be fired at a lower velocity by the cannon because it is heavier, but it would also push through the air more efficiently, being heavier and might actually go a little bit further... but it also might damage your golf club and hurt your arms with the impact on a heavier ball.

Low velocity projectiles like grenades leave the muzzle at much lower speeds but also maintain velocity much better because they are heavy and the air does not slow them down so much.

I agree that shooting at a target with a low velocity round is much harder at longer ranges because the longer impact time means more time for the target to change direction or stop or speed up and end up further from the point of aim than they could possibly be if the round impacted in less than a second, but two things make it easier... first of all a rifle or HMG bullet needs to make contact to have any effect on target, while a grenade is inherently an area weapon that does not need to hit a target to damage it, and second, which is directly related... a group of enemy targets is always a difficult target for a burst of machine gun fire a large group increases your chances of getting some hits but as the Germans proved in WWI location location location.

If you have a line of men walking towards you all side by side then a rifle is more efficient than a machine gun.

What the Germans did during WWI was to locate their machine guns at each ends of their trench and fire sideways at about a 30 degree angle forward of down their own trenchline. It meant as the line of enemy men reached your trenches instead of firing at the man in front of them with targets either side also marching forward, they were essentially firing down the line of men standing side by side so say 100 men were walking toward your trench when they started walking and were far away the bullets you fire at one man might hit the two or three men either side of him but you were essentially shooting at three or four men at a time.

If you moved sideways and essentially fired from a flank position you are looking down a line of 100 men so each bullet you fired could go through several people and the line was 100 men thick so firing in long bursts was very efficient and effective in killing enormous numbers of men at one time.

The targets were also relatively close so you rounds would go though a few people at least.

If they were a group at 1km range then you might get more than three or four because of the spread of bullets but it still wont be as efficient as landing one 40mm grenade in amongst the group.

At 2km you are wasting your time with a rifle calibre machine gun and with a HMG you would have the same problems as with the RCM at 1km but the heavy recoil means your spread of impacts would be much bigger than the group of men you are targeting.

The Grenade would still be very effective.

The elongated T-90M turret to the left and the standard T-90A turret to the right.

To reach a target at 1,000m, a grenade ammunition will take at least 10s while a 7.62mm or 12.7mm ammunition will take a little over 1s. That is a huge different for moving targets including infantry.

In addition to my previous rather long reply... an RPG-7 fires a rocket at about 180m/s from the tube and after flying about 10-15 metres it fires its own rocket motor to accelerate to about 355m/s, so it is flying much slower than a rifle bullet too... the point is that the speed of the projectile is incorporated into the sights and aiming procedure, so to take the above example a group of enemy troops in the open moving across open terrain, you might need less lead with a machine gun, but you would also need direct hits to have any effect. With a grenade launcher you might need a much bigger lead on a group of walking or running infantry, but even just getting close is good enough to get casualties... an either way they wont hear either type of rounds coming.

They might see the muzzle flash from your machine guns, but the grenade launcher is an indirect fire weapon so it might be hidden behind a low wall so they might have no idea they are under fire until rounds start exploding around them.

I would say a better criticism of the grenade launcher is that the rounds are large and heavy... meaning vehicle mounts and vehicle support would be necessary because the potential volume of fire from a tank or vehicle mounted grenade launcher would be enormous.

In 1991 in Desert Storm I think I remember reading they actually fired more 40mm grenades than 7.62x51mm ammo... of course most rifles and LMG used 5.56mm which likely was fired in much larger numbers than either of the other two calibres, but it is interesting nonetheless.

The elongated T-90M turret to the left and the standard T-90A turret to the right.

Nice pic.... important to recognise that while the rear area contains main gun ammo it is totally separated from the crew compartment... unlike on western vehicles, where for example the Abrams the rear turret area is a serious weak spot with light armour and live ammo...