General Main Battle Tank Technology Thread:

magnumcromagnon wrote:

Mike E wrote:

Vann7 wrote:
Not having no autoloader today is incredibly retarded and not justified..
The performance of the crew will significantly decrease after a couple of days of fighting ,specially if the crew
do not have proper rest and no sleep because of the war.

It all honesty it depends on the person you are talking to (opinionated). I myself believe that while autoloaders are great, they can fail in which case they are useless... That being said, human loaders are slower, can wear out, and risks yet another life in the process.

Well I'll have to make an analogy here, I would compare 'not' having a autoloader vs 'having' a autoloader with a person who 'runs' from San Diego to New York City, with a person who 'drives' the same journey. There a people who are skilled enough and who happen to be in good enough shape to run that distance, and there are cars that are in bad shape and drivers who are too incompetent (terrible drivers who can't read a map or use GPS) to drive that journey, but the people who are capable of running the journey are few-and-far-between and significantly outnumbered by people who could drive the same journey.

Austin wrote:Mechanically how reliable is autoloader ? Does it gets jammed or broke ?

Werewolf wrote:

Austin wrote:Mechanically how reliable is autoloader ? Does it gets jammed or broke ?

I remeber BitnikGr mentioned that T-72 autoloader during its early years already had every 500 +/- reloading cycles a malfuction which is already far higher reliability than a human can perform without incidents like injuries from loading,driving or not focusing on the job. And the current autoloaders most probably have even higher reliability.

GarryB wrote:Of course the negative is that in a 24hr conflict the autoloader never does their share of the guard duty for the vehicle....  

I remember when the T-62 came out with a 115mm smoothbore main gun and it was largely panned in the west as too inaccurate and a stupid move.

These days most western MBTs have smoothbore guns simply because the two most useful and most powerful main gun rounds.... APFSDS and HEAT actually don't like being spun rapidly in flight... while the extra muzzle velocity for the former from a shorter, lighter cheaper gun makes it more effective.

As main gun ammo gets heavier and longer manual loading becomes less practical and eventually the west will come to realise what a great idea it is and how wonderful their tanks are for using it.

higurashihougi wrote:

Mike E wrote:

GarryB wrote:Of course the negative is that in a 24hr conflict the autoloader never does their share of the guard duty for the vehicle....  

I remember when the T-62 came out with a 115mm smoothbore main gun and it was largely panned in the west as too inaccurate and a stupid move.

These days most western MBTs have smoothbore guns simply because the two most useful and most powerful main gun rounds.... APFSDS and HEAT actually don't like being spun rapidly in flight... while the extra muzzle velocity for the former from a shorter, lighter cheaper gun makes it more effective.

As main gun ammo gets heavier and longer manual loading becomes less practical and eventually the west will come to realise what a great idea it is and how wonderful their tanks are for using it.

I thought that the "commander" of the vehicle did that job, at least for the US.

It was a stupid move, I've heard that its main fault. (The 115)

Yeah, but rifling has its own advantages as well.

I doubt people will be loading in the next generation of tanks.

...and the turret will be controled from within the hull, like Armata.

GarryB wrote:

I thought that the "commander" of the vehicle did that job, at least for the US.

When the vehicle is not in action and it is time to have a sleep it is generally standard procedure to guard the vehicle from the outside, with each crewman taking a turn. In a platoon of 4 Soviet or Russian tanks that means 12 men to share guard duty.... 4 less than a western unit... because of the autoloader.

It was a stupid move, I've heard that its main fault. (The 115)

From people who claim smoothbores are inaccurate, yet the modern Abrams with its German smoothbore can hit the balls of a fly at 4km range?

Yeah, but rifling has its own advantages as well.

Only for HE shells... which is why the 100mm gun of the BMP-3, which is specifically designed to fire HE rounds as standard and also artillery weapons like 152mm and 155mm artillery also use rifled barrels.

For a tank gun it is much more expensive to make and more difficult to keep clean and it needs to be longer and heavier than an equivalent smooth bore and in terms of HEAT and APFSDS round it REDUCES their performance dramatically.

No level of tight rifling will impart enough spin to stabilise a javelin or a dart or an APFSDS projectile... they simply can't be spun fast enough to properly stabilise in flight so small fins are used instead.

With the HEAT round the problem is the focused beam of plasma the shaped charge is creating... centrifugal force rips it apart and makes it less effective on target because it is trying to spread instead of trying to concentrate like it should.

Again fin stabilisation keeps the round on target to a degree that is good enough, while the performance improvements were substantial.

The only round that likes being spun is the HESH... an obsolete round still in use by the British requiring them to cling to their out of date rifled guns.

Against a hard target HESH is defeated easily with spaced armour... as used on most modern tanks as standard armour and available as an add on package of armour aplique.

Evidence is shown when pride of the British Army Challenger tank mistakenly fires on British Army Warrior IFV. Warriors super armour protects it from super deadly weapon. In actual fact standard armour upgrade for light vehicles defeats obsolete British tank round.


The HESH round needs to be spun in flight for stabilisation but when it hits a target it splatters and then detonates sending a huge shockwave through the armour it hits.

A WWII tank would find the inner armour of their vehicle scabbing off and bouncing around inside the tank with lethal effect on crew, ammo, and fuel... very hot razor sharp metal fragments flying around the crew compartment at supersonic speed...

Of course anti spall linings are standard and have been for half a century, while any cavity in the armour stops the shockwave dead.

GarryB wrote:The Israelis used up stock of captured T-62s and compared the gun favourably with the British 105mm.

I would suggest the state of optics  and distances in combat the 115mm was quite comparable to the 105 British which at the time was a western standard... the 125mm smoothbore was in service as the west started introducing rifled 120mm guns and smoothbore 120mm guns.

In practical terms the west had better optics but the Soviets had smaller lighter faster better armed tanks.

The problem is that pro-West and pro-US "analysists" frequently compare Panther and Tiger with the T-34 and then conclude that Soviet tanks are bullshits, but they do not know they are comparing a heavy and mid-heavy tank with a medium tank...

higurashihougi wrote:

Mike E wrote:Journalists don't know crap about armored vehicles... Your "average report" would include something like "becuase the M1 weighs more than its main competitor the T-90, it has better overall protection". This leads your average Joe Smoe to believe that, you get the idea. That is where misconceptions begin.

M1's frontal armour is very thick and has a very tough uranium layer. But then t-90 has additional ERA and modular armour, and a set of active defense system, which provide similar protection with much less cost, i.e. very cost effetive.

The US frequently fells into the sweet trap of "100% capability" and "one-size-fit-all", although it is clear that we cannot create a supergun which repalces all kinds of AK, submachine, machine, pistol, sniper rifle... that's why we have a disaster named F-35.

Mike E wrote:Journalists don't know crap about armored vehicles... Your "average report" would include something like "becuase the M1 weighs more than its main competitor the T-90, it has better overall protection". This leads your average Joe Smoe to believe that, you get the idea. That is where misconceptions begin.