[Official] Armata Discussion thread #1

I'm not really sure what to think of the write-up yet. It starts off mentioning the vulnerability of tank's roofs, and ends with talk of a new 135mm gun, and the inadequacies of ARENA, with no hint of Afghanistan APS in the article.

So we could translate this to a worker from the makers of the F-22 before the F-22 was revealed publicly talking about the vulnerability of non stealth aircraft to the S-300 series air defence missiles, and a suggestion they might be working on new versions of AMRAAM, how existing versions of AMRAAM really don't have sufficient range to keep the aircraft carrying them out of harms way. There is no mention of AIM-9X.

I would say talk of the vulnerability of roofs is in order because the armata really doesn't have one as such... the sloping frontal armour goes from the front of the nose to the base of the turret, so the "roof" above the crew capsule is all frontal armour thickness... ie with no need for heavy frontal armour on the gun that makes the heaviest armour is actually the roof of the crew compartment.

Certainly they have looked at 152mm guns for a very long period and might have decided that the size of the ammo reduces ammo payload potential too much and that an alternate calibre that will offer a substantial increase in power without a significant increase in size or weight of the ammo might be worth looking in to.

I rather suspect they will be looking into EM guns as well which might be 60-70mm calibre guns of very high velocity that might be mounted coaxially with 120mm rifled gun/mortars, so that they get the high velocity anti armour rounds and a good solid HE capacity too.

If ARENA... old or new was perfect then they wouldn't need an upgrade. The point is that imperfect as it might be... it is still rather better than nothing.

Quite often Russian officials will let slip little things and then you will hear nothing about them till they are actually finally revealed as ready for export.

A good example of this is the SAM called Verba. It has been mentioned a few times but there are little to no details about it anywhere.

7 wheeled chassis was for Black Eagle... for Armata they can have as many or as few as they want.



If this is it then it appears to be pretty much what we expected... two obvious optics, the top one with what appears to be a 50 cal mounted with it is clearly the commanders panoramic sight and the lower sight closest to us is clearly the gunners sight.

The small box on top of the gun is clearly a muzzle reference system with bounces a signal off a reflector mounted above the tip of the muzzle that us used to determine barrel sag. (A tank sitting in the sun can have the top of the barrel heated several degrees hotter than the lower part of the gun in the shade, which leads to the top of the gun expanding more than the bottom so the barrel is slightly bent... this reference system will detect this and compensate for it in its ballistics calculations. After firing a few shots the barrel heats up evenly and straightens, which the muzzle reference system will also detect and take account of.

There appear to be two sensors on either side of the gun near the gunners sight and the opposite side, I would assume they are combined optics for laser and optical detection systems for the self defence suite.

Near the back there appear to be two large banks of smoke grenade launchers, though they could be combination APS interceptor munitions and smoke grenade launchers for all we know.

the link at the bottom of the page leads to this:

http://vpk-news.ru/articles/9286

which has these images:



Which seem to suggest that the ammo is stored in single tubes stored vertically in the turret and presumably rotated up behind the gun and then rammed straight into the breach. Looks like space for two rows of rounds behind the gun so I suspect there might be room for 4-6 rounds there ready to be rammed, the two rows would allow a quicker change in ammo selection.

GurKhan thought the author was talking nonsense.

Gur Khan has been totally right so far, but these models don't look that far from the what it most likely looks like and what it needs to be fitted with.

That ammo is really long, even by western standards.

Keep in mind it was originally designed for the 15xmm gun of the T-95, and in the T-99 first production model will include both pieces of the 125mm ammo together. There is no crew in the turret so it is all together possible that it can be loaded into the turret from the rear and moved into the internal magazine by using the loader in reverse.

Imagine the length of the penetrators they could design and use with this autoloader arrangement!

That model picture of the APS seems to concentrate on defeating top attack weapons.

The Yak-B is only 50 calibre... it is a powerful and effective weapon, but in actual fact the last model Yak-BYu actually weighs 60kgs.

The 23mm calibre GSh-6-23M weighs 73kgs, yet for that extra 13kgs you get a much more powerful weapon.

The huge advantage of the 23mm calibre weapon is HE power of its shells.

A HE shell creates lots of fragments all around the point of impact that can kill or injure or cause damage to light material. A 50 cal solid slug will either hit or miss and its HE version only has a very light HE payload.

More importantly the 23mm round is based on the 14.5mm HMG cartridge so it doesn't actually take up a lot more space than a 12.7mm cartridge. For every thousand 12.7mm rounds you could store you could probably get about 800 23mm rounds... and 800 23mm rounds are far more effective than 1,000 12.7mm rounds.

It was shown from evidence from WWII that the 20mm light cannon were 4-5 times more effective than 12.7mm weapons because of their more effective HE rounds.

Now the 12.7mm HE rounds have improved since then, but so have the 20mm rounds, or in this case the 23mm rounds.

The weapon choices shown on the armata BMPT seem to me to be the best combination of firepower and HE power and direct and indirect weapons. The 23mm gun offers high direct fire firepower against groups of enemy with lots of small explosives delivered in groups rapidly leaving little time to take cover. The 40mm grenade launcher offers indirect fire with a good HE payload against targets behind cover but with no top cover... for instance hiding behind a building... a high velocity gun like a 23mm gatling will smash the front of the building or keep going over top and land kilometres away, whereas 40mm grenades lobbed over top will land near vertically with a nice even fragmentation pattern that would be very effective.
Finally for dug in infantry positions or fortified buildings with sand bags that 23mm rounds wont be high enough velocity to penetrate, and the HE charge not powerful enough to blow through layers of sandbags and concrete, and of course the 40mm grenades will have similar penetration problems being even lower velocity, then you use the 120mm rifled gun with a HE shell with a delayed fuse so the round penetrates into the sandbags and then the large HE charge blows the wall of sandbags and concrete down from the inside...

The ability to take out a room with a single aimed shot.

The capacity to use laser guided rounds to hit specific targets at extended ranges if needed.

It is a very good well balanced weapons package.

Also forget Armata having a Gatling gun, would be a stupid solution.

Can you clarify?

Armata is a vehicle family likely with dozens of different vehicle types, would it be stupid for all?

I agree that for most vehicles it would not suit, the APC model could have a single barrel KPB which would lack the armour penetration capability of the 14.5mm KPV, but the greatly increased HE payload would make it rather more effective against soft and unarmoured targets.
In fact there is no reason why an APDSFS round could not be developed for the 23mm cannon shell. When you increase calibre you allow more energy to be pushed down the barrel so a very high velocity APDSFS round might actually be able to be more powerful than from the narrower barrel of the 14.5mm weapon. The larger barrel means less barrel erosion from using too much propellent in such a small calibre.

Obviously the problem would then be trajectory as the HE round is heavy and slow (700m/s) whereas the APDSFS round will be light and very very fast, so you would need a dual feed weapon and a ballistics computer to change the aim points when the different rounds are being used.

The requirement for dual feed might be why they are going for the gatling?

Unless the target is in the air, I think a Gatling weapon is pointless.

Normally I would agree... gatlings are very good at what they do but have a very limited range of very specific uses... which in the Russian military are for naval use against very high speed high threat targets where their rate of fire gives them a better chance of getting a few solid hits in the short time the target is within range. In their air applications they are for very small elusive targets like cruise missiles for the Mig-31, or for very short bursts at ground targets as they whiz by from high speed low flying aircraft... Su-24 and Mig-27.

The anti aircraft weapons on heavy aircraft tend to be twin barrel 23mm cannon because of their high rate of fire and heavy shell weight, while for ground attack it is similar with the Su-25 and Mi-24 carrying fixed twin barrel 30mm cannon with the latest model hind equipped with a twin barrel 23mm gun.

I agree that a gatling for an air defence vehicle is not a great idea because their twin barrel guns are so good that a couple of them on Pantsir-S1 or Tunguska offer better accuracy and comparable rates of fire.

The thing is that the BMPT can't really afford the room for two 30mm twin barrel cannon and the 30 x 165mm ammo is very very powerful but it is also huge.

The BMPT is not an air defence vehicle... it is an overwhelm them with firepower anti ambush vehicle and if you look at the vehicle it is replacing in that role.. the Shilka then a gatling makes sense... a GSH-5-23M gatling in particular.

The reasons are that it is a compact and simple weapon that weighs less than a single 2A42. It only weighs 73kgs and does not require an external power source like an electric drive like western gatlings. The ammo it fires is as powerful as the ammo the Shilka fires because the projectiles are identical... the difference is that it uses a much smaller shell case with less powder that generates a muzzle velocity of about 715m/s, but the point is that against ground targets that the BMPT will be engaging there is no need for high velocity anyway.

The compact nature of the weapon and the ammo itself means larger amounts of ammo will be able to be carried than with a more powerful weapon. The 23 x 115mm round is devastatingly effective against unarmoured aerial targets, it is the same round fired by the Mig-23s twin barrel 23mm cannon which was reportedly considered very accurate by South African pilots when they got a chance to test one out. The 23 x 152mm round the Shilka fires has a much higher velocity, which is necessary for intercepting high speed aerial targets but unimportant for ground targets.

The custom designed gun for the Apache is a case in point... very heavy 30mm projectile with a small shell case to allow large numbers of rounds to be carried. Very effective against ground targets... and includes a shaped charge round for anti armour use.

The vehicle does not need the sort of insane Rate of Fire that Gatling weapons produce, and the extra weight from the gun barrels, the volume that the weapon occupies, the recoil (yes a tank can take a 125mm gun's recoil, but the smaller caliber gun is often mounted in a less rigid spot), and most importantly the sort of ammunition storage you need for such a weapon, I think make it a very poor concept for Armata.

Fired continuously I would agree, but I rather suspect this weapon will have a burst management system in place so you can fire 5,10,15,20,25,30,40,50, or 100 round bursts only. The high rate of fire will mean the rounds land together in a sort of cluster bomb effect. Otherwise your criticisms have already been answered... the 23mm gatling is lighter than any 30mm cannon except the GSH-301 single barrel cannon of the Mig-29/Su-27 and is only 13 kgs heavier than a 12.7mm four barrel gatling gun used on the Hind. The weapon is light, compact and requires no external power source... it is pneumatic powered, recoil is low because of the low muzzle velocity and small charge... though recoil would certainly build up with very long bursts this gun is for hitting an area with HE, not chasing an aerial target in the sky till you hit it. The ammo is slightly bigger than 12.7mm HNG ammo so storing 800-1,000 rounds should not be that big a deal.

I say it again I generally agree with your criticisms... but in this case they don't apply.

The Vulcan has been used as an air defence vehicle by the US military since the Vietnam war and as an anti convoy weapon it was excellent. As an anti aircraft weapon however they are best used up close in a dogfight and lack range and accuracy to be useful as an AD gun.

Well S-400 will definitely be available for export, and (with some downgrading) I imagine Armata will be as well.

I agree but suspect the same problems with exporting the S-400... for the next 5 years or so domestic production will be a full capacity for the local market so don't expect to get an export S-400 till 2017 and don't expect an export Armata till after 2020.

I have a feeling a lot of Armata's technology will be offered as potential upgrades with the T-90MS, which is already a top of the line MBT. Armata might just end up being to costly to purchase in small numbers unless countries like India want a significant amount of them for their military and UAZ starts cranking them out like T-34's.

Agree with that too, certain features and components might find their way to T-90 upgrades which would be available for export, though it might turn out the other way where T-90SM bits and bobs are on exported armatas initially because the original equipment is not allowed to be exported yet.

Of course that raises the other question... what exactly will they export?

The armata concept basically requires a whole family of netcentric vehicles and a C4IR system supporting its operation... now a few bits of that jigsaw puzzle might not be for sale at any price for the time being... the real question is, when the Russians are ready to export it will the customer want an Armata based tank and a Kurganets based BMP and a Boomerang-25 based BTR and a boomerang-10 based BRDM type vehicle, or will they want the full mix of heavy, medium and light brigades.

For many countries they wont want the heavy brigades as they will be expensive to buy and operate. A mix of Kurganets and Boomerang in a medium weight brigade structure might actually suit a customer best as both vehicle types are amphibious and well armoured and should be well armed with excellent optics and communications and data linking capability, as well as modern passive and active modular armour.

In some back waters a 25 ton Kurganets with the afghanistan APS that can shoot down APFSDS rounds and a powerful 125mm gun with long penetrators and advanced thermal imagers etc etc would be a match for many previous generation MBTs. In fact the Kurganets IFV with a 45mm high velocity gun would probably be a match against T-62 and early T-72 and M60 and Leopard I type vehicles.

It comes down to the targets involved.

The Coaxial MG is generally used by the gunner to engage enemy infantry. In that role a 50 or 57 cal weapon is over kill. Not only is it over kill it greatly reduces the amount of ammo you can store on board the tank.

A standard coaxial PKT MG can usually be equipped with a 2,000 round belt of ready to use ammo. Standard ammo for a HMG is generally in the 300-600 round range, and while it would be far better at penetrating cover, most of the time having 2,000 rounds ready to use is rather more useful than having 300-600.

Combat experience in several wars suggests that 30mm or 40mm grenades are actually rather more effective than 30 calibre MGs.

The exception is where the vehicle is designed to fire from a distance... for example the T-10 had 50 cal coaxial HMG and roof mounted HMG. The T-10M replaced both weapons with 14.5mm KPV HMGs.

This made sense because it was a break through tank that stood back from the front line and picked off enemy armour, with its very thick armour plus the distance from the enemy keeping it relatively safe. The HMG calibre weapons allowing it to engage targets at extended ranges effectively.

In terms of weapons I would like to see the Armata MBT equipped with a standard PKT MG as a coaxial weapon, though if there is a new replacement calibre for the 7.62 x 54mm it would be nice to use it here too. I would also like to see a 40mm auto grenade launcher in a mount that allowed elevation up to a very high angle, whether it is separate like the BMPT or coaxial with a super elevation option like Leclerc and AMX-40 doesn't both me. And for the commanders RWS on his panoramic sight a PKT simply for the ammo capacity.

In addition, according to General Chirkin, prototypes of the so-called capsular armour plating will be developed in Russia in two-three years that will significantly improve the level of protection of the crews of combat vehicles of various types. “The crew will be in a separate capsule, equipped with shock absorbers and springs. This is the second level of security,” the commander said. From the capsule, the commander explained, the crew will be able to control all types of standard weapons, without touching them with the hands.

So what they are saying is that the crew compartments in the new vehicle families will have modular armour so it can be improved and updated and also replaced readily when damaged.

The crew compartments will be sealed off from fuel storage and ammo and weapons to reduce the fire risk for the crew.