[Official] Armata Discussion thread #6

GarryB wrote:With the new airburst 23mm cannon shells wouldn't it be interesting in 23x152mm calibre.

Of course the twin barrel 23mm 23x115mm cannons could replace high muzzle velocity with enormous rate of fire and more compact ammo for larger ammo capacity.

It is. But a 30mm autocannon mount with a 300 round belt is already very light and compact. The projectiles are also easily twice heavier with better effects on target, especially with more advanced fuzing and guidance options.

GarryB wrote:There was a video with Putin visiting a factory making tanks where it was mentioned that Arena-M was being fitted to new tanks as standard and that it had been modified to deal with drone threats as well as diving top attack threats like Javelin.

Every Russian MBT that comes off the production line is also fitted with very extensive reactive and passive ballistic armor modules on all sides making them very hard to destroy from every aspect. Adoption of Arena-M would allow Russian MBTs to shed all that heavy additional armor while maintaining the impressive protection levels, at the same time regaining their previous level of mobility, which is going to be more of a requirement when facing opponents with intact mechanization.

GarryB wrote:Many people look at old IR guided missiles seekers that see hot spots only and compare with the much better image of the thermal imager and think Javelin can see as good as we can, but Javelin is just a machine... when we see a thermal image of a tank with men standing next to it we can see the shape of the tank and know what it is and see the men. The Javelins guidance system just sees patterns it might or might not recognise... a moving vehicle is easier to spot because the pattern is moving as a "group" and the group can be identified as a separate thing, but in a built up area when launched up into the air and then diving down on the target a Javelin might see lots of hotspots in its field of view, as well as windows and reflections... any of which could be a tank.

More importantly the machine is also no better than the man who wields it. The propaganda is impressive, but at the end of the day the Javelin and all other advanced western ATGMs are simply too advanced for the simple infantry while their insane expense precludes effective training even for the select few who wield them.

GarryB wrote:I dare say T-14 will also carry a laser dazzler and EO system to deal with cameras of all types (day or IR). A drone that can't see is unlikely to hit.

The T-14 has a new powerplant with significant reserves to power all the self-defense EW you will need plus the turret is about as modular as you can get. It will have an electronic protection only rivaled by more expensive attack helicopters which is why its going to be a nightmare for high tech mechanized forces that rely so much on sensors to detect and engage their targets.

ALAMO wrote:One of the solutions applied early in the war was attaching a log behind the tank, with a hanging bin filled with burning wood.
It worked just fine against the "superior smart Javelin".
Well, calling it this way they must have taken a "smartness" level of a regular Murican Laughing

The other observation was that Javelin is notorious for targeting gun barrels, being hot after a few shots.

A dazzler in Pilin style will minimize the risk of this type of weaponry for sure.

Tools are a reflection of the men who made them. That Javelin is expensive E-waste when confronted by actual battlefield conditions is just pure pottery because NATO troops are exactly that - overpaid, sensitive ballerinas who can only perform against dirt farmers.

The-thing-next-door wrote:In regards to the T-15 armour If the powerpack and colling system you could fit in 2m or more of composite on the upper 1/3rd of the hull front, though I would imagine there would also be additional composted crammed into the engine compartment to make it immune to large autocannon and RPG analogues.

Its already immune against autocannon fire and shoulder-fired RPGs. The heavy ERA is not for show.

The-thing-next-door wrote:In regards to the gun length, I was hoping for longer but atleast it is still longer than the German 130.

If you can help it, longer is not better. You make your gun longer to extract as much work out of the expanding hot propellant gas but you run into maneuverability problems in tight spaces as well as turret and gun balancing issues that need expensive batteries of tests to fix.

lyle6 wrote:
Its already immune against autocannon fire and shoulder-fired RPGs. The heavy ERA is not for show.

Regarding autocannon, I would not want to rely on ERA against them.

Regarding shaped charges, why not make it immune to Kornets?

You also ideally want most hits to not penetrate the engine compartment as that results in a loss of the vehicle, That should only be possible for the best anti tank weapons the enemy has. So the front ERA and armour infront of the engine compartment should stop most ATGMs and most 120mm rounds, while the sum of all frontal armour should stop potential improved 130/140mm rounds.

Especially if the commander's RWS mutates into a dedicated anti-aircraft weapon station to deal with drones and low flying aircraft.

This original comment by Lyle got me thinking... the KS-23 is a 23mm calibre shotgun and it was designed because they had some faulty 23mm cannon barrels so they chopped them up into shotgun length pieces and bored a chamber in one end to make 23mm calibre shotguns.

Now shotguns are not normally metric and the way the gauge system works is based on one pound of lead.

A 12 gauge shotgun can be determined by dividing one pound of lead into 12 evenly sized spheres lead.

The result is a calibre of about 18.5mm and interestingly enough 8 gauge works out to be 23mm, so by making 8 gauge shot gun shells you can load them into a 23mm gun and fire them if the chamber system allows of course.


The purpose of the 8 gauge KS-23 is pretty much as an anti riot shot gun for disabling vehicles and penetrating light barricades so I was thinking an 8 bore shotgun would not need a long barrel or enormous space for ammo (though the ammo isn't tiny). It is designed to be used at short range and would be excellent against relatively soft targets in the vicinity of the tank.

The problem of course is that it would lack long range performance or performance against armoured targets but the US is investigating a 12 gauge shot gun grenade launcher combination to replace their failed 20mm grenade launcher system, and I thought that using standard calibres made sense but to get a decent grenade a 23mm grenade launcher for Russia could use existing 23mm cannon projectiles including the new air burst HE rounds.

The cool think about shotgun rounds is that there is no limit on shell case length.

Standard 12 gauge shells are 2 and three quarters of an inch long, but new shells of 3 inch and even three and a half inch have been developed for shotguns with stronger barrels and mechanisms.

I would say the 23mm cannon barrels are already proofed to relatively high pressures anyway.

The thing is that with shotgun calibres they are reverse compatible so a 3 and one half inch 12 gauge shotgun can fire 2 and three quarter and 3 inch shells too, so an 8 gauge 23mm calibre shotgun with a four inch shell case could handle shorter rounds without problem and a four inch shell case would provide not only plenty of space for HE rounds and shot based rounds but also 23mm cannon projectiles... and perhaps even APFSDS rounds for use against close in threats of men wearing body armour... so a bundle of flechettes in each shot that spread out in a shotgun blast at close range to shred a target.

In such a case do you want a short barrel or a long barrel or make a hybrid that can use different chambers for high velocity 23 x 152mm or medium velocity 23x115mm or a shotgun 23 x 102mm (about four inches).

Or do you go for a short barreled high speed RWS designed to fire bursts of 8 gauge rounds that can be mounted on a range of mounts.

The 30mm cannon mounts are very compact but do you want it to be a replacement for the Kord or do you want it to be a supplement for the 125mm gun?

If you want a replacement for the Kord you might end up distracting your tank commander into becoming an air defence vehicle or Terminator type platform.

If you mount the gun on the rear turret bustle but limit it to elevation only meaning the gunner would be using it to engage targets delegated by the commander for targets like aircraft or drones or in tall buildings or up the sides of hills that the 125mm gun can't reach then a 30mm cannon with a rather large amount of ready to fire ammo makes a lot of sense, but if you want the commander to operate it I would say a twin barrel 23mm cannon might make more sense as a replacement for the Kord... the Ammo is similar sized... 23 x 115mm is not hugely different from 12.7x108mm, but the 3500 rpm and HE projectiles which could include Air burst rounds if you wanted them would make it rather devastating.

If you can help it, longer is not better. You make your gun longer to extract as much work out of the expanding hot propellant gas but you run into maneuverability problems in tight spaces as well as turret and gun balancing issues that need expensive batteries of tests to fix.

War Thunder players don't understand how many tank barrels they would go through (broken and bent) if the modelling was done accurately with buildings and rocks getting in the way of tank barrels.

In the real world those barrels wouldn't just phase through the building which remains standing as concealment and often cover for rounds in actual fact would in real life offer no protection for at all.

Regarding shaped charges, why not make it immune to Kornets?

With APS it probably is...

You also ideally want most hits to not penetrate the engine compartment as that results in a loss of the vehicle, That should only be possible for the best anti tank weapons the enemy has. So the front ERA and armour infront of the engine compartment should stop most ATGMs and most 120mm rounds, while the sum of all frontal armour should stop potential improved 130/140mm rounds.

All true, except in real combat you don't always know the direction the fire is coming from so standing holding a shield is nice but traditionally you need large groups of men with shields all locked together to protect you from arrows and other such things and even then a crafty enemy will launch burning arrows to land on top of the group of men with the hedgehog of shields. They are protected when standing together with locked shields but burning material coming down through the gaps in their shields tends to make them want to disperse... ruining the effect of concentrated armour.

If you make a tank invincible from the front everyone is just going to attack from a different direction... so it is not the achievement it appears... especially when it means you have 75 ton tanks as a result.

The-thing-next-door wrote:
Regarding autocannon, I would not want to rely on ERA against them.

In response to more complex subcaliber and cumulative warhead designs with precursor tips/stages, Heavy ERA evolved thicker face plates to protect the reactive element inside. Coincidentally this makes heavy ERA significantly harder to destroy with AP autocannon fire...

The-thing-next-door wrote:
Regarding shaped charges, why not make it immune to Kornets?

Probably because the Kornet is a very tricky missile to defend against.

The-thing-next-door wrote:
You also ideally want most hits to not penetrate the engine compartment as that results in a loss of the vehicle, That should only be possible for the best anti tank weapons the enemy has. So the front ERA and armour infront of the engine compartment should stop most ATGMs and most 120mm rounds, while the sum of all frontal armour should stop potential improved 130/140mm rounds.

Balancing issues. The T-14 HIFV is nose heavy as it is. You have the front armor and the heavy powerpack at the with only the turret to balance it at the rear. If you add more armor to the front you have to add more stuff at the rear to balance it out. But since the powerpack also makes for excellent spaced armor you don't really need to go through all that just to provide adequate protection for the crew.

And that is the key. An IFV seats 12 people - crew and passenger protection is the priority, not system protection.

lyle6 wrote:
In response to more complex subcaliber and cumulative warhead designs with precursor tips/stages, Heavy ERA evolved thicker face plates to protect the reactive element inside. Coincidentally this makes heavy ERA significantly harder to destroy with AP autocannon fire...

My point was that you would not want to rely on ERA for protection of the engine compartment against autocannon when you consider that it will liekly be hit dozens of times before the ERA can be replaced. You would not want to rely on NERA either as that delaminates when hit. One should ideally include enough passive elements to stop atleast 35-40mm apfsds.

Probably because the Kornet is a very tricky missile to defend against.  

This is not the 1910's, rather few threats to armour are easily stopped, that does not however mean that they are worth trying to stop.

Balancing issues. The T-14 HIFV is nose heavy as it is. You have the front armor and the heavy powerpack at the with only the turret to balance it at the rear. If you add more armor to the front you have to add more stuff at the rear to balance it out. But since the powerpack also makes for excellent spaced armor you don't really need to go through all that just to provide adequate protection for the crew.


And that is the key. An IFV seats 12 people - crew and passenger protection is the priority, not system protection.

These vehicles are very expensive and valuable on the battlefield, one would hope that they would continue to function after a hit from a mere 120mm tank gun. Balancing is an issue, but not an insurmountable one. One could only fit a sizeable composite array into the upper third of the T-15 infront of the engine compartment, hence it would not be particularly heavy unless an extremely dense array is used.

Protecting the engine against such threats is not as important as protecting it against autocannon and infantry anti tank weapons, but if you can you should.

I remember looking at drawings of the Object 299 tank variant and it seemed to have very thin armour everywhere, especially at the front, though that drawing also depicted a thin cast turret of only 400-500mm thickness behind which was the ammunition, needless to say any hit would likely be a mission kill.

Here is that image.


The lower 2/3 of the hull appears to have no more than 30cm of total armour array LOS.

What I am suggesting would be the optimal armour array layout and what I think the designers would have done. (armour arrays would in this case be the within the blue shapes)

Solid metal would not be so effective and would be very very heavy.

Having said that composite armour arrays in those blue areas don't need to be super heavy but could give protection from a range of threats with layers of various materials and even air pockets to stop penetrations.

The-thing-next-door wrote:My point was that you would not want to rely on ERA for protection of the engine compartment against autocannon when you consider that it will liekly be hit dozens of times before the ERA can be replaced. You would not want to rely on NERA either as that delaminates when hit. One should ideally include enough passive elements to stop atleast 35-40mm apfsds.

A misconception but autocannons are not nearly as precise to hit small targets like a single ERA block repeatedly. Its the barrel whip. There is not nearly enough time for the barrel to stabilize before a projectile is pushed through its length again.

The-thing-next-door wrote:

What I am suggesting would be the optimal armour array layout and what I think the designers would have done. (armour arrays would in this case be the within the blue shapes)

The empty space in the engine compartment is for the air intake and exhaust...

The-thing-next-door wrote:These vehicles are very expensive and valuable on the battlefield, one would hope that they would continue to function after a hit from a mere 120mm tank gun. Balancing is an issue, but not an insurmountable one. One could only fit a sizeable composite array into the upper third of the T-15 infront of the engine compartment, hence it would not be particularly heavy unless an extremely dense array is used.

Handwaving that problem away, the T-15 still has substantially more internal volume to protect than the T-14. You are not going to match the protection of the dedicated MBT design without resorting to tricks like using the powerpack as additional armor.

lyle6 wrote:
The empty space in the engine compartment is for the air intake and exhaust...

The air intake and exhaust likely go in the sponsons above the tracks, they do not need to take up as much volume as the engine itself.

Empty spaces between different layers of protection are a good thing against hollow charges.

The-thing-next-door wrote:
The air intake and exhaust likely go in the sponsons above the tracks, they do not need to take up as much volume as the engine itself.

Same powerpack as the rear engined MBT model.

from this angle you can see the faceted contours for radar stealth

Might these 2x T-14 be in the Ukraine theatre and allocated to SMO?

Already in Delaware. 

It seems that the production version has thicker frontal hull armor or ERA, and the contours and fit and finish are tighter, you can see the area between the side ERA and hull side being faceted instead of having a gap over there, indicating they are pretty serious about RCS reduction if they're caring about such details

The west is very air power focussed so a lot of their information about the battlefield comes from airborne radar on various types of aircraft.

Even the MMW radar homing version of Hellfire and Brimstone would have problems against stealthy targets I suspect.

The material will also be designed to be difficult to see in IR as well.

GarryB wrote:The west is very air power focussed so a lot of their information about the battlefield comes from airborne radar on various types of aircraft.

Even the MMW radar homing version of Hellfire and Brimstone would have problems against stealthy targets I suspect.

The material will also be designed to be difficult to see in IR as well.

Yeah, there are IR supressing panels inside the compartments, the heat generating parts are buried deep into the tank, there are heat shields around the exhaust and a cold air pump over it too, as well as an external IR supressing coating like nakidka but better since it is like 30 years newer

Atmosphere wrote:
It seems that the production version has thicker frontal hull armor or ERA, and the contours and fit and finish are tighter, you can see the area between the side ERA and hull side being faceted instead of having a gap over there, indicating they are pretty serious about RCS reduction if they're caring about such details

Future T-14Ms will probably have ERA installed on every available surface, the turret most especially, with possible provisions for mounting cage structures. The FPV genie is out of the bottle and I just don't see any MBT surviving without some sort of a 360 degree protection in its design emphasis...

I think menace from FPV drones may come up to the point to have (purposely built)Tsars-tank comparable outfits added.
I mean something leaving more firing spaces and/or being foldable/jettisoning at will.

I suspect ARENA type APS systems with munitions around the turret would be adapted and expanded to carry rather more munitions... the enormous advantage of ARENA and DROZD is that they are simple and operate over fixed lines of fire.

ARENA and DROZD munitions are like layers of claymore mines positioned to intercept threats over a fixed line of advance. The detonation speed and direction are known so when a threat is detected approaching the suitable mine is fired at the time the target is in range and vulnerable to that munition. The massive overlap of the munitions means if that particular munition has been fired then a munition either side can be fired instead and still cover that approach vector.

Having multiple layers of interceptors would mean coverage from repeat attacks without the complex calculations and mechanical steering of an aimed system to shoot down threats, though a 23mm shotgun weapon would be rather interesting in the role of short range anti drone defence, anti slower missile defence and anti personnel weapon if your tank gets rushed by infantry on foot.

The solution will require a combination of solutions from EW jamming to laser blinding systems to lasers that actually shoot down the target but blinding it so it misses can be just as useful and of course aiming a laser can be as simple and moving a mirror to direct the beam. Smoke and camouflage so the drones or missiles never spot the vehicle in the first place is another layer and of course directed EMP weapons as well as APS hard kill and ERA soft kill systems to prevent them from being effective.

The simple light FPV drones that carry tiny payloads can be effective if they fly into an open hatch or drop a grenade into an open hatch. but mesh screens can stop those...

It is the usual case of measure and counter measure in the ongoing battle to design military equipment and this experience will be rather more valuable for the Russians than for the west, for which it will mostly just be a real shock.

Russia finally figured out what a real Amarta future tank should look like...

lyle6: Oh, Noooooooooo.
marcellogo: Oh, Yessssssss.

HAHAHAHAHAHA...

Looks like the Swedes were onto something decades ago without even knowing it!

Mir wrote:Looks like the Swedes were onto something decades ago without even knowing it!

Strv-105 design only deserves the higher of praises anyway.

Sorry that they haven't tried to come with a successor.