Russian armour development.

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Herald12345 Editted as I thought of even more somethings in addition. 6/10/2008 4:34:05 PM

Before to go back on the topic , allow me to correct some mistakes :

You correct mistakes? That is a laugh .

Herald , the Leclerc has indeed 2 heavy machine-guns on the front turret : the 12.7mm coax on top of the main (the big fu**er) gun and a 7.62mm (which you take for an optical device (?) lol !)

Look at that , please :
h*tp://img359.imageshack.us/img359/3184/leclercemiratiarmyrecogbv0.jpg

That tube on top of the barrel is a boresighted SENSOR.

See the ONE coax machine gun above the driver's hatch, amateur?

The coax is the tube with the rubber dust sleeve sticking out of the mantlet, above the driver's hatch. The bore sight sensor [a droop sensor, and a PRIMITIVE one at that] is that box with the knobby bits that sits on the cannon barrel with the thing that l0ooks like a telescope [which is an OPTICAL sensor measuring device] where you'd expect it to be.

You see the 2 heavy MGs plus the remote controled one on the turret . That is 3 machine-guns controled from the inside when most of the others Tanks have only 1 (some have 2) . As I said , the bastards on the rooftop , they 'll better duck .

The remote station looks like a simple sluw elevate with no camera present that is aligned and bore sighted with the small machine gun. How are you supposed to aim the thing?.

In France , we do like big machine-guns or even a 20mm cannon as a coax (!) . Yes we do .

ROTFLMFAOATPDB. There is no 20 mm cannon on the Lecluck.

Please , look at that AMX-30 from the French 6th Light Armored Division during Desert Storm (GW1)
h*tp://www.inetres.com/gp/military/cv/tank/AMX-30/AMX-30_00.jpg

The AMX-30 was designed to fire a HEAT round as it main gun round. The 20 mm coax was a desperate attempt to conserve main gun rounds for antitank work instead of using those roundsa on soft skinned transport. It was a technical failure as a tank as the anti-infantry purpose of the coax machine gun FAILED. 20 mm was overkill. Even 12.7 mm in the Lecluck is overkill as the infantry can be mowed down with a 7.62 mm. Reason? Ammunition load. 1100 rounds goes much further and is easier to load than 200 rounds and is more murder efficient as an engineering solution against the expected target sets-including trucks

I suggest that you actually stop pretending and making stuff up.

Yep , a 20mm cannon as a coax : beat that ...

I just did.beat that.......with the TRUTH.

And in case you don 't know , the Leclerc AZUR is our response to urban warfare :
A full page about it there :
h*tp://engins-blindes-francais.wifeo.com/leclerc-azur-.php

I'll have something to say about all that add-on armor in a moment, but for a brief commen, that sure is a lot of desperate add-on applique to try to match either an American or British TUSK. I wonder WHY?

""The visible additions of the Leclerc include appliqué side panels and

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Herald12345 6/10/2008 6:06:51 PM

Herald,

The British do use those additional tanks, but apparently not in combat. Since there's a great deal more footage of Challenger 2 in combat situations, it's only natural that the CR2 is more commonly seen without the drums. Apart from anything else they get in the way of fitting the rear bar armour.

For road march. Not for maneuver, right?

Anyway, its a nitpick that I pick at BW about because he thinks its important. Like fording a river he doesn't understand the WHY of it or much about anything else he tries to post.

The concept of a 20mm coax isn't new. IIRC, the early LeClerc was intended to mount a 20mm cannon, but that was eschewed in favour of a 12.7mm gun, presumably in order to get more ammo ready to go. If you look at coaxial weapons usage, then it's almost always used for "Brassing up" targets, basically suppressive fire, so number of rounds and sustained rate of fire is more important than range (coax mounts are usually as good as a SF mount, so that's good for a mile)

Brassing up, or delousing the landscape of infantry pests as you move cross country is what makes the coax an ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL machine gun choice for the tank; as the friendly infantry cannot operate to the immediate front of a tank for the very obvious main gun overpressure danger close zones. An auto-cannon is murder INEFFICIENT against the enemy target threat set [AT hunting parties]. You need to spray likely cover as well as seen enemy. That requires a LOT of ammunition.

I would think that our "expert" would know this.

Once again FK. I emphasize I AM NOT an armor expert. Someone like Mike Golf would see at least one minor error I made that I just noticed. But where in this discussion has our "expert" even made ONE credible comment that hye can prove?

Herald

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afrikan_neekeri 10/28/2008 11:04:41 AM

FJV , that 's a good post .

""Maybe
for armor something similar to the Japanese sword would be beneficial,
a hard , brittle outer layer, backed up with a though resiliant inner
core.""

There are 2 shools :
- be strong first then swallow the remainings
- weaken and slowdown first then deal with it

Is my english good enough for you to understand what I mean ?
If it is , good :-)

Both methods works if you know what you 're doing . There is no winner , no "better" way , both works equally .
To archive the best method or the best compromise , one has to think real hard . You also have to take into consideration the weight , the size , the cost , the feasibility , the maintenance and the will to deploy such expensive material (it has to be).
All of this to say that in my opinion , the French and the German did get it right . When you take a closer look at the Leclerc T-10 and the Leopard 2A5 (as they are now) , they are almost impervious to enemy tank fire , whoever they are .
You can 't penetrate it from the front (or on the side turret for the Leclerc) and the tank can fire back at you twice faster than you can while making 50km/h over terrain . I 'm not bragging here , just telling as is it known already .

The T-90 as it is now (the most exiting possible foe !) is capable to face the European tanks because the bugger is not someone to lecture . It has a very good mobility and a FCS to go with , an excellent protection and active systems and some very good ammo .

Cheers .

You are right about Leclerc's and Leo's ability to withstand APFSDS rounds. Based on what I have heard (and I cannot guarantee any information I post here is 100% accurate because I'm not some high-ranking NATO official nor do I work for GIAT or Krauss-Maffei), the Leo 2A1 performed better against APFSDS than the M1. M1 armour was equally better against HEAT. This goes together from what I've heard from tankers and AT missile crews. They say that the side/rear armour of a Leopard 2A4 is much more vulnerable to any shaped charges than the M1. They also told me that a T-80 or T-90 covered in ERA is the worst AT-crew nightmare.

The experiences in Gulf war and operation Iraqi freedom don't contradict this. I don't think the Iraqis were firing the latest APFSDS at the M1s. They have performed outstandingly against various AT-missiles and HEAT rounds. Everyone knows that these weren't the latest nor the most powerful weapons and they were wielded by very inexperienced and poorly trained crews. But the sheer number of M1s deployed in Iraq compared to those who have been destroyed in combat speaks for itself.

But back to the topic. I think the current Russian development is the most cost-effective in the world if the trends in warfare don't change. They aren't even trying to maintain evrything what's left of their huge cold war tank fleet. T90s and 80s are relatively few in numbers and it has been estimated that about a third of the rest of the tanks are kept in service. Reactive armour is relatively cheap and probably the most effective means after ARENA of ATGM protection. And ARENA costs much less than a Hellfire missile and a slab of ERA costs much less than a portable ATGM.

It's most likely that the future Russian combat scenarios are in environments like Chechnya or Georgia => urban, mountains, hills=not good tank terrain. In such environments a T-72 with the most modern ERA modules on it is just as effective as a T-90 with the same ERA. You don't need all the most sophisticated fire-on-the-move-systems or the latest APFSDS rounds to take out a building or a guy with an RPG-7. If you watched the news footage from Georgia, I'm sure you noticed that the tanks on both sides were old as Lenin.

As Bluewings12 said, modular armour FTW! If an ATGM or RPG-29 or similar makes nasty hole/crack in the armour of Challenger2, Leo2, or M1, the whole turret/hull has to be replaced=> very expen$ive! In the same situation the crew of the Russian tank, which is covered in era and other various Gizmos so that it looks like it has been mostly glued together, takes it easy and drives to the ERA-shop, buys a new piece for 3 rubles, takes a sip from the vodka bottle, replaces the ERA piece, pours the rest of the vodka in th

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afrikan_neekeri 10/28/2008 11:34:11 AM

Actually what you and Herlad are both saying makes sense. In the strategic view the Russians would use thousands and thousands of tanks in an assault, because they had so many, their armour needed to be just enough to ensure enough broke through the defensive lines, and as Herald said it is down to survivability statistics, the more tanks you have the less armour you can afford to put on them and still ensure mission success. This also works economically as it lowers to cost of each tank to the point you can afford to make thousands and thousands of them. The whole point of armour is to give a unit survivability on the battlefield, for the Russians survivability was also in numbers.

Now to what you said Blue about the Russian adoption of hard kill systems, as Russian tanks were designed as assault units, for use against soft targets and defensive infantry positions, so the biggest threat they would face would be anti tank missiles, which use HEAT warheads, which ERA can account for, and with the deployment of more lethal warheads like sabots and tandem HEATs, destroying the missile before it hits the tank becomes more desireable, enter the active protection systems.

Were you talking about the Soviet Union? The only country in the world today that can quickly deploy thousands of modern MBTs for offense is the United States of America.

And a large-scale assault scenario where Russian tanks would be used against NATO tanks isn't even relevant. 20 years ago there was nothing between West Germany and Soviet troops. Now there are the Baltic countries or alternatively Belarus or Ukraine and Poland standing between Russia and Germany. None of these countries have a good relationship with Russia.

And NATO attacking Russia...That would be just retarded.

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afrikan_neekeri 10/28/2008 12:33:36 PM

A modest suggestion - could the Russians work on modular appliques (passive or active) because they are not confident in their quality control? Easier to swap out a bad Arena or Kaktus (sp?) than an entire tank hull with one gaping fault in the front plate. And I think it is no stereotype to say the Russians are not over their manufacturing problems.

If you can't produce quality plate and chain, crank out lots of scale or ring mail and hope for the best.

The build quality of Russian tanks is definitely not on par with the NATO tanks. However, they don't have gaping faults in their tanks. Come on, it's a cast turret and a simple hull. You'd need tons of epic failure to end up with a non-homogenous result. And if a part is of bad quality, it's not used to build a tank.

The main reason why modular armour is so good is that tanks tend to get shot once in a while. And when sandblasting/new paint is usually good for anything below 20mm, it's hard to repair a solid turret/hull that has had suffered extensive damage. I'm not privy to secrets of how they repair Challengers and M1s coming from Iraq but I can imagine it's very hard work.

I don't know if it's even possible to replace single ceramic tiles of Chobham armour. My picture is that they bake the silicon carbide ceramic tiles in an oven with epoxy and then they reinforce the whole thing with metal alloys and kevlar to form larger tiles before they even put them in place and apply the outermost layers of armour.

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HERALD1357 12/21/2008 8:53:59 AM

Errant nonsense. CREF previous posts above for about how armor actually physically works..

Herald

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