Main Battle Tanks and Armour Technology

[Damian]

T-90S interior is different than T-90MS.

 

[Kunal Biswas]

I think they did this on purpose..

 

[Damian]

Well photos of interior You provided were of standard T-90S not T-90MS. Seems that Russians do not want to reveal all upgrades inside.

 

[Kunal Biswas]

India buys anti-tank weapons of mass

After the "ominous warning" Indian Army Chief of Staff Gen. VK Singh (VK Singh) that the ground troops' lack of critical munitions to destroy enemy tanks, "the government quickly placed orders for the purchase of a large number of tank shells and missiles to equip troops stationed on the Western Front at the borders of Pakistan, reported April 12 the Indian newspaper The Economic Times. Credible sources report that concluded or are preparing contracts for the purchase of 25,000 tank guided missiles (TUR) "Invar" and 66,000 armor-piercing shells feathered (BOPS) for the T-90S tanks, and 10,000 anti-tank "Competition-M." As you know, March 12, General Singh wrote a confidential letter to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh (Manmohan Singh), which became public knowledge. In a letter to Singh called a critical situation with equipment ammunition 1.13-million-strong Indian army. Entered into two large contracts for the purchase of Tour-3UBK Invar, which are powerful anti-tank weapons with a range of 5 km. Under the first contract in Russia must be received by 10,000 rockets. The remaining 15 000 missiles will be received by the second contract from the company PSU Bharat Dynamics Ltd. The third contract is associated with the purchase of 10,000 anti-tank "Competition-M". In February 2001, India signed a contract with Russia for the supply of 310 T-90S tanks in response to Pakistan's purchase of Ukrainian T-80UD tanks and proprietary "Al-Khalid." The plant is scheduled to release in 1000 Awadi T-90S tanks. In November 2007, was awarded another contract to supply 347 tanks of this type in Russia. The factory in Avadi produced 170 T-90S, this year will be produced about 100 tanks. In addition, the Army has ordered 124 tank "Arjun" in addition to the first contract of 2004, which planned to buy the same number of combat vehicles of its own design.

Gur Khan attacks!

 

[Kunal Biswas]

What kind of AP rounds one can get from Russian, for T-90S.. ??

 

[Damian]

Different combat and practive mmunitions.

APFSDS, HEAT, HEF ammunition + GLATGM (Gun Launched Anti Tank Guided Missile).

APFSDS ammunition for 125mm smoothbore gun 2A46 and other types for example designed in Ukraine. Below Vasily Fofanov site with APFSDS ammunition list.

125MM APFSDS ROUNDS

And more here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/125_mm_smoothbore_ammunition

 

[pmaitra]

Going a bit too specific, and having that picture of Arjun's ammo storage in mind (cannot find that picture), I wonder if it is time for DRDO to consider an unmanned turret. Have a 3 member crew, all in the hull, and reduce weight of the tank by stripping some of the armour there and focusing on the protection of the hull.

 

[Godless-Kafir]

Going a bit too specific, and having that picture of Arjun's ammo storage in mind (cannot find that picture), I wonder if it is time for DRDO to consider an unmanned turret. Have a 3 member crew, all in the hull, and reduce weight of the tank by stripping some of the armour there and focusing on the protection of the hull.

I dont know why some people say auto loader is not a good idea! It is just paranoia that if it gets stuck then the crew is marooned.

If anything Arjun Mk2 would be heavier with more ERA and equipments.

 

[pmaitra]

I dont know why some people say auto loader is not a good idea! It is just paranoia that if it gets stuck then the crew is marooned.

If anything Arjun Mk2 would be heavier with more ERA and equipments.

I guess getting in and out of the tank becomes difficult if the autoloader gets stuck.

Arjun Mk2 will probably be lighter, but that is after refinements and I don't know if that takes into account ERA tiles or not.

Anyway, my point was to start thinking of an unmanned turret.

 

[Damian]

Unmanned turret on Arjun is immposible to be installed. At least not without deep hull redesign. You can however place on standard hull a low profile turret with crew in turret basket below turret race ring.

Something similiar like on Jordanian Challenger 1 with Falcon turret, or WPB Anders in light tank version. However such design have it's shortcomings, ammunition there is placed in turret bustle and due to turret width, not much ammunition can be stored there (in Polish turret that have bustle with bigger width than Jordanian Falcon, there are only 10-12 rounds).

There is also US solution, very similiar but gun and whole gun mount is mounted outside turret structure, and gun is loaded by autoloader placed inside hull (turret basket between crew stations).

These are however not real unmanned turrets.

So the only way is to develop completely new tank, or completely new turret for Arjun.

New turret might have a positive effect on vehicle protection, because less volume inside will be needed, with the same turret size and weight, it will be better armored, or turret might be smaller thus preserving current (or a bit higher) protection level with less weight.


On this video we can see how M1128 Stryker MGS low profile manned turret autoloader works and where it is placed.

 

[militarysta]

It may be interesting:

Tank engines life time, before rebuild:


AGT-1500: 700h
AGT-1500 after TIGER 1400-1500h
MB873 3000h (or 16000km)
ГТД1250 1000h
6ТД 800h
В92С2 700h

Dates for ATG-1500 are teaken from article about TIGER program, for MB873 taken from manuals , and dates for eastern engines are from otvaga2000.ru forum (thanks guys!).

 

[Damian]

Too small number of engines to be properly compared IMHO. However as it seems complains about AGT-1500C were exxagarated (as allways), the basic variant have the same livetime between repairs as V92S2 (and here we have the more "vurnabale" Gas Turbine on one side and Diesel on the other that is claimed to be less vurnable), and AGT-1500C TIGER beats also GTD-1250 and 6TD.

Do we know service life between repairs of Perkins-Condor CV12? Or newer engines like MTU MB883?

 

[militarysta]

The same in diffrent way:

 

[Damian]

Meanwhile, as it seems, freezing Lima, Ohio, Joint Systems Manufacturing Center tank production line idea might not get in to life (JSMC tank production line was planned to be freezed from 2014 to 2017/2018). US Congress recently ordered another 46 M1 tanks of older variant to be upgraded to M1A2SEP v2 variant, the most modern and advanced M1 tank variant. Contract will be finalized in 2013 or 2014, and more can be contracted in future.

At the end of 2011 US Army in all of it's active Armored Brigade Combat Teams (the Heavy Brigade Combat Teams were renamed to Armored Brigade Combat Teams this year) had ~1,547 M1A2SEP v2 tanks. So this means that overall number of M1A2SEP v2's in US Armed Forces inventory will be increased to ~1,600+ between 2012 and 2014. It might be possible that US Armed Forces will end with ~2,000+ M1A2SEP v2 tanks in nearest future, and if economic situation will be stable or will improve, more tanks might be upgraded to this variant for ARNG (that use approx ~1,000+ M1 tanks of M1A1SA and M1A2SEP v2 in it's active units) and USMC (that use ~400-410 tanks of M1A1FEP variant, USMC analog to Army/ARNG M1A1SA variant), so 100% training, spare parts, procedures, logistic commonality could be achieved within whole active part of US Armed Forces tank fleet. This would have great impact on reduction of costs during vehicles life time.

Digital Abrams: The M1A2 SEP Program

So it seems that situation is not bad. Due to withdraw of ABCT's from Iraq, and not using them in Afghanistan, and thanks to high effectiveness of repair and modernization program "oldest" M1's are only 2 ot 2,5 years old.

Also US besides planned sell of 400 older M1A1's from stocks to Greece, plans to try sell additional 100 M1A1's to Marocco. However competition there will be hard, Russians want to offer T-90S there and Chinese their VT-1A. Both offers, Russian and Chinese might be cheaper, and thus more attractive than US offer, also fact that US is not willing to sell it's most important and effective technologies like Depleted Uranium alloy armor and APFSDS ammunition, might interest Marocco to buy Russian or Chinese tank, wihout export downgrades.

 

[Kunal Biswas]

US offer, also fact that US is not willing to sell it's most important and effective technologies like Depleted Uranium alloy armor and APFSDS ammunition, might interest Marocco to buy Russian or Chinese tank, wihout export downgrades.

I doubt US ever sell any thing of Radio active ( Depleted Uranium ), Also no Ukrainian..

 

[Godless-Kafir]

Unmanned turret on Arjun is immposible to be installed. At least not without deep hull redesign. You can however place on standard hull a low profile turret with crew in turret basket below turret race ring.

Something similiar like on Jordanian Challenger 1 with Falcon turret, or WPB Anders in light tank version. However such design have it's shortcomings, ammunition there is placed in turret bustle and due to turret width, not much ammunition can be stored there (in Polish turret that have bustle with bigger width than Jordanian Falcon, there are only 10-12 rounds).

There is also US solution, very similiar but gun and whole gun mount is mounted outside turret structure, and gun is loaded by autoloader placed inside hull (turret basket between crew stations).

These are however not real unmanned turrets.

So the only way is to develop completely new tank, or completely new turret for Arjun.

New turret might have a positive effect on vehicle protection, because less volume inside will be needed, with the same turret size and weight, it will be better armored, or turret might be smaller thus preserving current (or a bit higher) protection level with less weight.


On this video we can see how M1128 Stryker MGS low profile manned turret autoloader works and where it is placed.

What is wrong with the Arjun turret anyway? You seem to find so many faults based on mere "superficial" and hollow observation based on exterior observations from pictures. I dont quite understand your hate towards arjun because you started off your loud mouthing right from day one in the forum, with NO data on the tank and judging everything wrongly based on your limited knowledge of online surfing.

How would you know on the first day? Blabbering about sights being German 80s stuff while you did not know it was an BHEL made sight and they never had stuff like GPS, Computerized fire control, Battle field management system etc.,in the 80s either. You just took one look at the tank and started judged it based on who made it. This is exactly why i dont accept any of your arguments even today after you learnt a bit about the tank, because your a superficial fellow.

The stryker can run fast for sure but it cant fire on the run at least not side ways and the ejection of used shell casings seems like such a waste when IA always tends to reuse them.

 

[Damian]

I doubt US ever sell any thing of Radio active ( Depleted Uranium ), Also no Ukrainian..

Depleted Uranium is called depleted because it's not more radioactive than radioactiveness of environment. The problem is that DU is a heavy metal, and most heavy metals are toxic.

So You can without any hazards sit on pile of depleted uranium and nothing will happen, but try to "eat" part of it, or breath DU dust and it's poisonous effects might endanger Your life.

But just the same problems are with Tungsten alloys seen as so life friendly and at... but only for short time, there were made efforts to clean Tungsten alloys from toxic materials...

But yeah, we all know, eco lunatics are against DU only because it has Uranium in name, not because they made any research to compare it against "friendly" Tungsten.

What is wrong with the Arjun turret anyway? You seem to find so many faults based on mere "superficial" and hollow observation based on exterior observations from pictures. I dont quite understand your hate towards arjun because you started off your loud mouthing right from day one in the forum, with NO data on the tank and judging everything wrongly based on your limited knowledge of online surfing. You just took one look at the tank and started judged it based on who made it. This is exactly why i dont accept any of your arguments even today after you learnt a bit about the tank, because your a superficial fellow.

I'am not sure if You even understand principles of tank designing.

As I said, with current turret eometry that is a western standard, it is nececity to not only give it good pure frontal aspect protection, but also good sides protection to increase protection within safe manouvering angles.

Safe manouvering angles principle, tells us that vehicle frontal protection is within 60-65 degrees front arc, and this means that for this frontal protection, not only purely frontal armor is responsible but also side armor.

It was discovered that side armor is very important for frontal protection and two way to solve this problem were taken.

In west side armor is made as a very thick composite armor cavity, not less than ~300mm thick. And here two schools of designing were crated, US and European.

US school preffers to place such thick composite armor over full side turret lenght, while Europan school preffers to protect by such means only crew compartment leaving turret bustle weakly ;rotected, thus turret have less weight.

Arjun turret however, designed mostly on wester ideology as base, do not have side armor designed by both western schools. There is a composite armor but placed only on less than half of turret side lenght. This means that both, crew compartment and turret bustle are not protected from sides at 30-35 to 90 degrees from turret longitudinal axis.

It means that vehicle is highly vurnable also from frontal arc hits.

Do You understand this, and for at least one time, can You stop this national pride talk, and understand that I do not hate Arjun tank, I do not hate India, but I only criticize a design, that is not design from protection point of view, within any tank designing principles?

Also problemaic is a fact that turret is very wide and have wide gun mantle mask. Thick yest but we need to understand that gun itself will weight around 2 to 3 tons and gun mantle armored mask cannot be dense and thus heavy, so we have there very wide weak zone, and probablity of hit in this place will increase.

We also have main sight placed in a cut out "window" in front armor, it means two thing. A weak zone in armor, of course there is armor cavity behind sight, but due to lack of space it will be thinner, and composite armor need high volume of itself to increase it's effectiveness.

This also makes main sight vurnable for any hits in to front armor, and these are more probable due to fact that allways, we aim in target center mass.

Main sight placed completely behind front armor and going though turret roof, increase frontal armor protection, decrease front weak zones number and size, and makes main sight less vurnable to front armor hits.

It have also other benefit, FCS and main sight components, that are mostly very big, placed completly behind armor, adds additional layer of protection, especially against spall, projectile and armor fragments, we can say that they act then somewhat like spall liner.


So this is not a hate speech, it only You that for some reason, national pride and such thing, can't accept such argumentation, or tank designing principles, made in different countries and based on their greater experience in tank combat and tank designing.

The stryker can run fast for sure but it cant fire on the run at least not side ways and the ejection of used shell casings seems like such a waste when IA always tends to reuse them.

Stryker can fire moving and with turret facing any direction.


As for spent casings, there is no need and also space to store them inside. Overall solid, metal casings are thing of the past in fact. Semi combustible casings are better in that regard, however for 105mm rifled gun, it seems nobody ever bothered to design semi combustible casings.

 

[Kunal Biswas]

Depleted Uranium is called depleted because it's not more radioactive than radioactiveness of environment. The problem is that DU is a heavy metal, and most heavy metals are toxic.

So You can without any hazards sit on pile of depleted uranium and nothing will happen, but try to "eat" part of it, or breath DU dust and it's poisonous effects might endanger Your life.

But just the same problems are with Tungsten alloys seen as so life friendly and at... but only for short time, there were made efforts to clean Tungsten alloys from toxic materials...

But yeah, we all know, eco lunatics are against DU only because it has Uranium in name, not because they made any research to compare it against "friendly" Tungsten.

DU effects are dangerous:

Verified adverse health effects from personal experience, physicians, and from personal reports from individuals with known DU exposures include: (a) Reactive airway disease,
(b) neurological abnormalities,
(c) kidney stones and chronic kidney pain,
(d) rashes,
(e) vision degradation and night vision losses,
(f) gum tissue problems,
(g) lymphoma,
(h) various forms of skin and organ cancer,
(I) neuro-psychological disorders,
(j) uranium in semen,
(k) sexual dysfunction, and
(l) birth defects in offspring.

DEPLETED URANIUM: USES AND HAZARDS

 

[Damian]

DU effects are dangerous:

Yes they are, as allways when we have a contact with highly toxic materials.

It is also a fact that tungsten alloys are also toxic, only recently there were made efforts to reduce number of toxic materials in tungsten alloys.

It is just typical "radioactivity" histeria story, and DU is it's victim only because it have Uranium in it's name.

 

[pmaitra]

That's what I thought about DU, because it is depleted; but then reports crop up that scare people.