Main Battle Tanks and Armour Technology

[Damian]

A simple video without any comment will do more bad than good. He can just read my posts here, and I can recommend some good books.

 

[Galaxy]

Russia sticks to all the agreements with India on the T-90 tanks

Russia sticks to all the agreements with India on the T-90 tanks

November 29, 2011

The Russian side expressed perplexity at the Indian media allegations that Russia had refused to grant India the modern technologies for the production of T-90 tanks and spare parts for them, a source close to the Russian military-industrial complex, told RIA Novosti.

"The Russian side promptly and fully follows all the agreements with India concerning the licensed production of T-90 tanks, including those relating to the supply of components and the transfer of technical documentation," - said the source.

Earlier, "Business Standard" claimed that Russia refused to provide India with modern technologies required for the production of T-90 tanks at Indian factories and constantly delayed delivery of parts. According to the publication, this has led to the fact that, instead of the expected one thousand tanks, India produced only 150, having a negative impact on the Indian defense sector.

"It's hard to say why such publications suddenly appeared. The cooperation between Moscow and New Delhi in the military-technical sphere is regulated by intergovernmental agreements and monitored by the Intergovernmental Commission on Military-Technical Cooperation. It is also regularly monitored at the meetings of the corresponding subgroups within the Intergovernmental Commission. And if there are any questions, they are quickly solved, "- said the source.

According to several sources close to the Russian Embassy in India, the appearance of such articles may be regarded as an attempt to make Russia responsible for the difficulties with the development of the licensed production of modern military equipment in India. The sources believe that the new publication in the "Business Standard" confirms the suspicions that a number of Indian companies can not cope with the order for T-90 tanks and delay its implementation.

The agreement for the licensed production of Russian tanks T-90 in India was signed in 2001. T-90 tanks are produced at a factory in the city of Avadi, in Tamil Nadu.

Russia sticks to all the agreements with India on the T-90 tanks | Russia & India Report

 

[Austin]

Thats as far as a hate article can take Shukla , The problem is neither Indian MOD nor the Russian concern can every time come out with statements denying all that is written in the media and in such vacuum such article written by Shukla can take a life of its own.

I wasnt expecting but surprised that Rian came with a refutal from Russian sources , Hope Shukla learns to write a balanced article on all subjects taking all views into consideration , Two extremes wont take him too far professionally.

 

[Austin]

He believes the F-35 costs $65million and even Lockheed Officials have said this price does not include engine and that this cost will be reached after the 3k odd F-35s are manufactured.

All i can think of is he likes the JSF ( which I do as well ) but since he is no ordinary blogger but writes is a recogonised Journalist writing for a main stream indian news paper , he should be careful with his facts.

If you did not know he once quoted Prasun Sen Gupta in one of his articles on the T-90. You may remember his articles on all the blown up T-72s.

The irony is he had commanded a T-72 formation in the Indian Army for like 7 years , Its difficult to wonder how he had kept his men motivated or his own views on the tanks.

May be he can rejoin the armoured corp and take care of Arjun regiment that would keep him happy and yes a JSF in VTOL configuration to pick and drop him every day

 

[nitesh]

Oh! Gee! Oh! Gee! Oh! Gee! I have posted this before and I am posting it again.

This is from PIB.
Press Information Bureau English Releases

The Russian side had signed a contract for transfer by 2008.

I had posted 2 articles from the Hindu which claimed the same at 4 different times in both tank threads. It even carried direct quotes from OFB. If you have the patience to look for them then please go right ahead.

Thx for the info, but your info also says that, the armor plate hasn't been received, so even after paying it has not been transferred. Also the link never says that the agreement has been signed in 2008, that is your interpretation.

You have to be clear in what you want. From 15th Aug, 1947 to 29th Nov, 2011 Soviet Union and then Russia has never sanctioned India while Europe has sanctioned India at least 5 different times along with creating treaties which directly affect us like the NPT and MTCR.[/QUOTE}
Unnecessary twisting of arguments, by this logic we should not at all go with anything related to Europe at all, but your views are different at different places, try to be consistent.

 

[nitesh]

You have to look at all his work on T-90 and not just this one , he has a history.

TI sights are no more a problem , I think i even saw a recent statement from Army on this. Ofcourse Tehelka will recycle it after 2 years and will show how bad the TI problem is , some times i really wonder who are these people working for when Arjun used to get a bad name in press ( most of times unjustified ) we used to blame the phoren lobby , indian army and what not ..... now with the string of malcious article against T-90 who are we suppose to blame now ?

If t1 sights work, then why the tender has been floated for AC's? In Arjun sights work without AC's so according to you the issue has been sorted out now in T 90 also. But still the fact remains that a non functional machine has been bought in, and kept getting the order without even problems getting sorted out.

You have to just look at MOD press statement of past decade ( its all on their website ) when ever there was a problem MOD has acknowledge it and praised the Arjun and T-90 when ever it deserved.

Well, you are right here. But the fact remains that Arjun has been kicked around unnecessarily, whereas T 90 has been treated with kid gloves at least in terms of orders.

BTW forget the T-90 or Arjun , his ability to look at JSF development program and analyse it based on facts presented by Lockheed Congress Reports Pentagon reports , open source information and present a well balance write up is simply beyond him , all he keep harping is Lockheed told me so and I know what they told me are all facts and my own analysis on JSF proves the same.

Alll he has to do at the least is to look at website of AW&ST , you would find many reliable information on JSF development both its pluses and challenges.

A good reporter would present facts from all sides and let its reader decide based on it but Shukla just present his final analysis and depending on if he hates it or likes it its outcome is already know.

Expect him to come with more facts on T-90

This is again an attempt to divert form the topic dada, let's desist from this

 

[Austin]

If t1 sights work, then why the tender has been floated for AC's? In Arjun sights work without AC's so according to you the issue has been sorted out now in T 90 also. But still the fact remains that a non functional machine has been bought in, and kept getting the order without even problems getting sorted out.

The AC issue is an interesting thing , All T-90 AFAIK comes with AC , even the Algerian T-90S are seen with AC and they have been tested in desert as part of trials.

It seems some one in the Indian Army General Staff thought it was not man enough to drive a tank with AC , After all they have been doing that for years. So AC was not part of the deal then.

Now may be they have changed their views and perhaps after Arjun experience they though having an AC is good for crew. What ever it is they should have an AC in there for all tanks considering the major area of Tank Warfare is on our west and when it gets hot there it really gets hot.

I dont think right now equipment in there needs AC , else they would have seen many major failures by now.... TI used to break down in extreme heat but it was few and far in between and an exception not the norm but it has been rectified. But if they do get an AC inside the equipment may work better , most certainly the human manning the machine would do so.

Its like this i have a high end desktop machine at home and I dont have or use an AC , the machine works well and i use it 24 hours or more continuously , sometimes the fan works faster if the machine heats up or it slows down and ofcourse I sweat out if its hot but the machine never shuts off ever due to over heating ..... ofcourse if I had an AC i would definately work better without sweating which mean more productivity and with less effort and the fan would have to work that much less harder and CPU will remain lot less cooler.

Well, you are right here. But the fact remains that Arjun has been kicked around unnecessarily, whereas T 90 has been treated with kid gloves at least in terms of orders.

To some extent it is true , Arjun project could have been better handled from all sides ...specially the Army.

Although personally I think maintaining two different tanks which has little common between them is not a great idea but in Indian armed forces in general thats a norm not an exception..... i doubt any purchase we did ever had logistics as the first major criteria.

This is again an attempt to divert form the topic dada, let's desist from this

Fine lets leave the ghost of Ajai behind us and move on....

 

[Austin]

Found it on Tank Net on T-90 Trials

Ref:
ТАНК Т-90С «Бишма» для вооруженных сил Индии
Òàíê Ò-90Ñ «Áèøìà» äëÿ Èíäèè


India's T-90 issues - Tanknet - Page 5

Susorov published an article on T-90 evaluation from India, some of the results/requirements:

- Summer 1999
- 3 tanks
- 2000 km without big problems
- 1 tank was dispatched to Malaysian tests
- 2500-3100 m APFSDS fire by Indian officers after 20 minutes familiarization
- 3100 m firing at night by Indians
- Armor tests from 100 m distance both turret and hull - without penetration
- Crossing a 1.8m depth river without preparation.
- T-90M can mount a 120mm NATO gun.
- A march of 10-12 hours at 50°C.
- Get inside a river 5m depth, turn off the engine, stay 1 hour under water. This was needed to check how Shtora and other systems outside tank would cope.
- 24 missiles were fired at distances of 4-5kms, all hit target.
- 2000 shots were fired by the gun.

some information on Malaysia trials:

- 19 June-21 Aug 2000
- 2800 km march
- Engine was taken out of tank in the jungle and repaired in 4 hours.
- 65 km/h max
- 30 km/h 30 sec accel
- 5 m fording after 15 min preparation

 

[p2prada]

Thx for the info, but your info also says that, the armor plate hasn't been received, so even after paying it has not been transferred. Also the link never says that the agreement has been signed in 2008, that is your interpretation.

Armour ToT is non negotiable. We never paid for it because we never even negotiated for it. This came directly from the Russians. This is the media making stuff up.

Unnecessary twisting of arguments, by this logic we should not at all go with anything related to Europe at all, but your views are different at different places, try to be consistent.

See, I don't understand the point you are making. There is a huge difference in buying some radars and some guns from the west as compared to an entire offensive platform without any ToT. We don't even have licence to manufacture the German engines. Radars and guns are stand alone, you buy them you don't need the west for it again. But engines need to be serviced and overhauled constantly, we can't to that without their support.

When it comes to MRCA, the entire deal will come with ToT. We will have the capability to make the entire thing in house along with the engines. Even if they sanction us, our plans don't have to stop. We can do a China. But we can't do the same with German engines on the Arjun.

Well, you are right here. But the fact remains that Arjun has been kicked around unnecessarily, whereas T 90 has been treated with kid gloves at least in terms of orders.

Fact is the opposite. Some of the T-90 engines have already reached their service life in the Indian army. The T-90 has gone through the same tests that Arjun has gone through and has had a higher success rate. This is just like the MRCA deal. You simply cannot claim the Super Hornet was tested thoroughly and was rejected while EF and Rafale were treated with kid gloves and were accepted.

T-90 - a knol by Anonymous

Read this for more on the T-90.

 

[p2prada]

All i can think of is he likes the JSF ( which I do as well ) but since he is no ordinary blogger but writes is a recogonised Journalist writing for a main stream indian news paper , he should be careful with his facts.

You got that right.

The irony is he had commanded a T-72 formation in the Indian Army for like 7 years , Its difficult to wonder how he had kept his men motivated or his own views on the tanks.

I know that and it was too fvkin embarrassing for me to post this. Is this the standards of our officers or is he just trying to post jingo news to get more money? I like to believe it is the latter. Can't believe the Russians had to come out and shut him up.

As far as the AC for T-90 is concerned. I am guessing it has more to do with the basic advantages you pointed out and global warming rather than just to get the Ti working.

I am assuming some officer told some journo they are looking for an AC option and that the TI will work better in it. The journo must have taken it to mean the AC itself is required for the TI to work.

 

[Austin]

When it comes to MRCA, the entire deal will come with ToT. We will have the capability to make the entire thing in house along with the engines. Even if they sanction us, our plans don't have to stop.

Are you sure that TOT means what it is becuase TOT these days are just glorified name for lic production.

What TOT does is allows you to build some component from locally sourced material , but many components still needs to be procured directly from OEM becuase either TOT is not available due to sensitivity or its not economically feasible to build the entire production base in India.

All equipment build in India would be done under their guidance and they need to certify that its built according to their standards , the Russians still do that for MKI . All critical equipment built are made from machine and tools directly imported from the OEM.

With TOT you have the know how but you dont have know why , you dont have extensive design and test data that went into its making ..... you just know this is how it is made and this is how it should be made.

A classic example of TOT is what i see for AL-31FP engine , this was suppose to be a deep TOT including Single Crystal Blade which we got but we only use it to make AL-31FP engine with OEM sourced tool and equipment. Hence for Kaveri we are in tie up with snecma for core and SCB.

I think looking at all the TOT deals we did and these days it is just fashionable to have every deal with TOT , is that it allows you to develop many components inhouse with OEM sourced equipment but using your own raw material , you end up paying lic cost for every thing you make to the OEM , Critical equipment is still sourced from OEM essentially black boxes , but you can program it according to your need.

Much better then the good old lic manuf we did but still a far cry that we dont have to depend on OEM once we got the TOT

 

[nitesh]

The AC issue is an interesting thing , All T-90 AFAIK comes with AC , even the Algerian T-90S are seen with AC and they have been tested in desert as part of trials.

It seems some one in the Indian Army General Staff thought it was not man enough to drive a tank with AC , After all they have been doing that for years. So AC was not part of the deal then.

Now may be they have changed their views and perhaps after Arjun experience they though having an AC is good for crew. What ever it is they should have an AC in there for all tanks considering the major area of Tank Warfare is on our west and when it gets hot there it really gets hot.

I dont think right now equipment in there needs AC , else they would have seen many major failures by now.... TI used to break down in extreme heat but it was few and far in between and an exception not the norm but it has been rectified. But if they do get an AC inside the equipment may work better , most certainly the human manning the machine would do so.

Its like this i have a high end desktop machine at home and I dont have or use an AC , the machine works well and i use it 24 hours or more continuously , sometimes the fan works faster if the machine heats up or it slows down and ofcourse I sweat out if its hot but the machine never shuts off ever due to over heating ..... ofcourse if I had an AC i would definately work better without sweating which mean more productivity and with less effort and the fan would have to work that much less harder and CPU will remain lot less cooler.

Austin, first The AC tender is ordered for T1 sights, please don't tell me that the T 90 tank for evaluation came iwth AC, it worked and our people are stupid enough to not order it. But even if this is the case, why so much pressure on Arjun electrnics to work in extreme heat without an AC? Something is not right.

To some extent it is true , Arjun project could have been better handled from all sides ...specially the Army.

Although personally I think maintaining two different tanks which has little common between them is not a great idea but in Indian armed forces in general thats a norm not an exception..... i doubt any purchase we did ever had logistics as the first major criteria.

The issue is that, they designed the GSQR in such a way, and keep buying equipments which are totally from different philosophy, so not much can be done in this regard.

Fine lets leave the ghost of Ajai behind us and move on....

So, we should just disregard what ever he is saying, and sing all is well? Not fair austin

 

[nitesh]

Armour ToT is non negotiable. We never paid for it because we never even negotiated for it. This came directly from the Russians. This is the media making stuff up.

Well again, you are making stuff now, the links have been posted, the statements from specific people are there.

See, I don't understand the point you are making. There is a huge difference in buying some radars and some guns from the west as compared to an entire offensive platform without any ToT. We don't even have licence to manufacture the German engines. Radars and guns are stand alone, you buy them you don't need the west for it again. But engines need to be serviced and overhauled constantly, we can't to that without their support.

Are you sure of what have you written here

When it comes to MRCA, the entire deal will come with ToT. We will have the capability to make the entire thing in house along with the engines. Even if they sanction us, our plans don't have to stop. We can do a China. But we can't do the same with German engines on the Arjun.

This is an hyper bole, you are simply not making any sense at all.

Fact is the opposite. Some of the T-90 engines have already reached their service life in the Indian army. The T-90 has gone through the same tests that Arjun has gone through and has had a higher success rate. This is just like the MRCA deal. You simply cannot claim the Super Hornet was tested thoroughly and was rejected while EF and Rafale were treated with kid gloves and were accepted.

T-90 - a knol by Anonymous

Read this for more on the T-90.

Oh please, so according to you all this news about T1 sight not working, issues with ammunition is just plain lie which is peddled to make super duper T 90 look bad?

 

[Austin]

Austin, first The AC tender is ordered for T1 sights, please don't tell me that the T 90 tank for evaluation came iwth AC, it worked and our people are stupid enough to not order it. But even if this is the case, why so much pressure on Arjun electrnics to work in extreme heat without an AC? Something is not right.

As far as I know the only electronic that did not work consistently in extereme climate of Thar on few tanks are the TI , The TI is not the Russians but French one Cathrene-XP, having said that Arjun was designed in India and all the fine little things were kept in mind while designing , It also has much greater internal volume , so it is much easier to make sure during design stage that cooling needs of TI are taken care of and space allows more flexibility.

Like any imported equipment you buy , they dont bring it trial it and have a Eureka Moment , I am sure during trial there would have been issue observed with Russian system and rectified accordingly, Cathrene-XP being French and not part of original system needed more time to be sorted out.

AFAIK Arjun does not uses Cathrene TI but some other type. I could be wrong though.

 

[Austin]

here is something on the new Relikt ERA from NII STALI

RELIKT COMPLEX IS A RELIABLE PROTECTION
Valery Grogoryan Military Parade, No. 5, 2011

Valery Grogoryan - president, science director for JSC NII STALI (Research Institute of Steel), PhD (technical science), professor, RASRA academician


At present, the armor protection of even most advanced domestic tanks of type T-90 against high explosive antitank (HEAT) and armor-piercing discarding sabot (APDS) projectiles needs improvement. It follows from the expert evaluations of the most representative antitank projectiles and antitank guided missiles (ATGM) that, for example, penetration ability of the APDS of the tank guns of the ABRAMS M1 tank modifications is growing approximately according to the linear law with a factor of proportionality of about 35 mm per year. As regards the HEAT guided missiles, then alongside with the growth of the penetration ability of the warheads (WH) due to the increase in caliber, power of explosive charges and use of the precision technologies for manufacture of the warheads, a qualitative change in the principle of influence on the armor protection takes place. Specifically, we can see a transfer to the tandem warheads capable of destroying the reactive armor of the first generations, expansion of the delay time between operation of the main and auxiliary warheads, improvement of their effectiveness thanks to the scheme contrivances of different kinds, etc.

It is quite obvious that to maintain parity, we should find an adequate answer to improve for the armor protection of the domestic tanks.

The necessity of the urgent retaliatory steps to improve armor protection of the domestic tanks is also dictated by its higher role in the local conflicts where probability of use of the close combat weapons such as a handheld grenade launcher (RPG) with the HEAT grenades against the thin-armored side projections of the tank abruptly increases.

The specialists of the Research Institute were tasked to develop the appropriate armor protection complex. As a result, the RELIKT complex of the frontal armor protection was developed and entered service. Also developed were the reactive-armor special modules which were initially developed to protect the thin-armored BMP-3 infantry combat vehicles against RPG, and which well protect the side projections of the hull and turret of the tank against the widespread close combat weapons of type PG-9S.

The rear section of the hull (in the area of the engine compartment) and the turret is covered by the latticed screens to reduce by more than a half probability of an explosive jet from the shaped charge cone of the warhead of the antitank grenade launcher due to the violation of the normal operation of the warhead in case of a hit between the ribs of the screen.

Both complexes are principally new. Thus, the RELIKT complex employs a 4S23 element of reactive armor (RA) of high sensitivity and modern, more effective, propelling scheme where destructive and destabilizing influence on the ammunition striking elements (explosive jet, APDS rod) prevails relative to the thick armor plates propelled in opposite sides. In this case, the dominant contribution to the said destructive effect is made by the plate propelled in pursuit. Owing to fact that energetically a in-pursuit propelling is more advisable than an on-head propelling, the structures of such kind are more proof (in 4 to 5 times) against the APDS as compared with the KONTAKT-V RA series complex. At the same time we can see that the anti-tandem properties of such armor essentially increase, i.e. armor acquires better proofness against the most advanced tandem antitank guided missiles of type TOW-2A with a delay time of at least 400 us and with the penetration ability behind the mounted shape-charge-proof reactive armor of at least 1,000 mm.

Thus, the use of RELIKT on the domestic tanks is a meaningful step of protection of the domestic tanks against the majority advanced antitank traverse weapons designed to destroy a tank from the front.

According to the estimates of the specialists they expressed at the exhibition at Nizhni Tagil, RELIKT developed by the Research Institute of Steel is an adequate answer to the advanced antitank weapons. Today, it is one of the best armor protection complexes for the armor materiel and possibility of its installation both on the new, upgraded and being in-service tanks makes RELIKT really unique.

Protection of the tank side projections against the HEAT grenades was borrowed from the technical solutions developed for the light-weight vehicles. As applied to the protection of such light-weight vehicles, the solution of the task was drastically more difficult because of several limitations:

- it was necessary to initiate the explosives and dispersion of plates so as to prevent their destructive effects on a relatively thin principal armor;

- it was necessary to prevent transfer of detonation from the RA element initiating under the action of the explosive jet of the charge to the entire volume of their block;

- if possible, localize the area of damage by limiting it by the area of one or two modules;

- make the protective modules universal, bearing in mind simultaneous reinforcement of protection against the kinematic weapons such as bullets of up to 14.5 mm in caliber and the projectiles to the small-caliber guns.

The whole complex of the tasks listed above was solved in no small measure due to the development and acceptance for operational service of the RA element (index 4S24) with twice as little amount of explosive as indexes 4S20 and 4S22. This drastically increased, without reducing the effectiveness of the jet suppression, the design survivability when attacked by fire and practically eliminated flammability both of the RA elements themselves and of the modules on the whole that was a problem with the previous RA elements of type 4S20.

It should also be specially underlined that when mastering this complex, a very complicated task was solved to delay a leading portion of jet that by virtue of a certain inertial dispersion of the RA plates (especially when propelled in pursuit) had time to "slip" having at the same time a rather high penetration ability of at least one caliber of the warhead for a relatively thin principal armor.

It should be also noted that RELIKT allows installation on the tank of a stealth complex against precision weapons. The main component of this complex is a set of the NAKIDKA anti-radar multi-spectral composite material widely tested and well-proved.

Even a simple visual inspection of the vehicles shows that percentage of the so-called weak zones was essentially reduced.

If we take into account that all the represented protection complexes were only a part of the amazing work on deep upgrade of the T-90 tank that has been performed by the Uralvagonzavod practically for all aspects related to the improvement of the vehicle combat effectiveness, then we may draw a conclusion that both our army and the foreign partners in the event they buy such vehicle will obtain one of the world's best tanks capable of standing up to the today's threats.

However, the potential of growth both of protection and of the other combat properties of the vehicle have many latent reserves.

 

[p2prada]

Are you sure that TOT means what it is becuase TOT these days are just glorified name for lic production.

It is both.

What TOT does is allows you to build some component from locally sourced material , but many components still needs to be procured directly from OEM becuase either TOT is not available due to sensitivity or its not economically feasible to build the entire production base in India.

From what I know, OFB makes only 85% of the T-90, the rest is imported as it is not feasible to make it here in India.

All equipment build in India would be done under their guidance and they need to certify that its built according to their standards , the Russians still do that for MKI . All critical equipment built are made from machine and tools directly imported from the OEM.

They don't get their hands dirty. Quality Control means the need to certify, without a quality control specialist you may as well hang yourself. Yes, all tools are imported, but they can be made at home if we try. The Chinese did that as well. We simply follow contract.

With TOT you have the know how but you dont have know why , you dont have extensive design and test data that went into its making ..... you just know this is how it is made and this is how it should be made.

The Know why aspect can be figured out. I had pointed this out somewhere in the forum. The people building the stuff aren't Phds. They don't need to figure out what this component does or why is it there. The IAF does not need that kind of expertise either when it comes to early deliveries. If you really want the Know why aspect then set up a department within DRDO and hand them over the blueprints they will tell you the know why. But then contractual obligations say otherwise, so as long as we follow the contract we won't do it. What is stopping us is not our brains, but a flimsy piece of paper. Sad to say the paper is more powerful.

A classic example of TOT is what i see for AL-31FP engine , this was suppose to be a deep TOT including Single Crystal Blade which we got but we only use it to make AL-31FP engine with OEM sourced tool and equipment. Hence for Kaveri we are in tie up with snecma for core and SCB.

As far as I know, we scored ToT for SCB a long time ago. I guess as far as back in 2006. Even the German ambassador in one of his interviews pointed out that the SCB tech has been transferred to India from Russia and that EF consortium is ready to do with same. Contract does not allow to use our own tools for manufacture of the MKI. We can't use this on Kaveri, again because of contract and not technology. More importantly, there is no guarantee what design principles and material composition worked on Al-31 will work on Kaveri.

I think looking at all the TOT deals we did and these days it is just fashionable to have every deal with TOT , is that it allows you to develop many components inhouse with OEM sourced equipment but using your own raw material , you end up paying lic cost for every thing you make to the OEM , Critical equipment is still sourced from OEM essentially black boxes , but you can program it according to your need.

Early on a lot of components for the radar needed to be sourced from Russia. It is not the same anymore because the whole thing is built and assembled here. But what is important are the source codes. So, even if we have 100% capability to build the radar and if we don't know the source codes, then the radar cannot be used at all.

We have the know how to build the MKI and that's licence manufacture. But we also have the know how to use said technology as a weapons platform, meaning we have access to source codes and the like and this is more critical for IAF. The licence costs are what got us these things unless you want everything for free and that's not how the world works.

Much better then the good old lic manuf we did but still a far cry that we dont have to depend on OEM once we got the TOT

The Chinese scored lesser ToT on Su-27, but they are doing fine with the J-11. It has been 20 years and it does not look like the same tools sourced from Russia are being used. Reverse engineering the tools won't be easy at all and I wonder if we actually have ToT on the tools anyway.

The simple fact is we don't need the know why aspect just to get the MKI to work at 100%. The T-90 is a lot simpler comparatively.

Coming to the point, if India does something to earn a sanction in the next 5 years. Then neither party wins. But it won't be as bad as having the entire Arjun line coming to a standstill as compared to the MRCA line which may chug along due to early build experience we may have gained using SKDs and CKDs. If we are sanctioned before we get the first squadron, then we lose out our initial payments like Pakistan did and can kiss the MRCA goodbye.

Do you know why hackers love Linux and Unix as compared to Windows or Mac? It is simply because the entire source code is available open source. They know the in and out of the OSs. This allows them to use the advantages of such systems and also know the inherent weaknesses. If the IAF can make changes to the aircraft any time and for any exigency then we have relevant ToT, the same as a Linux system. The MKI allows that and hopefully MRCA will follow.

 

[p2prada]

Well again, you are making stuff now, the links have been posted, the statements from specific people are there.

No. The Gun barrel ToT was signed only in 2006 not in 2001. It is simple logic that in 2001 the gun ToT wasn't even negotiated for. Armour ToT is non negotiable as it is a Russian Law. They don't sell armour ToT to anybody by the laws of their constitution. You can quote anything you want, but speak to a Russian defence lawyer first.

The Russians modified their laws to allow transfer of Gun ToT. Armour ToT is still a non negotiable entity.

Are you sure of what have you written here

100% Sure. Without an engine a tank will not run. The engine comes from Germany along with the transmission. We don't even have licence to manufacture them. We import the entire thing.

This is an hyper bole, you are simply not making any sense at all.

Nothing to say here.

Oh please, so according to you all this news about T1 sight not working, issues with ammunition is just plain lie which is peddled to make super duper T 90 look bad?

There were initial report of TI failures, the Russians paid for most of the damages and then fixed the issue. That's all there is to it.

There are no ammunition issues. We have plenty of Israeli shells. Firing all the ammo is less of a technical issue and more of a supplies issue. If you did not know early MKIs had cracks in the tyres and this is a technical issue. Lack of fuel isn't a technical issue.

 

[p2prada]

here is something on the new Relikt ERA from NII STALI

Even a simple visual inspection of the vehicles shows that percentage of the so-called weak zones was essentially reduced.

I wonder if he is talking about the T-90MS.

 

[Austin]

I wonder if he is talking about the T-90MS.

Probably yes becuase thats seems to be the only publicly known vehical thats well covered with Relikt ERA , including the Top and Sides.

But i think the article talks about Rekit performance figures for local tanks , which is 4 -5 times compared to Kontakt-5 for KE and atleast 1000 mm for CE. Those figures are just too radical specially for KE rounds.

I think the export variant of Relikt will have 2x times K-5 performance and similar performance for CE and the figures he quotes of T-90MS performance parameters shows 2x performance improvement over K-5 , 850 KE frontal and 550 CE side and back with ERA comparable to Western heavies.

I think in the beginning of the article the designer takes Abrams APDS as benchmark or reference point and mentions how its is growing 35 mm very year and Relikt KE performance has been clearly designed keeping Abrams newer APDS in mind.

On the same note i should add that the chief designer of STALI during T-90MS ceremony mentioned that Relikt is something of a past for them and that they are working on newer non energetic armour , which suggest they moved aways from explosive ERA and looking for NERA type with much better performance.

 

[p2prada]

Probably yes becuase thats seems to be the only publicly known vehical thats well covered with Relikt ERA , including the Top and Sides.

But i think the article talks about Rekit performance figures for local tanks , which is 4 -5 times compared to Kontakt-5 for KE and atleast 1000 mm for CE. Those figures are just too radical specially for KE rounds.

I think the export variant of Relikt will have 2x times K-5 performance and similar performance for CE and the figures he quotes of T-90MS performance parameters shows 2x performance improvement over K-5 , 850 KE frontal and 550 CE side and back with ERA comparable to Western heavies.

I think in the beginning of the article the designer takes Abrams APDS as benchmark or reference point and mentions how its is growing 35 mm very year and Relikt KE performance has been clearly designed keeping Abrams newer APDS in mind.

On the same note i should add that the chief designer of STALI during T-90MS ceremony mentioned that Relikt is something of a past for them and that they are working on newer non energetic armour , which suggest they moved aways from explosive ERA and looking for NERA type with much better performance.

I am guessing the benchmark rounds are more in the range of M829 rather than the A2 and A3 versions. That's more in line with the 3BM42 version as an equivalent M829 round.

If you are giving the Relikt 2x performance increase over K-5, are you saying the K-5 is the regular Russian K-5 or the export version.