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History of US Tanks.


Damian90

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5 minutes ago, Marko said:

How many of the fifty tanks/AFVs or so hit required extensive repair.

Also I would be dubious about Israeli  statistic's its not in there benefit to admit  there armour is vulnerable if I remember correctly they were trying to sell the Merkava to turkey.

I remember the Israeli government of the time made a compliant to the Russians as RPG 29 or 32 cant remember were used against them.

As for the high ranking officer who was simply putting it out there.

 Does it make sense to build such an expensive asset that is still vulnerable

Armour in its self is not enough, it needs to be complimented with additional defence to protect the crew and asset.

I happen to agree with that.  

Would I like to see tanks removed from military arsenal's hell no.

such innovations as electric armour I think it was called mite just be the way forward

 The British have even experimented with very hard plastics and other materials there's even a story floating around about experimentation with a device that blends (no idea how it works ) the vehicle in to the terrain to make it harder to see smoke and mirrors I should imagine.

Remember the battleship once ruled supreme on the seas, aircraft carriers and then missiles all but made it redundant

Tell me one Tank type that can servive a direct hit from a hellfire 11 missile.

 

 

 

Does it matter how many tanks required repairs? They were not destroyed, crews survived, they done their job.

 

And yes it makes sense to build tanks with heavy armor because while still vulnerable, they are less vulnerable than all these ultra modern tin cans some people try to advertise.

 

Electric armor is bogus, development was stopped as it's effective only against simple RPG's, it's also very heavy, and energy inefficent.

 

When it come sto battleships, people that decided ships should have no armor... well they should answer for their stupidity and shortsighted decisions. Right now ultraexpensive battleship is more vulerable to being hit by a stupid small UAV, after which it requires extensive and incredibly expensive repairs, while when it would have at least some type of armor, it would not be required.

 

As for tanks, yes they can survive hit from Hellfire, for example when it hits their turret front. For example T-14 can survive a hit from Hellfire when hit in it's hull front.

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8 minutes ago, ChrisWerb said:

Marko, I think it was the special anti-APS RPG-30 they complained about.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RPG-30

 

 

 

RPG-30 can be very easy counterd by software upgrades that will see the difference between inert projectile and real granade, this is why RPG-30 project was abandoned and they are not manufactured.

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25 minutes ago, Damian90 said:

 

Does it matter how many tanks required repairs? They were not destroyed, crews survived, they done their job.

Well it sort of does remember they were fighting insurgents not a well trained well equipped army

I would speculate how many would have been recoverable if they where.

25 minutes ago, Damian90 said:

 

And yes it makes sense to build tanks with heavy armor because while still vulnerable, they are less vulnerable than all these ultra modern tin cans some people try to advertise.

 

Electric armor is bogus, development was stopped as it's effective only against simple RPG's, it's also very heavy, and energy inefficient.

 

 

When it come sto battleships, people that decided ships should have no armor... well they should answer for their stupidity and shortsighted decisions. Right now ultraexpensive battleship is more vulerable to being hit by a stupid small UAV, after which it requires extensive and incredibly expensive repairs, while when it would have at least some type of armor, it would not be required.

 

The battleships of WW2 some of which were the heaviest ever made and where still vulnerable to torpedoes.

 

 

As for tanks, yes they can survive hit from Hellfire, for example when it hits their turret front. For example T-14 can survive a hit from Hellfire when hit in it's hull front.

Well my understanding is different, but I am not sure about the T-14 even though I would be dubious about Russian arms manufacturers claims

 

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Well it sort of does remember they were fighting insurgents not a well trained well equipped army
I would speculate how many would have been recoverable if they where.

 

If you win the battle, you control the battlefield, you can recover them, simple as that.

 

Besides let's assume you lost a tank, but it saved the crew life, they survived and were able to evacuate, not it's far more easy to replace lost tank than replace a lost crew.

 

Let's replace a tank with lightly armored tin can, in such situation you loose a tin can and it's crew.

 

Yeah I think tank is a better choice.

 

By the way I always wonder why some people claim that a tin can is cheaper than a proper tank? Actually some of these tin cans start to cost just as much if not more than normal tanks.

 

And when it comes to service life costs, these can be also reduced in case of heavier tanks, by components commonality I mentioned or by replacing standard powerpacks with diesel-electric hybrids.

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Damian, you can't really make the comparison with the battleship.

 

Battleships never were completely armoured on their outsides - besides a belt along their sides and some deck armour (often in multiple layers) they were mostly only armoured against splinters with a internal heavily armoured citadel encompassing command and control, fire control, main armament turrets, ammunition feed arrangements, magazines, powerplant, transmission and steering. The reason for this was that they had to float :) Now the good bit about old battleships is that they relied on very tough weapon systems that could be controlled from multilply redundant, but successively less accurate optical rangefinders in tough armoured housings. They did not rely on fragile missiles or the plethora of electronic sensors that modern warships do. Now modern warships tend to be armoured with some kevlar or other armour in essential places to prevent something like a KPV on a boat  causing a cheap and embarrassing kill of the ship, but they are not armoured against their opponents main armament - that would make no sense whatsoever. A comparatively close airburst of a smallish weapon like AARGM can strip a ship of much of its fighting ability and possibly even set off missiles in VLS. A direct hit from a supersonic AShM is simply not resistable by any amount of armour that could be put on a modern warship, plus that too would probably rob the ship of most if not all of its sensors. Big AShMs need to be seen to be believed in terms of lethality and the situation is only getting worse with some now achieving M 3.0+ impact speeds. You either misdirect the missile, destroy it a good distance away, or the best that can happen is your ship is no longer a participant in the war.

 

 

 

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This is why I like tanks more, in case of APS failure and direct hit, armor gives me at least some chances of survival. ;)

 

By the way some rudimentary and simple calculations.

 

Let's take for example M1A2SEPv2, it's base empty weight is 63,5 metric tons, it's turret weight is something around 28 metric tons if my memory serves well.

 

If we take off the turret, we stay with a hull weighting 35,5 metric tons, ok let's redesign the hull so there will be space for 3 crew members in isolated capsule in the front, protected by heavy armor on front, as well as heavier armor on side, top and belly.

 

Now let's put unmanned turret on top of it, let's say it weights 15 metric tons. Now our vehicle weights 50,5 metric tons, it means it's lighter by 13 metric tons than vehicle from we designed the new tank. But also protects the crew better, as the crew is placed lower, and armor is more rationaly distributed as well as more dense.

 

LmzMc7y.jpg

So we get something like this. But wait, that's not everything.

Let's assume we want to make hull better protected over sides (entire lenght) and rear, let's assume we are willing to add 5 metric tons more. So we have vehicle weighting 55,5 metric tons but with superior hull protection over any existing tank with manned turret.

But it's not end of possibilities, let's assume our small unmanned turret is designed to take on addon armor, let's say 5 metric tons. Now our vehicle weights 60,5 metric tons, but have superior all around armor protection and survivability compared to any other known vehicle.

 

And still our new tank weighting in maximum up armored configuration, only 60,5 metric tons, which is still a very reliable weight, and we can assume we would use such armor configuration only in full scale conflict.

 

Our new tank also can have active protection system.

 

How much more survivable such vehicle would be to previous generation vehicles, and still with scalable protection, it's weight would range from 50,5-55,5 metric tons to 60,5 metric tons. This is exactly what US need, what NATO need in terms of AFV's procurement.

 

Same with IFV, with small, lightweight unmanned turret, armor not only can be better distributed over hull, but entire vehicle will be within both reasonable armor protection and reasonable weight limits.

 

And this is exactly what General McMaster is advocating for.

 

A vehicle in 50,5-55,5 metric tons weight configuration could be used in peace time and in peace support operations/anti insurgency operations, where protection would be optimized against RPG's and ATGM's, so can be lighter and mostly provided by active protection system. While 60,5 metric tons configuration would be for full scale conventional warfare.

 

Heck if we assume that base armor is also fully modular, we can have various armor kits optimized for various threats. For example front hull armor module could be for peace support operations/anti insurgency operations optimized against shaped charge threats only, thus less dense and lighter, while for full scale conventional warfare it could be designed against both KE and shaped charge threats, thus being heavier, densier etc.

 

So as we can see such design is far more flexible.

Edited by Damian90
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I found on my HDD some rare photos of TTB (Tank Test Bed) and CATTB (Components Advanced Technology Test Bed), uploaded them to my IMGUR account to they don't gonna get lost again.

 

k2VALzx.jpg

dWYeVny.jpg

 

These are interesting vehicles and I might write here about them later on. ;)

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I can't argue with any of that Damian although I don't think the $300k a pop price of APS is going to help our post-BREXIT exchequer much :) This is probably a really dumb question, but, given the obvious advantages, why has no one actually put a kinetic effect ATGW into service?

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8 minutes ago, ChrisWerb said:

I can't argue with any of that Damian although I don't think the $300k a pop price of APS is going to help our post-BREXIT exchequer much :) This is probably a really dumb question, but, given the obvious advantages, why has no one actually put a kinetic effect ATGW into service?

 

Good question, perhaps they were too large? Look at LOSAT, it's huge! So it could be only viable for ground combat vehicles.

 

US Army was developing LOSAT carriers both on HMMWV and Bradley chassis.

 

a_4_99.jpg

2_hmmwv_anti-tank.jpg

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Rockets are terribly inefficient when it comes to propellant use, compared to a gun. Also, the guidance system is either cheap and can easily be defeated, or highly sophisticated with multiple sensor fusion, at which point it becomes rather expensive. These days 30mm KETF rounds easily surpass in price what basic 120mm rounds cost. It's not the chemicals, the production, the shiny packaging. It's the cost for the electronics.

Next is the problem - not demonstrated well enough in SB Pro - that flight paths can be somewhat erratic, so for a safe kill the target must be

a) within the engagement envelope of the missile

b) far enough out in the open so the missile's trajectory won't collide with anything other than the intended target

 

Now, the question is, do you need a big ass missile or wouldn't you be better off with an artillery system that can fire intelligent top attack munitions. Does the missile absolutely have to be launched from the ground, maybe it's a better option for an airplane (or a drone).

 

The specific reasons why LOSAT was canceled, I don't know. But that I can easily think of a number of reasons why it may have fallen through suggests to me, at least, that either the thing didn't work reliably enough outside of tests under idealized conditions, or was a solution in search of a problem (long range standoff attack against armor in the desert ... who would be dumb enough to challenge the US or NATO on that field?)

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AIUI it's not so much that rockets are an inefficient use of propellant - if you think about it, in a recoilling gun, half the energy goes into throwing the gun and vehicle backwards - it's that you get to throw more away with each shot - rockets have casings, venturi etc.

 

Rocket technology has come a long way in just a few years. For example, ATACAMS replacement is a missile half the size that gets the range up from 300 to 500km. They were experimenting with much smaller KE ATGW than LOSAT called CKEM - CKEM was 1.5 metres long, weighed 45 kg and had a velocity of mach 6.5. One was successfully tested against a loaded T-72 of some description at Eglin AFB. Impact energy was said to be 10 megajoules (equivalent to that of a 10-ton truck traveling at 100 mph (161 km/hr))

 

I think you're right about the testing in idealised conditions (these missiles tend to be laser beam riders) and the threat going away factors. Another is that this class of weapon must have quite a long minimum range. By definition it can only be line of sight in operation (3rd party lasing doesn't really work with beam riding) meaning the launch platform would be vulnerable to return or preemptive fire. Launch signature is hardly inconspicuous. Then you would have to go to Benbecula or Whitesands to actually shoot the thing due to its immense range safety template. You also can't have the variety of warheads and effects (frag, HEAT+frag, penetrating blast, thermobaric, airburst etc.) you can with subsonic or moderately supersonic ATGW which are ever more in demand now. 

 

Then again, beam riding is not an expensive form of guidance compared to imaging. CKEM was relatively compact (the C in CKEM) and would have the ability to overcome most countermeasures and neutralise multiple targets in single digit seconds in most conditions...

 

 

 

 

Edited by ChrisWerb
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I suppose a beyond line of sight engagement envelope would be the desired goal, and I don't think that it is THAT difficult if you know the general direction and maybe can even program a range bracket before launch. You fire away with, say, +10° and at 1,000m flight range you're already 170m above ground. Then home in on the target, which ideally is only one or two degrees off course in azimuth and at maybe -3° in elevation. If the range bracket determines the initial rise and an automatic transition to descend you wouldn't even need a massive course correction once that you lock on, just the delta to the already pre-set trajectory.

The prerequisite for all this is positional data at launch, just like what artillery procedures do. Know where the firing site is, know where the observer is, and know the vector of the target. In the GPS age and, if you have to use a laser for homing in on the target, with an LRF wizardry is hardly required.

A missile at a closure rate of Mach 6.5 is so fast, obscurants will hardly have a chance to block the laser in time.

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On 04/11/2016 at 10:39 PM, Ssnake said:

I suppose a beyond line of sight engagement envelope would be the desired goal, and I don't think that it is THAT difficult if you know the general direction and maybe can even program a range bracket before launch. You fire away with, say, +10° and at 1,000m flight range you're already 170m above ground. Then home in on the target, which ideally is only one or two degrees off course in azimuth and at maybe -3° in elevation. If the range bracket determines the initial rise and an automatic transition to descend you wouldn't even need a massive course correction once that you lock on, just the delta to the already pre-set trajectory.

The prerequisite for all this is positional data at launch, just like what artillery procedures do. Know where the firing site is, know where the observer is, and know the vector of the target. In the GPS age and, if you have to use a laser for homing in on the target, with an LRF wizardry is hardly required.

A missile at a closure rate of Mach 6.5 is so fast, obscurants will hardly have a chance to block the laser in time.

 

The laws of physics will intervene unfortunately. At mach 6.5 your missile's course is almost dead straight. You're not going to hit targets in defilade remotely the way you could with Spike N-LOS, Spike LR, EFOGM etc. What you suggest would work with the target a long way behind a low obstruction half way between launcher and target, but tactically is that going to happen often enough for it to be worthwhile? Also there is no "locking on" - AIUI these missiles have to be beam riders. Atmospheric heating/ionisation means you can't get a seeker to work (or perhaps even survive) in dense air at those velocities [late edit: checked Damian's figures and they did get them to work - at least at M 5.0].

Edited by ChrisWerb
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10 hours ago, ChrisWerb said:

 

The laws of physics will intervene unfortunately. At mach 6.5 your missile's course is almost dead straight. You're not going to hit targets in defilade remotely the way you could with Spike N-LOS, Spike LR, EFOGM etc. What you suggest would work with the target a long way behind a low obstruction half way between launcher and target, but tactically is that going to happen often enough for it to be worthwhile? Also there is no "locking on" - AIUI these missiles have to be beam riders. Atmospheric heating/ionisation means you can't get a seeker to work (or perhaps even survive) in dense air at those velocities [late edit: checked Damian's figures and they did get them to work - at least at M 5.0].

 

if you fire the missiles upwards at an angle, you can arc the missile over defilades. 

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  • 2 weeks later...

In 2017 modernization program for M1A2SEPv3 (ECP1 upgrade program) will finally start, meanwhile US Army already is working on M1A2SEPv4 (ECP2 upgrade program?).

 

http://www.scout.com/military/warrior/story/1728632-army-builds-new-abrams-tank-variant-for-2020s

 

Also important note at the end.

 

Early conceptual discussion and planning is already underway to build models for a new future tank platform to emerge by the 2030s – stay with Scout Warrior for an upcoming report on this effort.

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Marko:

 

If that were true the above nations would be fielding a new tank for every Russian, we don't see that. What we do see is a nation that develops a new AFV and, the west starts to loose their minds, and needs to spend untold millions to counter a precede threat.

Other countries that are a real threat produce a new AFV and we the west don't care. So one could say we have picked our enemies that will encourage the greatest military spending to benefit the MIC.

Spending our resources on such products is a dead (no pun intended) end street that were are now living through.

 

The T-14 is not even fielded yet, and the west is in spin dry mode. Yet the same country is helping all over the world, from supply the international space station fighting ISSI etc, yet we seem to think (some of us) that when they produce a new AFV it's a issue that requires to spend our resources on, this defies logic, most countries  don't follow this path are still developing, and living in peace, strange is it not?

 

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3 hours ago, 12Alfa said:

 

Marko:

 

If that were true the above nations would be fielding a new tank for every Russian, we don't see that. What we do see is a nation that develops a new AFV and, the west starts to loose their minds, and needs to spend untold millions to counter a precede threat.

Other countries that are a real threat produce a new AFV and we the west don't care. So one could say we have picked our enemies that will encourage the greatest military spending to benefit the MIC.

Spending our resources on such products is a dead (no pun intended) end street that were are now living through.

 

The T-14 is not even fielded yet, and the west is in spin dry mode. Yet the same country is helping all over the world, from supply the international space station fighting ISSI etc, yet we seem to think (some of us) that when they produce a new AFV it's a issue that requires to spend our resources on, this defies logic, most countries  don't follow this path are still developing, and living in peace, strange is it not?

 

You could well be right but i think the west did get a wake up call when they thought the Russians were going for a full invasion of the Ukraine. If media reports are correct Nato members were not prepared enough to meet the challenge.

A lot of there heavy equipment was in storage etc 

I read an article about the current state of the British army equipment wise its not good.

One very senior British officer admitted the Russians could not only out gun the UK but had some better equipment some of which has Already been fielded. 

The British army has a lot of new equipment coming but as i am sure you well know it takes time 

 I remember wondering at the time of the crisis would the CR-2 as it stands now with its limited ammo options been capable of taking on the T-90.or even the T-80. i fully realize Tanks would have been just one element had NATO had to intervene in the conflict

I reckon air power would have been the deciding factor and NATO is still vastly superior in numbers and quality of its aircraft.

But i would speculate it was not just the British army who realized they needed to upgrade/update some of its land warfare assets 

 

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A couple of points;

 

-Upgrading/replacing is ongoing for all nations who have war stocks, this I see as never ending given the current mindset of our leaders, the people just want to live in peace most of the time.

What is the threat to the UK, if I recall the last invasion was by the Romans or so, what/who are you afraid of? The idea the Russia would invade the EU to get to the UK is way down on the list I would think.

 

-The wakeup call should have come with Georgia (sp) if indeed a wakeup call was needed. The west knew there was not a full scale invasion taking place, unlike the media let us believe, the Int showed that.

 

-They way most see the situation with Russia, and China (not me but ppl who study theses issues) that if one breaks understandings, rings a county with wpns, and engage in propaganda the other side will eventually start to arm, and deploy along its borders, and if need be secure them by methods that seem invasion like.

IE: placing rockets in Poland is not a juster of good will to the peace process, as well as TADD in south Korea to the Chinese.

 

-All of the above are meant to threaten, and provoke ones foes, and in a large part doing that as the other side will look weak if it does not appear to take defensive actions, and so round and round we go.

 

-Who wins?

Only the wpn manufactures, the ppl sure as hell don't due to living under the now escalated buildup of wpns on both sides. Then the cost in the tax payers,taxes that would have went to health care, infrastructure, renewable energy, and the list  goes on.

We see the top countries spending on wpns struggling with a wide list of issues, while other not into the arms manufacturing at a large part doing rather well for there citizens, so, this begs the question.......why?

 

 

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