EasyE

Few small questions There have been a few updates to the armor models of tanks in SB correct? Are the LOS armor diagrams still accurate? If not are there updated values? Challenger 2 for example seems a little high from what we have learned recently..( I could be wrong and I fully expect to be told that I am) What version of the Leo-2A4 armor do we have in the game? D tech? Any plans to get other armor packages in the game? Thanks for your time.

Leo-1C2 For all us Canadians....

T-72Bm1989 playable Type-98/96 non playable T-90 early version nonplayable Leo-2 with B-C armor tech. (we have D tech correct?) Chieftain mk-10 T-62M-playable

Looking forward to being able to do this....

According to the document bellow a version of the armor "technology" in the XM-1 offered protection against a 115mm DU APFSDS fired at a velocity I suspect is above 1600m/s across 25 deg arc, when fitted to an IFV. So in is possible that the M1 production model was protected against such ammunition. So we know that the M1 armor could have been tested against DU apfsds. What round? M774 with a increased propellant? Basic pen calc suggest suggest that would do around 380-420mm at 0 at close range. Makes the CIA docs seem somewhat close, and referring to a DU monoblock round as the baseline for the RHA equivalence.

I would be interested in knowing what the threat profile for the M1A1 was meant to face. Most of the documentation on APFSDS available to the USSR in the early to mid 1980s was that they performed very poorly against spaced composite arrays. IIRC a BM-22 loses 30% of its pen ability just by impacting a thin steel plate and having 500mm of air before the next layer of steel. So against the M1 I suspect the round would have preformed poorly. The more the angle of impact of the short tungsten slug goes up the more likely it will shatter against the RHA black plate of the M1...RHA equivalence be dammed... So CIA statements about the M1 400mm worth of KE protection I suspect apply against early monoblock designs M774, XM-578... Applying it to steel W slug designs the protection probably goes up a great deal. I suspect that the M1A1 was designed with protection against more advanced APFSDS designs in mind as well as tandem warheads. The thought was that the next gen of 125mm apfsds would pen around 450mm (0 deg?) at normal battle ranges. The the need for the beefed up protection. Whatever the armor array of the M1A1 is, it was almost certainly tested against M833 and M829. M833 DU long rod, is slightly heavier then the BM-42 W, the M833 a bit slower at normal combat range, however the monoblock DU design is probably better against complex arrays. "If" the M1A1 stopped the M833 it probably has a decent chance against Bm-32 and 42 from most normal engagement ranges. That said I don't think there were many if any BM-42s delivered to front line units before 1988. From what I can tell and rough back of the envelope calculations suggest that if BRL-2 (or whatever it is called) has around 530-550mm vs KE and around 1000mm vs CE it has slightly higher TE efficiency against CE and slightly lower against KE as German C-tech which we have a reasonable measure of. Cheers

I think too much certainty is being drawn from it. It gives us some good insight into German armor packages against monoblock rounds (also the T-80U). However if that is vague. B-level and C-Level are rather clear armor inserts. Where I find confusion is the nature of the D armor packages. D-1/2/3, what exactly are these referring to? Are these inserts? Or Inserts plus NERA Wedge armor. Or differnt combos of each. D-1 say is B-Level plus wedge D-2 C level plus wedge, and D-3 a new insert plus wedge? Or different inserts more optimized more against CE? Seems to be that B-level tech is rough equal to about BRL-1, C is BRL-2, HAP-1/2 around D-2./3... EAP around D-2. Seems to be a rush for answers by those on the internet.. rather then to figure out what questions to ask first..

The claim has been made that the Swedes had planned to have a wedge type armor on the turret of their M1A2. That the Export Armor package which is also claimed to be the equivalent to HAP-2 was not able to get sufficient protection over 700mm across the frontal arc with out the addition of the wedge type armor. I don't see any evidence of this. Is there anything to support this claim. IMHO It doesn't appear to be the case as the protection profile of the M1A2 with the Swedish armor was worse then the Leo-2 with it, with greater LOS on the passive armor 860mm vs 930-950mm LOS.

Was there not a minor upgrade to the M1A1HA in 1990? Also as per the release of the Document re: Swedish armor trials. I have to wonder if the export armor package of the M1A2 is similar to the BRL-2 package, perhaps an evolution of it.. 600mm vs KE +- 30 deg is actually very good. No one seems to have much of a sweet clue as to what the protection of BRL-2 (1984) is like. Thinking about the thickest part of the turret (inserts ~900-960? mm los) I have heard estimates range from 400-to 600mm vs KE head on. The document states that the 1987 armor package on the Leo-2 is about 575mm vs KE head on (~840 LOS). Is there are reason to suspect BRL-2 is not comparable? This close up of the weight simulators seems to suggest to me that together they are thicker then 50mm. The front welded plate is about 40mm, and two plates stacked on top look considerably thicker then that, 75-100mm IMHO. BRL-1~ 400mm=BRL-2+75mm +other improvements such as hardness/thicknes of steel in NERA arrays, more air gap, inclusion of ceramics. Not at terrible stretch to see it be around the 480-550 vs KE against contemporary ammunition (BM-26/32/42). It is a tough sell for me to think that BRL-2 is 400mm but an export armor package a decade later is nearly double at 700mm vs KE when having much more modern ammunition shot at it. On another note. The Leo-2A4 1992 armor model in the document seems to be rather close to what we have in the game. The Leo-2A5 might be a little high but nothing that can't be easily fixed.

Yeah I suspect it could be modeled rather well. The FCS for the T-80U transplants to the T-90S...The Devs seem to be hesitant to model player use of the GLATGMs used by Russian tanks forces..I suspect what ever the reason is must be a bit of a hurdle.

Perhaps. There is a limited of time and resources to develop such things. Perhaps if the player base for SB was much larger it would make more economic sense to take on such things. I deal with software sales people all the time in my industry and one thing they often do is to offer a full time limited functionality, soon my colleagues and myself end up taking the bait and buying more functionality. Perhaps SB could offer a free download of limited use, few maps limited editor etc and say T-62 or other vehicle for use in single and multilayer use. It could get many people into the game who normally wouldn't and eventually more paying customers. As you said above, if it was that easy it probably would be done already and there are things don't know or understand. Question for Ssnake. Any particular reason we don't have a T-72m1989 with K5 (or similar) in the game? Seems to be a very common tank in use in Russia and elsewhere. Thanks

For a playable vehicle I would pay up to 100$ for certain ones. No playable depending on the level of detail. For an update with a large number of cold war era and modern era vehicles I could see shelling out greater then 100$ "Then who do you play with?" I am happy to use it in single player as I don't do multilayer much currently. That may change when work slows down. "If you have a playable T-64 and I don't - how does multi-player work?" I suppose I drive it and you shoot at me. "Does everyone need to buy the same DLC (for want of a better term) in order to play either against you or with you?" I don't see why that needs to be the case. DCS works rather well with that model. My thoughts are more along the line. I am willing to pay more for an update if there are popular AFVs included. I will buy the next update regardless.

I would be happy to get and pay for this, in the mean time I would also pay for more non drivable tanks and APCs. T-80B/BV, T-72M1989, T-62M, early T-90s, some modern Chinese tanks , heavy APCs, Challenger 1, Cheiftian Mk10/11, Leo-C2. Don't need to be drivable. Drivable, That would be ideal but perfect should never be the enemy of good.

The lack of any long monoblock round even being introduced in small amounts until 1991 suggest to me this is not main reason for the rounds being much shorter then the theoretical limit. Almost certainly they could have produced longer rounds at some point in the 1980s. Producing them in mass at a price that wouldn't seem prohibitive, was out of reach.

Yes sorry typo, 3BM-32 is how it should have read, both the 32 seemed to have had a DOI in the mid 1980s but not reached any real distribution until the very late 1980s. It appears that a few different methods for manufacturing the rod were being run.. Uranium and tungsten are actually were very quirky things to alloy and manufacture, with it being very difficult and expensive to achieve uniform tensile strength in a high LD alloy rod because of fracturing during fabrication and heat treating of the materials. The 3BM-42 being a quick solution to the problem and the 3BM-32 being another. There was no inexpensive solution to this problem available to the USSR to mass produce longer rods until the late 1980s, where they were a decade behind the USA and Germany at this point. I suspect that the USA didn't know this, and assumed that the USSR had worked out how to cheaply alloy heavy metal long rods with out very serious manufacturing defects. From what I can gather in available public information, the BRL-1 armor package would have been effective against the most common APFSDS steel with tungsten slug designs of early 125mm ammo like the 3BM-26, with the NERA array breaking apart, yawing and causing misalignment the interior components to then fail against the backing compoenents. The rush to introduce 3 armor packages a little over 8 years suggest to me that this was the case. On another note, the USA and Germany conducted a great deal of research in the late 1980s on vastly improve the tensile and yield strength of heavy metal alloys. In some cases gaining improvements of 300-400% through some methods that caused dissolution uniform recrystallization of ultra fine powders of various metals mixed with the main heavy metal. I suspect this may be one of the ways the M829A2 was improved over the M829A1. It could also be a way of improving the heavy metal alloys in armor packages such as HAP-2 and Burlington.