Ideal PLA main battle tank (?)

K

kovona

New Member
Spec or not, beats driving on water logged ground. In any case, I don't think the M1's weight will be serious disadvantage when fighting in coastal China. The mountains and woodlands will be a different matter...
 
crobato

crobato

Colonel
VIP Professional
kovona said:
Spec or not, beats driving on water logged ground. In any case, I don't think the M1's weight will be serious disadvantage when fighting in coastal China. The mountains and woodlands will be a different matter...
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That's another thing too. China's coast is also rugged and mountainous.
 
sumdud

sumdud

Senior Member
VIP Professional
You can try increasing the calibre of the gun (length of barrel) as people have done on 105s, but China can't rely on this, at least not on the south, as the vegetation could get into the way of fighting.
 
S

Skywatcher

Captain
man overbored said:
There is a very good reason. The US Army has studied this in depth. Increasing the caliber of the gun to 140mm from 120mm has two major drawbacks. Number one, it will reduce the number of rounds the tank can carry. The M-1A2 carries a lot fewer rounds for it's 120mm gun than the original M-1 carried for it's 105mm main gun. The Army doesn't feel it can afford to reduce the number of ready service rounds any more than this for a tank to be tactically relavant.
The second problem concerns loading. The US Army will not use an autoloader. A 140mm round will require one, it is too heavy for a human loader to lift out of a bustle and place in the gun. The experience the US Army has with autoloaders is based on direct experience with Russian equipment it has either captured or bought from for Warsaw Pact nations. We have at least one example of everything the Russians use, and the aggressor force at Fort Irwin trained other Army units with T-72's for many years. Here is what our Army found. Number one, the Russian auto loader takes six to seven seconds to load a round. During this time the gun must be level and the turret cannot rotate. This means that in combat there is a six to seven second period of time where the tank commander cannot aim at the next target, the tank is essentially defenseless during this time. By comparison the standard for the M-1 is to load a round every four seconds and well drilled crews can load and fire every two seconds. The main gun of the M-1 is being aimed at it's next target while the gun is loaded, so rapid rates of fire are easily accomplished while the tank is on the move.
In actual practice the Russian autoloader has a failure rate exceeding 20%. It limits the maximum and minimum elevation the gun may obtain, a fact exploited by the Chechens in Grozny when the mauled Russian T-80's. Former Red army vets simply taught the rebels to hide in basements or on the top floors of buildings. The Russian gun could not be elevated or depressed sufficiently to engage these rebels and the Russians were badly defeated.
Last, their autoloader put rounds inside the hull, twenty two of them. One hit to the hull and the propellant charges detonate, blowing the turret skyward and also blowing the engine out the back. By comparison, M-!'s in Iraq have taken advanced anti-tank rounds through their thin side armor behind the wheels with little effect. Hits to the ammo bustle detonate the ammo in the bustle, blowing the blow off hatch out but the crew is protected by a titanium blast door. The crews walk away. No M-1 crew has been lost to another tank. The badly blown up tanks you will see from time to time are all ones that had engines or tracks disabled and were taken out with Maverick missiles to prevent them from being compromised.
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What about the French autoloader on the Leclerc?

And as for lengthening the barrel vs. increasing the caliber, I think that the end result would still result in a longer barrel.
 
N

Norfolk

Junior Member
VIP Professional
Skywatcher said:
What about the French autoloader on the Leclerc?

And as for lengthening the barrel vs. increasing the caliber, I think that the end result would still result in a longer barrel.
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The French Army is having serious equipment problems in general in recent years, mainly due to old age, but the LeClerc is fairly new, and even so, not even half of the French Army's total fleet is even operational, let alone combat-ready.

Given all the issues with ground pressure and close country in the South (paddy-fields, roads of dubious load-bearing capacity, mountains, dense vegetation, etc.), and technical issues surrounding prospective increases in bore-calibre and the resort to automatic loaders - and never mind taking into consideration the logistical arrangements to keep very sophisticated tanks going in difficult terrain - it comes as no wonder that the PLA prefers to extensively upgrade and upgun some of its Type 59's in preference to deploying the Types 96/98/99 in the South. Parts of the North and to a certain extent the West would be different, though.
 
M

man overbored

Junior Member
Since the Germans do not use a depleted uranium penetrator in their APFSDS round, but use less controversial but less capable tungsten, they have chosen to use a longer barrel on their latest 120 mm smoothbore to increase their round's penetrating power. The US Army continues to use a DU penetrator and chose instead to concentrate on an improved propellant and better aerodynamics for our M829A3 round. This gave us a better result in testing than using the longer barrel of the latest version of the Lepoard.
 
PrOeLiTeZ

PrOeLiTeZ

Junior Member
Registered Member
proelite said:
You need to take physics. By your logic the weight of the atmosphere would flatten and compress the soil. Pressure is force per area. You can have an ultra heavy object, but spread it's weight evenly across an area to exert low pressure on the soil. Conversely, you can wear pointy shoes on your feet and sink several inches every time you place your feet on the ground. How do you think snow shoes work?
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No your anaylses isn't correct: pressure=force/area, force=mass * acceleration, if your mass is huge then your force will be too then that gives you a big pressure, if the pressure says is ? and your pressure is more then the grounds resistant pressure ?....then your tank will sink....true if you spread the area out enough it will stay up but the amount of area neccessary to keep your tank from sinking wouldn't be warfare feasable, airlifting it would be near impossible without huge airlifters, even the C-17 can manage a single m1a1...

thats warfare inland but if your in the urban environement the roads and bridge aren't designed to take such weight and its size cause of its distrubuted weight will prevent it from going into the smaller city roads...
 
PrOeLiTeZ

PrOeLiTeZ

Junior Member
Registered Member
man overbored said:
There is a very good reason. The US Army has studied this in depth. Increasing the caliber of the gun to 140mm from 120mm has two major drawbacks. Number one, it will reduce the number of rounds the tank can carry. The M-1A2 carries a lot fewer rounds for it's 120mm gun than the original M-1 carried for it's 105mm main gun. The Army doesn't feel it can afford to reduce the number of ready service rounds any more than this for a tank to be tactically relavant.
The second problem concerns loading. The US Army will not use an autoloader. A 140mm round will require one, it is too heavy for a human loader to lift out of a bustle and place in the gun. The experience the US Army has with autoloaders is based on direct experience with Russian equipment it has either captured or bought from for Warsaw Pact nations. We have at least one example of everything the Russians use, and the aggressor force at Fort Irwin trained other Army units with T-72's for many years. Here is what our Army found. Number one, the Russian auto loader takes six to seven seconds to load a round. During this time the gun must be level and the turret cannot rotate. This means that in combat there is a six to seven second period of time where the tank commander cannot aim at the next target, the tank is essentially defenseless during this time. By comparison the standard for the M-1 is to load a round every four seconds and well drilled crews can load and fire every two seconds. The main gun of the M-1 is being aimed at it's next target while the gun is loaded, so rapid rates of fire are easily accomplished while the tank is on the move.
In actual practice the Russian autoloader has a failure rate exceeding 20%. It limits the maximum and minimum elevation the gun may obtain, a fact exploited by the Chechens in Grozny when the mauled Russian T-80's. Former Red army vets simply taught the rebels to hide in basements or on the top floors of buildings. The Russian gun could not be elevated or depressed sufficiently to engage these rebels and the Russians were badly defeated.
Last, their autoloader put rounds inside the hull, twenty two of them. One hit to the hull and the propellant charges detonate, blowing the turret skyward and also blowing the engine out the back. By comparison, M-!'s in Iraq have taken advanced anti-tank rounds through their thin side armor behind the wheels with little effect. Hits to the ammo bustle detonate the ammo in the bustle, blowing the blow off hatch out but the crew is protected by a titanium blast door. The crews walk away. No M-1 crew has been lost to another tank. The badly blown up tanks you will see from time to time are all ones that had engines or tracks disabled and were taken out with Maverick missiles to prevent them from being compromised.
Click to expand...
when i mean strap it onto 8x8 truck doesnt mean actually ontop of it, it also means being towed-straped onto the rear of the truck...it wont ripp out th truck cause its aint connected...china 8x8 trucks already tows their artillery...increasing the calibre probably you were mistanken when i said this...

was mean't to mean increasing the lethality in the rounds, same size but increase in calibre firepower....increasing the warhead leathality impact....i know the major drawbacks of the autoloader system compare to the manual one, but if the chinese generals are fine with it then something in the autoloader system must of been a major advantage in letting them turn to this system.
 
M

man overbored

Junior Member
Something to consider is that all tanks are transported from place to place.on big low boy semi trailers pulled by some very heavy duty tractors. It costs many hundred dollard per mile to operate a tank under it's own power. A fifty ton tank in already pretty much at the limit of what a truck can haul. In the US most states limit tractor trailer rigs to forty tons and a few states like Nevada allow up to sixty tons combined weight on a permit. Above that the load requires a special permit for each trip, and the highway patrol will devise a route that keeps the load clear of obstacles ( low bridges and the like ) and off roads that are not designed to handle such weights. Bridge capacities have to considered when devising these routes so state engineers become involved. If you move the tank on a ship the deck may not be able to withstand the weight. If you recall the old Iwo Jima class LPH's from the 1960's their flight decks had areas that would not take the all up weight of a parked CH-53E when that helo entered service. Our RO/RO ships have specially strengthened tank decks. Big heavy objects present special handling problems.
 
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