Modern Main Battle Tanks ( MBT )

gelgoog · Oct 15, 2018

Yeah, but the question is, can the 120mm Reinmetall gun of the Leopard 2 penerate the T-14 over its frontal arc or not?
Because if it does not they need a better gun. The T-14 is supposed to have over 900mm RHA equivalent armor on the front. I think they'll need at least a 130mm gun.
In turn, I think the major weakness of the T-14 is the turret, which has little protection, and retains the carousel loader. Sure the crew is protected but the gun is exposed. Disable the gun and the tank becomes useless in combat.

TerraN_EmpirE · Oct 15, 2018

gelgoog said:
Yeah, but the question is, can the 120mm Reinmetall gun of the Leopard 2 penerate the T-14 over its frontal arc or not?
Because if it does not they need a better gun. The T-14 is supposed to have over 900mm RHA equivalent armor on the front. I think they'll need at least a 130mm gun.
In turn, I think the major weakness of the T-14 is the turret, which has little protection, and retains the carousel loader. Sure the crew is protected but the gun is exposed. Disable the gun and the tank becomes useless in combat.

First The chances of actually facing a T14 in battle are rare. T14 is like the SU57 The best they have but not in numbers. It's a rare gem unlikely to be seen in combat anytime soon.
Second this 900mm RHA figure is lacking in type HEAT or Sabot? But when i have seen figures like this its not the turret front but the Glacis that means the crew compartment not the turret. The turret is unmanned and smaller and less armored probably in the under 700mm which would put it around the penetration numbers of the L55 main gun with modern ammo. Same for the Abrams main gun. In point of fact the latest Sabot are said to be able to penetrate up to a 1000mm.
All the real armor of the Armata is around the crew. The turret is protected but mostly be ERA and the APS. The Turret is basically a remote weapons station. To keep weight down it's less protected

TerraN_EmpirE · Jan 30, 2019

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So the French dusted off the 140mm Leclerc demonstrator.
In the last few years NATO makers seem to be picking back up the late 1980’s early 1990’s work on l130mm/140mm smooth bore guns.

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The Germans are now looking to adopt the Israeli made Trophy system for the Leopard 2A7. Despite offerings from European makers. This is as at this point Trophy is the only combat rated APS Hardkill system west of the Russian boarder.

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Roumor mill is that Rhinmetall might be working on a Lynx MBT variant.

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Leonardo now offers M60A3 upgrade kit

The Russians of course maintain that they will eventually at some point upgun T14 to 152mm, yet as yet no evidence.

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Iraq trades in Abrams tanks for T90s. This is a response two fold. 1st because of price. 2nd as the US Tanks have conditions of use that the Iraqis have already violated.

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Thailand loves them some Chinese made VT4

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As Does Pakistan.

gelgoog · Jan 30, 2019

There were T-14 prototypes with a 152mm main gun. However if the 125mm gun is enough against all possible targets why bother with more?
This saves the Russians money since they can use existing ammo from their ammo stocks.

Because of the modular construction of the T-14 it is not particularly difficult to replace the main gun section unlike on an MBT with a standard body chassis type.
I am still dumbfounded at the Chinese's lack of investment in modern land forces. Although there have been many weapons systems which entered service or are in development, it still feels like they are catching up with 1980s technology for the most part, with some notable exceptions like tank FCS, or artillery where the Chinese are either state of the art or beyond that.

TerraN_EmpirE · Jan 30, 2019

gelgoog said:
There were T-14 prototypes with a 152mm main gun.

No there were prototypes of other tanks with it.
As yet no solid confirmed 152 T14.

gelgoog said:
However if the 125mm gun is enough against all possible targets why bother with more?

Because the targets change. Modern tank armor continues to evolve and the Russians have wanted to keep up. They are the ones who keep pushing 152.

gelgoog said:
Because of the modular construction of the T-14 it is not particularly difficult to replace the main gun section unlike on an MBT with a standard body chassis type.

Wrong. Double wrong.
You need to change the gun tube and the autoloader.
The automatic loader in T14 is a carousel type like those in previous Russian tanks. It needs to be built to reliably load the ammo in two parts.

As for "Standard Body Chassis" the Gun tube and breach are easily changed and most late third gen NATO tanks were designed to up Gun. Leclerc, Leopard 2, Abrams, K2 all at some point trailed 140mm rounds of various types.
The biggest change is the magazine racks. That's a new unit.
The tank that has the hardest time is the Challanger 2 but that's because the British so tailored it for there two piece ammo. That in order to move to the NATO spec Smooth Bore they basically need a new turret.

TerraN_EmpirE · Feb 28, 2019

Meet the M1A2C Abrams: The U.S. Army's New Tank
The latest version of the M1 arguably is the best tank in the world. For now.

by
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The U.S. Army has revealed its newest tank.

The new M1A2C Abrams boasts new active and passive protection that could help to protect it from the latest enemy weaponry.

The first detailed image of the M1A2C
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on Feb. 22, 2019.
The photo depicts one of the new fighting vehicles at the Army's Yuma Proving Ground in Arizona. The most obvious new features of the M1A2C that are evident in the photo are the vehicle's Trophy active protection systems and an additional slab of armor on the front of its turret.

Trophy uses a radar to detect incoming missiles and rockets then fires tiny projectiles to intercept the munitions. The Army also is back-fitting Trophy to some older M1 models.
The M1A2C is the latest variant of Abrams to enter production. Congress gave the Army $1.5 billion to buy 135 M-1s from General Dynamics in 2019, extending a program that began in the 1970s.

The first M1 entered service with the Army in 1980. The original M1 packed a 105-millimeter gun. The Army bought 3,300 of them. In 1984 the Army added thicker armor to a batch of new M-1s and called these 900 tanks M1IPs. The U.S. military no longer uses these early M1s.
A major upgrade in 1986 added a new 120-millimeter gun. This is the M1A1. The Army and Marines bought 5,200 copies through 1992. Roughly a thousand M1A1s still are in service with the Marines and Army National Guard. Another 3,000 or so are in storage.

There are a bewildering number of subvariants of the M1A1, each boasting incremental improvements in drive-train, armor and electronics. The latest upgrade, the M1A1SA, has a factory-fresh engine, digital electronics and a top-secret armor blend that includes a thin layer of uranium.

The Army plans to retire all M1A1SAs by 2025.

The M1A2 appeared in 1992. It’s pretty much a new tank, with better armor than the basic M1A1 plus a new internal layout and fresh sensors that together allow the gunner and the commander independently to search for targets.
The Army has acquired around 1,500 M1A2s and converted most of them to the System Enhancement Package Version 2 standard. The M1A2SEPv.2, which General Dynamics describes as a "digital tank," features high-end computers, a remotely-operated machine gun on the turret and a dozen batteries that allow the tank quietly to operate its sensors without turning on its engine.

The M1A2C in essence is a better-protected M1A2SEPv.2 that's also easier to upgrade. In addition to Trophy and more armor, the new tank boasts more electrical power, better diagnostic systems and a data-link that's compatible with programmable ammunition types that are in development.

"The Abrams M1A2C can host any mature technology the Army deems operationally relevant," the Army
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.

The latest version of the M1 arguably is the best tank in the world. For now.

Russia and China both are developing new fighting vehicles. Russia's high-tech Armata tank has run into development problems, but China successfully has fielded hundreds of new Type 99A tanks that roughly are similar to mid-generation, digital M-1s.

But China has struggled to adapt old-style doctrine to its new armor. In early 2019, the Chinese army's 81st Group Army, riding in Type 99As, lost a mock battle during a war game in Mongolia, Global Times
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, citing the state-run CCTV television news network.

"We rushed with the Type 99A too close to the frontline, which did not optimize the use of the tank's combat capability," CCTV quoted Xu Chengbiao, a battalion commander in the brigade, as saying.

"We only studied the capabilities of older tanks, but have not completely understood new ones," Zhao Jianxin, another battalion commander, reportedly told CCTV.

Anticipating the day when Russia resumes modernizing its tank corps and China figures out how to use its own new fighting vehicles, the U.S. Army already is planning a new M1 variant to follow the M1A2C.

The "cornerstone technology" of the M1A2D is a new infrared sensor, according to the Army. The newest Abrams will also sport a new laser range-finder and will be compatible with artificial intelligence that could make the tank more autonomous, the Army stated.

David Axe serves as Defense Editor of the National Interest. He is the author of the graphic novels
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The surprise on the C abrams was the added frontal turret armor. This was supposedly added to counter weight the addition of the Trophy system which adds about 2.5 tons to the turret. There is also a remote weapon station for the commander.
Other upgrades are mostly internal systems upgrades new FLIR sights, modernized computers, an ammunition data link that can tell a round when to detonate and how to detonate. They also added a APU to the power pack so the tank crew can operate systems well not running the gas turbine.
Sorry Diesel lovers no Piston on this bad boy Gas Turbine 4 Ever.

TerraN_EmpirE · Aug 11, 2019

Scuttlebutt Fox 10 ran a report from the US Yuma testing grounds where a Bradley was fitted with a hydro pneumatic suspension. Replacing the Torsion Bar system. Word is a Abrams demonstrator is on the way. Today Challenger 2, K2, Leclerc use such a system well with the exception of Merkava the rest are Torsion bar.

Poland to upgrade there tanks including Leopard 2, T72 and local T72 variants.

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Deleted member 13312 · Sep 16, 2019

TerraN_EmpirE said:
Rate of fire is another mistaken argument. Manual human loaders are faster for the first few shots but as it progresses the human loader slows down. Not because he is tired adrenaline is quite the stimulant. It’s because of how the ammo is sorted. A human loader will start with the ready to go rounds but as the fight progresses and more ammo is fired the available ammunition starts moving more and more to remote spaces in the magazine. What an autoloader does is move the ammo to a fixed loading arm. As such unless the magazine is depleted there is always a ready to load round. Where as a human loader starts having to grab more and more hard to reach ammo. But again other things apply here as the chances of needing to fire more than a few tank rounds in a string are rare, as battles lasting hours are very rare. And in the in between the loader will rearrange the ammo.
Although a 3 man crew may require less than a 4 having a larger tank crew can be advantageous. You have an extra man for watch, an extra set of hands for the grunt work of tank repair and military tasks.

At the risk of bringing up a dead discussion, this is a point that I have seen being raised in many a post and forum and one that I have given much thought about. That of autoloader vs a human loader, more specifically the claim that an extra man= extra manpower, extra eyes for scout etc,etc.
If an extra hand is that important, that modern MBTs would have never removed the radio operator's position when digital radios became prevalent (in fact, modern day coms are still a b*** to operate in a EW environment ). But the fact was that advancement in tech made it really hard to justify making space for an extra person in a tank despite all the passive advantages it might bring.
Deleting an man from the tank can also mean that these extra hands can be tasked to dedicated tank repairs and/or maintenance to relieve the tank crews of that work. While modern optical equipments for both gunner and tank commander makes the loader's human set of eyes somewhat redundant unless one is willing to spent more money to give the loader something better than standard viewports, besides if the loader is to tend to the gun he isn't going to be spotting anyway.
And finally, this might very well be a anecdotal evidence but I have seen videos if both human loaders and autoloaders in action and to be frank the better autoloaders aren't that much slower than a human for the first few rounds, the bustle autoloaders in particular.
IMO, what we are seeing now is the crossroads between human and machine. Unless some new technology is discovered that revolutionize armoured warfare as we know it, the forseeable future is that tanks are going to be more heavily armed and armoured. So even if NATO elects to keep the standard 120mm gun it will still have to compensate by making the penetrator of an even denser material that makes the round even heavier if the penterator remains of a same size which puts the human loader under even greater strain.
Currently the human loader can still justify his position on a MBT, but as times goes on I don't forsee how he can continue to do that.

TerraN_EmpirE · Sep 18, 2019

I am requesting that posts starting with
https://www.sinodefenceforum.com/new-type98-99-mbt-thread.t851/page-281#post-569782

https://www.sinodefenceforum.com/new-type98-99-mbt-thread.t851/page-281#post-569803

https://www.sinodefenceforum.com/new-type98-99-mbt-thread.t851/page-281#post-569813

https://www.sinodefenceforum.com/new-type98-99-mbt-thread.t851/page-281#post-569821

https://www.sinodefenceforum.com/new-type98-99-mbt-thread.t851/page-281#post-570015

https://www.sinodefenceforum.com/new-type98-99-mbt-thread.t851/page-281#post-570034

And

https://www.sinodefenceforum.com/new-type98-99-mbt-thread.t851/page-281#post-570040
Be moved here, they are more general MBT than about the type 99 series of tanks

Viktor Jav said:
Not disagreeing with anything here but the points listed out merely highlights the passive advantages that a loader has rather than the active ones. While it is true that the gunner's view will be much more narrow compared to a 360 view the loader has out of his hatch the gunner is going to have view magnification and IR sights to play with and the TC with his Panoramic Sights is going to do even better. The extra MG gunner is most useful only in an urban setting wherein the tank would depend on infantry outside the tank for maximum support and efficiency, besides there is no reason why an extra soldier can't hop on the turret and man a extra MG. And as the Chieftain had pointed out the extra man out can be assigned to scout duties and do it much better than a loader.
As for the whole "Gun going boom" scenario, if you have a scenario wherein the enemy had managed to damage your gun to the point it is inoperable or it broke down on its own. Then problem isn't going to be solved with just a loader with a wrench.
We are already seeing a thread forming, with newer tanks like the T-14 sporting armor that makes the performance of preexisting guns doubtful and Armies are responding in kind like the German 130MM. Granted it is not going to happen overnight but in the near future like it or not the next US MBT is going to be dragged kicking and screaming to an autoloader system.

I am going to recover this post as I am not satisfied with what I said earlier.

TerraN_EmpirE said:
Yes a magnified soda straw which is limited again. If one set of eyes is good and Two is better Three then takes it beyond.
Optics have really limited views. This is why TC on western tanks still operate hatch open head out cavalry sword in hand demanding a charge so they can run the enemy through... okay maybe not. But the Commanders sight still is a bit of a soda straw. It wasn’t until iron vision that they had a system that didn’t have restricted view aspects and even that is in prototypes.

In the Korean War and Iraq there were cases in non urban where infantry swarmed armor. However only a few MBT with 4 man crews have the extra MG. Look at Challenger II and Leopard 2 both have manual loaders but no extra MG. Abrams and Merkava seem to be the stand out with that extra weapon but since they have the crewman why not?

There are more ways a gun can fail than the gun being damaged. Misfires, hang fires, failure to extract are real issues that can happen with a tank or side arm. An automatic loader today has no way to correct that. If it happens then the T14 is down to its secondary weapons. In the case of a tank like a T72 or K2 the gunner or TC has to resolve the issue. In a manually loaded tank that’s the loader.
T14’s crew capsule is impressive armor from the front but from the sides and rear it’s just as open as any other tank. The Turret has been armored but they skimped a bit which is fine they don’t have a crew in that part of the tank, as such the T14 it doesn’t at this point render the 120mm smooth bore obsolete. It also doesn’t hurt that the Russians haven’t been able to put them into massive large scale production like older tanks.

As for the whole "Gun going boom" scenario, if you have a scenario wherein the enemy had managed to damage your gun to the point it is inoperable or it broke down on its own. Then problem isn't going to be solved with just a loader with a wrench.

The main gun can go down for any number of reasons the least likely being that the gun has been destroyed. It is a mechanical system like any other and it can fail for any number of reasons. Remedial actions are not a case where in the gun has been destroyed. They are the situation where in the breach fails to close the trigger fails to engage, ammo not seating failure to eject and more. These situations are not the norm and automatic loader systems are not designed to correct them. In that situation a crewman has to get behind the breach and start troubleshooting. That is where the loader with a wrench comes in.

We are already seeing a thread forming, with newer tanks like the T-14 sporting armor that makes the performance of preexisting guns doubtful and Armies are responding in kind like the German 130MM

First this isn’t the first time. In the late 1980s early 1990s the US, Germany, France even Israel were working on new Very high caliber tank guns to counter the perception that then Soviet tanks would render 120mm smoothbore guns obsolete. Of course what played out was the collapse of the Soviet empire. The super tanks didn’t happen, the Russian military fell apart. The funds didn’t go to a super tank but updates of the existing tank the T72 spawned the T90.
The whole push for bigger guns wasn’t started by T14 reaction but restarted. The 130mm 140mm guns date back that far. The Leclerc 140mm demonstrator was built in 1996, the US had a 140mm Abrams demonstrator in about 1990. Israel and the Swiss armed a Leopard 2 with a 140mm gun for demonstrations. The K2 Black Panther tank from South Korea designed from 1995-2008 was built to drop in a 140mm gun.
The Russian claim of a 152mm dates back to the same era.
So when you say T14 is making “existing guns performance doubtful” welcome back to the late Cold War.
What happened was that after the end of the USSR; the “Peace Dividend” meant it was more practical from a cost perspective to sell off older tanks to lesser allies and make enhancements to the existing 120mm smooth bore. This is why there is the L55 main gun. Because it was more cost effective to put a bigger barrel on the gun.

Viktor Jav said:
. Granted it is not going to happen overnight but in the near future like it or not the next US MBT is going to be dragged kicking and screaming to an autoloader system.

No kicking and screaming needed. Abrams was used as a base for two vehicles of interest here. First the M1 Armata.... I mean M1 TTB

It’s built like T14 encapsulated crew in the front unmanned turret with Carousel style loader. The rounds were 120mm Unitary stored tip down.
But wait there’s more.

Stryker MGS unmanned automatic loader turret.

M1 CATTB
Bustle mounted automatic loader, 120mm lightweight gun or 140mm gun, active suspension.

Basically the US knew from 1988 on that it’s next tank would have an automatic loader. The US flirted with an unmanned turret like Armata, Low profile turrets and more. They even offered a low profile turret like this Centurion upgrade demonstrator that was built in the US.

The CATTB had a Automatic loader like the K2 and Leclerc but more ammo. Because the Bustle of the Abrams is larger than that of either tank.

TerraN_EmpirE · Sep 18, 2019

Biscuits said:
You can pick 2 things out of 3: great armor, 4 man crew, decent weight

4 man crew is invariably an advantage, but PLA did an informed trade off, sacrificing it so the tank doesn’t become too heavy.

A 99A weighs 58 tons. That’s 19.3 tons of tank/crew member. If you want to have that level of protection for 4 crew members, the tank will weigh 77 tons. That’s 2 more tons than the heaviest modern MBT, the Challenger 2.

Such a tank would have issues on smaller paved roads, let alone the marshlands close to Vietnam, or the bridges in mountainous Tibet and Guangxi.

Tank treads produce less ground pressure than regular wheeled vehicles. As such not as much an issue as you may think in a marsh. Mountains are an issue and so are bridges as are transporters. The latter two more than anything.
However at the heart of your claim is that somehow 19.3 tons is a magic number that keeps a crewman safe. That’s a load of..
It’s not the weight it’s the type and design. Weight is the result of the design not the cause of the protection. I mean even the autoloader is part of the weight not protection. If you want the protection weight to crew you have to start subtracting tracks, suspension, optics, automatic loader, ammunition, weapons, power pack, Turret drives, final drives, fuel, displays, wiring and more.
The 19.3 to 1 figure is bogus. Because it fails to consider so much that effects protection and results in a arbitrary number and if the tank doesn’t hit that ratio it doesn’t mean that the tank is flawed.
At the heart of the tank argument of loader vs Automatic loader is that the loader takes more space than any other member of the crew. In a modern MBT the driver takes the least room he lives in a chair.

The gunner has his station and a chair that he lives in. The TC has a hatch and chair and displays he lives in the hatch.

The loader has the most room because he has to move the ammunition from the racks to the breach. His space is to allow him to access ammunition from the hardest to reach point in the ammo rack to the breach. But his position decides the size of the tank and effective ability to fire rounds and choice of rounds.
His space is decided by the magazine.
Older tanks had smaller stations for him as they basically stuck the ammo around the walls of the turret. Of course the flaw here should be obvious. If the turret be breached the shell is right there. Bad day.
Modern Manually loaded MBT are designed to try and isolate the ammo as much as possible well still allowing the ability to load.
This creates a compromise you need an armored door with hydraulic system to open and close the heavy door/doors fast to ensure the crew compartment is separated in the event of a hit to the magazine.

The work around for this is either the semi automatic loader system like that in the Merkava tank.

Or the the conveyer belt system offered for Abrams by Meggitt. These isolated the ammo with only a small amount of opening between the ammo and crew which is rapid opened and closed by a smaller lighter armored door. By delivering the ammo to the loader as opposed to the loader having to hunt for it.

Or the automatic loader.
The PLA chose to continue on the Russian based ammo system for the Type 96 and then type 99 tanks.
The 125mm tank gun.
Now NO it’s not the same gun but it’s compatible.
No it’s not the same loader but it’s compatible.
No it’s not the exact same ammo but very closely resembles.
That means two things.

that the Ammo is a binary type, in other words in two parts. You have the head and the powder charge.
because of that the ammo, has to be held in two magazines one for the head one for the charge.

They could have gone manual but that would have meant two ammo magazines and two storage systems. Or the way they chose the Carousel which try’s to compact the ammo in one place under an armored floor and behind the hull armor in the hopes of shaving off weight.
But it came at a set of trade offs. A smaller range of elevation and depression which is a big deal in mountain terrain.
A higher risk of issues in the event of a fire in the turret as the ammo is under the floor and if it goes it goes up.
To date no one Russian or Chinese seems to have installed blow out panels in the hull for these tanks.

Modern Main Battle Tanks ( MBT )

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