IronsightSniper
Junior Member
Probably just rubber than.
New Type98/99 MBT thread
- Thread starter Dongfeng
- Start date
any effectiveness against vanilla RPGs?
MwRYum
Major
If it cause the RPG round to detonate in the non-ideal position (ie. not upon striking at the actual hull), it'd serve its purpose - in theory that is, don't know if that's the same deal with tandem warhead HEAT round type though.
plawolf
Lieutenant General
I don't think there can be any question about whether a rubber side skirt can stop a tandem warhead HEAT rounds. Those things are designed to punch through spaced armor on older MBTs. Even if that skirt was steel armor, a tandem HEAT round will still almost certainly defeat it.
Actually, the value of these rubber side-skirts are more "impressive" than people would think. Especially of these relatively thick "heavy rubber skirts". They do not protect the tank's sides by detonating the warhead before it reaches the essential hull in question, but actually prevent the trigger of the warhead (like, for example, a RPG-7 round) to detonate the charge. The trigger of a shaped charge round like the RPG-7 usually need to hit something hard like metal or even just brick-walls to detonate the charge, so hitting the relatively elastic, but still durable rubber-skirt sections, the round has a high chance to just break its own trigger-cap and fall to the ground harmlessly, or even gets 'caught' by the rubber-skirts. The sectioned nature of these skirts, as apparent from above's photo, also helps to increase its "elasticity" needed to "catch" the round and renders it useless. And even in case the round does go off, the distance between skirt and hull is sufficient enough to render the shaped charge or the liquified metal-jet generated from the (typically) chopper-liner to expend much of its power to penetrate the hull. An air-gap is a very effective anti HEAT measure, as the air-gap could be directly translated to actual millimeters of armour protection in terms of shaped charges, which means those 30-40cm between skirt and hull mean effectively 300-400mm of "RHA armour protection". This dynamic, while not as clear and sciencetific, was actually mentioned in one CCTV documentary about the ZTZ-96 tank years ago IIRC.
These heavy rubber skirts must not be mistaken with some western rubber skirts on old tanks, that are much lighter and thinner, and only meant to protect against dirt and dust. Above's rubber-skirt looks to be up to 20+mm thick and are pretty much based on soviet designs, who were designed with the same anti-RPG roles in mind.
The only problem with it, is that they arent protecting the tank against anti-tank rounds that have so much initial velocity, that they cant be caught by the heavy rubber-skirts but just punch through them like butter - or, as mentioned here, tandem charges.
Also, they are next to useless against chaingun rounds, since they too will just punch through them and hit the relatively thin side hull armour of approx. 80mm (at least this was in the T-72 case and it is dependent on the design of the autoloader - dunno if China modified theirs for that sake)...
Oh crap. First post since 2008.
These heavy rubber skirts must not be mistaken with some western rubber skirts on old tanks, that are much lighter and thinner, and only meant to protect against dirt and dust. Above's rubber-skirt looks to be up to 20+mm thick and are pretty much based on soviet designs, who were designed with the same anti-RPG roles in mind.
The only problem with it, is that they arent protecting the tank against anti-tank rounds that have so much initial velocity, that they cant be caught by the heavy rubber-skirts but just punch through them like butter - or, as mentioned here, tandem charges.
Also, they are next to useless against chaingun rounds, since they too will just punch through them and hit the relatively thin side hull armour of approx. 80mm (at least this was in the T-72 case and it is dependent on the design of the autoloader - dunno if China modified theirs for that sake)...
Oh crap. First post since 2008.
IronsightSniper
Junior Member
Not actual '300-400 mm of RHA', but more like 100-200 mm of RHAe.
From Folfanov in regards to the T-72BM:
From Folfanov in regards to the T-72BM:
Welp, anyway. It does protect against 1st generation RPG's and has good chance to 'catch' similiar velocity rounds (so, up to 120m/s) without them detonating. But with everything faster, such as an RPG-29 (280m/s) it would simply fly past without being affected by the rubber a or punch through it directly.
I wonder If China could strenghten it or make it more robust and on the same time more flexible somehow, to even 'catch' these 'high velocity' rounds... Because, no matter how good a tank is armoured from the sides, it can never hope to resist a direct gun-hit from an opposing tank, an ATGM hit, or one from a high performance man-portable anti tank weapon. So, everything should just be done for the sake of protecting against light anti tank and other low-penetration but commonly available weapons. At least this would be the most cost effective route, instead of plastering the sides full with heavy ERA that would only protect the sides once, no matter if it was hit by either a heavy or a light anti-tank weapon, and then expose a huge gap that is vulnerable to near everything. Heavy rubber plates are more flexible and multiple-hit capable compared to that...
I wonder If China could strenghten it or make it more robust and on the same time more flexible somehow, to even 'catch' these 'high velocity' rounds... Because, no matter how good a tank is armoured from the sides, it can never hope to resist a direct gun-hit from an opposing tank, an ATGM hit, or one from a high performance man-portable anti tank weapon. So, everything should just be done for the sake of protecting against light anti tank and other low-penetration but commonly available weapons. At least this would be the most cost effective route, instead of plastering the sides full with heavy ERA that would only protect the sides once, no matter if it was hit by either a heavy or a light anti-tank weapon, and then expose a huge gap that is vulnerable to near everything. Heavy rubber plates are more flexible and multiple-hit capable compared to that...
