New Type98/99 MBT thread
- Thread starter Dongfeng
- Start date
All tank that carry ammo in the hull are prone to impressive cooking off in the hull if hit at the sweet spot.
99 have a carousel so if you have ammo cooking off, it will be like other MBT with ammo in the hull like Russian, English, German, Israeli and France MBT in service.
M1 have the advantage to store ammo outside the crew compartment but at the cost of having it's ammo way more exposed with a turret hit. It would not explode in the tank hull if the blast door are close ( When not recharging the gun) . So the crew is safer if no ammo are carried in the hull. M1 had possibility to carry ammo in the hull too...i don't think that storage is used anymore.
For FPV drones grenade tossing destroying mbt, I would put open hatches as one of the main problem. Better climatization and optics are one improvement that newer tanks have over Soviet era tanks.
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It has laser device to blind the launchers of SACLOS missiles like MILAN, TOW and Kornet but I'm not sure it could blind moving missile like Javelin though.
There are no sensors for that, the only 360 sensors are LWRs. Those can give you a vector only to something actually lasing you, almost certainly a rangefinder.
It in theory can be done within a sector through commanders sight, but honestly extremely unlikely. 99A isn't that new.
A penetration into the bottom of the hull is nearly universally fatal, ammo stored there or not. T-14 and supposedly the undesignated new PLA tank have armored capsules that would in theory protect the crew from a catastrophic lower hit, but it doesn't stop the tank itself from being destroyed.
It's very dubious if this is actually an advantage. In the battlefield, a M1 effectively only has whatever thin armor shields the blowout panels in the turret, which will be the most exposed part of the tank. The crew can often survive a M1 being mission killed from ammo cook off, but then you have a likely wounded crew stranded as dismounted infantry in a modern battlefield environment where their survival chances range from low to very low.
The Chinese/German/Russian/Israeli 3rd generation tanks will have the crew instantly killed if an ammo cook off happens, but it's much more difficult to hit the low part of the hull (which is also more armored), and an equivalent hit to a M1 will also kill the crew, although not in an equally spectacular fashion.
I think there's a good reason why almost every major tank building nation uses ammo stored in the hull bottom, and why both 4th generation tank designs use carousel (with added improvement by armored capsule, which saves the crew but still leaves the tank destroyed).
M1s were designed firstly in an era where they just needed to match the T72 in frontal protection while having a defender's advantage, and then secondly every upgrade afterwards focused on partisan suppression in the middle east.
Having the ammo cook off and leaving the crew stranded is fine if youre not fighting regular military adversaries. It's probably even beneficial through a mineshaft canary effect, where if a M1 gets crossfired by RPGs and gets mission killed, it reveals that the danger in the area is high, while the crew can still run out of there, because they're not in a modern battlefield environment.
Never say m1 ammo storage was an advantage in battle... it was an advantage preventing hull/crew loss. We were talking about active MBT and turret toss. Lower fire rate by manual ammo manipulation is probably a disadvantage.
Hull breach is fatal indeed, but without ammo storage in it the tank have a chance to be salvaged.
New crew capsule in T-14 and future PLA tank is indeed a nice solution to protect crew, removing the need of a fragile ammo storage but also having an autoloader that give them a nice fire rate. But if we talk about turret toss... T-14 will probably toss.
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What I mean is that crew loss is not necessarily improved, because a M1 turret hit can easily disable the tank, leaving the crew stranded in hostile territory. While the same turret hit on a tank with bottom ammo storage would just be shrugged off.
I think this is true and likely the major advantage to having the Abrams' ammo storage system, that the hull can be recovered even after losing the crew. But a counterpoint is that it's very unlikely one can recover the tank after frontline destruction against a modern enemy force.
And to China at least, the crew is much more valuable than the tank, so this is a reason why this type of design was chosen.
I will also add that it's not uncommon to see the ammo rack melt through the engine block and down to the ground on the Abrams. At that point, recovering that is probably not worth it.
The crew survivability is what I believe to be the main purpose. As others mentioned, crews and their experiences are priceless.
The crew survivability is what I believe to be the main purpose. As others mentioned, crews and their experiences are priceless.
But it doesn't provide any crew survivability benefit. If anything, it's the opposite. Lighter weapons easily hit the turret ammo rack and force the crew to run out into fire.