New Type98/99 MBT thread
- Thread starter Dongfeng
- Start date
It's not just FPVs but shots against turret in general.
Abrams have been a disaster in their first combat tour, getting blapped from miles away before they can get close to the front. Some 80-90% loss rate? Despite Ukraine/NATO volunteers being told to conserve them as much as possible. In hindsight, the performance of Iraqis Abrams vs militants was the warning sign.
Something like a T90 or Merkava can hide it's chassis under cover while peeking with it's turret. If the turret is hit, nothing much happens. Whereas on Abrams, you get a big boom, dead crew if the loading hatch is open, otherwise alive but stranded in enemy territory crew, and either way, a disabled tank.
It's proven truly awful in terms of protection, through it still has a stabilized and up to date gun, that's about the best thing you can say for it.
I’m seriously confused here, are you trying to say that the t-72 style tanks are better protected than the abrams? Even thought the Russian tanks like to turn the crew into jelly when penetrated? If the turret is hit in the Russian tank, it explodes, because ammo is stored on the turret walls, and if not, sparks and shrapnel fall down and land on the ammo. The abrams has the best protection available currently, certainly better than the t-90, which also has issues with reversing at any decent speed, unless you can provide a source that says otherwise. Like all tanks, the abrams will fail if used incorrectly.
You're talking about a bottom hull penetration here, which also does the same in an Abrams. The unique awfulness of the turret magazine design is that any random insurgent with a FPV drone or better can just pop your ammo rack by hitting your exposed turret.
Ammo is stored in a carousel deep inside the hull. The Abrams have them in the turret walls.
That's a separate issue. T72 series reversal speed is absolutely awful design, and possibly makes the Abrams more crew survivable as a whole package, simply because it's such a crippling flaw that you can't run away in reverse. But we were talking about the armor scheme, not the whole tank as a package. In battlefield condition, the reverse speed defintely causes a much reduced survival rate.
However, tanks like T99, Leopard and Merkava do not have this reverse speed flaw, while also not having the issue of easily detonable turret magazines. So I'd say these represent the gold standard in overall survivability (if we don't count T-14).
It's not like having a bottom hull stored ammo scheme means you must have an awful reverse speed. That's the fault of the engine/gearbox/transmission.
The ammo is covered by steel plates in the caroussel, though, so it takes more than sparks and shrapnel to fall down and detonate it.
Once you get the crews to stop carrying extra ammo outside the autoloader, T tanks can be pretty resilient post penetration. Of course, it is, once it does ignites, all bets are off for the survival of the crew, though the Soviets did experiment with blowout panels on the T-95's autoloader, which has been adapted for the T-14.
It is a matter of trade-offs, as with everything. A solution like the M1 requires a massive turret and the survival of the crew is still dependant on the blast door being closed at the time the ammo in the bustle is hit or that the either the blast door or the plate that separates the ammo from the crew hasn't been compromised in any way by the impact, otherwise the explosion will go into the fighting comparment before the blowout panels.
Are you saying that in Desert Storm (the first use in combat) was a disaster? Where are you facts to back that up?
If you are saying the performance of the Abrams used by Arab Nations was a disaster, then I think you will be backed up by facts.
The first Combat Tour of the Abrams tank was and is Desert Storm (1991 if you look this up). It was a bit one sided.
If you are saying by the Ukrainian Army, then point to facts. Their lost rate of Abrams is not a disaster, if we agree that a disaster is losing tanks at a rate of more than 50% with each engagement. The Ukrainian Army's 47th BDE (the only unit with Abrams) lost 5 of 31 tanks over the course FEB to SEP 2024. That is a loss rate of 16%. The apparent reason is the use of Abrams as NOT a part of combined arms, a key component in NATO doctrine.
The M-1 is a tough tank. But it’s no more invulnerable than any tank is in a war that has eaten more than 6,000 Russian tanks and at least 700 Ukrainian ones. Get used to seeing wrecked and abandoned Abrams in Ukraine.
See my comment above. Any tank used by Arab Armies has/is not great, except for Jordian Army. It always comes does to training and the personnel operating the tank.
Are you kidding? Where are you getting this( reverse slope defense is a form of armor protection) data? Hiding under cover peeking the turret over is good if you have rolling terrain (not desert sand hills like in Iraq) it may provide some cover, but modern ammunition penetrates such cover and still hits the tanks.
Again where are your facts on awful protection of the Abrams tank versus T90?? (I think somewhere in the forum this was discussed already)
Stating that the stabilization and the M256 120mm gun is the best thing about the Abrams displays your lack of knowledge and the generalization of this subject.
A good tank operated by a great crew in combined arms battle (Infantry with tanks and artillery) will beat a great tank with a mediocre crew. Combined Arms for today and the foreseeable future include drones, at least in the defense.
I would just conjecture that the drones today are the newest version of the ATGM that 'signaled' the end of tank warfare, and we still have tanks in many countries. It is about combined Arms Warfare not simply tank on tank like some game or engineer spreadsheet.
Also in other comments you pointed out hits to the hull are catastrophic, and you point out the open ammunition storage (open = not behind blast doors and therefore not crew protection) is a reason for an armor vehicle loss, I agree. This is not the case with the Abrams. There are many posts on the , go look. There is even a declassified video on line. Look it up.
As far as the tank crew capsule version of the future tanks, that remains to be seen if that concept will work in combat. As of the current moment the T-14 is not being used in combat, nor is it fully working. The Chinese concept on this forum is just some drawings on paper and I am not sure that it is more than that. The PLA ground force has understood that hard training is the key, not some 'Wunder weapon'.
Index, you are a bit off. The Abrams ammunition storage is not just in the turret. There are a few rounds in the hull, also behind blast doors.
A rando insurgent or any Soldier with a FPV (or any drone) can kill a tank if the crew is not doing what they should be doing, which is watching the current area. The Drone is adding back the old 'air guard' concept back into everyone's doctrine. Except instead of ground attack aircraft, it is a drone.
The turret ammunition compartment of the Abrams cannot be just destroyed by the blast of a munition carried by a FPV/drone. Munition would have to have the same penetration capability as antitank munition. Hits on the exterior of a tank from hot fragments are not going to make the Abrams turret ammunition detonate. I think you are making assumptions based on some videos online (that are made/edited) for messaging.
Please, do some research and lets talk about this with facts, because you are coming off as someone that uninformed and is using Wikipedia as your sources of information. I am sure you are not uninformed so come up with sources to your position. I am sure you have a valid perspective.
Its almost like tanks can fail to perform if used outside of the optimal parameters of the doctrine behind its design, which is exactly what happened with Iraqi T-72's.
David Axe is utter shit, though.
All it takes is for the loader to not close the blast door in the turret bustle between loads, though.
Enemies in desert storm did not have modern equipment. They used ww2 era AAA guns. They were very delusional as Saddam essentially had an insurgent army but chose to fight as a regular army.
I do not consider this military on military action. The Abrams had success here because there the Iraqi "army" was an undisciplined mob, and even worse, agitated to go out on the fields by Saddam.
In the same vein, Chinese Type 59G had significant success in Sudan's wars, where Sudan had the only airplanes providing spotting and the other forces, similar to Iraq, mostly fielded old early cold war relics or unupgraded T72s. I do not consider this to be military on military action for the Type 59G.
There's much more videos alone than 5 Abrams destroyed in Ukraine. The other "numbers" given by this channel are so extremely off that it's laughable propaganda.
Quite the contrary. It's at least as far progressed as Armata.
Hmmm some people here don't know how the ammo doors on the Abrams tank work. There are a few very funny videos on youtube showing loader fails (Soldiers are pretty harsh in humor), but the explains the working of the ammo door.
Bottom line is that the ammo door is hydraulically operated and is opened by the loader by the knee switch. It closes automatically after a set time. Here is a ,.
So for the ammo door to be open (not closed) for an extended time period indicates the tank is not operating correctly or the crew wants bad things to happen to them.