Tanks guns and ammunition.

[Collimatrix]

 

A collection of Chinese tank ammunition.  From top to bottom, 125mm, 100mm, 105mm.

 

You can see that the 100mm ammunition for the D-10 is actually physically larger than the 105mm ammunition for the L7.

[DD000]

Does anyone have a sense of the typical weights of an apfsds round's sabot, fins, nose cap, and tracer compound? I'm trying to get a sense of what percentage of a apfsds round's in-bore and in-flight mass is parasitic weight.

 

Also, the energy figures are usually differentiated muzzle energy and penetrator energy. Muzzle energy is obviously for the entire projectile assembly, but does penetrator energy typically refer to just dense metal long rod or the entire in-flight projectile (including fins, tracer compound, etc.)?

[Ramlaen]

[Belesarius]

Apparently Rosoboronexport is offering 115mm and 100mm Missile rounds for export with modern tandem HEAT warheads for the T-55 and T-62.

 

http://www.armyrecognition.com/weapons_defence_industry_military_technology_uk/analysis_russian_anti-tank_guided_missiles_ammunition_able_to_destroy_modern_armored_vehicles_10301173.html

[Collimatrix]

On 12/2/2016 at 2:08 PM, DD000 said:

Does anyone have a sense of the typical weights of an apfsds round's sabot, fins, nose cap, and tracer compound? I'm trying to get a sense of what percentage of a apfsds round's in-bore and in-flight mass is parasitic weight.

 

Also, the energy figures are usually differentiated muzzle energy and penetrator energy. Muzzle energy is obviously for the entire projectile assembly, but does penetrator energy typically refer to just dense metal long rod or the entire in-flight projectile (including fins, tracer compound, etc.)?

Wikipedia gives that the sabot on M829A1 weighed about as much as the penetrator.  Ogorkiewicz states that the sabot usually weighs about 30-40% of the total solid mass thrown by the gun.

[Militarysta]

 

[Militarysta]

@Methos

T-72B3

 

[Molota_477]

2 hours ago, Militarysta said:

@Methos

T-72B3

 

What're the S1/ S2 and G1 stand for?  Svinets-1/2 and Grifel?

[Militarysta]

@UP

 

Yes, IMHO it's explanation of this marks.

[SH_MM]

That's interessting. So the FCS of the T-72B3 can handle all known Russian 125 mm APFSDS rounds and all Soviet ones. What does this "R4/5/6/7" and "R12/13/14" mean? Are these two switches that need to be set on the corresponding value for firing?

The other two images are very interesting. Where are they from and from what year are they? The blue triangles seem to indicate 120 mm APFSDS ammunition; in 1986 there is one at ~510-520 mm penetration - this might be 120 mm DM33 (if the ammo is German, which is somewhat indicated by the language). The next two APFSDS rounds are located at 600 mm penetration (1992) and 750 mm penetration (1994) - this might be DM43 and DM53 or both might correspond to one round fired from a different barrel length. 

The solid blue line is labeled "US-Schutz" (US protection), the solid red line is labeled "RU-Schutz" (Russian protection). If we take a look at the numbers, it appears that the German (?) estimates for US armor are much lower than the (IMO often overexaggerated) protection estimations from the internet.

German (?) armor estimates vs KE:

• US tank pre-1980 (M60): 250 mm RHA
• US tank from 1980 (M1 Abrams): ~350 mm RHA equivalent
• US tank from 1985 (M1A1 Abrams): ~490 mm RHA equivalent
• US tank from 1992 (M1A2 Abrams): ~650 mm (!) RHA equivalent
• Soviet tank pre-1976 (T-64): 320 mm RHA equivalent
• Soviet tank from 1976 (T-80B?): 400 mm RHA equivalent
• Soviet tank from 1985 (T-72B): 520 mm RHA equivalent
• Soviet tank from 1987 (T-72B? T-80A/U?): 540 mm RHA equivalent
• Soviet/Russian tank from 1990 (T-80U with K5/T-90?): 720 mm RHA equivalent

[Ramlaen]

Wasn't Grifel a 152mm round?

[Militarysta]

@Methos

What does this "R4/5/6/7" and "R12/13/14" mean? Are these two switches that need to be set on the corresponding value for firing?

Yes.

Where are they from and from what year are they? 

 

Rheinmettal internal presentaton from last decade Those photos where posted in some italian military press this year but it was known...slighty before it for tank oficers in Leoben. Now it is relased for public as we can see or someone in Rheinmettal Itally had very bad time in work

 

The solid blue line is labeled "US-Schutz" (US protection), the solid red line is labeled "RU-Schutz" (Russian protection). If we take a look at the numbers, it appears that the German (?) estimates for US armor are much lower than the (IMO often overexaggerated) protection estimations from the internet.

German (?) armor estimates vs KE:

• US tank pre-1980 (M60): 250 mm RHA
• US tank from 1980 (M1 Abrams): ~350 mm RHA equivalent
• US tank from 1985 (M1A1 Abrams): ~490 mm RHA equivalent
• US tank from 1992 (M1A2 Abrams): ~650 mm (!) RHA equivalent
• Soviet tank pre-1976 (T-64): 320 mm RHA equivalent
• Soviet tank from 1976 (T-80B?): 400 mm RHA equivalent
• Soviet tank from 1985 (T-72B): 520 mm RHA equivalent
• Soviet tank from 1987 (T-72B? T-80A/U?): 540 mm RHA equivalent
• Soviet/Russian tank from 1990 (T-80U with K5/T-90?): 720 mm RHA equivalent

 

Interesting but it have no sense for my...

First - we have that note:

Ant turret armour is 400mm RHA ve KE. And we have 350mm in this presentation. It's really small value(!) It's really not conected even whot burlington files from UK and armour protected mentioned there...

Russian protected can be true, but rather for hull then turret. T-64 have avarage 400mm RHA + for turret, but only 330mm for hull...

540mm is for T-72B turret, and slighty less for hull (520mm), 720 it was T-80U and T-80UD and Ob.187 whit Kontakt-5 ERA...

 

This diagram is very inaccurate for me...or there is something which I don't known. Anyway - IMHO values for M1 are understimated... and not acoding to known relised CIA files in thema M1 Armour...

 

 

 

[DD000]

12 hours ago, Militarysta said:

 

Am I reading this right? This graph seems to state that there's a 120mm KE round introduced in 2003 that penetrates 950mm armour. I assume it's referring to the M829A3, but 950mm is way higher than even the most optimistic penetration estimates for it I've seen. 

There also seems to be a pretty large increase in protection from US 1992 levels to 2002 levels (from 650mm to 850mm). I also assume that this is the upgrade from the M1A2 to the M1A2 SEP, but it's surprising as well. I thought the SEP upgrades were mainly to its electronics, with some upgrades to its armour, but nothing so dramatic. Do you suppose that the CE protection to KE protection ratio has remained constant all this time? If the original M1 had 400mm KE protection and 750mm CE protection, then...

M1A2: 650mm KE, 1219mm CE

M1A2 SEP: 850mm KE, 1594mm CE

[Damian]

8 minutes ago, DD000 said:

 

Am I reading this right? This graph seems to state that there's a 120mm KE round introduced in 2003 that penetrates 950mm armour. I assume it's referring to the M829A3, but 950mm is way higher than even the most optimistic penetration estimates for it I've seen. 

There also seems to be a pretty large increase in protection from US 1992 levels to 2002 levels (from 650mm to 850mm). I also assume that this is the upgrade from the M1A2 to the M1A2 SEP, but it's surprising as well. I thought the SEP upgrades were mainly to its electronics, with some upgrades to its armour, but nothing so dramatic. Do you suppose that the CE protection to KE protection ratio has remained constant all this time? If the original M1 had 400mm KE protection and 750mm CE protection, then...

M1A2: 650mm KE, 1219mm CE

M1A2 SEP: 850mm KE, 1594mm CE

It's all some old fantasy estimations, based on god knows what. I would completely ignore this, as it's waste of time to take interest in all these estimations.

[LoooSeR]

12 hours ago, Ramlaen said:

Wasn't Grifel a 152mm round?

IIRC yes, it was.

[SH_MM]

13 hours ago, Militarysta said:

Interesting but it have no sense for my...

First - we have that note:

Ant turret armour is 400mm RHA ve KE. And we have 350mm in this presentation. It's really small value(!) It's really not conected even whot burlington files from UK and armour protected mentioned there...

Russian protected can be true, but rather for hull then turret. T-64 have avarage 400mm RHA + for turret, but only 330mm for hull...

540mm is for T-72B turret, and slighty less for hull (520mm), 720 it was T-80U and T-80UD and Ob.187 whit Kontakt-5 ERA...

 

This diagram is very inaccurate for me...or there is something which I don't known. Anyway - IMHO values for M1 are understimated... and not acoding to known relised CIA files in thema M1 Armour...

Maybe it's an estimation error - 50 mm protection difference is not really much. But it also might have another reason. The quote from the US document says that "one version of the M1 turret armor is rated as [...] 400mm RHA against kinetic energy munitions." It is not specified which part of the turret armor has this level of protection: is it the frontal armor, when directly hit from the front? Is it the side armor when hit at 30° impact angle (so worst case in the frontal ±30° arc)? Is it the turret armor hit from ~20°, so that the horizontal slope is nullified?

Which line equals the 400/750 mm RHA equivalent protection? Red, blue, green, yellow? Which line is used by Rheinmetall (or their German sources) for armor estimations?

The Rheinmetall-made graph also shows no information of what part of the tank has the estimated protection level. The value for the Abrams tank might be a wrong estimation of the frontal turret armor when directly hit from the front; it might be a value for the lowest level of armor protection along the 30° arc. The value also could reflect the minimum protection when hitting the turret so that the horizontal slope is negated. Sweden at least tested the armor in such a way:

In theory these estimations for armor protection might even be a composite value/average (300 mm frontal hull armor + 400 mm turret armor = ~350). It's hard to say without having a more detailed description for both sources.

However what I think is well reflected in the estimated protection levels, is the relation between protection increase from M1 Abrams to M1A1 Abrams to M1A1HA/M1A2. We roughly know how thick (or thin) the added steel plates added to the M1E1 for simulating the increased armor weight are. Suggesting that the M1A1 Abrams has a protection level of ~600 mm RHA equivalent vs APFSDS doesn't make much sense, unless the weight efficiency of the armor made a giant leap. Even more so the values of the M1A2, which are based on Paul Lakowski's old Armor Basics with incredible mass efficiency and thickness efficiency (in general Steel Beasts values seem very questionable - Leopard 2A6 turret with 1380 mm vs APFSDS...).

The M1A1 with T158 tracks (59.1 metric tons) is only ~ 2 tons lighter than the M1A1HA with first generation DU armor (61.2 metric tons). Two metric tons are equal to about ~254 mm RHA per square metre. Given that M1A1's turret cheeks cover an area of ~1.73 m², this means the armor weight increase is roughly equal to 147 mm RHA. So seeing the estimated protection level increase from 490 to 650 mm (+160 mm) makes some sense. It depends on how the armor exactly looks, but based on the penetration calculator from W. Odermatt's website, hardened DU (alone, no other armor elements) requires about 37 more weight for a given protection level compared to normal RHA (300 BHN). So there must be some very strong magic involved to boost the frontal turret armor to 820 mm (Steel Beasts value). The M1A2 has second generation DU armor, but armor weight stayed pretty much constant given the addition of APU, commander's sight, driver's thermal viewer, GPS system and new electronics. The SEP upgrades seem to have added more armor than the transition from M1A1HA to M1A1HA+/M1A2.

 

12 hours ago, DD000 said:

Am I reading this right? This graph seems to state that there's a 120mm KE round introduced in 2003 that penetrates 950mm armour. I assume it's referring to the M829A3, but 950mm is way higher than even the most optimistic penetration estimates for it I've seen. 

There also seems to be a pretty large increase in protection from US 1992 levels to 2002 levels (from 650mm to 850mm). I also assume that this is the upgrade from the M1A2 to the M1A2 SEP, but it's surprising as well. I thought the SEP upgrades were mainly to its electronics, with some upgrades to its armour, but nothing so dramatic. Do you suppose that the CE protection to KE protection ratio has remained constant all this time? If the original M1 had 400mm KE protection and 750mm CE protection, then...

M1A2: 650mm KE, 1219mm CE

M1A2 SEP: 850mm KE, 1594mm CE

This is not the case. This is a presentation from Rheinmetall, that's why it most likely doesn't include any M829 variant in the penetration graph. However Rheinmetall has mentioned in numerous other occasions, that the current APFSDS are optimized against special armor. You shouldn't read it as "can penetrate X amount of steel armor", but "can penetrate composite armor, that provides protection equal to X mm steel against conventional APFSDS ammo". According to German sources, the DM53 + L/55 can penetrate special targets that are equivalent to 1,000 mm RHA, but it cannot penetrate 1,000 mm RHA. How this armor target exactly looks is unknown, but another presentation mentions that Germany/Rheinmetall expected tanks with 1,000 mm RHA equivalent armor, consisting of ~220 mm protection provided by ERA, ~380 mm protection provided by steel and ~400 mm by ceramic and composite materials.

The Danish Army has chosen DM53 over the KEW-A2 APFSDS, even though the latter is 30 mm longer and has a 30 m/s higher muzzle velocity - because the Rheinmetall APFSDS performed better against complex special armor targets. Turkey has tested the current South Korean, Israeli and German APFSDS rounds; the South Korean round performed worst, while being faster (1,750 m/s vs 1,720 m/s of DM53) or respectively shorter (750 mm vs ~700 mm M338?).

[chebuRUSHka]

On 13.2.2017 at 2:23 PM, SH_MM said:

This is not the case. This is a presentation from Rheinmetall, that's why it most likely doesn't include any M829 variant in the penetration graph. However Rheinmetall has mentioned in numerous other occasions, that the current APFSDS are optimized against special armor. You shouldn't read it as "can penetrate X amount of steel armor", but "can penetrate composite armor, that provides protection equal to X mm steel against conventional APFSDS ammo". According to German sources, the DM53 + L/55 can penetrate special targets that are equivalent to 1,000 mm RHA, but it cannot penetrate 1,000 mm RHA. How this armor target exactly looks is unknown, but another presentation mentions that Germany/Rheinmetall expected tanks with 1,000 mm RHA equivalent armor, consisting of ~220 mm protection provided by ERA, ~380 mm protection provided by steel and ~400 mm by ceramic and composite materials.

This or it was fired from a ETC gun. I remember there was a test with a type B or C ETC gun by 2002.

[FORMATOSE]

French APFSDS :

Left to right, second row : OFL 120 F2, BSCC 120 F1, 140 mm APFSDS,  OFL 105 F2, OFL 105 F1 or G2, OFL 90 F1, OFL 90 F2, OCC 90 62

Left to right, front row : OFL 120 F1, OECC 120 F1,  two non-identified arrows

[Ramlaen]

Quote

Sumpter Township Police Department

Today's entry into the "you don't see something like that everyday" file:

Earlier today a resident showed up in our parking lot and asked us to take a look in her trunk. She explained that her husband had been storing a military object in their house since at least 1994 and after his recent passing she was cleaning things out.

You can imagine our uneasiness when, upon opening her trunk, officers observed this big fella staring back at them. The initial Interest quickly turned to "hmmm, what if?" and we reached out to the Explosive Ordnance Disposal unit of the Wayne County Airport Police for assistance.

Upon their arrival, the experts confirmed it as being an anti-tank tank round. Several on-scene x-rays confirmed that it was indeed a live round but posed a minimal risk.

Please remember, if you happen to find anything that looks to be military ammunition (especially something in the 3ft long and 50lb range), grenades or anything else that remotely looks like its sole purpose is to go "KABOOM!"... call us and we'll happily make a house call.

**photo taken next to garbage can & receptacle for point of reference (and at the back of the building far, far away from occupied spaces).

[Collimatrix]

Oh boy.

So, just how prone is the combustable case material to ignition from, say, static discharge or someone carelessly flicking a lit cigarette at it?

[Khand-e]

10 hours ago, Collimatrix said:

Oh boy.

So, just how prone is the combustable case material to ignition from, say, static discharge or someone carelessly flicking a lit cigarette at it?

Don't know, I've heard a few anecdotes that a 9 volt battery has more then enough of a charge to it to set one off if you simply touched the case with it. can you get the same from a good bit of static electricity?

[Xoon]

39 minutes ago, Khand-e said:

Don't know, I've heard a few anecdotes that a 9 volt battery has more then enough of a charge to it to set one off if you simply touched the case with it. can you get the same from a good bit of static electricity?

In case of the 9V battery it probably was shorted when it touched the metal casing, which rapidly heats up the battery and part of the casing it touches. This could probably ignited the propellant if it is sensitive enough. 

When it comes to static electricity, instead of a constant supply heating up the metal, you would instead have a arc which heats up the surrounding air/gas and ignites it. A human does defiantly have the potential to ignite the propellant, but it seems highly unlikely with a casing, since the casing would discharge you, instead of sending the arc through the propellant. Image building a computer, if you zap the electronics it is dead, but all you need to do to discharge yourself is to touch the casing.

[Khand-e]

33 minutes ago, Xoon said:

In case of the 9V battery it probably was shorted when it touched the metal casing, which rapidly heats up the battery and part of the casing it touches. This could probably ignited the propellant if it is sensitive enough. 

When it comes to static electricity, instead of a constant supply heating up the metal, you would instead have a arc which heats up the surrounding air/gas and ignites it. A human does defiantly have the potential to ignite the propellant, but it seems highly unlikely with a casing, since the casing would discharge you, instead of sending the arc through the propellant. Image building a computer, if you zap the electronics it is dead, but all you need to do to discharge yourself is to touch the casing.

 

Guess that makes sense.

Like I said though, these were mostly just a few anecdotes from a few ex Army and Marine tankers I spoke to, and anecdotes are of course the least reliable source of data.

[Bronezhilet]

Serbian 125mm shells. Photos by Erik Kannike.

[SH_MM]