Bronezhilet

/accidentally visited 4th page of this tread instead of 49th, without paying enough attention to dates. But it seems like that picture was not posted back than/

While the video is indeed garbage, your rebuttal is as well.
So your counterpoint to "the engine bay being hot and in the front is an issue with the Merk" is "It's more important and therefore it isn't an issue".
If you actually bother to look at how the Merks 1-3 and the AVDS-1790 are put together, you would very quickly notice that the hottest air from the engine is blown straight onto the deck above (which on the Merk 1, 2, and early 3 would appear to only be solid steel, with no give-away bolt heads to indicate composite armor of any kind), and from there out the side louvers, sideways (and slightly back). if it were thrown down it would kick up clouds of dust.
Steel is, of course, an extremely good conductor of heat, and this in turn means that if the lower surface gets hot, well, so too does the upper one. The thickness of this plate is, in fact, mostly irrelevant.
Additionally, if you knew anything about other tanks which use the AVDS, you'd know that the entire purpose of the funky grating on the back of the M60 (and originally the M48A3 with the AVI-1790-8) is to reduce the IR signature. And yet despite that grating and exhaust tunnel design, the M60 retains a non-negligible IR signature. I strongly suggest reading what Hunnicutt has to say on the topic. To assume that the Merks 1-3, which squeeze more power out of what is effectively the same engine and therefore have more waste heat to remove, and have less grating area to permit airflow, somehow end up expelling colder air is plain fantasy.
Unlike the Merk, the M60 spits out its hot exhaust rearwards, out of the line of sight, and therefore the exhaust grills are out of sight from the front. The Merk has its exhaust grills in the front arc of the tank, where they can clearly be seen (and of course the grills heat up to approximately the temperature of the exhaust air). On the Merk 1 it was waaaaay worse, as the engine combustion exhaust was just piped out to the sides and expelled there, resulting in a large patch of the vehicle which get hot enough to fry an egg on. On the later Merks the exhaust was routed to mix with the engine cooling air exhaust, indicating that this was a large enough problem that it needed to be solved.
The later Merk 3 has a layered deck above the engine (if the bolt heads are anything to go by), and layers (particularly if they include air layers) are extremely good insulators, so that bit should be mostly ok now; the Merk 4 has both a layered deck and an MTU engine, in which the air flows the other way through the engine, from the top downwards and out the side. The Merk 4 also what looks like layered sponsons around the exhaust grate, which the 3 lacks; so that area too should be better off than it was. These tanks however also have solid steel hulls, which the engine can and does heat up through its mounting points (as you need pretty solid mounting points to hold down a 1000+HP diesel), and the hull extends forwards to the nose (and to the non-modular sponsons on the Merk 3), giving a large area in the front radiating away. It should also be noted that transmissions produce non-negligible quantities of waste heat, as do the brakes (torque converters too, yay viscous fluid shear), for obvious reasons; more so that the engine if you're doing anything other than standing still. And having those stacked right up close against the steel hull is asking for it to heat up.
 
So yeah, handwaving away the heat from the automotive components being in front as "Not true"
You wouldn't happen to have a single fact to back up that rather bold statement, would you? Like, a source of some kind?
Regarding the pic you posted, there's a certain component that deserves some attention there. Specifically, the tires on the roadwheels. You may note, that they are white and therefore cold. Now, what do we know about roadwheels on tanks?
hint: they ain't cold when the vehicle is moving:

So by the fact that the wheels are cold, we know that the Merk you posted has not been moving, and indeed one cannot tell how long the engine has been running; nor can the LFP, which is by all accounts part of the steel hull, be seen. Using a photo such as that to demonstrate the effect of the engine on the thermal signature is disingenuous at best.
 
The LFP is a thing on the Merk 4 too, you know; and considering how the rest of your treatment of this point is "I'd rather have a damaged engine", you're effectively trying to squirrel out of the fact that yes, the engine on the Merk is more vulnerable than it is on MBTs.
Not if said conventional design had, y'know, armor there, like, I dunno, the Abrams or Leo 2.
Again, do you have a single fact or source to back that opinion up?
And, as usual, you are ignoring a much more vital component than the engine, care to guess what it is and why?
In actual competently designed tanks post-1973 there are no fuel tanks in the crew compartment (excluding derivative designs which inherited them), so that's a bit of a moot point. Most modern tanks keep the fuel in the engine bay and/or the sponsons, and not in the front of the hull where armor belongs.
I find that hard to believe, you wouldn't happen to have a source for that would you?
Cause if we take that at face value, that would make the Merk the first tank designed without armor compromises since what, 1916?
Also the multiple generations of modules and sideskirts spotted on Merks suggests that that is not actually the case.
Of course another point that both you and Red missed is that tank armor is designed to meet a reference threat. What that threat is is a different question, but considering how Egypt, Jordan and Syria all operate tanks which fling APFSDS and which the Merk 4 is at least notionally supposed to be able to go up against and win, the idea that its armor doesn't at least do something against KE is laughable, to say the least. What the CE threat is is also an open question. Red also clearly doesn't get how "special" armors work against CE.
Again, fact to back that up? Cause without a source, that's just meaningless handwaving.
Cause even with the most modern turret modules seen on the Merk 4m, there doesn't seem to be any burster plate to prevent the blast from an ATGM disassembling the armor inside, the way we've all seen the pictures of it happening from 2006. If the declasified Brit Burlington docs are anything to go by, NERA arrays have trash multi-hit ability without burster plates, and there's no reason to believe the Izzys have some super duper sekrit sauce nobody else does to solve this problem.
That's a very strong statement to throw around unsubstantiated. You wouldn't happen to have anything resembling a source to support this claim would you? Official claims that this is indeed the case? Product page on one of IMI's websites that claims this gun ever existed? pictures of a testbed with the gun?
The last time I saw someone taking the claims of a 140mm gun on the Merk 4 seriously was back in the early 2000s, before the thing entered mass production, and even then it was presented as only being rumors and not thrown around as if it were a fact the way you're doing.
Both these claims also need to be sourced.
For reference, L/55 guns have a whole host of problems accompanying them, including balance issues, elevating mass and inertia, recoil impulse and length (same problem faced with more energetic ammo in L/44 guns), and so on. As part of the upgrade to the L/55 in the Leo (part of the A5 upgrade pack), the gun drives were replaced and the entire mantlet area redesigned -the newer mantlet is much narrower, and the gap is filled by armor boxes attached to the fixed turret structure, most likely to reduce the elevating mass and restore margins.
L/55 guns are enough of a headache that the US seems to have decided to not go that route because of the problems the testbeds had with them. Handwaving away integration issues like this as "no biggie" is being deliberately ignorant.
We've already been over the whole thermals business and that picture, but what I don't get is even if we assume you are correct and the Trophy antennae are a stronger radiator in the relevant wavelengths*, how is this greatly increased thermal signature a point in favor of the Merk?
*even with extreme emissivity differences, I don't see how that could be the case. Comparing to a similar radar by the same manufacturer, I get 110W continuous power draw for the radars at most (comparing to the Elta EL/M-2129), as opposed to several hundred KW waste heat in the exhaust even at idle.
A. You are aware that the wonders of modular armor mean that armor packages can be changed mid-batch, and that therefore doesn't make it a 4a/4b difference.
B. If you think minor changes like that (and whatever internal changes to the armor module it covers) are enough to prevent the blast from a warhead shrekking the armor after a hit you're somewhere between deluded and hopeless.
 
Before being a Democrat and blaming Russian propaganda, consider the following:
1. Is it wrong? If it is correct, or at least has a good change of being so, crying "propaganda!" is a great way to discredit your viewpoint.
2. Cui Bono? If the Russians don't stand to benefit (and indeed, what good does mocking the IR signature of an irrelevant third world country's tank does to the Russians), why would they waste their propaganda efforts on it?
Kindly use your brain before posting.
Also kindly try and keep your shitposting on this forum in full grammatically-correct sentences. 

Consider the geometry of actual armor without ignoring the LFP.
In addition, the mass of the ammo is almost insignificant (25 kg per round and 40 or so rounds in the hull is 1 ton, vs 2 tons each for the engine and transmission plus fluids).
That's not how tracked vehicles work, at all.
You keep throwing this around without sourcing it. While I get that the Merk 4 is better protected than the previous ones, I'm interested in hearing what the actual professionals have to say.
Also, the Namer shows that when sufficiently motivated even the Izzys can adequately place armor around an AVDS if we ignore the LFP as usual.
The Mark 2D seems to show that the guys in charge disagree about the driver's visibility and armor on that side. On the engine side, continuing the hull line at the hump forwards to the beak instead of having it drop would make room for an armor module in front of the engine. That area is not in the FOV of the driver's central periscope nor in the FOV of the right one, which looks out over the engine deck.
Please don't throw around things like this, they betray just how little you actually know.
Let's compare the AVDS-1790-5A as found in the Merk 1 to the MTU 883 in the Merk 4, shall we?
First, the AVDS:

And then the MTU:

Notice something? The AVDS is nominally approximately 4" longer. But that includes the turbo arrangement, which isn't included in the MTU engine dimensions. Once you include the turbo, the MTU 883 is longer.
But wait, you say, the powerpack isn't only the engine! The Merks have used CD-850 Allsions and RK-304 and RK-325 Renk transmissions!
So let's take a look at those now.
First, the CD-850:

Note that the depth of the transmission, 29", is approximately 730mm.
next, the RK-304:

and finally, the RK-325:
https://www.renk-ag.com/en/products-and-service/products/vehicle-transmissions/rk-325/
Dimensions: 1,910 x 830 x 960mm
that's L*W*H.
So, in fact, the RK-325 as found on the Merk 4 is longer than the transmissions in any previous Merk model, as is the MTU engine.
So yeah, the "significant reduction in length of the powerpack unit" is a simple sign that you don't actually know what you're talking about, care to guess again?
You should know the drill by now. Source this claim.
You're zigzagging from "theres no problem with armoring the front along with the engine, slight weight bias forwards is a good thing" to "need to restore balance by uneven wheel spacing".
Also that's not the only reason for having wheels spaced unevenly, care to guess what the other ones are?
Again you're not bringing your A-game, step it up.
2 has a new powertrain with the Renk RK304 transmission, which necessitated changing the entire engine deck area, exhaust routed into the coolant air exhaust manifold, as well as turret changes like the mortar and special armor slapped on.
The drivetrain of the 2 is closer to that of the 3 than it is to the 1.
Well you'd also expect them to realize that ammo separation is the objectively correct way to go, but I suppose you can't get everything.
Also how exactly would you expect them to realize that the alternative is better when they don't have any experience with rear engine tanks newer than the M60A3, anyway?
Reminder that the Merk 3 has a roof sight.
There's a difference between making something work and it being a good idea which gives you what you actually want.
Red is not russian, even if you can't tell Eastern European accents apart.
What did the big bad Russians do to you anyway?
You're dragging the forum discourse level and SNR waaay the fuck down with your shitposting, cease.
 
Hybrids bring their own host of problems, not least requiring more volume and weight than equivalent mechanical transmissions. Also, why would you go to all the trouble of putting the drive sprockets in the front, if you decouple them from the engine? it's objectively a worse location for them.
This bit we've been over before, and I'm just qouting it again to rub your face in how wrong it is and how you never bothered to perform 10 minutes of googling because you lack any self-critical thinking ability.
You're gonna have to source this too, this claim in particular is interesting, as on the Merk the air filters were never in the way of the UFP in the first place!
Aaaand you're confirmed for never having viewed anything through a camera resting above a hot surface.
That's not only an incredibly asinine statement, considering how the IDF hasn't designed any rear-engine MBTs, but it's nevertheless still wrong:



 
In short, @Mighty_Zuk, you have a lot of unsubstantiated claims to back up, Referte Avt Morimini.
You've also said a lot of bullshit that betrays a basic and fundamental lack of understanding of the subject matter. Git larned, and kindly match the confidence displayed in your posts to your actual level of knowledge in the subject matter, and not to what you'd like others to believe it is. You are invited to step up your game and keep the baseless speculation and denial to other forums like AW, and refrain from overly nationalistic fanboyism.
Also, if you don't know something, even in a field which is close to your heart, just admit it. there's no shame in not knowing shit, but there's quite a lot in pretending to know stuff you don't and being flat out wrong.
Kindly raise the standard of your posting, we really don't want this place devolving into AW or worse, DFI. Which is unfortunately the current posting standard you are representing.
 
Sure, if you like your tanks immobile.
 

https://mobile.twitter.com/TitanicKyle/status/1117926588652371968
 
Interior seems to be mostly intact! 

@Collimatrix @Mighty_Zuk @SH_MM @LoooSeR @Militarysta @Xlucine
 
 
 
 
Yeah I took 'some' liberties with the jet, but that mainly has to do with this being a rough first look at Nozh, I'll do a more properly shaped jet later.
 
 
tl;dw: Yes, a copper jet can cut through a wolfram penetrator but the jet is not nearly long enough.
 
Edit: This is also a frictionless simulation so the jet penetrating the steel plate doesn't slow it down at all. All in all, this is a best case scenario for Nozh.

So, recently I stumbled upon something fairly interesting. Most of the people here know about shaped charges and how they work, the principles behind it are fairly well known. Recently however, there has been research about a new 'class' of shaped charges: Reactive Liner Shaped Charges. As the name implies it's a shaped charge with a liner made out of a reactive material.
 
Please note that I still do not fully understand the workings of Reactive Liner Shaped Charges, this post may be changed or updated depending on new information and/or discussions.
 
What is a reactive material, you say? One of the papers explains it like this:
(Demolition Mechanism and Behavior of Shaped Chargewith Reactive Liner, Jianguang Xiao et al., 2016)
 
In simple terms, it's a material that only explodes when you hit it really really really really hard with a hammer. Or when you fire it into a solid material at several kilometers per second. I dunno. It's one of the two.
 
What this amounts to is a shaped charge which forms an exploding jet. Neato.
 
But... why should you care? We already don't fire explosives at an armoured target because it's not very efficient, so why suddenly care now? To answer that I have to compare it to normal shaped charges and explain a few things about explosives. The most important thing to understand is that no explosive detonates instantly, there is always a slight delay. This delay is (almost) negligible at normal projectile velocities, but become important at high velocities. Think hypersonic velocities, like with... shaped charge jets!
The main thing I am not completely sure about is whether the detonation of the shaped charge initiates the liner, or the impact with the target. The self-delay of the reactive material used in most of the tests is ~0.85 and depending on the liner angle the jet can move 2.8 to 5.2 meters before actually exploding. Of course this distance will be a lot less when penetrating because the material slows down. A reactive material with a too low self-delay might detonate during the formation of the jet, or before it actually managed to penetrate the armour (but this only applies in the situation where the reactive liner is initiated by the shaped charge). This is of course not something you want, you want the liner to detonate inside the target to do the maximum amount of damage.
 
And that's the main reason you should care about shaped charges with reactive liners. They do a fuckton of damage.
 
This is your brain: This is the result of a shaped charge with an aluminium liner:

 
This is your brain on drugs: This is the result of a shaped charge with a reactive liner:

To give a sense of scale, that's a 1520 by 1520 mm concrete cylinder. The shaped charge had a diameter of... 81 mm.
 
As you can see the reactive liner does a fuckton more damage compared to a normal liner, this is because the jet literally detonates when it's inside the armour. Concrete is one of the materials that cannot deal with certain forces, which makes it weak versus explosives detonating inside of it. Steel for example cares a lot less about it, but even steel will suffer more damage from a reactive liner than a normal copper liner. The entry hole for a reactive liner is around 0.65 CD whereas for a copper liner it is 0.5 CD. A paper also states the following:
The paper however does not show or describe the "tremendous increase in steel target damage". It does however give some basic information and show photos of the entry holes:
 

 

 
The penetration capabilities of reactive liners in steel targets were "sacrificed slightly" compared to copper liners, but the paper does not elaborate any further.
 
Here's some more information and pictures about the effectiveness of reactive liners against concrete targets, just for shits and giggles:

A 'Bam Bam' is the same warhead as the 81mm one (1.8 kg) from the first photos, except scaled to 18.1 kg. The 81mm charge is called Barnie, by the way. The target is the same ~1500 mm too.
 

As you can see the Bam Bam charge is capable of fucking up massive parts of asphalt roads/runways. A 21.6 cm shaped charge completely destroying around 42 square meters of asphalt.
 

 
But hey, a 21.6 cm charge is fucking massive, lets tone it down slightly.
 
Charges:

 
Test setup:

 
Results:

Sadly there's a bunch of information missing in the tables. It is highly likely that different liner thicknesses were used, but these aren't given in the tables.
Results can be found in the full version of Table 1:

...that's around 9-10 square meters of concrete fucked up by a ~1 kg warhead. That's fucking insane.
 
 
Some other things to note is that due to the materials used in these tests (an aluminium-polymer mix) the jet velocity is significantly higher and the jet length longer than comparable copper liners:

 
So the reactive liner used (26% Al, 74% Teflon) has a jet tip velocity that's around twice as high for shallow charges, but drops to around 1.6 at higher angles. The difference in jet tip velocity is most likely due to the lower density of the reactive liner. This is what Wang et al. said about this:
This poor ductility also increases the probability of fragmentation (jet break-up), which can be seen here:


 
So because the reactive liner has a lower density, it forms a jet quicker, but because of its poor ductility it starts to break up very quickly. Tests have shown that a stand-off that's longer than 2 CD is undesirable, whereas normal liners do not really care about a longer stand-off.
 
However! The research done to make the Barnie warhead show that it is undesirable to have cavitation during the formation of the jet. This cavitation is visible in the above simulations, but can better be seen in this one:

It is very well possible that Wang et al. had a sub-optimal liner design, since the final Barnie jet looks like this compared to a comparable aluminium liner jet:

They are quite similar and the Barnie jet does not have the 'blobs' visible in the simulations from Wang et al..
 
 
 
And last but certainly not least, Xiao et al. calculated the TNT equivalence (RE factor) of the reactive liner:

 
In simple terms, the kaboom-effectiveness of this reactive material is 3.4 to 7.7 times as high as TNT. But since these values on their own are kind of meaningless, lets compare them to other RE factors!
The RE factor of C4 is 1.34.
The RE factor of RDX is 1.6.
PETN? 1.66. 
Torpex? 1.3.
Amatol? 1.1.
ANFO? 0.74.
The explosive with the highest detonation velocity (Octanitrocubane)? 2.38.
THIS FUCKING ALUMINIUM/TEFLON MIX!? MOTHERFUCKING 7.77.
 
Interestingly the theoretical energy contained in the aluminium/teflon mix is only about 4 times as high as TNT. The higher values are most likely due to the addition of kinetic effects.
 
 
So yeah... huzzah for reactive liners. 
 
I might add some stuff to this post later, depending on whether or not I forgot something.

Whenever someone complains about ERA being dangerous for infantry, I should post this.

One of my colleagues already went on a tirade of how islam is evil and how people will keep defending it blah blah blah.
 
...we haven't even caught the shooter yet, let alone have his/her motive.
 
When I asked him about it, he replied "Look at western people, we don't just randomly start shooting!"
 
 
Eeeehh dude....

Suspect apprehended.

I'm fine, everyone. (I live/work about an hour away).

I'm fine, everyone. (I live/work about an hour away).

Suspect apprehended.

Suspect apprehended.

Whenever someone complains about ERA being dangerous for infantry, I should post this.

Now that's how you design an oppression tower. Just needs some more spikes and barbed wire, an ominous smoke generator, and hidden speakers for playing theme appropriate music and it's good to go.

Whoosh~!
 

India has claimed it killed ~350 militants in their strike while Pakistan claims that the strikes resulted in 0 casualties. 
 
It is hard to decide if the Indian military is just as incompetent as they've always been or if the Pakistanis are just lying as usual. 

Hey Americans, Brits, Canadians, Poles and New Zealanders,
 

 
Thank you for this.
 
Reading about this it actually brings tears to my eyes.

It's really sad how far the Empire has fallen.

Here comes more T-64 stuff. Seems the Kharkov factory, 1972. 
I don't own any of this material. Enjoy.
 

 
 
 
 
 

Hello, just a long time SH lurker. Source: internet. 

T-64As, 120 BTRZ Kirchmoser, Brandenburg, DDR. Unknown year.
 

 
 
 
 
 

My photos from parade of AFVs. Several were edited, and also number of them have problems with "horizon", thanks to crowd and no space to move around. Oh, one more thing - this is all original content do not steal. Thats why i put my easy-to-edit-out discord nickname on them.

   Main action was happening on Dvortsovaya square/Palace square where access was blocked for mortals and only profession photographers from big medias could get in so a lot of vics were photographed during exit from square. 

 
 

What a fucking retarded statement. Fuck off.