SH_MM

This is the PT-92M2 (image via Jane's):

Testbed for the turret.

The TDD doesn't have side armor on the turret... never noticed that before.

Roof of the Bradley NG is raised by seven inches (178 mm) according to BAE Systems.

UDES 09 armor layout: CV90 base armor (various versions): CV90 and Bradley. Making an IFV taller than the Bradley would be a real challenge.

AFAIK India wanted the licence to make the engines for export in unlimited numbers, so they were only offered technological outdated engines to prevent India from taking away export contracts from MTU. PS: Another photo of the gunner's place...

Are reactive shaped charge liners identical with energetic shaped charge liners? Would make sense if they were... Energetic shaped charges are already in use. "DPEX energetic liner shaped charges substitute a defined amount of the inert liner components with reacting metals. These energetic components are transferred into the perforating tunnel together with the jet where a strong exothermic reaction takes place. The result is an extreme pressure spike inside the perforating channel that will follow the path of least resistance and initiate a flow back into the wellbore. This backflow will break up the crushed zone and transport it out of the perforating channel resulting in a cleaner tunnel with increased diameter. Any possible slugs that have been created will also be eliminated. In addition, depending on the rock type and down hole conditions, small fractures may be initiated on the walls and the tip of the perforating channel." http://www.dynaenergetics.com/products/energetics-systems/shaped-charges/dpex-shaped-charges

According to what I have read/heard, this isI the PT-17, the PT-91M2 is another tank. I.e. this is a new version of the PT-16 mainly meant as export option and to show that Bumar Łabędy can make tanks (so when the Polish government decides to develop a tank, they are more likely to choose Bumar instead of a foreign company). The PT-92M2 is supposed to be a modernization of the T-72M1 tanks operated in Polish Army, its a budget modernization only - this means adding new ERAWA ERA (some people talk about ERAWA-3, some mention currently existing ERAWA-2 ERA), new thermal sights and a laser warning system. That would mean it's actually worse than the PT-91M despite the name.

New T-72/PT-91 upgrade (new version of the PT-16 or a PT-17?):

That guy does a lot of bad videos. Don't even know where to start (or to stop?)...

The penetration of the Indian 120 mm Mk I APFSDS is 150 mm @ 60° aka 300 mm along the line-of-sight. Please also note the combat range of 2,000 metres... Funny story, someone at DFI got pissed of when I posted this image and photoshoped another value in... nice forum. The 120 mm Mk I APFSDS is a lot worse than the old DM23 APFSDS from the Leopard 2; however the Indian later designed a 120 mm Mk 2 APFSDS. There are conflicting infos about this round; sometimes photos show what seems to be identical to the 120 mm Mk I APFSDS, sometimes they quote higher pen values...

Just rename the topic instead of making more topics that vanish from the front page of the subforum due to inactivity.

Throwback Thursday Saturday, to when I used to post on DFI. The Arjun is really a bad tank that should have been canceled. But well, funding government insitutions for no gain is not unique to India. What I think is the most astonishing fact in the development is that the Arjun program exceeded its original budget by more than twenty times. Any politician with a brain would have stopped such a waste of money. The Arjun Mk 2 fails to fix any real problems of the tank. The Arjun has no relation to the Leopard 2, even in its basic design.

The frontal section of the Leopard 2's roof is sloped and thicker, supposedly 70 mm thick, because it has to resist incoming APFSDS rounds to such a degree, that they shatter and ricochet. In this area the additional "roof armor" double acts as a storage box with relatively thick coverplate. The proper roof armor covers only the flat section of the roof, which is has thinner base armor (est. 20 to 40 mm). To complement the aesthetics, at the left and right of the new roof armor section, additional storage boxes are installed ontop of the side armor of the turret. There are some photos showing the storage boxes open on a Swedish Strv 122, but I cannot find them ATM. On the Spanish Leopardo 2E, the frontal storage box was shortened for some reason, so a small portion of the turret roof (above the breech block of the gun) seems to be exposed: PS: found one

Btw. PUMA in this case is an acronym that stands for "Panzer unter minimalem Aufwand" ("armored vehicle (created) with minimal effort"), which doesn't actually seem to be a good marketing name. I'd propose to call it "PUMA" or "PumA" rather than "Puma" to highlight the difference between the modern Puma IFV (though in German Army lingo, it is officially called "PUMA", because all combat vehicle names are written with capital letters only). The name doesn't seem to increase trust into the vehicle (something made with low effort is usually bad), but refered to the recycling of already existing parts for cost reductions. In case of the ACV PUMA prototypes, between 55% and 71% of the parts are taken from the Leopard 1 and Leopard 2, but they used civilian MAN engines, which costed only ~25% of the Leopard 1's MB 838 engine. The transmission is based on the HSWL-284C from the Panzerhaubitze 2000 (and Marder 2), it shares about 80% of components with them. Five prototypes of the PUMA were made, three for the industry (light, medium and "heavy" with 750 hp engine; designated PT1, PT2 and PT3), while two prototypes (PM1 and PM2) were bought by the German Army - these were used for testing the concept and technology, leading to the development of the Marder 2 IFV. The usable volume of the PUMA was between 16 m³ and 21 m³ depending on variant. The ACV PUMA PT1 was later served as a testbed; it was fitted with a decoupled running gear for trials of the new technology. AFAIK the ACV PUMA was not tested for the Swiss Schützenpanzer 2000/Char de grenadiers 2000 program, the Marder M12 (Marder 1A3 with 30 mm turret) was tested instead. One prototype (light chassis with four roadwheel pairs) is/was owned by a company that rents military vehicles to movie makers. It is 18 tons heavy, 3.4 metres wide and has a V6 MAN diesel engine (325 kW output). It uses the same roadwheels as the Leopard 1, which are claimed to last 13,500 km. The tracks are said to last 15,000 km. The hydraulic shock absorbers of the running gear are taken from the Leopard 2. The width is said to increase to 3.7 m once skirts are added. At a later stage they decided to put a partly disassembled Leopard 1A5 turret on the chassis, which is quite stupid based on the weight (full Leopard 1A5 turret weighs ~10 tons, exceeding the capabilities of the light ACV PUMA chassis). Rather than weighing 25 tons (as designed), the vehicle currently sits at 32 tons! It is available for sale. Krauss-Maffei decided to do something similar, offering the Leopard 1A5 turret on the "heavy" PUMA chassis (five or six roadwheel pairs, 750 hp engine) for export.

They are Arab. Lebanon has currently the presidency of the Arab League.

Is it confirmed to be a cost cutting measure? Maybe there were some problems with the Epoch turret... Kurgents-25 being supposedly canceled, Russia ordering the BMPT (despite previously saying that the T-15 with Epoch turret would make this unncessary) and Bumerang being converted to Berezhok is suspicious... it might be coincidences, however it seems that the Russian Army is avoiding the Epoch turret. "One's an icident, two's a coincidence, three is a pattern..."

IFVs offered for the Czech Army. CV90 turret armament options: Main armament options: 120 mm tank gun 35 mm Bushmaster III (capable of using 50 mm Supershot, but it's a smaller catridge than the Rheinmetall one) 30 mm Bushmaster II (capable of using 40 mm Super40 ammo) Left sponson options: Storage box 7.62 mm MG 12.7 mm HMG 40 mm AGL HEW (future option, IMO rather unlikely due to the high power consumption of lasers) Right sponson options: Storage box Spike ATGMs AT-4 RPGs Also APS, RWS and panoramic commander's sight are optional. Overview over older CV90s: Original CV90 has extremely poor protection, second, third and fourth generation CV90s are only qualified with STANAG 4569 level 5 ballistic protection (though it is estimated to be exceeded by BAE Systems) - it's commonly quoted at 30 mm AP(FS)DS protection, but back then there was no official standardized testing against 30 mm AP/APDS/APFSDS ammo. I am really confused about the low level of mine protection, only STANAG 4569 level 3 and that only on the CV90 Mk III - there was no mine protection at all in the previous models! That's the same level of mine protection as found on the Marder 1A5, which is a much older design were the designers never put any thought into mine-protection at all. Seems to be quite a big oversight, specifically given that Sweden and Norway both bought MEXAS mine protection kits for KFOR and SFOR. Mobility stayed the same according to BAE Systems, so essentially they decided to keep it on an early 1990s level? Not sure if this is good, though the initial CV90 had great mobility at its day. Only the new fifth gen CV90 (though still officially known as a CV90 Mark III) does have STANAG 4569 level 6 ballistic and level 4 mine protection, but given that the quoted weight is equal to the quoted max combat weight, they seem to have sacrificed growth potential for this. CV90 Mk III payload is 16 tonnes, which is less than that of ASCOD 2 (19 tonnes). Also, I didn't knew that BAE Systems never manufactures the turret for the CV90, but always uses a subcontractor for it.

It is based on infomation present in the summary "Perforation - Protection: State of the Art" by P.Y. Chanteret and G. Weihrauch of the French-German Research Institute of Saint Louis (ISL), published as part of the European Forum on Ballistics 2001. Okay, a small correction: The article mentions that first anti-KE ERA was tested in/before 1973 by the ISL, summarized in the document "Untersuchung zur Mindering der Durchschlagleistung von Wuchtgeschossen" from 1973 by G. Weihrauch, H. Müller and B. Wellige. The specific ERA package for the frontal arc of the Leopard 1, providing protection against 105 mm APFSDS, was tested somewhere in the mid-1970s, the final report "Deutsch-Französische Kommission für Angriff und Schutz, Leo-I Beschuss mit reaktivem Frontschutz mit Pfeilgeschossen Kal. 105 mm" from the ISL is dated at 1977. ERA was first used in combat in 1982, with the first fielded anti-KE ERA being Kontakt-5 in 1985... so 1977 is still quite a bit ahead of schedule. The ISL research program by Germany (not sure if France was involved, no French names and the cited documents all have German names) lasted more than 10 years and lead to multiple "very effective sandwiches" by optimizing various different aspects of reactive armor. The English-language document "Recent Research Work conducted at ISL in the Field of Reactive (Active) Armour" by G. Weihrauch from 1984 supposeldy contains a summary of them. Unfortunately I couldn't find any of the research papers online aside of the general article form the European Forum on Ballistics (it's on NDIA, can't find link ATM).

Isn't the BRENUS ERA a version of the ARA? It's made by the same companies...

I think there are multiple factors that need to be considered. Shtora and Sarab are effective nowadays, but only against older missile types. Why are these systems effective? Because there was enough time to analyze the existing missile systems, that was quite hard back in the Cold War. The Soviets with Shtora faced a much greater amount of competition, still the system appeared rather late (~1985) and failed to intercept the TOW and MILAN missiles during the Greek tests. So it seems rather questionable, that a 1970s tank (a tank "prior to the adoption of the Leopard 2") could make good use of a Shtora/Sarab system. One thing to consider: The majority of opposing ATGMs in the 1970s and even in the 1980s still were MCLOS missile systems, at least for the Warsaw Pact countries. The Soviet Army could afford all the new and fancy stuff, the other countries in the Warsaw Pact not so much. For example East-Germany received the Fagot ATGM in 1975, the Konkurs and Metis were delivered in 1983 and 1984, while the gun-launched Bastion ATGM was adopted in 1988 and the Shturm missile was adopted in 1989. Even then the Malyutka remained the most numerous missile, though apparently a number of them were upgraded to SACLOS systems. The SPG-9 and RPG-7 were considered to be the main tank killers though. The Soviet Union adopted Shtora, because they faced a very different opposition. West-Germany alone had something in the area of 3,000-4,000 SACLOS launchers (316 Jaguar 1, 165 Jaguar 2, 170 Wiesel with TOW, ~2,100 Marder with Milan, several hundred Fuchs and Wolf with Milan, 212 PAH-1 helicopters, + several infantry systems). I can understand that it's a bit sad that most modern vehicles don't have an APS, but even the Soviets had a reluctance when it came to adopting APS. No system is perfect, so when you don't have to invest lots of money into a system of potentially limited value, then you won't do it. Even before the Israelis used Blazer for the first time, there was an ERA package being tested on the Leopard 1, which provided protection against 105 mm APFSDS ammo. Just think about that, an armor that could have a Kontakt-5-like impact on tank and gun development a decade earlier! I think it comes down to NATO not having access to enough data on Soviet tanks and missiles. The existence of the T-64 was pretty much unknown during the 1970s, while info on the T-72 was extremely scarce... I have an old edition of Jane's, where the author assumed that the T-64 and T-72 were both the same tank (blaming different reporting names from UK and US for the two designations) and were fitted with either a 115 mm or 122 mm rifled gun, while not a single word about composite armor is mentioned... NATO believed that ATGMs could deal with all Soviet tanks and that the larger number and higher sophistication of NATO ATGM systems would mean that Soviet tanks were even less likely to survive. When it became clear that the Soviets had composite armor and had developed more modern missile systems, the NATO tanks all were upgraded. The US Army's M60 was meant to receive ERA, but after the M1 Abrams became widespread, it was considered cheaper to not buy it. The ERA package adopted on the M60A1 of the USMC (originally designed for the US Army) is btw. not Blazer, but made in France (it's called something like "ACA" or" AAC"). The AMX-30 received a version of the same ERA system to protect against ATGMs. The Leopard 1 was meant to receive composite armor, but that was canceled after the Soviet Union was gone.

Stryker missile thingy ("STRYKER Maneuver SHORAD Launcher" aka Stryker MSL).

This is the prototype of the 120 mm L/44 tank gun from Rheinmetall fitted with a Ladehilfe (loading assistant) as used on the early Leopard 2 prototypes (i.e. made before the Leopard 2AV).

Kugelblitz is cooler.