SH_MM

Collimatrix, your post is based on the assumption that the propellant consists of the same components at the perfect mixture, only with one single different ingredient. If you can provide the exact compositon of the propellants used in said ammunition, I won't have an issue with your claims and agree with them. However from the data available to me - and that is unfortunately neither the composition of German nor Soviet propellants, show that there is a much greater room for modifications. Some British propellants were composed of more six or more different materials, not just two or three. This means that the impact of replacing a fraction of one component with another might be a different than expected. In the Cordite propellants, both raising and decreasing the amount of nitrocellulose could improve peformance - at least this is the case when comparing Cordite formula B with the original Cordite Mk. 1 and the Codrite formula C. At least the British propellants using nitroguanidine still had a small amount of nitrocellulose in the composition. All that said, I'd like to point to the drawing I previously posted. It is from the official data sheet from WW2. As you can see it says in regards to the propellant charge: "Ladung zu etwa 2,6 kg Digl. R. P. - G 1". The "Digl" means that the propellant consists of Diglykol (diethylene glycol dinitrate) and nitrocellulose, together with centralite and sometimes potassium sluphate. It does not contain any nitroguanidine. The "R.P." describes the shape of the propellant (tube propellant). In so far your criticism of the German propellant is not appropriate in this context. Toxn, as previously said: I do believe that the 50% greater penetration is also the result of the different penetration criteria. However I don't think that one should ignore the other factors, which I previously mentioned - just increasing the hardness of the steel cores could improve penetration of certain Soviet ammunition by 11%. Comparing the Soviet test results for one German gun to the formula from DeMarre only shows that it is valid for German (APCBC) ammunition. It does not guarantee the same level of accurateness when it comes to pre-war Soviet ammunition designs using flat-nosed projectiles against 30° slope. Specifcialyl against sloped plates DeMarre's formula becomes more inaccurate. There are reasons why DeMarre's formula (aswell as Krupp's formula) was discontinued (in the US at least) after comparing the results to actual ballistic tests made by the US Army and US Navy.

I don't think you should judge the performance of a propellant based on a single component. There were numerous differnet variations of propellant being used by every country in the war, the British Army used at least thirteen (!) different types of propellant thoughout the second world war. My statement about the propellant is based on the fact the the PaK 36® is firing a heavier projectile (if the values from other forums are correct) at a higher muzzle velocity. I have found a number of references (e.g. in webforums and books like "The Encyclopedia of Weapons of World War II and others") about different guns gaining performance after changing the powder composition, including some Soviet ones (in the late 1930s and in the 1940s new propellants lead to increased performance). The BR-350A is a very old Soviet round, the 7,62 cm PzGr 39 is a newer design. The Germans adopted the PaK 36 ® about five years after the original gun entered service with the Red Army... there is plenty of time to have developed better propellant systems. ___ Wisent 2: Wisent 2 hull welding:

Leopad 2A7 of Qatar.

Rafael did probably not receive any Soviet input for the Blazer ERA. However they also did not really "design" ERA, as (Western) ERA was invented and developed by Dr. Manfred Held. Dr. Held has patented numerous different ERA designs between 1967 and 1974. A lot of them can be accessed in the German/European patent office. As wirtten by Marsh, Dr. Held unsuccessfully pitched his ERA designs to numerous countries until he demonstrated his ERA to Israel in 1974. Given that there are patents from 1970 that show an identical ERA layout to Blazer (simple tiles, three layers of the same thickness), all "design" work Rafael probably had to make was chose the size of the ERA tiles for the tanks.

You are Zuk and always have been him...

Sure, going from AP to APCBC does not increase performance by 50%. However there are mutliple other factors directly affecting the penetration difference between the types of ammunition. The German propellant lead to a slightly higher muzzle velocity, APCBC performs better against sloped armor (both penetration values are for 30° sloped plates), the PzG. 39 has a better aerodynamical shape and a larger steel core (with a smaller HE filler). According to David R. Higgins' "King Tiger vs IS-2: Operation Solstice 1945" early Soviet ammunition used rather soft steel cores, so that the penetration of the BR-471 APHE round improved by 9% just by using harder steel. Given that the BR-350A is a very early Soviet round, I wouldn't be suprised if it used even softer steel than the early BR-471. All these factors might only affect the penetration by a few percents, but they all add up. 50% improved performance might be a bit too much and also affected by different penetration cirteria, but the 7,62 cm PaK 36 ® is launching a larger projectile with better shape at a higher velocity... expecting the same penetration values for both guns firing different ammo is wrong.

Maybe the wargamers fail to take the different penetration criteria into account? Also the Germans used their own APCBC PzGr. 39 and PzGr. 40 ammunition, whereas the BR-350A was simply an obsolete design, relying on a flat-nosed AP projectile without cap or dampers.

Arjun frontal ammo storage: Nice hole in the UFP's armor for acessing the fuel tanks: Turret armor layout: No side armor, only storage boxes: Please note that there is no thick composite armor block behind the gunner's sight... "Protected" rear ammunition: APFSDS ammunition:

A common factor of the vehicles mentioned by you is an autoloader, which the Merkava tanks don't have. Just look at how much smaller a T-90 or Leclerc/K2 is compared to an Abrams and a Leopard 2. The vehicles mentioned by you being smaller than a Merkava is also affected by the autoloader. The Merkava 4 has the MT883 engine, which is a lot smaller than the Leopard 2's MB873 - still it is a larger vehicle in every aspect. I also wouldn't mention the NKPz as proof of front-mounted engines causing less issues when using more/better technology than what was available to the IDF; the NKPz doesn't have composite armor at the glacis, while having slightly worse slope at the glacis than a Leopard 2 or Abrams. Yes, for a conventional turret we need at least ~2,000 mm. For a 130 mm or a 152 mm gun there might even be a greater space requirement. The Experimentalwanne Gesamtschutz (EGS) testbed made in Germany in 1989 was designed to have a gun in an overhead mount. While it wasn't actually fitted with a gun (due to being an armor testbed), the EGS had an armored cover around were the gun would have been located. There are many different options. One could use a conveyor-belt or revolver autoloader in a small turret similar to the Jordanian Falcon 2 turret or the Stryker MGS turret. In ideal case the autoloader would be fixed to the gun, so that it would follow the same movements. In Germany and Switzerland there were concepts that used an autoloader located in the hull, which then loaded the gun via inserting the ammunition with an "arm" from the outside. Such a design was used on a Bofors-designed tank in 1977 (UDES-18/19?) Another option is to have a conveyor-belt autoloader located in the hull, which can rotate with the turret. This would require a slightly larger turret ring, enough to transport a single round (about 1,000 mm for 120 mm ammunition) with a conveyor belt. Krauss-Maffei designed such a system for a tank concept in the 1970s, Rheinmetall and Wegmann later used broadly similar designs in other concepts. The US ELKE testbed with the 75 mm ARES gun had an autoloader, which stored the ammunition vertically in the hull, the rounds were then rotated by 90° in the turret/gun. This might be a bit problematic with current and next-generation ammunition though. The German company MaK submitted a design to the Kampfpanzer 3 project in 1974, which had an overhead mount for the gun, which essentially had the size of a turret and stored 40 rounds of 120 mm ammunition inside an autoloader. The turret ring was less than a metre in diameter. Yes, this should be sufficient to protect against current tank ammunition. The first CV90 Mk II was the Schützenpanzer 2000 (CV9030CH) for the Swiss Army. The original CV9030 procured by Norway was still the Mk I model. You can see the raised roof of the rear compartment of the CV9030CH here: Current Norwegian models (the later production models at least) have the same raised roof at the rear compartment: The same applies to the CV9030FIN: I guess it is depending on opinion, but I'd consider the Marder also as rather cramped. In SteelBeasts the rear section of the CV9040 has about the same height as the rear section section of the Leopard 2 engine compartment - maybe not exactly the highest point of the engine compartment, but quite similar. The Leopard 2's engine bay is a bit more sloped than the CV90 hull, the frontal section of the engine bay has a lower height than the CV9040 rear compartment. The CV90 Mk II's rear compartment seems to have a greater height than the engine compartment of Leopard 2.

The problem is that we don't know if the ERA (or whatever this add-on armor is made of) is spaced or not. It is spaced on the T-15 Armata with front-mounted engine, but it doesn't say much about the T-14 Armata. Look at the difference at the hull front. There is no empty space visible on the T-14, instead there are mulitple bolts at the front. On the T-15 Armata the bolts at the LFP start after the ERA element, on the T-14 tank the bolts start at the frontal section of the LFP. My guess is that the frontal armor of the T-15 was reduced by a lot, due to the engine being located at the front. The T-14 has different armor, the ERA is not spaced, but mounted directly at the composite armor module.

Only one drawback? I can see much more: armor integration, weight distribution and the same mobility problems that are related to having the drive-sprocket located at the front (more likely to be damaged during fast travel on uneven terrain). In order to provide just the protection along the frontal 30° arc, the side skirts have to essentially cover the whole length of the tank... that's certainly contra-productive when trying to reduce the weight of tank (or increase the protection while staying at a fixed weight). It depends on the context. If one discusses the armor integration/layout of a MBT or the distribution of a MBT's weight into it's components, the M8 AGS certainly is not useful for the discussion, because it is not "an MBT in a light package". The weight of the armor (incl. basic steel structure) of a current MBT is 50% or more. The weight of the M8 AGS' armor is much lower in relation to other components such as the engine or tracks. In the context of this discussion, yes. We are talking about next-generation tanks, which probably have extremely thick armor - take a look at projects from the Soviet Union/Russia, the UK, the United States and Germany. There are numerous tank projects - pretty much all next-generation tank prototypes - which had thick frontal hull armor. This affects the ability of the tank to mount it's powerpack in the hull front: it causes problems in combination with thick and heavy composite armor. The Carmel - based on currently avialable informations - does not fit into this discussion. The difference in the hull shape is based on the CAD model showing the tank from the side; the frontal mud-guards of the T-14's tracks were marked by the author as armor by accident. However as previously stated, the black lines were only added for giving the audience a general idea about how the armor layout of a next-generation tank looks like. The armor thickness wasn't measured with the black lines. Feel free to post any sources for your claims. Here is another drawing made by a forum-user, which pretty much confirms a thickness of 1,100 mm. That the T-14 Armata with an unmanned (and nearly un-armored) turret has an armor thickness comparable to the two-tons lighter T-90 tank seems to be very unlikely. There is also a drawing from Russian Sputnik-News, which also confirms an estimated thickness of more than 1,000 mm. Take a look at US armor projects for a M1 Abrams replacement/follow-up from the 1980s and 1990s. These tanks had an armor thickness of 1,500 mm or more. The German EGS prototype had about 2,000 mm frontal hull armor. The upgraded Leopard 2 versions already have about 900 mm effective thickness. I think you are confusing protection level against KE (claimed to be 050 mm or more) with armor thickness. The latter is pretty much alway greater than the former. The T-14 Armata is made by the same companies, the same research departments and some of the same people that made the Soviet tanks. Russia is the official successor state of the Soviet Union, the Russian Army is the de facto successor of the Soviet Red Army. Your claim is wrong and doesn't make any sense. It completely abandons Soviet philosophy, but still heavily relies on ERA and has an autoloader for a 125 mm smoothbore gun firing two-piece ammunition? That was a good joke! Next time you will claim that the Leopard 2 is not German, because it was made in West-Germany before the reunification, will you? The T-14 Armata is pretty much a lite-version of the Object 195, a Soviet next-generation tank prototype. Yes, the hull armor is less upgradable. The Merkava 3 has no composite armor at the hull front, while the Merkava 4 has no composite armor at the LFP. There is no easy option to upgrade this armor. Meanwhile on a conventional tank like the M1 Abrams, the armor inserts can simply be replaced. The problem is that you reject everything that sounds remotely like a critique of the Merkava, because you are a fanboy. This is the only issue here. Do you think that the rest of the world has moved for increased armor thickness just for fun? Do you think that Merkava is impenetrabtable against anything at all places? No. The tank isn't super heavy-weight, still it has a much greater armored surface... did you ever wonder "how comes that the tank has so much armor, but is relatively light-weight"? Do you think that the Challenger 2 with TES(H) and the Leopard 2A7+ prototypes reached a weight of 70+ tonnes, if a much lower weight could afford a much better protection? You keep forgetting that the Merkava 4 is not capable of stopping a Kornet ATGM (which doesn't always have a penetration as high as 1,200 mm depending on warhead) at all places. Even the Metis-M missile has proven of being capable of penetrating a Merkava 4 in several incidents. In 2006 51 Merkava tanks (inlcuding the Merkava 4 tanks) were hit by ATGMs, half of them penetrated the armor. So instead of being invulnerable, the Merkava tanks suffer losses ina bout 50% of the times being hit by ATGMs. In a fight at the Saluki river, three Merkava 4 tanks were penetrated by ATGMs, leading to the loss of seven crew members. At another incident a Kornet ATGM managed to penetrate the frontal armor of a Merkava 3 tank. Why do you think did the IDF adopt the Trophy APS on the Merkava tank? Just for fun? Show me any proof that of Merkava 4 being hit at the glacis or the LFP by a Kornet ATGM without penetration. The majority of all hits on a tank occur at the turret, simply due to the height of the vehicle. There the Merkava 4 has much thicker armor than at the hull. The Kornet ATGM was designed to defeat MBTs from the frontal aspect and seems to have no issues at doing so against the weaker armored hull of all tanks it has encountered including the M1A2SA and the M1A1M. It was not an isolated incident? Just keep trying to grasp straws. This is the LFP we are talking about, there is statistical data on how often the lower portions (incl. the LFP) of tanks has been hit in wars such as the Six-Day War, the Yom-Kippur War and the Lebanon War of 1983. In modern conflicts the hull is only hit in ~25% of all times. Now take into account that the front needs to be hit, which is less than ~12% of the vertical surface below the turret ring and only ~30% of the vertical surface along the frontal arc. Do you think that the Fagot ATGM will always hit the hull front straight on? If so, you are wrong. The ATGM will in most cases hit at a slight angle, most likely even more than a few degrees due to being a composed angle of vertical and horizontal variance. Most likely the ATGM strikes the hull slightly downwards, because the user doesn't want to risk hitting the ground or rocks/trees/bushes when firing. This would greatly increase the effective slope of the Merkava's LFP. So seeing a ~280-290 mm armor layout capable of protecting against a shaped charge with 400 mm nominal penetration (which for Soviet export weaponry in some cases wasn't reached) at unknown conditions is nothing special nor valid. You are basing your statements on the Merkava's protection on hearsay performance under unknown conditions. That is the key difference between the armor protection of the Leopard 2 and M1 Abrams, which was tested at known conditions to work equally well at the whole required frontal arc. You can see a photograph of the Abrams' hull armor being tested at 0° against a shaped charge warhead. Compared to this, your story is not verifiable. Who says that a modern tank needs a 1,800 mm wide turret ring? Modern tanks have large turret ring diameters in order to gain the internal space required for the crew and components in the interior. By moving to an unmanned turret - or placing the gun in a overhead mount - one does not need a turret ring diameter of 1,800 mm or more. Just look at some of the UDES testsbeds or the Marder VTS. I also don't see any reason why a tranversly mounted engine needs to be placed at the front of the vehicle. One can get the same reduction in hull length by placing the engine at the rear. Given that a frontally mounted engine will still lead to additional side skirts being required for crew protection, the weight savings seem to be greater when mounting the engine at the rear. No, we don't need to stop it completely. But relying on (thin) steel plates at high obliquity should stop. The protection provided by a thin steel plate, such as the 40-50 mm used on M1 Abrams, Leopard 2, K1, Type 90 and similar tanks, is not enough to stop modern 120/125 mm APFSDS. Throw the new 130 mm gun from Rheinmetall and the Russian 152 mm gun into the mix and even more armor is required. Given that there are limitations to weight and (high-hardness) steel plate thickness, the armor has to be thicker and made of composite armor in order to stay at an acceptable weight. If you already need a ~250-300 mm glacis, why not use it as roof protection for the crew? The hatch design doesn't need to be very complicated. Sure, simpler designs might have a few issues with armor coverage at the hinge/sliding mechanisms... but then again current hatches are also considered a weakspot on tanks like Abrams. For an engine having an engine cover that can only be lifted using a large crane seems to be another drawback. Yes, usually the engine covers are always lifted by a crane, but in case of emergency the crew can still use less potent/non-military equipment to deal with it. How would the slope affect vehicle length? It could only affect the length of the vehicle, if on the "conventional one" a further extension is added for having hatches on a un-sloped surface. Look at the hull of the Abrams: the glacis slope already extends to the turret ring. In your suggested layout, the frontal armor acts as roof armor only for the engine, which frankly doesn't require the same level as protection for the crew. The turret will only protect the crew compartment, if it has a large, overhanging turret bustle (which is capable of providing enough crew protection and not just external storage boxes as most of the turret bustles of the Leopard 2A5/6/7 and the Challenger 2) and the turret is turned towards the front. Want to fight against an enemy at the side? Well, then you have to expose the crew to top-attack weapons... No, because it is not possible to provide the same level of protection to all parts of the tank. In ideal case every area of the tank would have armor as thick as the turret front - but that's not possible due to weight, size, useability and other factors. The engine is always a structural weakspot due to needing a cooling solution and exhaust systems. So if some place should be less armored, it should be the area at the engine (above and below), which doesn't protect the crew as much as the front, aswell as the roof and belly of the crew compartment. Just look at current tanks: the armor at the sides of the engine of a Leopard 2 and M1 Abrams is 40 mm thick at best. The armor at the front is multiple times thicker, because it protects the crew. The same applies to the roof armor. The engine covers of the tanks are usually 20 to 25 mm thick, whereas the sloped glacis and turret roof are 40 mm or more thick. The photo is a bit misleading, because it compares the vehicles at different angles. The CV90 appears to be a lot smaller mainly due to it's smaller turret. The height hull itself doesn't seem to be any smaller than that of a Marder or Warrior IFV if you take other factors (such as the ~60-70 mm thicker, spaced roof armor of the Marder 1A3 hull) into account. The "Puma" is actually a Marder 1A3 with the Kuka M12 turret, which was offered in the export market to Norway, Switzerland and a few selected other countries. I cannot comment on your esimations, because I have never been inside a CV90 myself. However there are a few things that I can still add to this part of the discussion. In SteelBeasts at least the CV90 hull is a tad higher than the Leopard 2 engine compartment, by about 100 mm. If we take the ground clearance into account - which is between 50 and 100 mm less for the CV90 - the CV90 rear compartment is about 150 - 200 mm taller than the engine compartment of the Leopard 2. Now, I only looked at the Norwegian CV90, the Swedish version has (afaik) a slightly lower height at the rear compartment. But the Swedish version isn't exactly the standard configuration of the CV90, being not designed for compability with all NATO standards. On the CV90 Mk II (CV9030) the roof is raised by 140 mm, one the CV90 Mk III (CV9035 operated by Denmark and the Netherlands) it is raised even more. I don't know exactly if this is a NATO standard yet, but German AFVs are always designed with a compability from the 5th to 95th percentile (only the smallest 5% and the tallest 5% of the male adults are incompatible with the vehicle). That's exactly why I used is an example. You said that the Swedish requirement for armor protection is reduced to only 65° coverage at the front and not focused on crew protection, after I mentioned that moving the crew towards the rear of the vehicle increases the weight required for achieving the same level of crew protection (due to more side skirt modules being required). I answered by showing that the Strv 103 and Strv 2000 - both with front-mounted engines - had longer side skirts covering the 60° arc for the crew and not the vehicle front. The RPG protection is only offered for the engine, because the crew is placed so much away from the front. If the crew was located at the front, the protection against RPGs would be higher for it. It should be noted that these layouts belonged to the Char 90/Kampfpanzer 90 project that was co-developed with Germany.

It is the cable for the headlights.

It is fitted with a version of the same turret as used on ASCOD Ulan/Pizarro and Pandur II for Portugal:

Originally the smaller picture was left, but I moved it to the right when the arrow conflicted with the another photo (of the tank without fuel tanks). I forgot to adjust the caption. ___ Eitan to be made in the US? http://www.globes.co.il/en/article-new-israeli-apc-may-be-produced-in-us-1001164794

Even the Merkava 3, Merkava 4 and Namer have no composite armor at the lower hull front plate:

You seem to lack the context. If the crew is located in an armored capsule in the hull directly behind the frontal armor, then the glacis armor will be located above the crew, protecting it against top-attack weapons. If the engine is located in the front, you need to have an equally thick glacis armor (as part of the tank's frontal protection) and an additional layer of armor above the crew compartment, leading an increase in armor weight without enhancing the crew protection or frontal protection of the tank. According to an older article R. Hilmes, the roof thickness of modern tanks needs to be within 200 to 250 mm (composite armor) in order to resist (at least some types of) top-attack weapons. On the Leopard 2 variants with upgraded hull armor such as the Strv 122 and Leopard 2 Evolution, there already is 150-200 mm (excluding slope) of composite armor, so resisting top-attack weapons will be a lot easier. The rear compartment with the rear door of the Merkava is still taller than the hulls of other tanks at the crew compartment. There is enough place to store five or even six 120 mm rounds with relatively thick protective containers ontop of each other. On the Leopard 2 or M1 Abrams, you cannot store five 120 mm rounds (without any sort of protective container) ontop of each other. You are comparing apples to oranges. It nearly seems that you are again trying to hijack a topic to make it focused on the Merkava in comparison to other tanks. First of all, we are not talking about comparing a Merkava to a Leopard 2 or Leclerc, we are talking about the advantages of front- and rear-mounted engines in future MBTs with unmanned turret and the crew located in the hull (as you can clearly see how this discussion started). Mounting the engine at the rear means that the crew is located directly behind the armor - there is no place for ammunition. Here having the exhaust fumes transported along the fuel systems to the rear requires additional effort (armor/fire extinguishers) to have the same level of survivability compared to having engine and fuel systems mounted in the rear. Besides that, the ammunition in tanks with front-mounted turrets is not safer. On the Strv 122 the frontal hull armor has a thickness of more than 800 mm, while the Merkava 4 has less than 600 mm of hull armor. The Leopard 2 has 640-660 mm hull armor, whereas the Merkava 1 has 280 mm steel armor plus the engine and fuel. No, it does not remain valid and it never was valid to begin with. It is not comparable in layout, weight and size to a tank. If a vehicle barely has any armor, a front-mounted engine won't affect the armor integration much, due to the armor being thinner (no space issues) and lighter (no weight balance issues). To support and prove my point that the Carmel is not a tank and not valid in this discussion. The images are not for scale and based on different sources. If you scale them accordingly, the armor thickness will be comparable. The difference is about 2 to 3 pixels, depending on how to count the pixels with partial transparency. The lower picture is made by a Russian forum user, it might not be the most accurate one. The source of the CAD image above is unknown. I don't think that the 1,100 mm thickness was measured on the image, but is result of further anaylsis of multiple pictures and probably (scale) measurement on photos of the real T-14 tank. The black lines and the color for the different compartments were added for better visibility in the presentation, they are a bit inaccurate. I have never seen a value as low as 900 mm armor thickness for the T-14 Armata frontal hull, i.e. I have seen Russians claim a thickness of 1,200 mm and more. Given the size comparison between T-14 and T-90 (T-90 has more than 600 mm of glacis armor), this ballpark of values (1,100 - 1,200 mm) seems to be correct. There is about ~1,300 mm of space in front of the T-14 hatch, the upper edge of the sloped armor starts about 100 - 200 mm from the hatch. As I previously said, it is from a presentation that previously featured the Leopard 2 (or 2A4), of which the armor weight is roughly known. Hence the author just put "greater than armor weight of the Leopard 2" into the slide, to show the advantage of moving towards a next-generation tank. That the armor weight of the T-14 is higher can easily be estimated by taking a look at the weight per surface area and keeping the reductions in size (unmanned turret with less armored surface) and component weight (MB873 is a 30+ years old engine) into account. The T-14 Armata is two tons heavier than the last Russian MBT... nice weight reduction. QED. Absolutely not true. According to estimates based on the protection requirements (protection vs 115 mm APFSDS from 800 metres, protection against 127 mm shaped charges), the M1 Abrams should have protection equal to 350-400 mm steel vs KE and about 500 mm steel vs HEAT - as a minimum. The Merkava 1 has about 280 to 290 mm steel along the line of sight, which means that the protection provided by engine and fuel matters a lot. Not all of this steel is rolled homogenous armor (RHA), but also cast steel, which provides 10-20% less protection in the 1970s than RHA. A 300 mm fuel tank should provide resistance equal to 43 mm of steel against HEAT and less than that against APFSDS. So in order to be protected to a similar level as the M1 Abrams, the engine needs to provide protection comparable to 50-100 mm steel vs KE and 160 mm vs HEAT. The Leopard 2 however meet all US armor protection requirements and was even better armored - remember the 3,500 kg/m² armor weight? According to a book written by it's project manager, the Leopard 2 was designed to be capable of resisting Soviet 125 mm APFSDS from 1,500 metres distance. Based on the available pentration figures, this means the frontal armor of a Leopard 2 from 1979 should be equal to at least 450 mm of steel, probably 500 mm or more. Then the engine would need to provide 200 mm protection against KE... this is not possible. The AVDS-1790 has a dry weight of ~1,200 kg, while covering ~1.5 square metre of area. This is in terms of weight equivalent to 100 mm steel, but not all of the engine is made of steel (but materials that provide less protection per weight) and it is not manufactured using armor steel, but rather is made out of non-ballistic steel. Against bullets, which are rather easy to stop compared to APFSDS ammunition, mild steel provides only 75% of the protection per weight and thickness as RHA. Against shaped charges the protection is less than 70%. In other words you are wrong. Aside of this, there is no gained protection for the ammunition. If you penetrate the armor of the Leopard 2, you might hit the ammo rack; if you penetrate the frontal armor of the Merkava 1 or 2 (which includes the engine and fuel tanks to reach a protection level slightly below the M1 Abrams), then you might hit the ammo racks. However there are more ammo racks in the Merkava hull, which can be hit. You however ignore that the Merkava 1 is 63 tonnes heavy and fails to reach the protection level of the 55 tonnes Leopard 2 and M1 Abrams. Due to the IDF designer's at MANTAK not caring about the 30° frontal arc (see turret armor), the overall protection is much worse. The armor layout in the Merkava is less upgradable. The engine will always provide a fixed amount of protection when you stay with a version of the same engine (as done by MANTAK on the three first Merkava tanks). On the M1 Abrams and Leopard 2, you could upgrade over 600 mm of composite armor at the hull... on the Merkava 1 and 2 there was no composite and no option to upgrade. On the Merkava 4 however there is much less space for armor than on an Abrams. So essentially you are claiming that a fuel tank and a MTU 883 engine are comparable to ~300 mm of current generation composite armor. No proof, just claiming that the Merkava 4 survived a Metis and a Kornet. Now prove that under the same circumstances any of the mentioned tanks - despite having much thicker composite armor - would have been penetrated. Do you think that the Leopard 2 or Leclerc would not survive a Metis or a Kornet? Symmetric (tank) combat is expected to occur along the 30° frontal arc of each tank. Now, that means if the tank is on the battlefield and damaged, the crew cannot leave unless being exposed to other threats. Tank combat is not "two tanks meet straight heads on", but multiple units (e.g. platoons) of mixed units (tanks and IFVs) meet in combat, driving along a wider front. The UFP on the Merkava 3 is not better sloped than the UFP of the Leopard 2 or Abrams, even at the upper section, which is part of the frontal profile. The slope for the Merkava 3 seems to be 9° based on a photo from the tank at Latrun. However the armor is thin just about ~50 mm. The lower section is thicker, but less sloped. The Leopard 2 has 40 mm at 7°, which is about 8 mm more at the LOS (so a very negible difference). Still Germany developed in the same year the Merkava 3 entered service an upgrade for the Leopard 2 including better hull armor, because 40 mm sloped steel at 7° was not considered enough agianst future APFSDS ammunition. Upgraded versions of this armor has been installed on the Leoaprd 2A5DK, Strv 122, Leopardo 2E, Leopard 2A6HEL and in the form of AMAP in the Leopard 2SG and Leopard 2RI. The armor was also tested on the Leclerc and M1A2 Abrams as part of the Swedish trials. Based on a claimed armor thickness of 700 mm for the Abrams hull (even though I think it might be close to 600 mm) that should be about ~250 mm material along the line-of-sight. The Leclerc already features upgraded glacis armor - similar slope as on the Merkava 3, but about three times as thick. The placement of the engine is still the same on the Merkava 3. The distance between engine and turret is the same on Merkava 1, Merkava 2 and the Merkava 3. There is no proper way to increase the armor thickness without completely removing the frontal fuel tanks, whcih however are still existent even on the Merkava 4. There is no option for 750 mm thick armor. Which is quite bad protection. This is essentially possible just by adding the steel + the steel of the engine + the fuel alltogether... if the impact occured at a slight angle, this is even less surprising. This is not a bit surprising given the weight and amount of steel used. Yes, but this is more the result of the M48 and M60 not being known for their mobility to begin with. These are older generation tanks with by modern standards bad suspension systems. These tanks have a suspension travel of only 292 mm and 320 mm, not comparable to a Leopard 1 (407 mm), a MBT-70 (600 mm) and a Leopard 2 (526 mm), the tanks used as reference for the VTF in Germany (afaik VTF had the same suspension travel as the Leopard 2). Supposedly the early models of the Merkava had a travel of less than 500 mm based on comments of the new suspension used on the Merkava 3 and 4 being better. Maybe you take into account that the turret roof is lower in order to keep the tank's height at an acceptable level, which is hard to due to front-mounted engine and rear door increasing height considerably? So did you go to Wikipedia and read the values without thinking about it for a moment? These are the values for overall length with the gun facing forwards, not the hull length. You claim that the short length of the Merkava keeps the weight down, however it is not shorter. The Merkava 4 hull is 7.6 metres long, the Leopard 2 hull is 7.52 m long (excluding mudguards). There is no weight saving as result of a shorter hull, because there is no shorter hull. The Leclerc's hull is only 6.88 metres long.

Boxer JODAA technology testbed/demonstrator made by Rheinmetall for the Bundeswehr. It allows the commander to take over the driver's control digitally from his position. The vehicle can release UAVs and UGVs carried inside without the need of manual assistance or the need to leave the vehicle. The UAVs and UGVs can be remotely operated from inside the vehicle. The Boxer JODAA can also be controlled remotely. Boxer JODAA - Wiesel 2 WITCH - Panther

If a rear door is wanted or required, one can use a compact higher-power-density engine and have a small path at the side. Wegmann proposed such a design for the German NGP project, which demanded a modular vehicle, that could be reconfigured for different uses such as being a MBT, being an IFV or various other vehicles. The vehicle was to be powered by a diesel-electric powerpack, which was located at the right rear section of the tank. For the IFV version, the left rear section was used for a ca. 750 mm wide path to a rear door. On the MBT version, this place was used for storing some ammunition of the autoloader (due to the design using a low-profile unmanned turret). The same design using a larger turret (with enough storage for all ammunition, but no turret basket) would enable the vehicle to have a rear door and a rear-mounted powerpack.

I know that you wrote about traversely mounted engines, however try finding drawings of CAD data of the MT892 (or another compact high-power diesel engine) used on a combat vehicle such as the Puma... The graphic still clearly illustrates the overall size of the powerpack, even though the V12 version will be about 20% longer. I don't see any space-savings from traversely mounting the powerpack - the driver then has to be moved further back. In the end it is just a question of wether the driver should be located behind or next to the engine, the volume required by the powerpack will remain the same. I don't want to be nitpicking, but without voltage an amperage doesn't mean much. But I guess most likely it will work at the same 28 volts as the old APU and the new drive systems of the Abrams. The issue is that you are talking about a future system, of which we don't know the dimensions. Will it fit into the same space as the older APU? Or will it be bigger? The current APU (non-primary power source from Marvin Land Systems) of the M1 Abrams has an output of about 10 kW, it is working with a current of 350 kW at a voltage of 28 V. This system is 1.36 metres long x 0.6 metres wide and 0.32 metres tall. This might be somewhat easy to fit into the front of a tank, but if you tripple it's size (for reaching the 28 kW of running a 28 V at 1,000 A APU) will make it a lot more complicated. To be fair the APU of the Abrams seems to be rather space-inefficient (delivering ~ 38 kW per m³), Jenoptik for example provides a 17 kW APU for the Leopard 2, which is only 0.77 metes long, 0.46 metres wide and only 0.37 metres tall - thus providing about 129.8 kW per m³, but the Abrams' APU might have other benefits which could justify the size. There are many different APUs for the Leopard 2 - depending on version and manufacturer. On the German Leopard 2A7 prototype, the APU didn't feature it's own exhaust vents and cooling system, sharing it with the engine - this is also the case with the Leopard 2A5DK, which doesn't have it's own cooling/exhaust solution. On the production model of the Leopard 2A7 however, the APU has it's own cooling vents, the exhaust is AFAIK still shared with the engine. This might have something to do with the higher power delivered by the 2A7's APU (17 kW vs iirc. 7 kW on the Leopard 2A5DK), but it also could have something to do with costs saving measures (which unfortunately define the current Leopard 2A7). Rheinmetall is using a different placement and potentially also a different type of APU. Okay, but I still wouldn't say that they really make much more sense, given all the still existing drawbacks that have to be accepted. Reducing the size of the powerpack certainly helps reducing the drawbacks, but they still remain to some degree. I still fail to see how this is going to increas actual protection. The driver's hatch on tanks like the Leopard 2 and the M1 Abrams are located on the sloped surface, there is no extra flat surface required for the hatch. While some AFVs might have some special hatch designs or flat-surface just for the hatches, I don't think this is the case with any modern tank I currently can think of. Yes, the K2 Black Panther seems to have a flat roof surface (without sloped glacis) at the front of the tank, but this tank has a lot of issues when it comes to actual armor protection and armor layout. In general using only sloped steel armor for the glacis seems to be a bad design and a thing of the past. Modern missiles and RPGs are capable of fuzing even at extreme slopes, so this is already a main issue. Given that APFSDS ammunition does not riccochet - it will break, but only the frontal part of it will riccochet - relatively thin sloped armor is not a solution for all times. In research papers testing the protection capability of 75° sloped steel plates showed that the penetration was reduced by about 50% (thanks to a part of the penetrator breaking apart, another part of the penetrator deforming and a small reduction in muzzle velocity after penetration). For the Abrams and the Leopard 2 tanks having one to two inches of steel armor at a ~75-85° angle might have been sufficient, but when we look at 130 mm, 140 mm or 152 mm APFSDS the situation changes. Even 120 mm APFSDS should have no issues penetrating the glacis of a M1 Abrams or Leopard 2, specifically given that the performance against highly sloped armor plates can be increased by using special tip design (according to numerous patents). Still I don't think that a front-mounted engine would be advantagous for armor protection. I'd expect any sort of real next-generation tank (and this is also the case with the T-14 Armata) to feature enhanced protection against top-attack weapons and artillery ammunition. Here having the crew sitting below parts of the frontal armor means that it double-acts as roof armor. With a front-mounted engine, this is not the case. The door - and the path to the door - need to be tall enough for a man to fit through. The height of the rear compartment of a Merkava tank - or an IFV such as the CV90 and Marder - is much taller than the height of the crew or engine compartment of a conventional tank. The Marder also has a rear exhaust system, still it is a bad design for a tank. It is necessary on IFVs and some APCs for allowing a rear ramp and keeping the thermal signature at the front lower, but it is not a good design choice at all cases. The temperature of the exhaust gases is very high - about 230°C on the Leopard 2 and more than 600°C on the M1 Abrams; so the channel for transporting the exhaust fumes to the rear need to be insulated and/or actively cooled. The higher temperatures can effect other components (such as electronics) or the crew. It is already less weight and space efficient to transport the exhaust fumes to the rear, but the high temperature makes it only worse. Fuel is also more likely to catch fire after penetration when it is hot. In MBTs the sponsons are already used for storing fuel and other components such as the NBC system. Still the Swedish Leopard 2 has the same side skirt layout as the original version, so it probably will about the same or better in most cases. Do you think the requirement wouldn't be adjusted when the engine would be mounted at the front of the hull? The crew then would be exposed, if this wasn't adjusted - but based on the Strv 103 and the Strv 2000 it probably would be changed. The skirts of the Strv 2000 also provided protection against RPGs from the sides. The Carmel is meant to weigh just about 35 metric tons and is meant to armed with an autocannon between 40 mm and 76 mm calibre and ATGMs. It is not a next-generation tank, but rather another type of combat vehicle. If you have not much armor (due to a weight of 35 metric tons or less), a lot of drawbacks of the front-mounted engines won't be as prominent. The T-14 Armata has about 1,100 mm frontal armor according to German estimates, which is to weigh significantly more than 3,500 kg/m² (which about the armor weight of the Leopard 2 or 2A4 - equal to 446 mm steel). This is in no way comparable to the Carmel. Who says the weight of future tanks will go down. The reason why countries like Germany, the US and France have researched unmanned turrets in the - and why the T-14 has an unmanned turret - is to increase armor protection without increasing the weight. The current Challenger 2 weighs nearly 75 metric tons, the Leopard 2A7 in the best possible configuration (as wanted by the German Army) weighs nearly 70 metric tons. In the future tanks might need even more armor in order to resist 130 mm APFSDS or 152 mm APFSDS; Russia at least has thought about using this gun on a version of the Armata. A modern MBT with two/three men crew and increased armor protection might weigh some 60 metric tons or more, while providing the protection of a 80 or 90 metric tons conventional MBT. Other factors such as larger guns, bigger power supply systems (APUs, batteries), etc. might also affect the weight. In general having more horsepower, more torque and better acceleration is desirable. Yes, one can try to reduce the weight of the tank and reduce the engine power and fuel consumption. One could however also try to stay at an acceptable level of fuel consumption and try to maximize the automotive performance. There is no law that say the speed of a tank should be limited to just 70 km/h on the road or why the tank should be slow at accerating and unable to climb steep slopes. The older Merkavas, the ones on which Tal worked, however were never designed with a modern armor layout or ammo seperation with blow-out panels. The tanks were designed for frontal fighting only, with little to no side armor (as clearly visible on the much lower turret side armor thickness) - in this case placing the ammunition at the very rear of the vehicle does mean it will be hit last and more armor and other components need to be penetrated. However when looking at the protection along the frontal arc - or overall along the complete azimuth of 360° - the ammo is much less protected. Given that the earlier Merkava tanks lacked composite armor at the hull - and the armor is in general much thinner than on other MBTs - I would expect a Leopard 2 or M1 Abrams (which in the original configuration still had 105 mm non-isolated ammunition at the center of the crew compartment) to have much better protected ammunition. These are very subjective advantages. Carrying injured infantry into the back, but not having the place to treat their injuries or putting them into the recovery position is not an advantage, you could do the same with other combat vehicles. There is a reason why ambulance vehicles are tall and roomy. There is not very much place in front of the rear door: just enough to store 120 mm tank ammunition with protective caps - so probably less than 1.2 metres of space - this is not enough to aid an adult man. If the person is larger than that, it will be crushed when the turret rotates. The safe exit of the crew is very situational. If the enemy can shot from tha tank at the side - even if it is just with a machine gun - then the exit is not safe anymore. If you can hit the front of tank from a 30° angle from the centerline, you can also hit the place behind the rear ramp at an angle of 30-40°. On the other hand having the engine at the front increases the likelyhood of mobility kills in conventional combat, hence making sure that evacuating the tank has to be done more often. Quick and easy resupplying is depending on what you look at. Resupplying the Leopard 1 or Leopard 2 through the old ammunition hatch could be probably done faster than taking out those bulky ammo racks or crouching through the rear door. The glacis armor of the tank is however not thicker than that of other tanks, it is rather the opposite: it is thinner, while not being as well-sloped as the UFP of an Abrams for example. Hence it is weaker, less protected. The armor in front of the UFP, i.e. the hull nose and lower front plate, also does not seem to have a thickness comparable to that of other current tanks. The Leopard 2 - when fitted with the hull armor used on the Leopard 2A5DK, Strv 122, Leopardo 2E and Leopard 2A6 HEL, or when fitted with AMAP armor as used on the Leopard 2RI and Leopard 2SG - has much thicker armor at the LFP, hull nose and UFP. We are talking about an additional ~300 mm along the line-of-sight, while the basic tank already had thicker hull front armor than the Merkava 4 by most estimations (other than yours probably). So the main armor of the the Merkava 1 and 2 is a 100 mm steel plate behind the fuel tanks and a ~50 mm steel plate behind the engine? So how thick would the armor of the Merkava 3 and 4 be? Maybe we loo at the tank first... There is less than 600-650 mm of space in front of the engine, which includes the frontal fuel tanks. So the armor is going to be thinner than that of other tanks, no matter what. If the fuel tanks have the same size as on the Merkava 1 (300 mm), then there would be less than 350 mm of space for the composite armor. This doesn't say much. It just says that the fuel and the armor are capable of stopping some RPGs, nothing more. The side armor of the Abrams turret (~300 mm) has been capable of surviving some older Soviet ATGMs, while the heavy side skirts of the Leopard 2 together with the side armor (110 mm composite side skirts + ~650 mm empty space + 60-80 mm steel armor) has been claimed of resisting ATGMs with 1,000 mm penetration into RHA by Dr. Held, when being hit at a 30° angle. Still the engine remains vulnerable then, while being place at a location that is more likely being hit. Or you know, maybe the German Army had stricter requirements for mobility after having built two tanks with - by international standards - excellent mobility in form of the Leopard 1 and Leopard 2, whereas the IDF was willing to accept vehicles with much lower mobility, such as a 63 metric tons heavy Merkava 1 tank being powered by a 908 hp engine only? When your tank is capable of only reaching 50 km/h on road (and thus probably something between 20 and 30 km/h in heavy terrain), it certainly won't suffer from the same stress as a tank being powered by a 1,500 hp engine... this is why I clearly stated that the mobility issues were found to arrive at maximum speed. Yes, but the tanks with 105 mm guns have no relevance in this discussion. It is not shorter than the average MBT. It is shorter than the M1 Abrams and Challenger 2 maybe, two of the MBTs with the longest hulls currently being used. It's hull is still a tad longer than that of the Leopard 2 and considerably longer than the hulls of the Leclerc, K2 Black Panther, T-90, T-80 and T-84M. I am not disagreeing with the last statement of using something other than a conventional diesel V-engine, but that's not really the reason for the size of the Object 416. It's hull is barely shorter than that of a T-54 without fuel drums - by about 100 to 300 mm only. The Object 416 however is fitted with a 400 hp engine only, so using an engine of equal size might lead to a larger Object 416. The hull is not as tall other that of a T-54, but the difference in height corresponds with the reduction ing round-clearance. The photograph however illustrates the problems of visibility for the driver and gun depression caused by this design.

I disagree. A modern powerpack such as the MT890V12 will still be larger than a small two or three men crew capsule. Germany has tested two-men-crews and Israel is currently thinking about having only a two-men-crew for the Carmel. Just look at the Puma's powerpack including the MT892 Ka-501 engine: (ignore the red arrow) On a tank one most likely wants a V12 engine with at least 1.500 horsepowers - if you take a look at German projects (like the canceled NGP modular combat vehicle and the Leopard 2A7V upgrade), it seem that one wants even more power than just 1,500 hp. Yes, one could use an uprated version of the MT890V12, but this still should require larger cooling units, better brakes and better fuel systems than used on the Puma - so even more spaced is occupied by the powerpack. On future combat vehicles, the demand for larger APUs will also be important. The Leopard 2A7V will already feature an upgraded APU compared to the Leopard 2A7, but this is just the start. On future combat vehicles, there should be more electronics and other power-consuming features (such as an active protection system). One can place the APU in another part of the tank, but in general it seems desirable to place the engine and APU within the same part of the tank - it makes the fuel systems less complex, allows the fire extinguishers to work for engine and APU at the same time, while cooling and exhaust systems can be shared between APU and engine. The main problem with your suggestion of future MBTs moving towards front-mounted engines is that there are no real benefits of this. Your list includes five pros for front-mounted engines, but only one is valid. The option to have a rear door or ramp is the main benefit of front-mounted engines and the only reason why some APCs, most IFVs and the Merkava tanks have their engines located at the front. The other advantages are half truths or not true at all. You have also overlooked a few major drawbacks of front-mounted engines here. For example you said that having the engine located at the front is an advantage in terms of protection against mines and IEDs. In theory mine/IED will detonate below the engine, the crew is not directly affected by the blast, only by the shock? But this doesn't work. There are mines and IEDs that are triggered by thermal signatures, some of which have been used in Iraq against the Stryker and Bradley. Soldiers from the US Army even demanded a rear-mounted engine in the Mobile Protected Firepower vehicle just to be better protected against such IEDs/mines. Pressure sensitive mines might have been a common threat in the Cold War, but technology evolves and the battlefield changes. In many cases IEDs are fuzed by mobile phones or other methods requiring user input: then a front-mounted engine does offer no benefits in terms of protection. You wrote that a front-mounted engine could potentionally reduce the frontal area needing protection. How? Unless you want to claim that the engine acts as enough armor to stop anything by itself, this won't happen IMO. Tanks and other combat vehicles (such as wheeled and tracked infantry fighting vehicles) with front-mounted engines are always taller at the front than current combat vehicles with rear-mounted engines. Even if it was possible to create an engine, that delivers enough power while being small enough to not affect the height/width of the vehicle, the frontal area requiring protection should remain the same size as with a rear-mounted engine in best case. Why? Because the crew has to sit in front of the turret (or directly below the turret), if one wants to have optical sights (vision blocks) as back-up solution for electronic systems. If you want a rear door or ramp to evacuate the crew, the height of the hull might even be increased compared to currently existing tanks. Another issue with front-mounted engines is armor integration. In Germany the VTF (Versuchsträger Frontantrieb) was tested in 1984, after Germany considered the concept of a MBT with front-mounted engines. An major issue seen with the VTF was the weight distribution: Having thick frontal armor and the powerpack at the vehicle front caused a massive weight disbalance, which affects the mobility. Unless the turret is mounted in the rear of the vehicle - which would eliminate the option of having a rear ramp - the tank cannot have the same armor thickness at the hull as with a conventional layout. The cooling and exhaust of front-mounted engines are an issue. If the engine is front-mounted, you cannot move the exhaust and air vents to the rear of the vehicle, unless giving up any gained spaced (which is required for a rear door). This means there are ballistic holes, i.e. the engine vents won't be protected close to the same level as the rest of the hull. Any hit here by an ATGM or an APFSDS could lead to a penetration. This is sub-optimal, because it would be located in the frontal 60° arc. In general the tank needs to have more side skirts for protecting the frontal 60° arc, when the crew is moved further away from the front. Three further problems of tanks with front-mounted engines according to the German military are lowered visibility for the driver (the engine creates a huge dead zone for his optics), reduced gun depression (only 7° on the Merkava) and reduced mobility when driving at maximum speed through very uneven engine (otherwise the drive sprocket located at the front of the tank can hit the terrain and be damaged, leaving the tank immobilized). So I don't see any reason why future tanks should move to front-mounted engines. Just the demand of better protection per weight should already favour rear-mounted engine concepts.

So this German Army Puma video was dubbed by English-language narrators... I wonder if it was paid by the Bundeswehr or KMW & Rheinmetall. Gen. McMaster seems to like the Puma (and the CV9035) and Trump wanted to increase defence spending...

More photos, taken from a Spanish forum:

Well, it doesn't have fullerine armor and doesn't carry 85 rounds for it's 145 mm main gun. So it's a bad tank nevertheless.

Stryker with Denel 105 mm mortar turret.

So it's a 120 mm thick steel plate sloped at 70°? That is overkill for WW2 and even for the next twenty years after that. Or is it only 120 mm at the line-of-sight? Did the superstructure armor remained unchanged?