Mighty_Zuk

Armoring tanks is always cost effective during wartime. A single tank's price can buy several dozen armor packs. So it's not that.

Besides, they're likely to receive a monetary boost from the Sultan.

Lack of experience? Surely they're functional enough to realize they're being mauled out there. And functional enough to make a single source purchase that requires no integration works.

It's just that not many approve of their way of thinking, as some may put it.

Erdogan is practically a Sultan now, and Turkey's not-so-successful invasion of Syria is seen as a non-necessary expansionism at the expense of the local populace. Germany just happens to be a strong supporter of the Kurds, as I understand.

Austria(?) recently announced that they refuse to provide technology for Altay's planned new engines.

Indeed weight savings. The armor is already very heavy for them, and the Leo 2NG affords less hull side protection, while the 2PL gives up on any form of hull armoring. 

Probably why also neither of them bothers to armor the roof. The Leopard 2NG as it is, weighs 65 tons.

It's nice they chose a fan-art over an actual tank they produce. 

https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP84M00044R000200890001-1.pdf

CIA document on FCS of various tanks in the early 80's. 

Probably part of the NORK's FCS delivered recently to the SAA

Lord Almighty it looks intimidating. Nice to know it actually exists, I got to say. Time to start looking for physical differences (outside of the turret cage) if there are any with the MS.

as I said in my thread in AW, the T-90M has new cage armor on the turret and a side log.

Wars are fought by engineers more than they are fought by men wielding arms.

You're right. It's not it. Don't really know what that is. The turret looks odd.

This explains why the Super Shermans were so useful as artillery pieces during Yom Kippur War, scoring kills at 17km range.

quick guesses: primer failure resulting in a dud. Although would still require an open breech.

excessive barrel bending causing fuze setting inside the barrel.

Cracks in the breech causing rupture.

Could be either, or none.

Oh and that's a T-55. Old platform coupled with poor maintenance can have deadly results.

"Luke - I'm your fun uncle"

In case anyone wondered, this is how the Swedish planned the chain armor equipped tank to look like:

Use of thin chains? Interesting. 

It will become even more famous in my blog. But I do wonder, Ramlaen, even with the compact autoloader in place, would there still be room for a loader? The Abrams isn't exactly very roomy as it is now. 

So what's the deal with the 2 decoupled barrels? How is that useful?

So now the Oplot has a hentai version?

I've been lurking here for a while, under a different name of course.

Just the fact they managed to capture a tank and IFV is mind boggling. And these guys are NATO?

Leopard just proving again that it's at least as vulnerable to the common battlefield's threats as any other tank. 

That's not what I meant.

I meant that the ERA behind the passive armor was there and is still there. I don't know what type of ERA that is, what materials they use, what backing and the details. I just know there's ERA at the back.

The change in armor (which occurred in 2007-2008) in the Merkava 4B, was to the NxRA. The passive armor itself, regardless of the ERA, was changed so that hits would no longer remove parts of the armor, and keep the passive armor more intact.

Well it's not SLERA by that definition.

It's thick NxRA backed with a layer of ERA. 

Sorry I don't understand much about reptilians. 

What is SLERA?

This is the image were it says "Explosive" right?

 

So, does this mean the side armor of the Merkava 4 is ERA.

Or maybe NxRA?

I know NxRA stands for Non Explosive (X) Reactive Armor. But in NxRA there is a reactive material between in plates right?  Could this material be considered explosive?  Though, not powerful enough to explode the module like in ERA.

 

 

Mvh

Xoon.

1)That's the image indeed.

2)It does mean the turret side armor of the Merkava contains SOME ERA, not entirely though. 

If you look at this image:

You can see the composition of the armor as the coverplate was blown off, in the Mark 4A.

It's highly likely that Mark 2D, 3D, 4A and 4B all have underlaid ERA, as these are based on a similar principle.

The basic armor is NxRA in its nature on all these models, and the recent improvement (2007) was to eliminate the exposure issue seen in the image above. What is also seen in the picture is that the armor reacts violently upon hit, even without the use of any explosive material. 

What I guess is that only a single or less likely few explosive layers exist within the armor, at the very back of it, acting as a last line of defense. 

This would not have however the disadvantage of hard maintenance as seen on multi-ERA based armor of the Oplot-M, as by the time the ERA is initiated in the Merkava's side armor, the whole armor module would have been pierced and compromised, requiring full replacement.

3)Bottom line; the armor itself is NxRA, but is not related to the ERA located behind it.

And you are the best detective in the whole world

Zuk doesn't post here so I will copy a post of his from the AW forum.

That is, indeed, not a panoramic sight (me thinks). As you can see it's not placed where the panoramic sight is usually located. The actual sight is located further in the back and is either closed or rotated to the back. 

Just a bit in front of the commander's hatch before the roof armor.

Zuk also posted to his thread the following (taken from the video):

(some booty for the lads)

Seen during fields maintenance:

The interesting bit:

Because it's highly improbable that Rafael just chose to copy whatever design a few Soviet engineers brought with them, if they even did. And they would not seek other foreign help if they would already have a ready design. Keep in mind the earliest ERA was a very simple design.

What IS probable, in my opinion, is that key figures in Rafael heard about the concept itself, of explosive armor, and chose to design one themselves (again, with foreign help).