That_Baka

Chelyabinsk, spring 1947:

Well, compared to a sports car, every AFV has stability issues.  It's just a question of how bad they are.

Maybe there's something to all this...


 
This is a photo of an unfinished blackjack fuselage.  I have been unable to find out what year the picture is from.  Earlier reports were that all the unfinished fuselages had been finished into complete aircraft or cannibalized for parts, but there are some newer contentions that there are actually several more unfinished airframes in varying stages of completion.
 
So like Bele said, at the very least it's a persistent rumor.

Politics mainly. The Object 277/8 and Object 770 were designed on the orders of the Sovet Ministrov so every other design was unsolicited and for some reason the Soviets had weird hangups about unsolicited designs. Also the Object 777 only had a manually loaded M-62 which was not gonna fly. The Soviets right after the war decided  that the next generation of heavy tanks was going to a use an auto-loaded 130mm. The only reason the IS-4 and T-10 didn't get the 130mm was they were meant to be quick and easy replacements for the disaster that was the IS-3

I get the impression that the sentiment you're echoing is mostly a western thing. Every contemporary source I've seen on the IS-3 has been negative. They just didn't like it. For good reason: There was just a lot of problems with it. At one point they had to return literally every IS-3 to the factory to fix the welding which was falling apart. Notice that their response  to the IS-3's problem wasn't "wait for the IS-7" it was "oh my god resurrect that heavy tank program we canceled years ago and get it ASAP". The IS-3 was that bad. The problem with the IS-4 was just weight, otherwise they were enthused with it. To the point that when the designing of the T-10 was ordered the government demanded IS-3 shape and size but with IS-4 technology. And I would say the result was pretty good.

If Khrushchev was right it wasn't because of any foresight on his part. The man clearly had no aptitude and knowledge for both armored warfare and tank design. I'm not sure if you're familiar with why the T-62 has the 115 but he was involved and the whole affair was dumb.
 
If they weren't canceled either the Object 277/8 Object 770 or would've been produced*. Probably with the 140mm smoothbore. Maybe the Object 292 would also be produced as a hold over until 277/8 or 770 gets rolling. After that its impossible to say the if the later designs would be worthwhile. I think pure institutional inertia from the SA would keep heavy tanks going at least until the collapse of the USSR. Again I don't know if  the later designs would be good and therefore worthwhile. All the heavy tanks designers threw in the towel after the decision but I don't know what happened to their protégés after the infamous order. So I don't know if they were any good. I presume they kept working in the industry. 
 
 
*Probably with the name T-11 since it would've been the 11th heavy tank produced by the Soviet Union. 

Object 770:

Since flechettes have fins is there any reason SPIW, AAI's ACR, and Steyr's ACR all have rifling? The Steyr IWS 2000 also fires a flechette yet it is smooth-bore unlike other flechette firing weapon.

It is not "micro", but "small-sized". Micro would be just Микро in russian, usually means something very, very small, and MA/AM-17 doesn't fit in such category.
   Also "AM" designation sounds closer to other avtomats names like AK, AN-94, AEK, etc than MA.
 

To be fair, he's hardly the only one who does that.

there were still some type74 in service currently
but the flamethrower in the picture is the Type 02(A or C), which a lighter and better variant of Type 74.
the main visual difference is the canister number decreased from 3 (type 74)to 2
 




compare to the old Type74 flamethrower

Top to Bottom.
 
Type 74 flamethrower (rather rare to see in service and drills, flamethrowers were mostly replaced in the man portable incendiary role by the FHJ-84 Twin barreled 62mm Incendiary rocket launcher and thermobarics.)
 
QJG-89 12.7x108mm HMG.
 
QLZ-04 "Heavy" 35x32mm GMG. (Heavy is relative to the QLZ-87 in size and weight, though they don't really fit the same role even though both are GMGs.)
 
 
 

I love that in that picture they have one of their hyper-advanced Oplot MBTs, but the infantryman out front is clearly armed with an ancient 7.62mm underfold AK.

stolen (again) 

Bulat is some sort of light ATGM that I saw for the first time when Epokha turret models photos appeared. Never saw anything about it - caliber, penetration, type of warhead, guidance system, etc. Although it had smaller caliber than Kornet ATGM.

Now that is interesting.  Sounds similar to the US LOSAT.

It is Shipunov's conception of "Ideal" weapon - so called "smart bullet", in reality a beam riding small missile with not CE, but high speed kinetic warhead (along the round). Designed for use by a single trooper or as add-on weapon for IFV and so on.

 http://btvt.info/3attackdefensemobility/rarn_shipunov.htm

The turret base does protrude by about 6-12" or so above the roofline (don't be fooled by the fake roof that's stood off the hull, this is visible on the bow gunners hatches), which would save a small but significant amount of weight. Holding a ruler up the screen I figure it's about 0.3-0.6 m^2, so something on the order of a tonne for a 2.4 t/m^2 armour array (random number, corresponds to 30cm solid steel so around the right ballpark). This is just a ballpark for the frontal armour, the upper row of side armour could also probably be dispensed with for a flatter turret saving further weight.

Pimp My Tank, Saturdays at 1600. 

An Al-Zarrar that's burnt down and missing a good chunk of the spaced armor.  Is it the lack of anything behind that spaced armor that is the focus here (as in, it was some type of composite add-on)?

Orginally polish second generation 120mm APFSDS-T ammo:
 

It might be that the bottleneck in the CTA is designed to be disposable.  The portion of the bore closest to the burning propellant usually takes the most damage, so if the cartridge case takes some of the damage instead of the bore throat, it could allow higher propellant burn temperatures without sacrificing barrel life.
 
But it's hard to say for sure from the information that I have if that's what they're trying to do.
 
 
I would need to see more of the exact design of the firing chamber to say for sure.
 

 
The design does have the advantage that it has no exposed case material, while the rimless ammunition used in small arms has a fair amount of exposed area.  The rimmed ammo used in tank guns has close to no exposure though, so the so-called "cased telescoped" ammunition only enjoys an advantage vs. small arms ammunition in that respect.
 
The CT ammunition has the disadvantage that the cartridge case is completely cylindrical with, so far as I can tell, no taper to aid in extraction.  That could make getting the rounds out of the chamber at higher pressures harder.  On the other hand though, they are being pushed out of the chamber rather than pulled, and that may be a more positive way to get the spent case out.
 
From what I've read about the development of the British 110mm gun, the extremely high pressures required by tank guns necessitate a caseless or semi-caseless ammunition design.  The peak pressure is simply so high (120mm APFSDS peak pressure is about double that of rifle ammunition) that a conventional metal case will try to weld itself inside the chamber, and extraction becomes too unreliable.

I missed this response for the longest time somehow.
 
Yes, the caseless ammo in the G11 used high temperature propellant to reduce the risk of cookoff.  But there were other weird things about it too.
 
When the propellant in ammunition burns, the flame front propagates across the surface of the propellant.  The propellant is therefore usually shaped into extruded grains or flakes or rods, and the size and shape of these propellant grains can be used to control how much surface area is exposed to burning, and thus how quickly the propellant burns.
 
But the G11 ammo was different; the propellant was all consolidated into a single blob.  This was more space-efficient, but it meant that when the propellant needed to burn, it first needed to be shattered into smaller pieces by a booster charge.  Getting the main propellant charge to shatter in a relatively repeatable fashion was a major challenge.

Speaking about Ka-52s, Egypt will receive about 20 Katrans in may.