barbaria

25 minutes ago, Mighty_Zuk said:

What's not "cost effective" about the Armata's design?

I should have said 'not cost effective in replacing/repairing the Armata'

If a warhead penetrates the ammo in the autoloader, it will cause such a huge explosion that the turret will be popped of just like any other tank. The turret contains lots of expensive and sensitive electronics, optics and the main gun itself. Such an explosion would probably wreck any electronic or mechanical connection between the crew module and engine which makes repairs difficult and expensive, if not impossible. 

The most probable outcome of an internal ammo explosion of the Armata will be a total write off of such a tank, only in this case the crew is more likely to survive than lets say a T-90. An M1 Abrams won't suffer an internal ammo explosion and would thus be less expensive and difficult to repair and put in combat after a/couple hits.

Of course the Armata will be a tough nut to crack with it's advanced APS and  thick side hull armor.

1 hour ago, SH_MM said:

 

It is a Leopard 2, which IMO is facing to the right side of the frame. The ATGM seems to have impacted behind the heavy armor skirts, pretty much in the center of the tank. Most likely behind the fourth roadwheel, maybe a bit to the right or left side.

Maybe it looked like this:

IMO the Leopard faces us the viewers with it's turret facing to the left of it's center. The ATGM hit in the area of the main gun ammo stowage and there seems to be no delay between the ATGM exploding and the ammo inside the tank exploding, whatsoever.

It still amazes me why virtually every (western) tank designers put half or more of the main gun ammo in the hull. There is not one modern day tank that won't suffer casualties from internal main gun ammo explosion expect for the M1 Abrams. And Armata, but then again it's design isn't cost-effective. 

5 soldiers lost their life because of a faulty design. That's 5 too much and especially sad for the one soldier standing in the vicinity of the tank. 

Could also be an M60 or sabra mbt. Anyway, this shows why hull ammo storage is faulty and bustle stored ammo with armored doors and blow off panels a la M1 is the best solution for mbt. Unfortunately the Altay also comes with ammo stored in the hull.

1 hour ago, LoooSeR said:

Dat autoloader

So the warheads are in the crew compartment with the charges in the hull?

Also interesting to see that the special amour begins just in front of the crew seats on either side of the hull.

On 7-12-2017 at 5:37 PM, LoooSeR said:

Second Testbed for Object 477 of the Molot design program on modified T-80 or T-80U chassis (7 rollers instead of 6 per side)

 

http://gurkhan.blogspot.ru/2017/12/blog-post_7.html

That (commanders/gunners??) sight resembles a lot like the CV90's UTAAS, or the other way around

I wonder if the soviet's intended to field thermal imagers with these mbt prototypes..

If I understand it correctly, this thing will blow up the internals of an integrated special armor array and will leave a huge hole in a adapted special armor array? (thnx SH_MM)

Will this make backplates even more important to stop the jet from penetrating?

I retract my posts. Never give DRDO the benefit of the doubt.

17 minutes ago, Bronezhilet said:

That's not what the data sheet says though. 300mm of penetration is 300mm of penetration. The angle isn't important since APFSDS really doesn't give a shit about angle. If anything you want to test without angling the target because of the way APFSDS dips into angled armour. For a 17 L/D the auto-bounce angle is something like 83 degrees, for a high L/D penetrator it's something ridiculous like 89 degrees.

You  never know with Indians..

I meant a 300mm thick plate canted at 60 degrees.

4 hours ago, Collimatrix said:

300mm penetration at 2km is pretty sad, especially considering how little penetration APFSDS loses over range.  There are 105mm rounds from three decades ago that are better than that.

 

Is there any chance that's actually a dual-purpose FAPFSDS or something?

Or they forgot to mention it's 300mm at 60 degrees angle. But then again the L/D ratio is awfull..

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I'm on mobile so picture quality is garbage, but where do you see the UFP? When looking at the drawing I posted the armour is thin enough to suggest that it's solid steel. There's no way NERA thin like that is going to stop anything significant.

You can see different multiple layers around the driver's hatch, it's barely visible though. It looks to me like multiple layers but I could be wrong.

Aside from the flipflops in a tank factory, it seems that the UFP is made of some sort of multi-layer armor.

It looks like they took the leopard 2 design and made it worse on purpose in every aspect possible. Deleting the special armor array behind the gunners sight, having no armored ammo compartment in the turret bustle with blow-out panels, having a rifled 120mm gun, having an engine based on the leopard 1 engine and having worse turret side armor coverage.

The leopard 2 has it's design flaws and the Indians manged to amplify that. Kudos to them for achieving that.

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Care to source any of that? including that none are being upgraded? this will be good.

It's not like the Chinese are going to admit their IFV's are nightblind. And going from all the videos and pictures that are available to us, the only IFV equipped with thermals in Chinese service is the ZBD04A. 

If you count all the ZBD04, type 86A, type 86, ZBL09, Type 92, Type 92B, ZBD05 and ZLC2000 they surely must amount to more than the ZBD04A.

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the ZTQ-5 strikes again, what is this mystery vehicle?!

 

And perhaps you shouldn't have said VT-5, because, aside from that fact that's also a wrong designation (big hint, the PLA and export vehicle designations never hyphenate a base name ever, It's VT5), there's also the fact that the designation "ZTQ-5" doesn't even exist hyphen or not and it's completely fictitious.

 

 

And lastly, the sources I'm asking (who are very credible) all claim that It's going to be a ZTZ designation for the new light and not a ZTQ, so......

 

TL:DR, you really have very poor understanding how PLA procurement or designations work at all.

Thanks for clarifying that. Sometimes designations get thrown around the internet whitout sources backing them up. Chinese army designation are quite confusing and of course, tanks are being called ZTZ-xx.

1 minute ago, LoooSeR said:

Ever heard of Ukraine?

Indeed, they upgrade T-series thoroughly but with one missing crucial component: thermal imagers. 

Expect for the Oplot-M which is fielded in very small numbers.

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Probably because as LoooSeR just said, these are export vehicles, and "all the bells and whistles" puts it out of the price range of any potential buyers, and anyone who can do it themselves almost certainly wouldn't need to export in the first place.

 

China's primary buyers are located mostly, in order by region in, 1. Southeast and Central Asia 2. Africa 3. the Middle East 4. South America and 5. Far Eastern Europe.

 

Do these sound like regions with countries loaded with cash for the most part to spend on the cutting edge assuming were not talking about the nations where the USA and Russia already has a firm foothold? maybe theres a reason for the past 4 years China has been the 3rd most successful arms exporter, they know how to play the game.

I'm of the opinion that buying AFV's nowadays without thermals is ignorant and foolish. Thermals have proven their worth since 1991 and any army who considers buying these night-blind vehicles deserves a beating by a thermal imaging equipped opponent.

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So a literal decade ago = recent? because that's when the ZBD04A actually entered service as the designation was initially confused by most sources as the ZBD08, even I initially wrote it as this years ago along with a few other mistakes I learned to fix in my writings because I was taught the hard way how to put effort into it, this is because Chinese designations are really complicated and change often due to the fact they're rarely correctly identified in the first place. (and even though it entered full production on 2008, it was approved in 2007)

The non thermal IFV's in Chinese service outnumber the thermal equipped one. I haven't seen any upgrade program for the older IFV's to equip them with thermals. Not even the ZBD-04A predecessor, the ZBD-04. 

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Again with this mysterious ZTQ-5 vehicle, what is this exactly?

I should have said the VT-5 light tank. There was a light tank program initiated by the Chinese army and there where two competitors. The one who won the competition is called the ZTQ-5 and the loser is now offered for export and is called the VT-5. They are both quite similar in capabilities.

The IFV that NORINCO offers as the VN-12 is based on the chassis of the ZTQ-5 light tank. 

17 minutes ago, LoooSeR said:

I would like to see a confirmation on bustle autoloader. Any sources/photos?

http://imgur.com/FwGiFJX

'Tail cabin type autoloader'

That ZTQ-5 light tank has a bustle autoloader which is quite nice and a good solution. I wonder how much rounds it can store.

Very nice find. It looks to me that the sights on the epoch turret are related to the sighting complex of the kornet-D.

The ZTQ-5 light tank and the IFV based on the ZTQ-5 chassis have modern sights with thermals. The VN-12 and the type-59 based IFV not. The latter are prolly advertised at cash strapped armies while the former for more wealthy countries. Bear in mind that thermal imagers are quite expensive, especially military grade ones. I recall that the sights and FCS on the original bradley IFV accounted for 25% of the total cost of the vehicle.

Even the PLA hasn't fielded IFV's with thermals until recently with the ZBD-04A. Thermals were present at mbt, tank destroyers/assault guns and specialized recon vehicles.

9 minutes ago, LoooSeR said:

For some extra cash you will get your thermal imager  

Majority those vics are for export.

Yeah I don't think so. For example that type 59 heavy IFV and VN-12 IFV both use similar turrets like some of the PLA's ifv's with the same non-thermal sights and weapons lay-out. 

Why not equip your product with all the bells and whistles to show it's full capability? Also that HJ-73 ATGM on top of that modern looking RCWS looks off.

There is a disturbing lack of thermal imagers on some of these vehicles..

I see that Ukies are still too poor for thermal imagers 

3 minutes ago, LoooSeR said:

Yes that is the competition of 2014 and like I said in my previous post:

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The Chinese did use APFSDS then

2 minutes ago, LoooSeR said:

China didn't participated in 2014 competition. HEAT caliber is 125 mm, holes were much smaller. I will try to find photos. Chinese team use of APFSDS were pretty widely discussed on russian forums.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tank_biathlon#1st_Tank_Biathlon_World_Championship.2C_2014

1 minute ago, LoooSeR said:

Marks on targets shows APFSDS rounds were used. I think i even posted screengrabs that showed very well what kind of rounds were used.

Last year wasn't 2014. The Chinese did use APFSDS then. On top of that 125 mm HEAT munition have fins just like APFSDS.