heretic88

Some M109A7 footage, including the new rammer.
 
 

"Please, please plesae, do not break down this time!" 

Just arrived back at home. Sadly, taking photos was completely impossible. Hordes upon hordes of children...  
Well, yes this is only a showcase tank. We'll get newly built A7s. There was also an A4 present, from Austrian army. Old tank, with welded over ammo hatch. 
German army exhibited a Pzh-2000 too, with funny "no photos please" labels on it. It was hardly possible due to the crowd, but who cares...  Additionally, there was a Leo-2 based bridge layer, and some kind of engineering vehicle.

This weekend there will be an event here on which this tank will take part. I plan to go there, I'll try to get some information about this. Maybe some photos too, but probably hordes of children will prevent that sadly.

This weekend there will be an event here on which this tank will take part. I plan to go there, I'll try to get some information about this. Maybe some photos too, but probably hordes of children will prevent that sadly.

Abrams Driver then Gunner* 
 
Anyway once after we returned from Kuwait and not to long after we gotten our tanks back from the boat/train we had to loan out some of ours to another unit conducting training. So after like a week of so the guys return the tank claiming the turret was traversing on its own with zero human input whatsoever. So one day the mechanics tell us to go ahead and startup this particular tank and move it forward (so the turret can be freely moved without hitting other parked tanks). They specifically told us not to worry about the turret because its hydraulic line had been completely disconnected and that there was no way it could move unless manually.
 
I hop in and startup and I swear that thing made the freakiest engine startup noises I'd ever heard. Sure enough a couple of moments later with my head out cause I was open hatch in the seat the freakin turret starts traversing on its own! Needless to say I immediately ducked my head and dropped the seat and did an emergency shut off of the engine. Even if I hadn't have ducked I would have been fine since it was parked with 2 tanks on either side and once the gun tube hit the adjacent tanks bore evacuator it stopped it in its tracks anyway. No one got hurt but the tank next to it had to get a replacement bore evacuator though lol......

Consider the geometry of actual armor without ignoring the LFP.
In addition, the mass of the ammo is almost insignificant (25 kg per round and 40 or so rounds in the hull is 1 ton, vs 2 tons each for the engine and transmission plus fluids).
That's not how tracked vehicles work, at all.
You keep throwing this around without sourcing it. While I get that the Merk 4 is better protected than the previous ones, I'm interested in hearing what the actual professionals have to say.
Also, the Namer shows that when sufficiently motivated even the Izzys can adequately place armor around an AVDS if we ignore the LFP as usual.
The Mark 2D seems to show that the guys in charge disagree about the driver's visibility and armor on that side. On the engine side, continuing the hull line at the hump forwards to the beak instead of having it drop would make room for an armor module in front of the engine. That area is not in the FOV of the driver's central periscope nor in the FOV of the right one, which looks out over the engine deck.
Please don't throw around things like this, they betray just how little you actually know.
Let's compare the AVDS-1790-5A as found in the Merk 1 to the MTU 883 in the Merk 4, shall we?
First, the AVDS:

And then the MTU:

Notice something? The AVDS is nominally approximately 4" longer. But that includes the turbo arrangement, which isn't included in the MTU engine dimensions. Once you include the turbo, the MTU 883 is longer.
But wait, you say, the powerpack isn't only the engine! The Merks have used CD-850 Allsions and RK-304 and RK-325 Renk transmissions!
So let's take a look at those now.
First, the CD-850:

Note that the depth of the transmission, 29", is approximately 730mm.
next, the RK-304:

and finally, the RK-325:
https://www.renk-ag.com/en/products-and-service/products/vehicle-transmissions/rk-325/
Dimensions: 1,910 x 830 x 960mm
that's L*W*H.
So, in fact, the RK-325 as found on the Merk 4 is longer than the transmissions in any previous Merk model, as is the MTU engine.
So yeah, the "significant reduction in length of the powerpack unit" is a simple sign that you don't actually know what you're talking about, care to guess again?
You should know the drill by now. Source this claim.
You're zigzagging from "theres no problem with armoring the front along with the engine, slight weight bias forwards is a good thing" to "need to restore balance by uneven wheel spacing".
Also that's not the only reason for having wheels spaced unevenly, care to guess what the other ones are?
Again you're not bringing your A-game, step it up.
2 has a new powertrain with the Renk RK304 transmission, which necessitated changing the entire engine deck area, exhaust routed into the coolant air exhaust manifold, as well as turret changes like the mortar and special armor slapped on.
The drivetrain of the 2 is closer to that of the 3 than it is to the 1.
Well you'd also expect them to realize that ammo separation is the objectively correct way to go, but I suppose you can't get everything.
Also how exactly would you expect them to realize that the alternative is better when they don't have any experience with rear engine tanks newer than the M60A3, anyway?
Reminder that the Merk 3 has a roof sight.
There's a difference between making something work and it being a good idea which gives you what you actually want.
Red is not russian, even if you can't tell Eastern European accents apart.
What did the big bad Russians do to you anyway?
You're dragging the forum discourse level and SNR waaay the fuck down with your shitposting, cease.
 
Hybrids bring their own host of problems, not least requiring more volume and weight than equivalent mechanical transmissions. Also, why would you go to all the trouble of putting the drive sprockets in the front, if you decouple them from the engine? it's objectively a worse location for them.
This bit we've been over before, and I'm just qouting it again to rub your face in how wrong it is and how you never bothered to perform 10 minutes of googling because you lack any self-critical thinking ability.
You're gonna have to source this too, this claim in particular is interesting, as on the Merk the air filters were never in the way of the UFP in the first place!
Aaaand you're confirmed for never having viewed anything through a camera resting above a hot surface.
That's not only an incredibly asinine statement, considering how the IDF hasn't designed any rear-engine MBTs, but it's nevertheless still wrong:



 
In short, @Mighty_Zuk, you have a lot of unsubstantiated claims to back up, Referte Avt Morimini.
You've also said a lot of bullshit that betrays a basic and fundamental lack of understanding of the subject matter. Git larned, and kindly match the confidence displayed in your posts to your actual level of knowledge in the subject matter, and not to what you'd like others to believe it is. You are invited to step up your game and keep the baseless speculation and denial to other forums like AW, and refrain from overly nationalistic fanboyism.
Also, if you don't know something, even in a field which is close to your heart, just admit it. there's no shame in not knowing shit, but there's quite a lot in pretending to know stuff you don't and being flat out wrong.
Kindly raise the standard of your posting, we really don't want this place devolving into AW or worse, DFI. Which is unfortunately the current posting standard you are representing.
 
Sure, if you like your tanks immobile.
 

While the video is indeed garbage, your rebuttal is as well.
So your counterpoint to "the engine bay being hot and in the front is an issue with the Merk" is "It's more important and therefore it isn't an issue".
If you actually bother to look at how the Merks 1-3 and the AVDS-1790 are put together, you would very quickly notice that the hottest air from the engine is blown straight onto the deck above (which on the Merk 1, 2, and early 3 would appear to only be solid steel, with no give-away bolt heads to indicate composite armor of any kind), and from there out the side louvers, sideways (and slightly back). if it were thrown down it would kick up clouds of dust.
Steel is, of course, an extremely good conductor of heat, and this in turn means that if the lower surface gets hot, well, so too does the upper one. The thickness of this plate is, in fact, mostly irrelevant.
Additionally, if you knew anything about other tanks which use the AVDS, you'd know that the entire purpose of the funky grating on the back of the M60 (and originally the M48A3 with the AVI-1790-8) is to reduce the IR signature. And yet despite that grating and exhaust tunnel design, the M60 retains a non-negligible IR signature. I strongly suggest reading what Hunnicutt has to say on the topic. To assume that the Merks 1-3, which squeeze more power out of what is effectively the same engine and therefore have more waste heat to remove, and have less grating area to permit airflow, somehow end up expelling colder air is plain fantasy.
Unlike the Merk, the M60 spits out its hot exhaust rearwards, out of the line of sight, and therefore the exhaust grills are out of sight from the front. The Merk has its exhaust grills in the front arc of the tank, where they can clearly be seen (and of course the grills heat up to approximately the temperature of the exhaust air). On the Merk 1 it was waaaaay worse, as the engine combustion exhaust was just piped out to the sides and expelled there, resulting in a large patch of the vehicle which get hot enough to fry an egg on. On the later Merks the exhaust was routed to mix with the engine cooling air exhaust, indicating that this was a large enough problem that it needed to be solved.
The later Merk 3 has a layered deck above the engine (if the bolt heads are anything to go by), and layers (particularly if they include air layers) are extremely good insulators, so that bit should be mostly ok now; the Merk 4 has both a layered deck and an MTU engine, in which the air flows the other way through the engine, from the top downwards and out the side. The Merk 4 also what looks like layered sponsons around the exhaust grate, which the 3 lacks; so that area too should be better off than it was. These tanks however also have solid steel hulls, which the engine can and does heat up through its mounting points (as you need pretty solid mounting points to hold down a 1000+HP diesel), and the hull extends forwards to the nose (and to the non-modular sponsons on the Merk 3), giving a large area in the front radiating away. It should also be noted that transmissions produce non-negligible quantities of waste heat, as do the brakes (torque converters too, yay viscous fluid shear), for obvious reasons; more so that the engine if you're doing anything other than standing still. And having those stacked right up close against the steel hull is asking for it to heat up.
 
So yeah, handwaving away the heat from the automotive components being in front as "Not true"
You wouldn't happen to have a single fact to back up that rather bold statement, would you? Like, a source of some kind?
Regarding the pic you posted, there's a certain component that deserves some attention there. Specifically, the tires on the roadwheels. You may note, that they are white and therefore cold. Now, what do we know about roadwheels on tanks?
hint: they ain't cold when the vehicle is moving:

So by the fact that the wheels are cold, we know that the Merk you posted has not been moving, and indeed one cannot tell how long the engine has been running; nor can the LFP, which is by all accounts part of the steel hull, be seen. Using a photo such as that to demonstrate the effect of the engine on the thermal signature is disingenuous at best.
 
The LFP is a thing on the Merk 4 too, you know; and considering how the rest of your treatment of this point is "I'd rather have a damaged engine", you're effectively trying to squirrel out of the fact that yes, the engine on the Merk is more vulnerable than it is on MBTs.
Not if said conventional design had, y'know, armor there, like, I dunno, the Abrams or Leo 2.
Again, do you have a single fact or source to back that opinion up?
And, as usual, you are ignoring a much more vital component than the engine, care to guess what it is and why?
In actual competently designed tanks post-1973 there are no fuel tanks in the crew compartment (excluding derivative designs which inherited them), so that's a bit of a moot point. Most modern tanks keep the fuel in the engine bay and/or the sponsons, and not in the front of the hull where armor belongs.
I find that hard to believe, you wouldn't happen to have a source for that would you?
Cause if we take that at face value, that would make the Merk the first tank designed without armor compromises since what, 1916?
Also the multiple generations of modules and sideskirts spotted on Merks suggests that that is not actually the case.
Of course another point that both you and Red missed is that tank armor is designed to meet a reference threat. What that threat is is a different question, but considering how Egypt, Jordan and Syria all operate tanks which fling APFSDS and which the Merk 4 is at least notionally supposed to be able to go up against and win, the idea that its armor doesn't at least do something against KE is laughable, to say the least. What the CE threat is is also an open question. Red also clearly doesn't get how "special" armors work against CE.
Again, fact to back that up? Cause without a source, that's just meaningless handwaving.
Cause even with the most modern turret modules seen on the Merk 4m, there doesn't seem to be any burster plate to prevent the blast from an ATGM disassembling the armor inside, the way we've all seen the pictures of it happening from 2006. If the declasified Brit Burlington docs are anything to go by, NERA arrays have trash multi-hit ability without burster plates, and there's no reason to believe the Izzys have some super duper sekrit sauce nobody else does to solve this problem.
That's a very strong statement to throw around unsubstantiated. You wouldn't happen to have anything resembling a source to support this claim would you? Official claims that this is indeed the case? Product page on one of IMI's websites that claims this gun ever existed? pictures of a testbed with the gun?
The last time I saw someone taking the claims of a 140mm gun on the Merk 4 seriously was back in the early 2000s, before the thing entered mass production, and even then it was presented as only being rumors and not thrown around as if it were a fact the way you're doing.
Both these claims also need to be sourced.
For reference, L/55 guns have a whole host of problems accompanying them, including balance issues, elevating mass and inertia, recoil impulse and length (same problem faced with more energetic ammo in L/44 guns), and so on. As part of the upgrade to the L/55 in the Leo (part of the A5 upgrade pack), the gun drives were replaced and the entire mantlet area redesigned -the newer mantlet is much narrower, and the gap is filled by armor boxes attached to the fixed turret structure, most likely to reduce the elevating mass and restore margins.
L/55 guns are enough of a headache that the US seems to have decided to not go that route because of the problems the testbeds had with them. Handwaving away integration issues like this as "no biggie" is being deliberately ignorant.
We've already been over the whole thermals business and that picture, but what I don't get is even if we assume you are correct and the Trophy antennae are a stronger radiator in the relevant wavelengths*, how is this greatly increased thermal signature a point in favor of the Merk?
*even with extreme emissivity differences, I don't see how that could be the case. Comparing to a similar radar by the same manufacturer, I get 110W continuous power draw for the radars at most (comparing to the Elta EL/M-2129), as opposed to several hundred KW waste heat in the exhaust even at idle.
A. You are aware that the wonders of modular armor mean that armor packages can be changed mid-batch, and that therefore doesn't make it a 4a/4b difference.
B. If you think minor changes like that (and whatever internal changes to the armor module it covers) are enough to prevent the blast from a warhead shrekking the armor after a hit you're somewhere between deluded and hopeless.
 
Before being a Democrat and blaming Russian propaganda, consider the following:
1. Is it wrong? If it is correct, or at least has a good change of being so, crying "propaganda!" is a great way to discredit your viewpoint.
2. Cui Bono? If the Russians don't stand to benefit (and indeed, what good does mocking the IR signature of an irrelevant third world country's tank does to the Russians), why would they waste their propaganda efforts on it?
Kindly use your brain before posting.
Also kindly try and keep your shitposting on this forum in full grammatically-correct sentences. 

I hope you guys forgive a little bit of nitpicking: There is no such thing as "BDD". I have no idea who invented this term, but there is absolutely zero trace in russian literature for this. Correct term is "Металлополимерный блок" (metal-polymer block).

Yes. they are not in the army, they are all in storage. At the "Vostok-18" exercises, they trained to quickly remove old tanks from storage. 

No, unfortunately the people in the 31st millenium werent so wise to base their vehicle on the Gavin. This is an FV432  

No, unfortunately the people in the 31st millenium werent so wise to base their vehicle on the Gavin. This is an FV432  

The Gavin continues to evolve! 

Damian... probably the main source of myths about Abrams... He is constantly inventing new ones. He constantly tries to elevate the Abrams to godlike levels. His affection to this tank is so bad that I bet he would marry one if he would be able to  

@heretic88 aren't you supposed to talk heresy? Because what you just said is basically the consensus in this forum.
 
Current BMPT with 5 crewmen is shit tier. BMPT with 3 crewmen is leagues ahead. Both exist for the T-15 to shit on them from above.

IIRC last time they thought about tires of that size or probably it was something closer to 1260mm, - it was late 50s, when first modern Tatra 8x8 was born of paper as STD-138. And later they dropped them, as their vehicles ended up been much heavier than STD-138.

Dana has 15.00-R21 tires, which are 1335mm in diameter, not 1220

 
btw, there is on the internet a Dana chassis drawing - this one:

Somewhat surprising from Hlopotov, he defends the T-64. And actually, he is right! This "T-64B3" upgrade is indeed better than the T-72B3.
https://zen.yandex.ru/media/gurkhan/tankist-vsu-rasskazal-o-svoem-tanke-t64bv-obr2017-goda-5c64372b84e0ea00aebfadf9
 

Object 770 (mock up, to be precise)

 
 

Not only usefulness, but amount of weapons with interlaping roles - 2 types of ATGMs against vehicles and small caliber ATGM is supposed to be used against thin armor targets (like APCs and IFVs) that could be "servised" by autocannon.  On top of that 57 mm ammunition for this low-pressuse gun is different from 57 mm caliber rounds for Derivatsiya and Baikal turret.

Some information on BMP-3 with Epokha from GurKhan.
    Epokha unmanned turret is planned to be installed on modernized BMP-3s, it is armed with low-energy 57 autocannon similar to LShO-57 (which is basically an oversized AGL) and 2 new ATGMs. When people heard name of new ATGM (Bulat) and looked at model of Epokha turret everybody thought that Bulat ATGMs were new small caliber missiles as big launchers on sides of unmanned turret were exactly same as Kornet launchers on Berezhok and other turrets for IFVs.

 
   But looks like we were wrong:
   Bulat is Kornet-sized ATGM with new guidance system (possibly 3rd gen F&F, i hope). It is possible to use Kornets in those launcher, so Bulats are not going to be exclusive type of ATGMs that Epokha can use. I suspect that during initial presentation those things will be armed with Kornets instead of new Bulats.
 

   Bulat ATGM 3D model shown during presentetion of Boomerang-BM unmanned turret, sometime before 2015 IIRC.
 
   So what are those smaller caliber missile launcher on Epokha turret roof?
   Picture from patent:

 
   Those things are our good old friend "guided bullet" concept, which was sort of known for years.
Docs that were posted on otvaga:
http://www.fips.ru/cdfi/fips.dll/ru?ty=29&docid=2496087
http://www.fips.ru/cdfi/fips.dll/ru?ty=29&docid=2512047
http://www.fips.ru/cdfi/fips.dll/ru?ty=29&docid=2496089
http://www.fips.ru/cdfi/fips.dll/ru?ty=29&docid=2538881
http://www.fips.ru/cdfi/fips.dll/ru?ty=29&docid=2527366
http://www.fips.ru/cdfi/fips.dll/ru?ty=29&docid=2569229
 
In container/launcher:
http://www.fips.ru/cdfi/fips.dll/ru?ty=29&docid=2568823
http://www.fips.ru/cdfi/fips.dll/ru?ty=29&docid=2529256
http://www.fips.ru/cdfi/fips.dll/ru?ty=29&docid=2535119

 
LShO-57/AGS-57:
 

Depends which T-80... 
GTD equipped versions: 4 speed (I: 16km/h, II: 32 km/h, III: 48km/h, IV: 70km/h)
UD: similar 7 speed as T-64/72

Nice family drawing (same as one of our member's signature, but with names over them this time). Lacking Nota, though.

On the other hand, what you were trying to say, also applies to this model, 172.10.100sb turret was also used by T-72B in the beginning. It is very similar to the final 172.10.113sb variant. (what are the differences btw?)