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Armata soon to be in service.


Lee_Vincent

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Black Eagle and its follow-ons stand out.  PAK FA as another example of hype that is now suddenly being backed off.  Even the Armata itself.  Russia has already backed off the numbers they think they will produce.  That is just off the top of my head.  There are a slew of naval issues as well.

Edited by Thewood1
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Black Eagle was never a project requested or desired by our MoD, why it comes up in discussions about procurement and armed service is beyond me. PAK-TA hype is something that originated less than 30 days ago, nothing concrete was presented, with 2024 as a deadline being very far away. If anything it is a confirmation that PAK-DA is a live project that has branched out to being a transporter as well. 

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I find the it interesting how the weight of a tank seems to be related to its combat power. We always talk about Western MBTs beeing superior to their Russian counterparts, but has anyone of you ever noticed that contemporary Western MBTs are -on average- about 15 to 20 tones heavier? Were does all that additional weight go? Additional armour, i suppose, given that tanks like the M1A2 or the Leopard 2 seem to be more resistant to enemy fire than their Russian counterparts, the T-72 and the T-90, but honestly i dont really know. If the answear is that all the additional weight is invested in armor, why dont the Russians then juist build tank of equal weight with equal armor? They certainly must be capable of building engines etc capable to move a 70 ton tank around.

 

I don't know what drives the internal Russian military design decisions, but most countries follow a "theme" when designing equipment. Russian tanks look Russian. US airplanes look different than French airplanes. Etc. Partly this is due to corporate knowledge. The same techniques are passed down to the next generation.

 

As far as mass equating to protection, that's well understood. Why has the Soviet/Russian armor school tended to medium weight tanks vs. the heavy weight Western model? I don't know. Perhaps it's the WWII production mentality: better to build 5 30 ton tanks than 3 50 ton tanks? 5 tanks have 5 guns: 3 tanks only have 3. Take the Western view on crew protection vice the historical Soviet/Russian acceptance of casualties, and you can see how the "cost" of crew protection is different for the two sides.

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Well, the Soviets/Russians were/are great at engineering amphibious vehicles, but I don't know of any amphibious tanks. (DD Shermans excepted.)

 

As far as the volume needed to float a 60 ton tank, well, that's about 60 m^3. (I'll let the metric pedants correct the volume...then I'll toss in the "combat load" weight of 72 tons. :)  )

 

Back on topic: this new family of vehicles certainly seems to bring a new level of protection to Russian AFV crews. It's yet to be seen how the vehicles perform.

 

(Minor digression: WWII model of US shipping tanks overseas has been blamed for the Sherman not being uparmored. Every ton had to be shipped...twice. Once to England and then to the continent. A similar model appears in today's thinking. Each M1 has to be shipped. One tank per C5 or C17 sortie; although the C5 can lift more mass, the cg/density issues mean only one M1 per aircraft. Ships are less sensitive, but tonnage does add up. The Israelis do not have the expeditionary force requirement that the US has assumed. Their Merkavas take advantage of that and are heavy without needing to plan for shipment to distant theaters. Perhaps the Russians realized that they don't "need" to keep the tanks as light as they once thought?)

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But you do see the point.  All the rubbish about production numbers, massive transports hauling tank around the world, automated tanks, etc. just clouds issues.  Black Eagle is a perfect example and PAK FA is becoming one.

 

US defense contractors do the same thing, but people and media in the US and other countries are a hell of a lot more skeptical and willing to point out issues with credibility.  Just look at the F-35.  There are articles all over the place hammering on it from the initial announcements.

 

Then add in Russia's ongoing dependence on oil and gas to drive its economy and there is a recipe for a heavy amount pf skepticism.  

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I think the procurement goal for "Armata tanks" may be confused with new tracked AFVs in general.  I can find stated goals for "Armata tanks" and goals for Boomerang wheeled vehicles, but no numbers for other Armata-based vehicles or Kurganets-based vehicles. 

Edited by akd
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I just went through every link I saw in the first page of google from Jan to just two days ago and all listed 2300 as the final production number.  Interestingly, all stated that Armata won't even start reaching combat units until 2017.  I thought the original plan was 2016.

 

I assume that they are all sourcing from the same place, but I would have thought eventually I would find a "real" number.

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But you do see the point.  All the rubbish about production numbers, massive transports hauling tank around the world, automated tanks, etc. just clouds issues.  Black Eagle is a perfect example and PAK FA is becoming one.

 

US defense contractors do the same thing, but people and media in the US and other countries are a hell of a lot more skeptical and willing to point out issues with credibility.  Just look at the F-35.  There are articles all over the place hammering on it from the initial announcements.

 

Then add in Russia's ongoing dependence on oil and gas to drive its economy and there is a recipe for a heavy amount pf skepticism.  

No, I do not see the point.

 

Black Eagle is not even an example. It was a prototype, like many many many many others SU/Russia have been building. There were hundreds of vehicles that never made it past prototype phase. PAK FA? Yes, that's a good example. However, the price difference and complexity are quite different.

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I think the procurement goal for "Armata tanks" may be confused with new tracked AFVs in general.  I can find stated goals for "Armata tanks" and goals for Boomerang wheeled vehicles, but no numbers for other Armata-based vehicles or Kurganets-based vehicles. 

 

2300 figure is from ГПВ-2020 that we've discussed earlier in this thread. Many misinterpreted those. But there were no official procurement numbers for any new gen vehicles before 27.04.2015.

 

My point is about Black Eagle being a prototype.  There was so much hype about it, it has deafened any discussion about new tanks from Russia.

 

That's rather subjective. Especially considering that you might be confusing Black Eagle with Obj 195. Or not? Either way, I do not care even a tiny bit about fanboys, incompetent media and their speculations.

 

The fact is, the contract for the first few hundred of new gen vehicles have already been signed. And those vehicles (52 vehicles in total) that we've seen so far are part of it. There's absolutely no reason to believe they'll just stop producing them per that particular contract. As Steve said, they actually can't afford to stop working on them. So I really don't understand what are you trying to prove here.

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Black Eagle was never a project requested or desired by our MoD, why it comes up in discussions about procurement and armed service is beyond me.

The question was about why some Russians make wild statements about the balance of tank power. Before Black Eagle was officially tossed out it was a pretty sure bet that anytime anybody said how good an Abrams is someone (perhaps a teenager) would come out and say how the Black Eagle would soon make the Abrams look like junk. You can probably still find the YouTube videos and URLs to such blatant day dreaming.

Those of us who were bombarded by such claims, fantasy websites, fantasy videos, etc. can't help but keep them in mind this time around. Credibility is established over time, but so is a lack of credibility.

Now, the difference in our discussion is nobody here is saying Armata isn't going to happen. I also don't see anybody here saying that Armata is going to be the best tank in the world the first day it makes an appearance on a battlefield (at least I hope nobody thinks that!). So our discussion, unlike the ones in so many other forums, is indeed focused on technical issues. The problem is we have so little information about Armata that we can only speculate. Those of us who are skeptical of performance claims made by biased parties (government and manufacturers are biased by definition) believe that until we know more we should be skeptical.

Again, from my perspective skepticism is the correct thing to have for any ground up complex weapons system from *any* nation. That is a very defendable attitude to have. I think there is also a strong argument that the normal level of skepticism should be higher for something of this nature coming from Russia, simply because of the many factors discussed already.

Steve

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Back to the shot that AKD posted from the "topish" perspective. This is another break from traditional Soviet design. Soviet designs, going back to WW2, generally have the turret being nearly as large as the hull is wide. From what I see in this picture that is definitely not the case. This offers a smaller profile to a frontal shot and it reduces turret weight as a proportion of the vehicle.

What I can't tell is how much of the back portion of the turret is actual turret and how much might be external stowage (like Abrams). If there is significant external stowage then the turret is even smaller than it looks under the tarp.

Steve

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I just went through every link I saw in the first page of google from Jan to just two days ago and all listed 2300 as the final production number.  Interestingly, all stated that Armata won't even start reaching combat units until 2017.  I thought the original plan was 2016.

Check back a few pages for the translation LnL provided of the official account of what the plan is.

My guess is that the Russian plan, all along, was to proceed with a sufficient number of test models (some of which will be offline at any one time) for a few years so they can shake out the bugs and flaws before putting them into widespread production. That time period starts this year and goes to at least 2019 or 2020. I believe this was always the intent because it is quite realistic. One of the most impressive aspects of the 2008 reforms is how well grounded in reality most of it has been. I personally think that they've probably overextended themselves a bit more on this program than others, but time will tell.

I am also guessing that they either deliberately "leaked" information to suggest that they would go into immediate production (2017 timeframe) or at least didn't mind that someone was saying it. Again, Russian/Soviet information management practice is to always have conflicting information in order to create doubt about what the real story is. Now that the vehicles are ready for the prolonged testing phase, there's no harm in them saying so since everybody is going to know it in a few months for sure (i.e. when they aren't issued to replace T-90s or T-72s).

Steve

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What if the russians aim to use the new vehicles to create a very modernized unit or Group of units instead of using the new equipment to modernize their entire mechanized forces?

 

Modernization doesn't happen at once. T-90s are grouped with BMP-3s, and T-72s with BMP-2s nowadays, IIRC. And, from what I understand (and this is my personal speculation here), this is exactly what's gonna happen starting from post parade 2015-2019/2020. Certain units around the country will get new gen vehicles in place of their old ones. Testing will come in form of usual training, but more extensive.These units will have manufacturer's specialists (factory workers) assigned to them. Which is a part of the feedback/improvement process between Armed Forces and manufacturer. But other that that, this would be more like the usual everyday service. This is why Bochkarev said that the first batch of new gen vehicles will be in service by 2016. He meant the first batch per ongoing contract, including those vehicles that's already been produced. Starting from post parade time, later this year. That's how I see it.

Edited by L0ckAndL0ad
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