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Armata soon to be in service.


Lee_Vincent

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On 03.06.2016 at 4:33 AM, John Kettler said:

It's now possible I've seen it all. Overfed Russian POW tank crew with a tank! Adding to the surreal nature of whatever this was, Russian titles with "Panzer Lied" playing. Was this someone's military mushroom trip dream?

No idea, just a random vid I've found. Supposed to be a trailer for some 2018 movie or something, I'm not sure. I guess there's no bottom in the Ocean of the Human Stupidity after all.

On 03.06.2016 at 1:25 PM, Baneman said:

Wait - they KO the first Panther with a unobserved guesstimated indirect fire shot ? :blink:

I want to be able to do that in game ! :lol:

I wasn't joking about the coffee.

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One of the things that digital cameras and digital effects have produced is a lot of "movies" that are nothing more than speculative advertisements.  The creators are hoping to get funding for the whole thing either through crowdsourcing or traditional investment or both.  My view is that unless a major studio announces the movie and a release time I'm not going to believe it will exist beyond the trailer format.

Steve

 

 

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  • 4 weeks later...

"Wait - they KO the first Panther with a unobserved guesstimated indirect fire shot ? :blink:"

I happened upon a US WWII armor field manual awhile ago that contained detailed instructions on how to KO an emplaced anti-tank gun from defilade using indirect fire, pretty much like that. Admittedly, a Sherman platoon is trained in indirect fire artillery support, the gun includes indirect fire gun laying equipment,  and the platoon commander usually has some FO training. Not so sure about T34-85.
Another story similar to that involved a Jagdtiger performing an impossible super-long-range shot. By happenstance one of the crew was former artillery and borrowed the necessary equipment for calculating the elevation from a nearby artillery gun emplacement.

Do you know what that Russian clip reminds me of? American cowboy movies(!) which have long ago discarded any pretense to historical accuracy. Clint Eastwood circa 1964. ^_^

 

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MikeyD,

Both US tankers (Armor branch) and tank destroyers (FA branch) were indeed equipped and trained for Indirect Fire, as seen not just in the FMs, but in the Standard Catalogue of Ordnance. though certainly not at the spitting range shown in the film trailer under discussion. Hero of the Soviet Union Dmitri Loza is quite clear the Emchas were fitted with clinometers, which were promptly removed and handed on to Red Army gunners, who were ecstatic to get them and over their quality. Russian tanks had none, but I believe the SUs did, though I could be wrong. From what I can tell, it was more common, likely from branch subordination, to use US TDs as FA. A trip to the Combat Reports from TD units on tankdestroyer.net will readily confirm this. Accuracy, thanks to the long tube and high velocity, was impressive, though the ability to work rear slopes and the like was limited, relative to howitzers. Barrel life was also an issue.

Regards,

John Kettler

 

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  • 1 month later...

As is often the case, I followed a link to one story and found something juicy while on the site. I was over on National Interest reading an article on the Tu-!60M2 and looked at several other stories in the sidebar. On a whim, I decided to search for Armata. Back came a string of stories. Link is to the results. You are going to want to read at least the top two.

http://nationalinterest.org/search/site/Armata

Regards,

John Ketler

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  • 1 month later...
  • 1 month later...

TASS is crowing over a leaked British military intelligence report characterizing the T-14 as "the most revolutionary step change in tank design tank in a generation."

http://tass.com/defense/910629??utm_source=fark&utm_medium=refferal&utm_campaign=fark_tass.com

I decided to see whether or not there was any basis to the story. Turns out TASS got this one right. It would appear the British are concerned about the tank.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/11/05/uk-military-intelligence-issues-warning-over-russian-super-tank/

Regards,

John Kettler

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11 hours ago, John Kettler said:

TASS is crowing over a leaked British military intelligence report characterizing the T-14 as "the most revolutionary step change in tank design tank in a generation."

http://tass.com/defense/910629??utm_source=fark&utm_medium=refferal&utm_campaign=fark_tass.com

I decided to see whether or not there was any basis to the story. Turns out TASS got this one right. It would appear the British are concerned about the tank.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/11/05/uk-military-intelligence-issues-warning-over-russian-super-tank/

Regards,

John Kettler

The British government needs to do some soul searching about its military forces.  Basically it started cutting them at the end of the Cold War, and just kept going back to take more money every time they needed to make another program float.

As a result, they've got about as many tanks as the US Army has at Fort Riley alone, and there hasn't been a serious non-counter insurgency upgrade package to the Challenger 2 in some years.  That Russia is trying to restart a cold war, is invading its neighbors and increasing its technical capabilities, while the UK has gutted its military forces and neglected upgrading what remains is the story, not new super comrade tank Armata strikes fear into mighty British empire's tank legions.  

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The real threat of Armata, as we've talked about it here in this thread, is a mix of real potential and likely failure.  At best Armata represents a modest increase in threat even if everything goes off without a hitch on the Russian side.  Unlike the discussion here the British memo is totally unbalanced worst case point of view because it presumes everything the Russians say is going to happen will happen.  Be it designs working as intended, production going smoothly, and budget being able to sustain the entire program from design to fielding.  The lopsided nature of the memo, to me, indicates that it was a document deliberately "leaked" in order to frighten policy makers and the public rather than advise on the real threat level Armata poses. 

As PzKraut points out, the British (and many other NATO countries) have been making defense cut after defense cut based on three major assumptions:

1.  Russia has permanently renounced it's intention to militarily threaten Europe or European interests abroad

2.  If there's ever a military threat to the UK or European interests, the United States will come in and save the day on its dime

3.  If there's ever a military threat to the US' interests, the United States will be able to take care of itself

Russia has made it very clear that it is still an aggressor state and therefore the first assumption has been proven false.  The second and third assumptions have run into problems lately as the Obama Admin has been reluctant to get engaged in foreign entanglements even with strong NATO/European support.  And the Republican controlled Congress has shown itself to be even less reliable/predictable.  Worse, the Republican nominee for President (Trump) is scaring the pants off of UK/European countries because there's every indication that a President Trump would throw out 60+ years of defense commitments and principles with the support of enough in Congress to make it stick.  Even if Trump is not elected President, the indicators are that the general mood among Republicans is isolationism except when direct and obvious threats exist (with "direct" defined very narrowly).

The upshot of this is that several nations, the UK included, are "soul searching" as PzKraut put it.  After years of taking it for granted that Russia had decided to be a partner rather than adversary there is a real threat from Russia.  With that threat in mind it is now uncertain how much, if any, help would come from the United States for certain threat scenarios.  This means UK/European nations need to continue down the path of systemic military weakness or taking some action to reverse decades of neglect in its militaries.

In my view this "leaked" memo is the sort of Chicken Little talk that we'll see more of in the near future.  It is a way for the military to make a case average people can understand.  The infamous "tank gap" arguments by the US and NATO countries in the 1970s/80s was similar in nature.  The purpose of such "leaks" and public statements is to convince people that in order to meet a threat in 20 years something has to be done about it within the next 5-10 years.  It's not the sort of thing that can be pushed off until the point of crisis.  Since the general public, and politicians in particular, love to do nothing about the future... it's a prudent move to start the wake up calls now.

Steve

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  • 2 weeks later...

Steve,

As a result of your remark about the "tank gap" arguments, I did a bit of research. The resulting find, a 52-page Correspondence from Volume 13, Number 4 (Spring 1989) of International Security "Reassessing Net Assessment: the Tank Gap Data Flap" makes fascinating reading, with several authors being instantly recognizable by many here. In responding to criticisms, Eliot Cohen, one of the academic interlocutors, points out the issue of the secrecy of armor design and how it impacts things. I would therefore point out that the core armor/anti-armor disparities between US/NATO and the USSR/Warsaw Pact (massively favoring the latter) I've been hammering away on for years based on what the CIA's best SMEs reported in 1986 are not factored into these analyses and most certainly would have had real impact in the event of war.

Defensive advantages, far better training, field time and live fire experience, tactical acumen and gunnery excellence, including rapidity of target servicing and shifting targets, tend to mean very little when generally in range of the other side's far more numerous effective weapons while one's own ability to hit effectively and survive hits at expected engagement range is practically nil. This is precisely what not only the CIA told us, but what the DSB's Summer Anti-Armor Study of 1984 showed, as well as the classified article, by the US Army's General Gorman, which appeared  the CIA's classified quarterly Studies in Intelligence, also showed. Am hardly an expert on the tank gap arguments, but the link indicates that a lot of the "revealed wisdom" on the tank gap was based on some scarily ignorant assumptions, whose net effect was to drastically reduce the ability of the USSR/Warsaw Pact to operate effectively, showed gross misunderstanding of actual attack frontages, fundamental misunderstandings of the historical ability not only to operate massed armor in places thought impassable (e.g., Ardennes in 1940), but also the demonstrated Russian mass movement of armor through swamps in Operation Bagration and the towering mountains of the Greater Khingan Range during August Storm. Would further observe that the 5-year period between the DSB study and the discussions below in no way sufficed to begin to close the acute gap in armor/anti-armor weapon performance on our side, since pretty much everything was still combat ineffective in its original form on our end. 

http://mearsheimer.uchicago.edu/pdfs/A0012.pdf

Regards,

John Kettler

Edited by John Kettler
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From my favorite FMSO guys Grau and Bartles comes a useful 10-page article on the BMPT (or BMOT; explained at link) "Terminator-2" tank support vehicle. This is directly pertinent to the OP in that the FMSO piece says it may be based on the Armata chassis. This would make considerable sense from a rationalization and standardization perspective. The article, which has a lengthy list of Russian sources, goes into changes in how the Red Army's leaders see the nature of war and how that, in turn, gets reflected in force structure. The authors have even gone so far as to create a wiring diagram for the emerging new Tank Battalion. Believe this article will be of prime interest to the CMBS community. Am particularly looking for feedback from our Russian colleagues.  I meticulously manually transcribed the link, but for some reason, it's not displaying as such. I couldn't Copy/Paste it because FF is yet again not letting me.

fmso.leavenworth.army.mil/documents/Regional security europe/2Bartles-Grau15.pdf

Regards,

John Kettler

Edited by John Kettler
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Saw the Telegraph article on the Armata and tried not to laugh.

For those who don't know the Telegraph is an upmarket UK paper that has gone down hill in recent years and become more alarmist and sensationalist as time goes on. So it's doom laden predictions are to be expected.

It takes the line that the Armata is Revolutionary, when in actual fact it is an evolution, a continuation of on going trends.

better engine, suspension, gearbox and fire suppression are all things that bring it closer to current NATO tanks and are to be expected when you reach the point where an old design can't be upgraded any further but that's not a revolution.

I did like the claim that it's Lower, Lighter and Faster than Western tanks which would worry anyone who didn't know that that's been true since the T-62 and was a fat lot of use in both Gulf wars!

For me the really big thing about the Armata is that the arrival of HD Cameras feed to Screens has meant that the commander or gunners head no longer needs to be close to the sighting blocks be it directly or via an optical periscope. That means you can have a smaller turret ( you don't need the space for two men) and the crew can be somewhere safer. 

The Armata may be the first MBT to do it, but Stryer Fire support vehicle with 105mm gun does effectively the same thing!

Oh and as I noted a while back, putting a Active Scanning radar in a tank seems a gift to any opponent with semi decent ECM.

As to a future UK tank, Britain no longer has a tank factory so whether we could afford to reopen one and justify a production run and development costs is a debatable point. With Germany and France combining their two largest manufactures last year plans for a Leopard 3 look more promising but other than an interim upgrade with turret additions that looks unlikely to take to the field till 2030.

Still between them France and Germany could perhaps justify a 400-600 production run and post Brexit we may see the EU move the single market to include defence. That would probably make a Leopard 3 the front runner for the likely tank replacement for most of Europe. I suspect Italy might still go it alone only because of it's tendency to prop up shaky domestic companies and I have little doubt that Turkey will continue to go it alone.

As for the UK, post Brexit I think we could try to collaborate with someone, perhaps Saudi, but more likely was with, the JSF, Apache, Poseidon and Globemaster the next UK tank will most likely be American!

Peter.

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Wicky,

the Telegraph is the Mail with longer words. The Mail article is a shock piece designed to sell papers to the man in the street who doesn't know the background!

The Ajax is a replacement for current light tracked recon units like the Sabre and Sultan an as anyone who has played Shockforce will tell you they don't come off well against T-72's either. It's also actually an upgrade of the current GM designed Spanish Army ASCOD so not really new as such.

It has incorporated many of the lessons of both Gulf Wars so it is indeed well suited to fighting an "Incompetent Enemy" on that it has better protection against close range RPG's, Mines and IED's! Not incorporating those lessons would be a disgrace!!!!!

However like all MICV's and APC's it is vulnerable to top attack and PGM's and isn't going to take  even a front armour hit from a 120mm gun. The new 40mm gun is a steep up from the Sabres 30mm Rarder and even the better 25mm Bushmaster, probably needed as every bodies own APC's have unarmoured post Iraq/Chechnia. The much talked about digital warfare capability is just an upgrade to modern technology and like the Armata more evolution than revolution.

Not sure how accurate this is but I showed the spec on the computer side to my teenage son and he put it on a par with the new PlayStation 4!!!!!! 

Anyway, a needed overdue replacement for an old vehicle class but still in the same class, much like a Scout Bradley. The label "Minitank" is nonsense and of course it goes without saying that we are almost certainly once again paying far more for them than we should.

 

Peter.

 

 

 

 

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14 hours ago, Peter Cairns said:

For me the really big thing about the Armata is that the arrival of HD Cameras feed to Screens has meant that the commander or gunners head no longer needs to be close to the sighting blocks be it directly or via an optical periscope. That means you can have a smaller turret ( you don't need the space for two men) and the crew can be somewhere safer. 

The Armata may have kept the stupid carousel auto loader that removed the turrets from so many tanks by the hands of Chechen and Ingushetian RPG gunners, but the real revolution in the Armata is a Russian tank that has actual situational awareness. Also, the front hull of the tank is not exactly the safest place to house the crew as that is statistically the most probable impact area of enemy anti-tank weapons and an ATGM to the lower glacis will kill the entire 3-man crew with the added safety issue of having only one place to escape the vehicle from.

14 hours ago, Peter Cairns said:

The Armata may be the first MBT to do it, but Stryer Fire support vehicle with 105mm gun does effectively the same thing!

The M1 Abrams TTB (Tank Test Bed) was a prototype tank constructed by General Dynamics Land Systems back in the 1980s.

TTB Color.jpg

TTB Crew.jpg

The unmanned turret concept is nothing new. The Russians just wanted to make something different that would fit the 'new look' Russian Army.

13 hours ago, Raptorx7 said:

To the media anything with armor in its name or something that is used by the military on land is considered a tank. In the US the media loves to call the MRAPS given to police departments "Tanks".

I recently watched a video of the Dakota Access Pipeline Protests and I slammed my head against the keyboard every time one of the interviewed protesters called the Husky MRAP a 'Tank'. They deserve to get sprayed with water cannons and shot with rubber bullets just for that.:P

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We're being told that we are a few years from "driverless cars".  IIRC, the majority of Air Force pilots are already drone operators.

Once a tank is buttoned up, everything is seen via video screens anyway.  Surely the military are very close to fielding crewless/drone AFV's.  How may years away do you think?

And could being expert at CM2 (and FPS games) make one a desirable operator no matter how old and physically decrepit we are??

Edited by Erwin
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3 hours ago, Erwin said:

We're being told that we are a few years from "driverless cars".  IIRC, the majority of Air Force pilots are already drone operators.

There are a lot of drone operators, but it's far away from a majority. They're short fighter pilots though because they have a terrible career pipeline.

Meanwhile the Navy has like no drone operators (I'm aware of fire scout and Triton but they are a percentage of a percentage) and our pilots love our lives. But that's none of my business

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5 hours ago, Erwin said:

We're being told that we are a few years from "driverless cars".  IIRC, the majority of Air Force pilots are already drone operators.

Once a tank is buttoned up, everything is seen via video screens anyway.  Surely the military are very close to fielding crewless/drone AFV's.  How may years away do you think?

And could being expert at CM2 (and FPS games) make one a desirable operator no matter how old and physically decrepit we are??

There is this obsession with using technology in the military to try to lower crew requirements for the various things they operate... whether it be a tank, an artillery piece, a plane or even a ship... and at some point you reach a level where it just becomes extremely detrimental to the usability of the equipment. You need a robust crew to do maintenance, execute sleep/rest cycles, load ammo into storage, etc... and the more automated you become, the more tasks get foisted onto a smaller and smaller crew. Put simply, someone has to break track on that crew-less vehicle, and it ain't gonna be no robot.

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