IMHO

It's 2A46M-something - 2A82 is much longer in barrel. They're quite distinguishable when T-90s stands next to Armatas. T-90's 360 deg "beauty parade" footage is from good ol' days when UVZ was pitching T-90s upgrade to the MoD. Back then it was a sole "cat walk" piece.

May be the answer is less then obvious. Depicting major principles of warfare will not suffice for giving real-life commanders an instinct to differentiate between right and wrong decisions. One needs to properly fine tune basic variables like probability to detect, accuracy, probability to kill etc. to real-life scenarios. And that might kill the gamer's fun by creating severe unbalances that are nonetheless observed in real life. Examples: CMBS armour instantly turns in the direction of an ATGM launch. ATGM crews are basically one-shot kamikaze troops as US armour is portrayed as possessing near instant target detection. That makes armour rushes is quite a viable strategy in CMBS for US side. But we have multiple proofs that's not so in real life - last Israel/Lebanon war, Syria, Yemen. We know that an attempt to follow such a tactics will result in instant annihilation of an advancing armour force. So using CMBS to teach commanders for armour/infantry coordination is simply absolutely dangerous in this respect. CMBS depicts TOWs as having lower engagement distance than tank guns. Quite logical in gamers' minds - tank is perceived as more expensive and formidable piece, it should possess an advantage when duelling with Bradleys. Yet we know for sure that in real life it exactly the opposite - Bradley's ATGM engages and kills tanks at ranges far surpassing tank guns. Again applying CMBS for real life training is quite counter-productive. From Military Balance report we have real-life numbers of Ukrainian losses in heavy equipment (like 80% loss of all D-30 in inventory). There are enough sources to cross check the equipment deployed by opposing force. So my guess would be to properly depict the real life balance one may need to further weaken an already hard-to-play Ukrainian side. Good for RL - bad for gaming.

@DougPhresh, practical engagement ranges, cost to kill, accuracy, aiming-to-hit delay...

@IICptMillerII, you disregard cross section. Though having a superior energy .50cal will have a much large cross section than 5/10g shell fragment. So .50cal will spend WAY MORE energy penetrating the armour. @HerrTom, angle is accounted for by mere adjusting for the probability of a target to be ahead, sideways or behind center of the impact. Probability is easily derivable from the form of HEFRAG impacts seen on sat pictures.

@HerrTom, inherited velocity that is horizontal one will change the speed of the fragments. I guess this one will be significant.

@HerrTom, excellent posts!!! I'm too obvious but nonetheless. To compare effects you may consider including distance to the target for .50cal model. At practical distances for vehicle engagement by .50cals the projectile speed/energy will fall sufficiently. PS Really marvellous info you gave here.

Anyone seen battlefront info / Army evaluations on usefulness of M2 vs. M134 vs. M19 in real combat? Interesting what are the end results of trading caliber for ROF, kill radius for accuracy... PS I mean practical results. Technical specs and applicability for different targets are well known.

SAR/Sat semi-active homing steerable loitering tactical ballistic EFP warheads?

@John Kettler, 1. Friendly correction: AKM, not AKSU. The latter one is a near-SMG extremely short-barreled thing with "non-generic" gas regulator. Underbarrel GL does not fit to such a short one. 2. What's the timecode for DMR?

An interesting view on T-64, T-72 and T-80 based on a first-hand experience. The article is in Russian but Google Translate should help. https://topwar.ru/9310-sravnenie-tankov-t-64-t-80-i-t-72-iz-lichnogo-opyta.html

@panzersaurkrautwerfer, you'd need to manage these "independent tank battalions" in peace time one way or another. Like hire/fire people, pay salaries etc. Making "independent" support functions for each "independent" battalion would be an overshoot so you'll inevitably end up pooling them together in some division-level structure or attaching them to an existing one.

@HUSKER2142, People's Recreational Republic of California?

It's a popular misconception. T-80 was no more vulnerable than T-72 there. The myth of T-80 vulnerability was due to: Higher fuel consumption and non-existing logistics back then The need to toss to someone the hot potato of disastrous results of the first attack of Grozny PS Many a winter ago I was lucky to buy an OFFICIALLY published book with FULL results of internal MoD evaluation of all heavy weapon systems employed in Chechnya. Charts, full statistics, photos, attack schematics, tactics employed by rebels - all for less than five bucks. The circulation of the book was 300 copies and to buy one had to know which unmarked door to knock and "code name" of the person who sold them yet it was quite an open text then. I guess it must have been slapped with secret status by now.

And some desserts Rys' (Lynx AKA IVECO) training in VDV T-50-9 with external tanks (most probably flying from Russian Far East to Moscow region)

Appetizer... Main dish Part 1 of 4, Otokar http://bmpd.livejournal.com/2605991.html Part 2 of 4, FNSS http://bmpd.livejournal.com/2607254.html Part 3 of 4, BMC http://bmpd.livejournal.com/2611915.html Part 4 of 4, Nurol Makina http://bmpd.livejournal.com/2613158.html

A REALLY interesting thing would be to shed some light on the prospects of Armata having these massive upgrades to T-72 and T-80

I guess poor Werni oughtta wire his monies back to Sweden

Try to reload under fire or stay put is basically a choice between risking one soldier to get Stryker functional and running around with useless wheeled piece of metal for some time though keeping the crew safe. Do you really believe in all situations you'd go for a useless Stryker? Say you're reloading an Mk19 IRL and you've left with an almost used belt of two grenades. What you gonna do in reality? I'd guess you'd through it away which is not so different from shooting them into nowhere. All are IMHO...

@antaress73, interesting... So VDV continues along their own very private road of what they want to do on the battlefield I mean BMD-4 story at Serdyukov's times.

I'd add one more thing, the whole initial idea behind a beam rider is that it's cheap compared to any top attack. So moving to top attack somehow kills the very idea of it - saturating the battlefield with as much infantry portable AT assets as possible. I guess the concept was proven viable in Syria and Yemen.

You somehow want to find a way around the laws of the physics - you won't Longer flight time, lower energy projectiles, less spin - the projectile is more affected by environment factors. You can download a good ballistic calculator and see for yourself what affects a projectile.

@db_zero, you may ask why: The trend is to do away with M16 in favour of M4 but not the vice versa? That is a reduction in muzzle velocity for EXTRA cost. SOF do not employ 6.х calibers in any significant numbers? There's no question of a bill too high in their case

What use you gonna have to a Stryker standing still right in the middle of a firefight not able to return fire? Half of the enemy units have RPGs, even SVDs are able to do some damage... My instinct would be to hide the Stryker away - reload or no reload.

You have the ammo count so as the mag is about to be empty you may try to take the vehicle away from the front line, shoot through the rest of the ammo and reload in a safe location. A defenseless vehicle with an empty mag in your scenario is not much of a help anyway.