IMHO

@Thewood1, may be they just developed a nice training platform, not because they're super-precise in guessing the parameters?

@DreDay, business never sleeps!

@shift8, so RUS AF can just buy a CMANO and finally sort out any questions about detection probability/distance relative to angles, probability-to-kill etc.? Just joking... Is it possible to configure parameters of hardware simulated in the game? Is it like ARMA 3?

Thanks for your kind words. No it should not. Wave propagation velocity, inner layers of metal cracking/yielding/becoming fluid under pressure of the blast wave I believe... I'm sure Mikrotek's is more than qualified enough to be aware of the scoring. My best guess it may look like a minor problem compared to the lack of testing / field trials. Yeah, it puzzled me for years as well. I'm sure they must have tested it - it's such an obvious choice. My guess would be side-effects and velocity. Rods need to be strong enough to withstand the blast wave and still preserve the ring. Means enough weight to retain energy for certain distance with an extremely deadly frag pattern. And the velocity of the ring opening - we have to moderate the blast wave to keep the continuity. MEFP, compared to CR, has incomparably higher speed, pointed direction and controlled particle pattern. Frag-free HE counter-warhead would have an unmatched speed advantage too and trade MEFP's direction for reduced side-effects radius. But that's just my speculation.

@John Kettler, Have a look at the pic. That's not Zaslon though looks pretty much like it, does it no? Zaslon's basically a copycat of a late Soviet development model that is one of the grand grand children of Drozd. There was a very extensive research and Ukrainian Kharkiv Tank Plant was responsible for mating APS and the tank. Kharkiv plant was not developing the system itself but by the time Soviet Union dissolved they had a few working prototypes and enough testing experience. That's how Mikrotek - the producer of Zaslon - was born These systems were simple in the design, reliable enough and performed excellently against RPG-like light AT missiles. But they showed insufficient (though still tangible) results against HEAT/Heavy ATGM (I'll call them just HEATs thereafter) and certain problems with radar calibration against clutter (like stones flying from under the tracks etc.) As the people knew the laws of physics back then no one ever had any expectations about defeating APFSDS Since anti-HEAT performance was still serious there were many attempts to redesign the system. But in the end they all failed and none of them went into service as it was decided that inadequate results against HEATs did not outweigh somewhat disastrous effect on the supporting infantry nearby. It's also helpful to remember that it was a different kind of war that the systems were developed for back then. No COIN patrols in cities, no RPG-armed jihadi lurking behind a corner nearby - "good old" long range engagements across German plains with set battle lines So excellent RPG protection was considered relatively useless. The problems with HEATs were inherent to the design. First, to shoot down a HEAT with frags you should achieve multiple penetrations with high-energy particles. Akin to anti-ship missiles that require many hits from CIWS to be defeated. But with a curved-band-like fragmentation field the frag density decreases as the radius grows. And the residual energy falls quickly too, we cannot use high-energy particles - no plans to obliterate every infantryman within tens of meters from the tank. Second, the millimeter-radar has too short a range of detection to allow enough distance between the armour and a forced explosion of the HEAT warhead. Basically a side-skirt against TOW or Cornet - does not work. To solve these problems at that level of technology one has to strap formidable FRAG warheads to the tank. Too much energy and too dense a frag field near the charge to achieve enough effect on the fringes. Bad for the tank, bad for infantry - programs were finally discontinued. In theory Mikrotek could stand a chance to reasonably increase the engagement distance and solve the problem of radar calibration as electronics made a quantum leap since those times. But they could not circumvent the problem of wasted energy of counter-charge. And I'm saying in theory as it requires multiple tests and field application experience. Something they're lacking altogether as they're terribly cash-strapped.

T-90s in SAA hands - even those sent recently - are the earliest production models. "Just testing" It's a wrong view that Russia (or Iran) is married to Assad. Everyone's pursuing their own goals - not Assad's.

It was developed for Ministry of Internal Affairs nor for MoD requirements. Basically SWAT tasks - CQB, room clearing with no frags going through walls, non-lethal projectiles etc.

I believe you're absolutely right! I couldn't figure out how to reduce the projectile energy and somehow missed the obvious - the powder charge It all comes together. First, you put the target way behind Zaslon to help with reduced detection/effect radius and allow projectile some distance to deflect. Second, you position Zaslon very close to the projectile trajectory to rely more on blast wave energy rather than fragments' KE to deflect the projectile. Third you reduce the powder charge to "massage" the difference between projectile KE and the energy of Zaslon affecting the projectile. Actually with reduced powder charge the results might even be better with APFSDS. Zaslon will be very late to effect the projectile so with the long rod the force will be applied somewhere at the tail and that will give an excellent leverage with the high elongation. And reduced powder charge explains why the penetration was mere 66mm

Sure, as you were quite right to point - it does not give engagement information. Except for the time bomb bays are open So in my humble inexperienced opinion a funny application for older radars may be adding an upgraded parallel signal processing path plus fusing signals from adjacent radars. That would mostly leave an "old" radar signature but void possible least detection route calculation as "overlap" would increase significantly. Wideband should be good should it not? I mean even for given bands it should not work the same for all frequencies. Excitement in the coating would happen differently.

@John Kettler, Thanks, AA6 story is really interesting. Answering your question of how much this can affect long rod penetrator one can do simple back of the napkin calculation: Distance between mounted Zaslon units needs to be such as to prevent one activated unit simply disable adjacent ones just like Zaslon disables projectiles. So even "beauty parade" pictures give a rough idea of what distance is considered "low probability to hit" by designers. Bearing in mind that it's way way easier to disable Zaslon than a long rod penetrator. A more exact approach to calculate probability to hit. Long rod muzzle velocity is 1650-1750 m/s with a speed decrease of 50-60 m/s for every 1'000m (I take American/German APFSDS here). So at practical distances long rod comes at Zaslon at 1'500-1'700 m/s. Zaslon's detection distance is about 2m and its 500-600 fragments travel at speeds of 1'700-2'000 m/s. Long rod length is 750-800mm with the thickness of 20-25 mm. I'd assume effective profile of 10-15mm since a fragment glancing a long rod will have absolutely no effect on it. So this gives enough information to calculate the probability to hit the long rod. AND it gives another very important point: in practical situations Zaslon fragments meet long rod less than half a meter before it hits the armour. If they ever meet Disclaimer: fins are omitted. We have the long rod velocity and it's weight will be about 5-6kg so we have the energy. The weight of a single Zaslon fragment is 2g and we have the velocity for them so we can have the energy as well. So like spitting at a bullet trying to shatter/deflect it I missed an important point at long rod test - the armour plate is positioned at very helpful 28 degrees Does not mean so much for measuring post-effects of CE penetration but for KE? WTF? So being honest I'm kind of sceptical of what we see in this test. Putting aside an idea of total fake my best guess would be they actually used caliber AP rounds. And the napkin calculations tell us there's a reason why Trophy makes no promise of protection against KE penetrators and Quick Kill was designed with long range radar and a separate more powerful missile for defeating KEs. But Mikrotek guys seem to find a way around the laws of physics Disclaimer: I have enormous respect for Ukrainian tank school. Totally share the opinion a dirty win of T-72 over T-64 in Soviet Union wasted decades of progress in tank development.

Want no more fight - just the video is worth watching I believe. Here's Ukrainian controlled Avdiivka, Mar, 11 at 1500. A residential building is shot at point blank distance - less than 500 meters give or take judging by the time between shooting and explosion. Means both the building and the point of shooting are both on Ukrainian-controlled territory. Comments claim a Ukrainian TV crew of TSN channel was on site to film the action but it's not in the video so one can decide for oneself what's going on. The shot is at 00:30 and the operator says there were several shots before the video starts. Satmap: https://www.google.ru/maps/place/Vorobiova+St,+15,+Avdiivka,+Donetsk+Oblast,+Ukraine,+86060/@48.1266357,37.7502077,314m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x40e0838daf9c0a3b:0x737918c3ba7ae1a7!8m2!3d48.1273493!4d37.7493724 Photo: https://www.google.ru/maps/place/Vorobiova+St,+15,+Avdiivka,+Donetsk+Oblast,+Ukraine,+86060/@48.124511,37.741159,3a,75y,90t/data=!3m8!1e2!3m6!1s91203508!2e1!3e10!6s%2F%2Flh5.googleusercontent.com%2Fproxy%2FxuUDJafZy4jpt6f465TqwyATYfzmL65vX6dz33OQ4npGRZRWrm2we_-fBR9YqbVcK25MyLhJjJW7qzuPPU1I4REDBkmWmg%3Dw203-h134!7i4196!8i2786!4m5!3m4!1s0x40e0838daf9c0a3b:0x737918c3ba7ae1a7!8m2!3d48.1273493!4d37.7493724 PS Again I post just because it's the first time I've seen such a video so I honestly believe it might be interesting.

@shift8, What do you think about MIMO setups? Like fusing the data from heterogenious radars, improving detection at the areas of overlap, may be improving detection for older radars? Or may be older and noisier signal processing won't allow extracting additional information?

Well I'd pay close attention to how it's tested They don't shoot the tank itself but an armour plate placed 1.5-2.5 - BEHIND Zaslon. That's done to artificially double the distance between detection and target. Zaslon is put in an unnaturally ideal point along the projectile trajectory - very close to it. It's all done to mitigate design limitations inherent to such systems - be them Ukrainian, Russian or Ethiopian That's exactly why Afghanit is to integrate long-range radar and more powerful counter-projectile canisters. I'm sure APFSDS interception is doable given time to perfect the design it's just no piece of cake especially if the objective is real life application rather than artificial laboratory experiments. So IMHO the percentage of wishful thinking in Armata claims might be... unnaturally high

We may well mean the same thing just from different perspectives You somehow make an implicit assumption that it's just one receiver (and one transmitter per se). I'm saying with a MIMO setup it will be much more difficult to prevent detection - too many angles, an insane aperture increase etc. And processing MIMO data is something that was not possible 15-20 years ago but feasible now. Though just like you said - no luck with fire control within any practical limits Agree?

Correct me if I'm wrong but stealth designs are normally optimized for monostatic. Plus absorption and wave cancellation designs work in a rather narrow frequency bands. So it makes detection easier if one uses non-standard setup, certainly I don't imply tracking. I mean one can crudely replicate a strategic early warning radar approach. Crudely. THEN you'd need computational power. PS The tone is just a friendly smile.

...and it will be able to shoot down Death Star orbiting the Earth I'm kind of sceptical about T-14 developers statements. For so many years some of them were not able to produce a mere diesel-transmission block, others managed to put ERA blocks in a pattern leaving large zones undefended AND stupidly used wrong projectiles for ERA development itself... And now all of a sudden these guys promise to build something of a tracked aircraft carrier Let's see...

It's not a flamethrower literally. It's fuel-air. You should understand it was not developed for military and it was done with so specific objectives in mind that it has little place on a battlefield in it's current form. It was not a Milkor MGL role.

@John Kettler, I bet the stuff of that time could hardly calculate multipath which is not the most difficult thing today. Am I right?

MIMO+DSP+Many intelligent things? Good enough?

Yeah it's difficult to make it stealthy in all wavelengths Bomb bay opening time is just to launch and hit. They knew where it was approximately before. PS Since they used radio-command guided Neva they might have even launched several missiles in advance with intervals between launches

We know how backscatter works Especially what to do with bistatic with well-known routes and sharp-angled stealth forms

First, RPO-M and MGL would have different uses. Second, it would be stupid to issue en masse MGL that differs in ammo from underslung GLs. Though stupid does not mean impossible in Russian military purchases

This is a chemical warfare unit (however strange it may sound with MGLs ) - they are not part of Russian SOF. There are others you might have seen but they are not part of SOF as well.

Try to open the map as a picture in a separate tab. The map's larger than allowed by forum layout so it gets blurred by the browser while being resized The interesting questions are: To what extent Turkey is able to restrain FSA fighters. RUS shield may be a good idea vis-a-vis Turkish regulars but Sunni fighters are not exactly big fans of Russia in Syria. Where will professional FSA fighters apply their many talents should the fighting really subside in Manbij area? Idlib? Is there a way to make amends to Turkish ego over Manbij in order not to have a flare up in Idlib or South of Damascus area? Though we're focussed on Manbij at the moment but the fighting there does not subside. And the last but not the least, whatever Alawi/Sunni militias may dream of there's not a chance they ever rule Sunnies in peace again. So will there be a Sunny force with enough weight and rationale to negotiate with? John Kerry looked for one but found just AQ/ISIS offshoots and not for lack of talent or effort. In short is there an exit strategy for Russia?