L0ckAndL0ad

2016 is pretty lame as a target, IMO. Even if they'll enter actual service on May 31st 2017, that would still be within game time frame. However, the next 1-1.5 years would indeed be decisive in terms of what's actually gonna happen in between of now and mid 2017.

I can't call "sane" anyone who'd ask for that. In one-two years if it all comes out good? Certainly.

Hey, I'm just presenting the facts. Upgrades also cost time and money to make. But these things are already there. The numbers come from official documents. What we've seen so far on videos and photos is what they've allowed us to see. My take on it is that Armata-based vehicles rehearse separately, due to more secrecy around them. And there'd be a lot rehearsals in the coming days up to May 9th.

Few points regarding CMBS, time and reality: It's June - August 2017. Not Jan-Feb. There is not a single T-90AM, BMP-3M, BTR-82 (not to be mistaken with BTR-82A) in actual service, nor planned for production/modernization any time soon There's at least 24x Armata, 24x Kurganets and 12x Boomerang chassis-based vehicles already produced and operational, and assigned to certain RAF units Unless they'll melt them inside the industrial melting furnace a la "T-800 thumbs up"/Fiorina 161 OMG it's bursting out of my chest" style, they have actually more chances of seeing potential combat in reality rather than non existing/not planned T-90AMs and BMP-3Ms. Pure and simple.

Half a body is still a significant overlap IMO. Obviously. What I'm saying is, if your main gun suddenly brakes, you still got 30mm that you can use to defend yourself. Going back to my MBT vs TD point once more, I'd say that if Russians intend T-14 to be an MBT, they have to make the turret and mechanics durable enough to withstand frontal KE attacks (at least one) and still be operational. Otherwise it won't be much of a tank. Well, we can only guess as to how much would T-14 be maintainable/repairable in the field. There can be two types of components - mechanical ones, and electronics. Would it be safe to assume that electronics of either Abrams or T-90/T-14 can't really be maintained/repaired in the field by the crew? Which leaves only mechanical maintenance/repairs. And those usually depend on complexity and accessibility. The biggest advantage in all regards T-14 has is that it is a successor of Obj 195, Black Eagle, etc and others that came before it. The more prototypes you build, the better you get at building stuff and finding solutions. If Armata MBT was the first time Russians ever tried making unmanned turret MBT, their chances of making it good would be small. But with all that previous experience, their chances of succeeding are much better. Added: Crew. How far can Platoon sections operate away from each other? Would it be true to say that for each US armor Plt section of 2 tanks, there would be the whole Russian Platoon of 3 tanks? With the same amount of personnel.

+ defense, crew safety, powerful ammo, accuracy, C2 integration. Not a whole lot, huh?

LOL, that's one of those songs yours truly used to love to sing drunk at home-based karaoke during parties. Fits the mood. Где-то там в дали родной Техас, Дома ждут меня отец и мать. Мой Фантом взровался быстро, В небе голубом и чистом. Мне теперь вас больше не видать...

I dunno, I still don't see too much of a diff here. Are there any pictures that describe this schematically, like from presentations or something? If these things are being discussed much, maybe there's been some studies that can be referred to? Oh, well, how about those cases in Iraq when Bradleys were taking out enemy tanks with 25mm? Even if you can't penetrate it, you kill optics and degrade weapon mounts. That's suppression on vehicle level, isn't it? It'd need to be taken care of between missions, but on tactical level, I think it can be useful with additional eyes, coax and possible 30mm, in both combined arms ops or in pure tank formation. I am pretty sure if it would be there, it'd be coaxed with either main gun or commander's station. T-90AM commander's station coax MG has high elevation for example (was it 70-80 deg or something?).

What I'm trying to say is, looking at both pictures, it appears to me that there are two major damage zones so to speak, on either side of the turret. When Commander and Gunner are practically touching each other, what are the chances of one being injured and another one not to be? 1. And here I'd suggest that T-14 is likely to be fitted with 30mm autocannon, just like T-95 was. Can be good against infantry/light vehicles, and help to suppress enemy tank, if it's within a reach. Not to mention the fact that tanks don't fight alone on the battlefield. There would be at least two more friendly tanks right next to it. What would you say? 2. No, the implication was that Armata has a major advantage of being super crew-protective when fighting from the hull down. Turret of any tank would be at such risk when fighting, but not people in case of T-14. Armata MBT is the most skeptical thing for me at the moment as well. Doesn't mean I'm not excited to see how it all goes.

Not exactly true. Even T-72, apart from doing its flying turret thing, also has a good track record of being capable of being used by one person in combat, and being repaired under fire to continue fighting. But I don't see any reasons to compare T-72/T-90A with Abrams much at all, cuz, like I've said before, they are far from being "good" in my book. T-90AM autoloader allows manual loading. There are also Ukrainians with their T-80+ family tanks (with BM Oplot at the top), French Leclerc, Japanese Type-90 and Type-10, and Korean K-2. These vehicles say: you can in fact make a good tank with autoloader. With crew of 3. It's already working. And if one can make it even more crew-safe by doing an unmanned turret, then why not? Added: Why did Koreans went from K1, which is based on M1 Abrams, to K2, which is like a hybrid of Western and Russian stuff, and went for autoloader and F&F top-down attack AT munition? And, AFAIK, K2 turned out to be rated by a lot of people as "best in the world".

Internal space in both cases is separated by the gun, isn't it? There's T-90AM picture for comparison. Well, so that's the point, isn't it? Maximum crew protection. Isn't that good?

1. Aren't "mud"/wet "dirt/grass" terrain tiles different from "forest" ones in terms of effects? I always thought that forest tiles give more chance to brake chassis completely due to physical interference with trees and bushes. 2. AFAIK bogging down depends on weight and chassis type.

If T-72/T-90 is hit hard enough to seriously injure 2 people, it's just gonna blow Armata has a single armored capsule for it's crew, with (theoretically) more protection than classic MBT has, thus less chances of injuries. Then imagine Armata MBT in hull-down.

I don't see why they'd move away from 30mm on APCs now that there are BTR-80A/82As and MT-LBM 6MBs, and they're continuing experimenting with stuff like BTR-88. Oh my, oh my.. Good point about being mission capable. I've made my points regarding optics redundancy on T-90AM few posts ago. Gun mechanics redundancy is a different matter. It depends on armoring vs damage. This is why I made my comment regarding MBT vs TD difference. We need to see how exactly are they going to go with it. And I haven't seen anyone around here complaining about Russian made autoloaders Anyone around who extensively operated those? As for the crew, it goes both ways. What's gonna happen if your loader gets injured? What if 2 people will get injured? An MBT with autoloader can be operated with minimal crew of two, losing situational awareness of commander's role, but still fire at high ROF. Can Abrams with crew of 2 compete with that?

It is, you just need to dive into zakupki.gov.ru to get everything, which is deep as ahem.. as Black Sea I was talking about a compiled list like that one. Thanks. I took some snapshots for comparison. Are these three separate turrets, or are they just messing with false shaping frames underneath?

So they are serious about them. Do you have a link for those orders? I saw it somewhere, but for the death of me can't find it now. BTW, it just occurred to me that first ten Kurganets-25 have smaller turrets. What the hell?

Not really, no. Honestly, I would've settled for T-90AM really. It's far more crew-friendly than T-90A that's in service. I can't put T-90A in line with before mentioned western tanks. But T-90AM? Sure. But they aren't intending to buy T-90AM. Not yet at least. I imagine that they might go for AM upgrade (or whatever upgrade would be available at the time) when there'd be large amount of T-90A that needs to undergo capital repairs at the factory. Cuz upgrades usually mean that you need to do a capital repair first. I don't expect from Armata MBT anything that hasn't been done in T-90AM really, capability wise. T-90 is based on T-72, so some engineering solutions that had to be made to make it durable could be achieved with less technical problems on a completely new design like T-14. That's the main purpose to go for a completely new tank, as I see it. T-90 wasn't intended for maximum crew defense, T-14 is. That also leads to better/easier future upgrade capabilities in the long run. Some posted info on it's gun, that's suppose to be outstanding for quite a while, which is a good thing if you've ever played with Russian tanks vs Abrams tanks in CMBS. The biggest question would be how seriously have they armored the turret. Cuz that's practically what differentiates an MBT from a TD. T-95 did not look good in that regard, IMO. What I value the most, is the new IFVs/APCs. They've accepted the fact that additional firepower doesn't have to come from onboard 100mm gun. That safety of the passengers is #1 priority. One thing that still worries me tho is that Kurganmashzavod representative said in his interview that Kuragets-25 would be "like Puma, but amphibious". Meaning that default side armor panels are probably for buoyancy. In my opinion, they need to get rid of them, and leave amphibious capability for Boomerang alone. Experience in Afghanistan and Chechnya showed, both times, that they had to come up with additional side armor. This is why new gen vehicles have modular design from the beginning, and those amphibious side panels can be changed for heavier ones if needed. We don't know for sure which ones we're seeing now, but I guess they'd be using amphibious ones by default, and that's a bad idea IMO.

Did I just see 21x Kurganets-25 vehicles? 2 groups of 10 plus one stationary. And Boomerang, finally! Just 3 of them, but now we're talking!

Pretty much, yeah. Autoloaders. Russians have been designing and fielding autoloaders for both tanks and IFVs for decades. I'd say that their experience gives them a lot of credibility in this field. Autoloader is the only way to go when doing an unmanned turret anyways. Optics redundancy. There is a good example with T-90SM/AM: https://youtu.be/pfGP-dGjjnY?t=7m14s There are four sets of electronic optics on T-90SM/AM: 1) commander's panoramic sight; 2) external video observation system; 3) gunners sight; 4) parralel television sight (@ 9m20s). For Armata, I think it would be reasonable to assume that additional set of external cameras for a driver will be added. So that's quite high optics redundancy. As far as I understand, aiming of main gun is possible with both commander's sight, and parallel television sight. So that's 3 separate means. When it comes to internal damage (to the turret), that's the point when vehicle should back off, IMO. But we have yet to see how both T-14 and T-15 turrets are armored. My bet is that T-15/Kurganets-25 turret should be better protected than the model that was shown to us previously. At least optics wise. Because BMP-3/BDM-4M/Berezhok turrets are already better protected.

I did cover a topic of numbers quite a few pages back, but I'll reiterate my points: 1) Russia have publicly accepted the fact that it cannot compete with NATO on equal terms, thus only capable of making asymmetric answers; 2) Thus Russia does not necessarily need to produce sufficient amount of new vehicles ASAP to be able to fight NATO on the ground, especially knowing that the chances of such conflict are very slim; 3) Knowing how awful (in my understanding) previous vehicle designs were (both MBTs, IFVs and APCs), even if they can't come up with large numbers of such vehicles, but still be able to make vehicles that are "good", it can already be called a success. Armata does not need to be "the most capable tank on the battlefield", in my opinion. It does not need to be "the best tank in the world". It just needs to be "good". Meaning, does it matter which of the following tanks is "best" - Abrams, Leopard 2, Challenger 2, Leclerc? Neither needs to be the best, they just need to be good. The most important point in current developments is moving away from bad designs, and starting actually making good designed vehicles. Now, lets go back to redundancy. While Kongsberg MCT-30 Remote Turret might not be selected for future Bradley upgrades, there's Puma IFV, which is often mentioned by the creators of Kurganets-25. I take it that Puma is very good at redundancy, isn't it?

The most minimalistic requirement for redundancy would be an ability to drive back to safety. But combat redundancy? I know one technique - separate physical sensors for different optical channels. But if you're getting seriously wrecked, you'd need to back off anyway IMO. There's Kongsberg MCT-30 Remote Turret that is currently being tested on Bradley. How redundant is it?

Social and military spendings are the top priority. 2015 budged was corrected, and ГВП-2020 is now planned to be changed in 2018, as I've already said like twice in this thread by now. The word is that T-50 fighter initial orders are being decreased significantly, and, when it comes to Armata, they are considering to cut some fancy but not essential things for initial models, but with strong emphasis that they'll be kept for the mass production model, prices of which are significantly lower than of the initial ones. That's the word that can and should be discussed. And, yes, budget problems are always a major concern in these sort of developments, but I don't see how discussing oil prices and Iran nuclear deals gets us anywhere but politics and eventually threadlocked. How many times should I ask to leave politics out of this thread?

Differentiation of armor protection is possible when trading between frontal and side armor. But when it comes to roof armor, you trade armor space for internal ceiling height. Unless you wanna compromise bottom armoring. As for the initial link to the photo that you've later changed to a google search, what I see is just a frame. Frame does not represent anything really, IMO. Especially knowing that there's an engine in the front.

In order to communicate successfully, I think it's best to establish a base at which we both agree upon first, a common point. This is why I've asked those questions before going into numbers. Numbers alone don't mean a thing, if there's no basis that they are discussed upon. Yeah, I've seen the pictures of Namer. Not X-ray scans or schematics, though. What are you basing your assessment upon, that Namer can't take frontal hits from MBTs?

I'm talking about planes (along X/Y and Z axis), not specific areas, in which you can theoretically put armor. I'm talking "theoretical", because both Namer and T-14/T-15 armor specs are classified. So you can't claim that Namer does not offer frontal protection against KE rounds. And, being based on a Merkava chassis, which is a tank, one can expect frontal armor to be capable of withstanding frontal attacks. Also, wiki says: