panzersaurkrautwerfer

Speaking as to damage, now I'm less sure. It's like one of those abstract drawings in which everyone sees something else (having seen the same video posted on facebook in veteran/US Army circles too with commentary). All we really know for sure is: 1. The missile hit somewhat. 2. A crewman bailed out. If I was Hamid al-Panzersaurkrautwerfer I'd wait to see if the tank moved, then give it another shot. Your usual cue for ceasing fire is: A. Crew is bailing out. B. Vehicle has exploded C. There's a lot of fire D. Something is obviously broken but not on fire (tank rolls into a ditch and doesn't move again, gun tube is max depressed and dragging, turret appears to have become unseated). Normally this one would be a case "a" sort of situation, but there's not a lot of other apparent effects. If I'm an ATGM crew, again I'd watch it to see what it did (still while displacing mind you), but if I was a tank I'd shoot it again just to make sure.

I'd contend the yankee imperialist bombast is a little less far reaching, and the division between "official" and "This is Lockheed Martin's madness!" is a bit wider. The claims are also more modest and the CGI a little less silly. Which is not to say it is not just a problem shared worldwide, but there's almost a messianic element to the various Russian programs that THIS plane or THIS tank will restore Russia's fortunes and drive HATO back to the dark corners, while the American way is just to cram as many cooperate buzzwords in involving synergizing assets to maximize throughput of information to ensure a virtual monopoly over the battlespace of asset utilization thus justifying this trillion dollar antenna that doesn't work when it's raining.

It's okay. I was once a Troop XO and my vehicle on paper was our M1068 (which is to say a M577 with a bigger generator). I don't rarely turn down tracked vehicles, but blessedly our Troop's mortar section was questionable idea'ed away*, so I spent no time in stealing their HMMWV. Speaking as a 19 series guy, the Bradley was less rough in that regard, you only had twoish guys in the back, and less of a push to dismount the vehicle commander** *In one of the Army's wonderful ideas, they'll let infantry officers wind up in command of Cavalry organizations. Ours decided troop level mortars were silly and they should exist as a Squadron level mortar platoon, which then morphed into his personal security detail. While the mortar carriers followed the personnel, the mortar section sergeant's soft top pickup truck style HMMWV remained. **Of course, this may have just been my corner of the Army. Finding a consistent and sane way to make the old 3 and 5 ARS MTOE work is pretty hard!

Possibly. I'm not entirely sure how much noise per unit produced your arms industry generates, but it isn't a favorable amount. It's one of the things that doubtlessly leads to a lot of skepticism on the part of western observers, very much like the boy who cried wolf, we've heard super tank/IFV/fighter/missile deployed in five years before, and it hasn't resulted in much.

I will right pissed if my mobility kill M4A3E8 cannot kill off like, and entire SS infantry battalion. Also Tiger tanks must be shot from 90 degrees to their aft or it doesn't count. (In all seriousness, I am irrationally excited for M4A3E8s. I know they're not like a wundertank, but they're far and away my favorite Shermans. Of course now that I'm getting them I will have to switch over entirely to whining about needing Pershings in the game) As to on topic, they're an interesting piece of the battlefield, but from all my readings (pacific inclusive) they weren't linked to the CM level commanders, they were reporting at much higher or separate echelons. On the other hand: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Carpenter_(lieutenant_colonel) Can we get Piper Cubs as air support options?

I'd given decent odds of some degree of firepower kill, possible optics damage assuming a non-penetrating hit. Certainly some damage to crewman's coveralls if worn.

So what you're telling me is you were medically discharged for both mental health reasons, and having your entire skeletal structure vibrated into dust? The ride on the Abrams was something else the first time out. It doesn't feel so much like a vehicle as much as a boat, as you're still rolling and rising with the terrain, but any of the bumpiness is either crushed flat, or rolled over.

Yes, but Russian tanks are designed for starved hobbits. On US tanks I wouldn't contend a major advantage to small dudes. There's a downside to being significantly taller from what I've seen (I'm 5'9, so it's not like I'm experienced with "tall") but there's the interior volume for a guy of such and such height, simple as that. You don't cram much extra stuff inside the tank because you want the fighting compartment free of flying objects and space to operate. Now the Bradley, that would be a good thing to be one of those 5'5 and built of nothing but muscles and anger sort of dudes. It was designed for 1980 when at most a soldier might be wearing the old flak vest type armor. The turret has now been crammed with BFT and CITV related stuff, and if you're a vehicle commander, you're likely also a squad leader so you're either wearing your body armor, or have to put it on on the way out so getting out of that thing can be problematic. Same deal with the troop bay, it's less a seating location and more a wall of humanity and hardware when it's loaded for combat.

In defense circles, there was still a lot of trumpeting how much it was real and soon to be in production from my recollection. It may have been purely company fluff, but the tight link between government and defense industry in Russia makes it hard to judge sometimes just how unofficial statements may or may not be. I would content that from a technical standpoint, the BMD-4 is more realistic. I will also contend the idea of a BMD is obsolete and there's better ways to use money than on that platform.

Yellow bands on a munition just means the presence of some sort of explosive filler. I'm not a munitions guy by training so again I might be off base, but that's the rule of thumb I've seen and if you look at other US produced missiles (and I think it's a NATO thing too) there's a lot of yellow bands on them, and the same for artillery rounds. The only markings I know of for sure that attest to different variants of weapon will be on the munition's dataplate.

We're clearly dealing with some stolen valor crap here. Every Marine I've seen that's been short or of slight build has been a SMAW, M240, or .50 cal gunner. Joking aside, I'm serious. All the same on the army side we ran the pretty wide range. We had some cats would could pretty much hang out of the turret standing on the floor all the way through folks I swore had phone books placed under their TC seats. Abrams remains pretty comfy as long as you're like, sub 6'3 I'd say though.

It fails to mention a total lack of ability to tie shoes 0/10.

BMD-4 procurement is going...forward? It's sub-triple digits last time I looked, but there's a plan at least to have a few hundred soon, and a claimed 1,000 or so by 2020. Take it with the usual grain of salt though. There's also the Bumerang which is the BTR replacement which entered large scale fielding in 2015 if you follow Russian press releases. Which again, kinda hits up the credibility of these claims on a whole. Has any other nation accomplished the sort of modernization being proposed on such a scale during peacetime? The closest analogy I can come up with was the M1 and Bradley fieldings (which came around the same time as the MRLS, major M109 upgrades, and the AH-64+all the airforce and Navy stuff) and that still took a lot longer from "prototypes" to "fieldings" with a lot less friction. I'm genuinely interested to see what folds first. We might not know it for a few years, like for all we know now the Bumerang has been entirely scrapped, and there will be no Kurgenets 25, just the APC until 2025 or something given Russian secrecy, but unless there's some pretty dramatic economic-world events changes I think all bets are off. Re: History Repeating If Battlefront would just hurry up and release CMFB we could all take a break from Armatatalk until something more real came along. Just sayn'.

My attempts to slowmo the video enough to figure out what flavor of TOW it was ultimately exceeded my patience. In the middle east it could be anything from a Vietnam era TOW through a TOW-2A. 900 MM RHA penetration is about where the TOW-2/TOW-2A series tops out though, and even the not-ERA portions of the T-90's turret have estimates in the 870+ range. So about to be expected. The crew bailout is interesting though, I wonder if it's some former T-72 crew member going through the "oh god not again" drill. Open hatches wouldn't have made as much of a difference in terms of crew shock from an external explosion though, although it makes a lot of sense if you're expecting some sort of in-turret effects. If the various optics shattered, all the in-turret dust got thrown up, it'd be enough for fairly junior dudes to bail too though.

Re: Engines I think it's sort of a mix, some vehicles the engine upgrade is no big deal, again the M48 required some hull modifications but it was fairly low muss and was the kind of thing we even did for National Guard tanks, and modifying the Sherman hull to accept everything but the A4 setup was fairly modest. On the other hand some tanks it's frankly, totally, and utterly impossible and you'd be an idiot to try. I suppose the takeaway is rarely is upgrading a major end system easy unless the thing you're replacing it with is pretty much around the same size (see M48A5, the various captured Soviet designed vehicles in Israeli use). I'd still contend a 152 MM is well beyond that tolerance. Re: Armata as a real tank Two points of discussion: a. It really makes zero sense in the Russian current doctrine of Hybrid threat. Heavy units have a part, but not one that cannot be filled by a T-90. And defensively against any threats Russia's main defense is nuclear deterrence. It might not help if Russia chokes or chooses not to end the world as we know it over a minor invasion (In 2078 Japanese Battle Mecha, driven by surprisingly busty schoolgirls retake the Kuril Islands), but nor would the Armata for that matter. b. Putin is Donald Trump in a lot of ways. And they both are fixating on a "make <insert country> great again" platform. And with Putin you can see the attempts with this, the Olympics were all the bluster and pomp of a western one, Russia is roundhouse kicking countries that it believes are within it's sphere of influence but not falling its lead, decayed military capabilities are getting a shot in the arm, strategic bombers are harassing the HATO dogs again, and boy oh boy it's like 1983 again! Of course it's all smoke and mirrors, or a layer of paint over things that are mostly comprised of rust instead of steel. But a major defense project like the Armata doesn't have to reach fruition for a long time. And you even look at the way Russian nationalists tend to present their military, if Russia has 100 doomships, but of that, five are modern and capable, 20 are obsolete but functional, and the remaining 75 are decayed to the point of uselessness, they'll tout it as if all 100 doomships are the modern and capable ones. It doesn't matter nearly so much about the rest of the force so long as the Fightingest Fighting 101 tanks Guards Heros Battalion is fully outfitted with Armatas and shows up on TV all the time, while the majority of Russian units might as well be riding on T-34/85s. Limited accomplishments (or even fake accomplishments) effectively portrayed to the population mean more than modest, but more functional accomplishments. This is true with all people, everywhere. However the more we get down this rabbit hole of thirty one flavors of Armata, all the more potent than the last, the more it seems like it's cost effective to make a few (or even just one) prestige formations, and call it good. It's not like fully fielding the Armata will be a milestone for everyone to feel accomplished about, it'll be the first one to enter service with a big party and a dance off or something, every Russian documentary will fixate on that one Armata unit (or two, so you can have different camo schemes and the one show that focuses on how strong Russia is, and the other than plays up the romance between brave Armata tankists and the local peasant's daughters), while everyone else is still cursing their luck to be stuck in the small portion (90%) of Russian forces that still have T-90As and T-72B3s (or just straight up Bs).

I am the harbinger of Sherman. I will post on the M4 until I have reached Atlanta, and then I will burn it for His power runs through me and metes out retribution. Joking aside, the Sherman is just a really good example of how hard a "simple" upgrade in armament is. If you look at most new tank designs, they nearly inevitably have their roots in the moment in which someone has finally built a bigger gun that absolutely must now go on a tank. And rarely does this go easily. For that matter the one up-gunning I know of that wasn't too crazy was the M48 models that recieved 105 MMs, but I would believe that has a lot to do with the guns being fairly similar in proportions, and the M48 being designed around being crewed by wookies so the turret had some room. Even the Abrams that was designed to receive a 120 MM still required an interim model (the M1IP) because the 120 MM gun (which was an existing weapons system mind you, nothing prototype about it) just couldn't be made ready fast enough to keep up with other pressing needs. When you talk about tank upgrades, I'm hard pressed to think of one that's less challenging than the weapons system. And given that it makes it doubtful the Russians would stride into the Armata literally planning on adding a gun that historically has been beyond reasonable engineering capabilities to install.

You foolish fool! As a huge Sherman nerd I now have something else to ramble about. The US 76 MMs used and entirely different turret that was originally built for an abandoned Sherman replacement that was going to use an early model 76 MM gun. It had been designed however with the exact same size as the Sherman's turret ring for industrial/parts reasons, so when it came time to equip the Shermans with bigger guns, through sheer happenstance there already was the engineering solution sitting on a shelf. The base model turret could not accommodate the larger gun without significant modifications and the installation of a counter-weight to keep the turret traversing evenly on the turret ring. As such virtually all US 76 MM armed Shermans used the "T23" turret (so named after the abandoned prototype it was originally installed on) rather than the original model. The Firefly required welding a massive counterweight to the turret, rotating the gun itself onto its side so the breach was accessible (as the Sherman turret was too small to operate the breach from the rear and top, the loader had to come in from the side), cutting a hatch into the turret because the loader could no longer get around the gun (as opposed to the strictly ease of escape reasons the US added loader's hatches), dropping a crewman to make room for the new ammo, etc etc. Then with both of these, the Sherman moved from "bad ground pressure for it's weight class" to "terrible ground pressure for its weight class" which required track extenders, and eventually an entirely new suspension system. It's worth noting there's almost no parts commonality between the M4/M4A1 series and the later model M4A3E8 that represented the 76 MM armed version with all if it's kinks worked out. And that's just for a gun, not including an autoloader and such.

Few more points: 1. It is a small turret, but that's because outside of optics and accessories, the only thing in it is the gun and breach assembly. The rest of everything the turret needs has been crammed into the hull. Which gets into the putting a bigger gun either means: a. Somehow cramming more into a space that's already full up with less b. Building a massive external turret (as it'll have to hold the ammo and autoloader) that doesn't exceed the limitations of the existing turret ring. Both of these are technically possible given enough money and time, but the question will remain does it make economical sense to build a really bad 152 MM tank, or does it make more sense to design a tank from the tracks up to work with the gun you need to accomplish tank type missions? 2. The US "never*" used Fireflies. The later 76 MM armed Shermans were simply the recognition the 75 MM was not up to snuff against armor and something bigger was needed. The end state was never "76 MM augments continued use of 75 MM tanks" it was "we use the 75 MM models until they're all broken then replace them with 76 MMs as they become available." You can see this occurring with late arriving US Armor divisions that simply did not have any 75 MM gun Shermans, and were all 76 MM model equipped. The transition is also noteworthy because none of the later model guns the Sherman would mount were available or even conceived of when the tank was produced, which is rather unlike the 152 MM which "exists" as an option now. The Sherman was armed with a gun that was totally adequate for armored combat circa 1942-early 1944, and when the gun got long in the tooth there were plans to out and out replace it entirely**. Yep. In terms of industrial planning it makes sense to find "something" for all those factories geared to pump out Panzer IIIs to do. It does not make sense however to gear up to build an entirely obsolete tank right out of the gate that cannot be made "modern" without significant changes. Which again is what the Armata appears to be on path for if we believe press releases. I wonder if that's just the plan. The Armata will never actually be fielded, it'll just constantly be going back to the drawing board to become the ultimate tank, with a newer model slapped together for each victory parade until infinity. Armata 2076 will hover and include an APS that protects the crew from excessive homosexual radiation! IT WILL BE BEAUTIFUL. *Some US Fireflies were completed before the end of the war, but they were completed much too late and there's no record of them leaving the depot, although there's sufficient ambiguity to their fate that some might have been issued or even made it to the frontline in time to be turned in at the end of the war. No one really cared to document it very well because hey global war is ending and we don't really care what happens to these oddball tanks because they're just as scrap metal as the rest of them. **There was resistance to this simply because the 75 MM was a much better gun for anti-infantry work which is most of the Sherman's missions, and the early run 76 MM had some pretty big faults. However again looking at production once the 76 MM was adopted it became "the" Sherman variant used rather than both being operated side by side until the end of time.

Re: Armata Weight is a pretty serious issue, but it's a bit of the lesser problem to conquer. Looking at the size creep of various western MBTs and IFVs, they're often 10-20% heavier than they were designed to be, but that's a problem to be overcome vs a hard barrier. Interior volume though, that's pretty much a killer/show stopper. If it's not there, it's not going to be there short of some pretty drastic modifications/honestly just buy a new hull. Also with regards to ammo. 20 Sabot type rounds sounds like enough to get the job done, but what it'd actually look like is closer to 6-8 sabot, then 6-8 HEAT, and then however much room you have left for HE FRAG. So in that regard, 20 sabot rounds is more than enough to get it done....but that's assuming you've got another 20 or so rounds of AMP/MPAT/HEAT/split of HEAT and HE to do the rest in. Re: FSVs Being a tanky-tanker I tend to view everything as evolving away from the tank at its root. An FSV is a tank that's lost some of it's tank-characteristics in order to thrive in habitats a tank cannot handle. Some of these are literal habitats (poor terrain, mountains, etc), some of these are metaphorical habitats (budget, strategic mobility) but by trading away variously the cross-terrain mobility, firepower, and protection of a tank, the FSV can operate where a tank cannot. The Stryker MGS trades cross-terrain mobility and protection in order to make a vehicle that's highly strategically mobile while retaining a lot of the firepower of a tank. The M113 FSV trades the armor, and some of the firepower of a tank in order to make something that can follow infantry into battle and flatten bunkers at close range that does not cost an arm and a leg. And so forth. Which goes back to the original point. Building an FSV on a modern MBT hull doesn't make much sense because if you can get away with building an MBT scaled vehicle, your better bet is just to use the MBT, as all things considered the cost, strategic mobility, local mobility etc is all pretty much the same as a tank, in exchange for effects that will be doubtful sufficiently potent to justify the expense. I mean 152 MM is a big gun regardless of it it's a NLOS friendly lower velocity weapon or a high velocity anti-tank thing, but in the strategic sense is it so lethal as to justify its existence? And I'd contend no. A 120 MM range round will still ruin a building in short order, maybe not as fast as a 152 MM but not so much slower as to be deficent. Longer 125 MM rounds might just be okay enough at anti-tank. If they weren't okay enough then they shouldn't be used at all because why make a brand new MBT that literally cannot complete against peer armor*?

That would be valid with a western style turret in which everything is stuffed into the turret itself, or with a bustle style autoloader. As the case is, the unmanned turret and Russian style autoloaders actually take up a lot of hull space. Also the more open space you have on the interior of the tank the more armor it takes to effectively protect the tank. Adding a lot of interior volume for a hypothetical 152 MM cannon that might or might not be fielded is a lot of design penalty to add. There is something to be said for futureproofing a tank by adding in the ability to upgrade the main gun. The Leo 2 and Abrams both have the capacity to include a longer 120 MM gun (the Leo has exercised this in newer models, the Abrams just has the engineered ability to do so should a longer gun be selected. This however is a pretty small leap with hand loaded guns. As I've already mentioned the Russian style autoloaders have placed their own burdens on gun and ammunition upgrades, and it's no small feat to install a new loader system. Basically summarizing: A. It's not just plug and play. A new larger gun will come with a much larger autoloader. B. having the requisite volume to fit a larger gun, AND have loose enough tolerances to accommodate unexpected size issues would impose not insignificant design penalties. C. All of this costs money. Vehicle design is rarely "check all" for options. Would a 152 MM friendly tank be helpful? Likely! Is it economical? Not really. This is the logical Fire Support Vehicle. If you can bring a tank to a fight, then why not bring a tank? If you cannot bring a tank, how do you build something to do what you wanted a tank for? The Ontos in its ultimate use (rather than design) was a good sample of that. If offered the sort of firepower reserved for tanks, in a package that was easily transported. Not as good, no, but you could get an Ontos a lot of places that either did not require, or could not accommodate tanks. Which is why FSVs for armor formations are silly. No one will claim an Ontos is superior to a tank on a battlefield that will accommodate a tank. So why build something worse than a tank in some ways to do things tanks already do just fine to follow tanks into battle?

Armata watching is difficult. For the longest time there simply were no details at all, so a lot got filled in by: 1. Fantasists. Think of it almost like conceptional fiction, what would you as a semi-educated person want on a tank? Why wouldn't the Russians build a tribarrel 45 mm railgun? 2. Russian nationalists. Whatever the M1 Abrams has, the Armata's will be bigger and cheaper, and cooler, and RUSSIA STRONK ALL HAIL THE UBERPUTIN. 3. Professionals throwing things at a dart board. What historically have the Russians tried to do? Would they pursue a 152 MM main gun tank? They tried that before. How about an austerity light tank? Less likely but Russia is going towards hybrid warfare, something more deployable might go with that! This put a lot in the air, some things more believed than others, there's a lot of computer model tanks that all got floated with mutually exclusive features that were all taken as real (and honestly all of them were equally based in reality). Then with the actual unveiling of the Armata platforms a lot of really confusing information was published, some of it likely wrong on purpose purporting a whole host of features, that then got fed through the Russian nationalist press which resulted in 100% true facts about the Armata's ability to engage spacecraft. This is then complicated by a mentality displayed on this forum that takes any of these claims, and then turns them around into "we need to shoot down spacecraft so it will happen!" without asking if the capability is reasonable, feasible or economically possible. So what information we have includes nuggets about how the Armata will be able to drive itself (which is something the rest of the world struggles to get small cars to do under fairly controlled circumstances) and an APS that can swat western Sabot rounds out of the sky (which is something western APS won't even claim to be in the same area code of being capable of). This is not to imply Russians are stupid, or incapable of building something advanced, but there's a lot of factors working against the Armata delivering on it's capabilities list. Unhelpfully as evidenced by a few posters here, the Russian answer hasn't been "well wait how will we shoot down an object that is traveling fast enough to go from muzzle to impact 2 miles downrange in about 2 seconds?" it has been "we need the Armata to do this so it will happen." This is frankly not an answer. The US needs a cheap reusable space platform and yet it has not appeared. We need totally clean nuclear power without the inherent risks and that hasn't happened yet either. If there was a track record of "this will happen" resulting in product from the Russian defense industry, then well yes there's reason to be confident, but the Russians have needed a new tank since about 1993 (a real new tank) and yet, all the various Black Eagle, T-95 stuff drowned in economic troubles and technological immaturity. The PAK-FA sets itself on fire and is disappointing the Indians of all people in it's ability to do much of anything. Which is not to imply this is a Russian and only Russian problem (lord knows the critical tomes you can write about the F-35!) but there's this belief that engineering, political, and economic friction does not impact the Armata. Which getting back to the original statement, totally modular super turrets were likely something claimed by someone at some point. It's likely as real as a lot of the things the Armata is supposed to do. But given Russian history, and extraordinary claims, the jury is pretty far out on the basic short term goals, let alone the follow on.

The size and bulk of an autoloader for a 152 MM gun will nearly certainly be well outside of a readily swapped out module. This is almost doubtlessly going to have to be a new Armata based tank rather than anything simple or easy (case in point see what happened with the CATTB, and that's without needing the autoloader). The fact the Russians have gone with an in-hull autoloader too doubtlessly places constraints on the size of whatever comes next. The "HAH YOU BUILD ARMOR TO FEND OFF 125 MM NOW I HAVE A 152!!!!" sounds like a thing...except now you've incurred the cost of two separate tank programs. Having some manner of 152 MM gun program with an eye towards the future isn't dumb, but much for the same reason the 140 MM guns of the west are still sometimes researched, but never employed, there's still a wide variety of issues to be overcome before it's ready for primetime. Which is why announcing that there's now going to be this armata wunderpanzer is so silly. It's like if I showed up to a car trade show and promised my car's in vehicle AI would literally drive you everywhere without so much of a hiccup, precisely calculating the exact maximum speed required by 2019. This is much more advanced than what much better funded with more experienced engineering teams would even dream of promising in terms of automated cars. I say my car will also be cheaper, come with a self feeding self cleaning hooker, and outperform all other cars on the race track. What I have to show for it is a Ford Focus made from off brand parts that broadly accomplishes the task of going forward when you press the gas pedal. Russian promises and claims for the Armata so far have been so outside of what the state of the art is capable of on a bloated Western defense budget, let alone a sad violin Russian budget. To now claim there's a super-heavy massive gun tank that'll exist concurrently with the already shaping up to be technically complex and likely highly expensive T-14 just stretches credibility to the degree where I feel comfortable mocking it until someone finally puts their rubles where their mouths are. And frankly looking at the never ending array of new Russian equipment, from BMD-4s, to PAK-FAs, new ships, the whole Rainbow of Armatas claimed, new infantry kits, revamping the way the Russian army is trained, established and paid while at the same time keeping the old way it's always done thing because conscripts! and then I look and see oil has bounced back to 31 dollars a barrel, I have to wonder just where the certainty that what exists as a real prototype enters production, let alone the napkin drawing follow on ultra vehicles based on that prototype will come from. It's just funny. If there's ever an operational T-14 battalion, then I think I'll take suggestions of a newer even bigger version of it almost seriously. But as the case is, I'm dropping this one firmly in the MIG-31 Firefox bin, and going back to Xcom 2 for the day.

Then it'd make sense to have the 152 MM MBT as a starting point vs a heavy gun tank. If you look at historical heavy tanks, or other anti-tank tanks, you never reach the proliferation required to make an impact. Or to go to a historical example: the M36 was quite capable of knocking out most heavier German tanks. However getting those German tanks to show up where there were M36s and not just M4s with 75 MM was another trick. If you need a 152 MM gun to accomplish knocking out a tank, then you'd better start with the 152 MM gun instead of wasting time on a 125 MM. As the case is the Russians are starting over with a different 125 MM divorced from the old autoloader which put most of the constraints on round length and thus kept Russian shells only a bit more potent than their Soviet predecessors. The fact they're investing in an improved 125 MM at all should be taken as a measure of expecting it to be up to most anti-armor tasks. But there is not really a point to having a split fleet. Again even historically speaking, the 75 MM Sherman despite being better at infantry support tasks lasted only as long as there were vehicles in storage with only the 76 MM version enduring. The British method of having good AT guns on tanks, backed up by CS howitzer type tanks died off pretty quickly when it was apparent a good tank gun needed to do both (with the Firefly/Challenger purely being holdovers until a full on shoots all comers 17 pound gun armed "medium" tank could be produced). The closest you get is the M1 Abrams with the 105 MM out of the box, but the base tank was still designed with a 120 MM to be designated at a later date (and even then it still took more than a little doing to make the gun match up with the tank). And the intent was always go to a zero 105 MM gun fleet and an all 120 MM. If the Russians are well and truly starting from scratch, and they NEED a 152 MM, it makes zero sense at all to field a 125 MM version of the tank, especially again, if it's simply a matter of magic away from being fielded.

It sorta kinda is. It's interesting as far as leveraging conventional and unconventional assets against a threat, historically it's just been limited to "how do I use this tank to win at COIN" which is a bit tricky, but looking into hybrid threating right on back is an interesting avenue. Like we'd all studied it prior to the Ukraine largely with an eye towards Iran, but the limitations of it have borne out and there's some definite lines of effort and weak spots that make it a lot less deadly than we'd imagined. Anyway. In any event it's much more pressing than pretend tanks, although pretend tanks are more interesting to talk about. Regardless the fact I haven't seen a good explanation of why a 152 MM exists beyond trying to impress Arabs into a sale because they're "dum and lik big guns" continues to give me the impression this is not a serious effort and likely remains someone's attempt to milk the Armata cow for dacha money.

1. I'm confused if you're aware how different they are, how easy you think it is to convert a vehicle to use the larger weapons system. Why yes, I am aware these two tortoises are male THIS DOES NOTHING TO SLOW MY BREEDING PROGRAM. 2. Very large two part munitions are still very large two part munitions. Also factor in the significant size difference between propellant and projectile and you start looking at a loader that is going to need to be reinvented vs rescaled. 3. A much larger CATTB wasn't able to fit a full load of 40 rounds. Wonder what else ya'll had to leave off. I imagine if the auto-driver or something works you could just skip him. Or perhaps the gunner because Russian AI is just that advanced. Maybe just skip the armor because the tank doesn't really exist, it's actually a patriotic Russian trapped in Estonia's bus, and shooting it is a warcrime! 4. I don't get this. Either the 152 MM is mature because hey look it was mounted on an actual platform 30ish years ago, or that's an interesting place to start with a whole host of engineering challenges to overcome. Hell, a 140 MM Leo 2 or Abrams is a lot closer in terms of being combat ready given that the engineering work for that mess is already done, drop in some SEP v3 parts and roll the M1A4 out to murder entire Russia supreme! Look. Again, there's a reason the collective response of the western military establishment has been largely eyeroll to the Armata. Once there's less reason to doubt the T-14 will ever make up a meaningful portion of Russian ground forces, then I think the capability let alone the need (which still frankly, goes entirely unaddressed at this point) for a 152 MM armed version becomes less laughable, but oil is low, sanctions are on, Russia is still paying for the Ukrainian mess, and the attempts to build an economic union to Russia's benefit remains a shambles. So in other words, good luck with your vanity project, I'm going to go back to researching how to detain your motorcycle gangsters without giving you knuckleheads casus belli because that's the real threat, instead of the majick Obj. 404 not found dance we used to do circa 1988. Addendum: On the other hand, what is interesting to think about is technology has caught up to the point where reviving the old STAFF round is entirely reasonable, and Russian roof protection being what it is, and velocity being less relevant for a STAFF type round, I imagine it'd be good times supremo just to issue the whole lot to anyone with Leo 2s east of the Rhine.