Russian tank track skirts

[Dozza]

Hi guys, I've been looking at the screenshots of CMBS on the website, and I'm just wondering, are all the screenshots there accurate, or have the models been updated since then? I ask particularly because the ... "track skirts" covering the front of the tracks for the T-90A (and pretty much any other Russian tank available in the game I assume, apart from the T-90AM) are the antiquated, all-steel construction used on Soviet tanks prior to in or about 1988/89, when they were replaced with newer skirts of (presumably) rubber construction.

 

Here's CMBS:

 

http://www.battlefront.com/images/stories/CMBlackSea/GalleryBeta2/t-90.png

 

And here's an example of the same steel skirts on an old T-72B1 at Russia's 2014 tank biathlon:

 

http://77rus.smugmug.com/Military/Tank-Biathlon-2014/i-C7BNjmL/0/O/TankBiathlon14part1-04.jpg

 

And here's the real T-90A:

 

http://77rus.smugmug.com/Military/Tank-Biathlon-2014/i-sD4ZbzP/0/O/TankBiathlon14part1-42.jpg

 

My apologies if this has already been posted about, the search function didn't really help because I wasn't sure what terminology was being used.

 

 

[John Kettler]

Dozza,

 

Welcome aboard!

 

What makes you think the skirts on the T-72B1 are steel? They certainly don't look like steel to me, but instead appear to be rubber of similar. The T-90A appears to have same, except that there are three visible plates (likely steel) covering the forward side hull which seem to be attached to the skirt proper. You can see quite clearly on the pic not only that both mudguards are made from a flexible material which looks exactly like the track skirts. Further, it's apparent that the material, whatever it is, has fibers running through it, evidenced by the frayed ends visible on the bottom edge of the mudguard. There are lots and lots of pics of bent, torn, partially destroyed and twisted metal mudguards, and the track skirts don't fit that model at all. The BMP-1 does have metal side skirts, and you can see for yourself what happens to them over on the Luhansk training ground thread I posted.

 

Regards,

 

John Kettler

[John Kettler]

Dozza,

 

Here's evidence in support of my argument that the side skirts on Russian tanks aren't metal. When the T-62 underwent a massive upgrade, rubber side skirts were fitted. The belief in the Intelligence Community was that these would have enough give under attack from infantry HEAT weapons, such as the RPG, that the projectile would fail to fuze. Am aware of no western tests on this matter. 

 

T-62M (Ob'yekt 166M) (1983) – Extensive modernization of the T-62 with protection and mobility improvements and the "Volna" fire control system. It is fitted with a BDD appliqué armour package, an additional belly armour plate for anti-mine protection, 10 mm thick reinforced rubber side skirts and 10 mm thick anti-neutron liner.

 

T-72A and later models evidently now have plastic side skirts, though I have no idea what that means in terms of material used.

 

Early model T-72s did not feature side skirts; instead the original base model featured gill or flipper-type armor panels on either side of the forward part of the hull. When the T-72A was introduced in 1979, it was the first model to feature the plastic side skirts covering the upper part of the suspension, with separate panels protecting the side of the fuel and stowage panniers.

 

Regards,

 

John Kettler

[Dozza]

Hi John,

Sorry, I wasn't clear - when I said " the ... "track skirts" covering the front of the tracks" I'm particularly referrring to the guards protecting the tracks at the front (mud guards? not sure of the technical term) which I've circled below:

http://imageshack.com/a/img910/1499/9ybRMc.jpg

http://imageshack.com/a/img673/4987/WIoRnd.jpg

I agree that the side skirts themselves are definitely not metal. Basically, the guards on the CMBS T-90A in the screenshot are inaccurate, and belong to an 'earlier' tank.

Also, to correct myself, that's not a T-72B1 but a full-standard T-72B - its got the full T-72B sight including missile guidance channel - I should've looked closer

Edited March 17, 2015 by Dozza

[Kieme(ITA)]

BFC used the avilable T-72 model to make the T-90 hull. So the front mudguards are the same for the in game T-72 and the T-90A / AM.

 

The front mudguards of T-90 tanks seems indeed to be of the same rubber + metal wire mesh as the T-72, so BFC should correct the T-90 hulls accordingly.

Edited March 17, 2015 by Kieme(ITA)

[Dozza]

BFC used the avilable T-72 model to make the T-90 hull. So the front mudguards are the same for the in game T-72 and the T-90A / AM.

 

The front mudguards of T-90 tanks seems indeed to be of the same rubber + metal wire mesh as the T-72, so BFC should correct the T-90 hulls accordingly.

 

Ah, got it. Thought it might be something like that. Would be nice if it were fixed

[Apocal]

(mud guards? not sure of the technical term)

 

It's "mud guards."

[Dozza]

It's "mud guards."

 

LOL. Given it eventually came to me, clearly it was in a dusty corner of my mind and my brain just simply wasn't working when I was trying to articulate my meaning.

 

In any event, how practical would it be to fix the relevant models? I've got to be honest, I'm so anal I noticed it immediately and it bugged the hell out of me.

[John Kettler]

Apocal,

 

The English language must be terribly confusing to people trying to learn it. Are we talking guards made of mud, something like China's famous clay warriors, or are they guarding mud. If the latter, why guard at all, given effectively unlimited supplies? And that's over an above the now not so obvious, if running across the term without knowing tanks or having an image to work from, guarding against mud? Weighty questions, to be sure. Now, if you want to talk mudbugs, I'm there! Shall need beer, though.

 

Dozza,

 

This is turning into quite an education for me. During my Hughes days one of my first assignments was to figure out how the Russians could render WASP, a brilliant swarm antitank missile which used active MMW guidance, useless. One of the things we came up with was using track guards to hide the telltale track reflections, especially when moving. Back then, the Russian tank force, as we saw it, was T-62s and T-55s, neither of which had skirts.  The T-64, which did, was never seen in public back then, was never paraded. The US learned of the T-64 in the late 1970s, and there wasn't even a CIA report on the T-64B until October of 1984. In fact, we had no sighting of the T-64B until 1980. In my entire career in military aerospace I never saw a single CIA document. They had lots of control markings which kept them out of defense contractor hands. What I saw came out of DIA or Army Intelligence.

 

This hiding the tracks concept may (note conditional) explain the embedded metal fibers in the T90 series track skirts and, presumably, the mud guards. The Russians were the world leader in MMW systems, and the US was trying desperately to catch up. The T-72 , which started with gill armor, was officially accepted as a State approved weapon in 1973. Interestingly, the Wiki has a link to BFC's T-72: Balkans on Fire. I don't know, having never seen anything on the matter at all in terms of more than cursory info, when the Russians switched from straight rubber (what we thought when we saw them), to the current material. But then, the US didn't have a single T-72 to examine until after the SU collapsed in 1989.

 

Regards,

 

John Kettler 

[jomni]

The skirt of the T-90 in the loading screen is rubber.