T90 versus Abrams - equally matched?

[Piispa]

I just played my first scenario with the highly expected T90 to give an opportunity to face the Abrams on equal grounds. In short, it didn't go as I expected.. pretty badly.

Well, screw equal grounds, I ambushed the Abrams (two abrams against my four T90) on city streets separately. First I put two T90s on each side of a crossroad as the sucker-to-be Abrams approached. Two clean hits later on the sides of the Abrams I witnessed as it turned its mighty main cannon first on the right - BAM! One T90 burning. BAM! third hit on the side of the American war machine. SKREEEEEEET! As it turned its weapon 180 degrees against the another Russian export. BAM! And it was burning along its brother.

What the...?

Yeah, that was me stunned, but no worries! I've still got two and apparently the American beast at least lost its paws.

Now, my third tank was ambushing the second Abrams on another street. With little luck I expected as it shot its first round on the side of the American tank, but apparently the crew got stunned by the sudden shell as it took awhile for them to react. Another blast on the side before it started to turn its turret. After the second reload the Abrams got its turret aligned but my lucky bastard got the third round flying before the Beast got his. The third did the trick and the crew bailed. Phew! Three rounds with a T90 in about 50 metres to knock one late 70's-era American made warbeast! C'mon!

And how did the remaining two T90s of mine fare against the last Beast who had lost his paws? Well... Surely I thought one could do the trick from behind and approached with little care. Foolish of me. I came out from the corner, facing the Abrams from its behing - fired - BAM! - turret turning - reload, reload, reload! God damnit, RELOAD! - BAM! - T90 burning.. CHRIST!

Last T90 crusing the streets - frak, it spotted me! Turret turning 180, my crew already panicking! BAM and its history.. The T90 that is.

Seriously, dudes. Is T90 (the flagship of Russian military engineering) really that sucky or did you think you a liiittle bit overdid your totally loveable pride and joy, the M1 Abrams?

[Stuart Galbraith]

I tried the scenario where a company of Abrams goes up against a (I never learned quite how many) of T90s (bad moon rising). The result was about7 burned out Abrams, and the rest had knocked their tracks off. It was roughly an equal number of burned out T90s. But as has already been said, more Abrams crews survived than those of T90s. They have roughly comparable performance to an Abrams at long to medium range in good conditions, but close the gap and they start dying. And when a T90 brews, the crew usually doesnt survive....

Just curious, did you have M1A1s or A2s?

[Piispa]

Just curious, did you have M1A1s or A2s?

M1A1s, the Marine-versions.

[MarkEzra]

In a recent PBEM game one T-90 takes out 3 Marine M1 and and 2 LAV's in two turns. US M1 can also be destroyed. My gaming opinion after hours of playing T-90 vs Abrams is: Abrams is a better tank. Is the T-90 hopeless mis-match? Far from it. In WW2 terms: Abrams = Tiger, T-90 = Sherman Firefly. Used properly the T-90 can do very well. Used less skillfully the Abrams can still come out on top.

Just a side note to Bad Moon Rising:

It was designed with a definite Cold War, Red Hordes unleashed flavor.

[istari]

I posted a few days ago about the T-90 vs M1A1 FEP (look for the post on page 2 or 3). I was actually asking because I had the opposite experience - I was surprised at how effective the T-90s were in a head-to-head engagement during "USMC Bad Moon Rising".

My initial try, I attempted to duplicate the tactics used in Operation Desert Storm by keeping my tanks moving steadily forwards at a steady pace (Move, not Hunt) in line abreast, thinking that I'd have superior fire on the move and superior sensors to pick up the T-90s first.

That was a bad idea. Despite having all my Abrams pointed in the right directin, the T-90s still sighted me first and opened fire. In the end, I'd lost all 14 Abrams and took down 8-9 T-90s. Yes, most of my crews survived, but I still lost the tank force.

So in my experience, in a head-to-head fight at medium range (1000-2000m), the T-90 came out very well indeed.

Chris

[dan/california]

Bad Moon Rising is totally tactics dependent. If you advance the Abrams to the low rise in the middle of the map and stop in a hull down position you can wipe out the T-90s for the loss of 1-3 Abrams. In fact the position is so good you barely have to give another order.

The T-90 however is good enough to make it tactically dependent which is certainly an improvement over the T-72. I don't think most peoples computers could handle enough T-72s to make that one interesting.

[Huntarr]

"Bad Moon Rising" is an entertaining scenario to say the least. Yet a pretty easy one to master.

Blue force should sweep out to the left flank and then take hull-down positions at the lines marked, as OpFor comes at you.

[MarkEzra]

There are advantages for both sides.

[Prince of Eckmühl]

This was the first CMSF:Marines scenario that I played. The first go-round, my Abrams were slaughtered. The second time, I spread my platoons out across the width of the map, and then advanced the individual vehicles in overwatch fashion. In that second game, I had two vehicles mobility-K, but none were destroyed. It is indeed, all about tactics.

PoE

[Crimguy]

At extreme distance, the T-90 can be devastating with its' ATGM.

[Secondbrooks]

About Bad moon rising:

I just told Marine M1s to get in line and advance in hastly manner.They remained some time in lower hull-down position in Huntarr's picture.

Not a single casuality for my side (few broken optics and such), enemy wiped out totally. But main thing why result was so nice for me was that i ordered them to move fast: I bet half of T-90s were taken out by flank hits. And when i got closer i got few flank shots to stationary T-90s (mobility kills probably)

But yeah. T-90s ability to harm M1s from front seemed to be indeed minmal. I bet my tranks took more hits than T-90s. I quess almost half of my company would have been lost immediatly at first contact if T-90s could damage/destroy my tanks from front, as they managed to send few accurate and dealdy looking volleys for missiles and sabot at my advancing tanks. I was impressed how well they saw, or then it was movement of my tanks which made them bit blilnd...

[cmfan]

In "Bad Moon Rising" I ended up destroying all the T-90s with only one M1A1 FEP knocked out and several damaged to varying degrees.

I started movement to contact via Platoon bounding over watch until I got to the slight crest in terrain Huntarr and Dan point out. With a bit of serendipitous bit of luck this was where the T-90's began engaging me and as a result this is where I set up my firing positions. I'm sure if I had been caught before the next useful piece of terrain I would have fared much worse.

I noticed that several of my M1s took some nasty main gun and ATGM hits but kept on fighting. Actually, most of my casualties resulted from TCs being caught unbuttoned. The one M1 that did get knocked out took several hits before brewing up - actually it probably died because I was negligent about its cover and I kept tasking it to engage enemy tanks despite mounting damage. It eventually brewed up but at least my driver got out.

The T-90's appeared to be able to handle some punishment too, but not nearly as much as the M1A1s, and as others have pointed out, once they took a penetrating hit they lit up pretty fast. I dispatched very few survivors once I began moving to the objective.

[Flanker15]

Were your T-90s shooting the right kind of ammo? (HE againsts tanks bug?)

If you were hitting the side or rear of the M1 you should be able to one shot knockout with KE or HEAT ammo. The M1 has very thin side and rear armor compared to the turret front, you should be able to knockout those facings with Soviet ammo at over 3000m. At 50m the shell would probably go through several M1 side turrets if you lined them up (heck you'd have a pretty good chance of knock out from the front too). Only the TUSK versions have serious armor added to those areas but it's more against HEAT shells not KE.

Of course the other thing is the M1 has very good internal saftey layout, you were penertrating it but not causing any knockout damage (damaging systems, hurting crew but not damaging anything critical).

[Sivodsi]

I have a suspician that if the red player fast moves all his tanks to the first ridge, and then hunts to the top of the ridge with a covered arc he will be unbeatable in this scenario.

This ridge is closer to the red player than the ridges are to the blue player, and getting your tanks into position first counts for a lot in this game.

Once the red player has got this position it won't matter where the Abrams pop up, they will get whacked. I lost badly playing the Americans in a PBEM game where my opponent did this, and I used this tactic as the reds vs the AI and won comfortably.

When I have time I will hotseat this to test the theory, using Huntar's positioning for the US forces as detailed above.

Of course, if anyone else wants to play-test this before I do, they are welcome to post their results here.