(RAR) Unnamed Ultramarine VS M1A1 Abrams (40K + Real Life)

[Simon_Jester]

In the Heresy era, Marine legions were numerous enough that they could carry out division, corps, or even army-scale operations, so them being good at positional warfare starts to make more sense. Though you'd have hella attritional problems... on reflection you can actually prevent this from being a problem IF you are careful about how you 'farm' the gene-seed of your Space Marines. If you keep them in training long enough for the first progenoid to be extracted, your overall numbers will remain constant over the long haul regardless of what happens in the meantime.

[Rogue 9]

Also I cannot help but notice how much the Predator looks like something I know was a popular mil-tech corporate propaganda item in the 1980s when 40K got going...[/img]

M113 90mm Cockerill! Gun Caliber Twice the Armor Thickness, Victory is Assured!

Amusingly, the Predator tank is rather lightly armored for a main battle tank in 40k (frontal armor can just barely be penetrated by heavy autocannon and is overmatched by shoulder-fired antitank missiles; side armor will yield to just about any heavy weapon out there, including the weapons that serve as the functional equivalent of heavy machine guns in the Imperial Guard).

It's more than that; the Predator is also explicitly just a turret and a front armor slab stuck to a Rhino chassis. It really is the same body as their APC.

[Simon_Jester]

Huh. Then the analogy to a 90mm gun armed M113 is even more apt.

I honestly never saw much point to Vindicators myself even after reading their stat line, but I have almost no tabletop experience so I could be missing something.

Frankly, the other Marine 'tank,' the Land Raider, makes a lot more sense as a tank than the Vindicator does. It has excellent all-around armor protection, for one.

[Micro-Balrog]

You should only field extra types of weapons if existing ones cannot do the job, otherwise improving the existing types, or replacing them with entirely better models, is a far superior solution. That isn't a modern thing or even a gunpowder thing, it's been true through history.

But it hasn't been true throughout history.

That's to say: yes, in a perfect world you should be issuing everyone in your military the same rifle, the same machine-gun, and the same pistol.

There are however two important caveats to this:

1. It doesn't always necessarily occur. Logistics in the armed forces are often affected by various considerations - a country can start producing one type of rifle when the other one isn't out of production yet, you need to start producing guns at different plants where the have different tooling, or - as it sometimes happens in the WH40k verse, you have several political entities that coalesce into one fighting force and have multiple disparate gun industries.

The obvious examples of this are the various armies of WW2. The Soviet Union produced simultaneously multiple kinds of submachineguns, rifles (Mosin, Tokarev, PPS, PPSh, PPD all come to mind immediately), and in addition it fielded a variety of rifles that have been stored since the Civil War (even Lee Enfields and some Arisakas they captured in the 1930s). Nazi Germany had a truly bewildering array of weaponry - submachineguns, rifles (some captured during their conquest of Europe, some of them produced on their own).

In peacetime this this happens less, but this on to this day. I spent a brief period as an armorer in the Israel Defense Forces. At that time - this was a few years back - the M16 was in use, the Galil was in use, the Uzi was still hanging about in some units, and the Tavor was introduced in a limited fashion as a field-testing gun in select infantry outfits. So the unit I was assigned to (for several weeks before I transferred to being a computer technician!) had four types of guns - Galils, Uzis, M16s and M16 carbines - all of this excluding the wild array of machineguns we had. We even had a 51mm mortar.

But it gets better.

2. Special Forces groups often get treated laxer on logistics rules due to their unique requirements. (Space Marines are quite clearly a Special Foces equivalent for the Imperium).

In a given IDF SF unit you can get such disparate firearms in the armory as Kalashnikovs, M16s, several types of Uzis, SPAS-15 shotguns, and so on and so forth.

Russia's Alpha is known to have at least one M4 carbine (which is a US weapon), AN-94s, AK74s, and several types of submachineguns (which Tula Design Bureau continues to design with a tenacity better applied elsewhere).

To illustrate my point, here is a photo of weapons that Karden (a Russian police SF operative) has issued to him at one given time:

Here you go.

Note that this is a photo of seven disparate firearms in seven disparate calibers.

[Rogue 9]

Huh. Then the analogy to a 90mm gun armed M113 is even more apt.

I honestly never saw much point to Vindicators myself even after reading their stat line, but I have almost no tabletop experience so I could be missing something.

Frankly, the other Marine 'tank,' the Land Raider, makes a lot more sense as a tank than the Vindicator does. It has excellent all-around armor protection, for one.

Vindicators are similarly Rhino-chassis vehicles. All the Marine armored vehicles are except the Land Raider.

And the point to Vindicators is to drive up to the enemy and drop giant howitzer shells on them. On the tabletop you field more than one; odds are your opponent can't kill all of them before at least one gets in range and starts laying waste.

[U.P. Cinnabar]

And the point to Vindicators is to drive up to the enemy and drop giant howitzer shells on them. On the tabletop you field more than one; odds are your opponent can't kill all of them before at least one gets in what one might as well call kissing distance of the enemy and starts laying waste.

Fixed it for you.

[Simon_Jester]

Thing is, as a strategy this makes very little if any sense for Marines. Sure, if they're careful with their gene-seed the casualties they take won't destroy them as an institution, but Marines should never be intended for attritional combat. They're totally unsuited to it.

Now, I will note that the current iteration of the Vindicator in the most recent codex is apparently an assault gun- huge short-barreled demolition howitzer in a fixed forward mount, earlier iterations included a gun turret with an antitank weapon (e.g. a laser cannon), or could be designed that way. Either way, though, it's a paradox that the Marines' "default" battle tank is in fact lighter and squishier than the corresponding tank used by the Imperial Guard.

Based on the fluff (which is that Rhinos are the old easily mass produced design, as are Vindicators, while the Leman Russ heavy tank is a more recent discovery), it honestly seems like the Guard and the Marines should trade AFVs.

The Land Raider makes a lot more sense as a Space Marine tank- big, heavily armed, extremely durable. The deliberately archaic design (it looks like a British WWI tank took a loooot of steroids) is silly, but the basic concept makes a lot more sense than putting Marines in Vindicators.

[Rogue 9]

And the point to Vindicators is to drive up to the enemy and drop giant howitzer shells on them. On the tabletop you field more than one; odds are your opponent can't kill all of them before at least one gets in what one might as well call kissing distance of the enemy and starts laying waste.

Fixed it for you.

24 inches isn't that short. The standard board size is only 48" across and you get to deploy up to 12" in; you're in range on turn 2 if the other side is hanging back, turn 1 if it's an assault army that's coming at you.

Now, I will note that the current iteration of the Vindicator in the most recent codex is apparently an assault gun- huge short-barreled demolition howitzer in a fixed forward mount, earlier iterations included a gun turret with an antitank weapon (e.g. a laser cannon), or could be designed that way. Either way, though, it's a paradox that the Marines' "default" battle tank is in fact lighter and squishier than the corresponding tank used by the Imperial Guard.

To my knowledge it's always been that way. Sure you aren't thinking of the Razorback IFV?

As to the rationale, the Astartes use equipment that's easily and rapidly deployable from orbit. The Leman Russ design hardly qualifies. I mean, a Thunderhawk transporter can carry a Land Raider, sure, but it can also carry two Rhino-chassis vehicles (read: anything else), while a Russ is heavy enough that even if you adapted the Thunderhawk's clamps to hold one, it would only hold one. The Guard uses bulk landers for which that isn't a problem.

[Simon_Jester]

To my knowledge it's always been that way. Sure you aren't thinking of the Razorback IFV?

No, but I WAS conflating the Vindicator assault gun (built on the Rhino chassis) with the Predator tank (ALSO built on the Rhino chassis).

As to the rationale, the Astartes use equipment that's easily and rapidly deployable from orbit. The Leman Russ design hardly qualifies. I mean, a Thunderhawk transporter can carry a Land Raider, sure, but it can also carry two Rhino-chassis vehicles (read: anything else), while a Russ is heavy enough that even if you adapted the Thunderhawk's clamps to hold one, it would only hold one. The Guard uses bulk landers for which that isn't a problem.

Hm. Air-transportability is a valid concern, yes. That actually makes a fair amount of sense, that the Marines are forced by their deployment pattern to accept either single MBT-weight vehicle (in which case they might as well pick the biggest, baddest one they can carry) or a pair of vehicles of half the weight (in which case they just have to sigh and accept the weight restrictions).

[Cykeisme]

There were sources (Forge World?) that describe the Predator series as "cavalry tanks" rather than "main battle tanks".

Unfortunately the tabletop game doesn't reflect the fact that, compared to the Leman Russ, the Predators have a much higher top speed on both flat terrain and rough terrain, due to high power-to-weight ratio and an advanced suspension system.
Once again, not shown in the tabletop (aside from the gunners' inherently higher BS skill), the Predator is also supposed to have very effective targeting systems, vastly increasing the accuracy when firing on the move.


As Rogue 9 already mentioned, they're also light enough that Thunderhawk Transporters can bring them down to the surface from orbit two at a time, and likewise pick them up and return them to space, if needed.
They need to maintain this capability when they're spearheading an attack on an enemy-held world. Surface-based anti-ship defenses are temporarily suppressed (destroyed if possible), long enough for drop pods to be fired at key targets. These initial troop landings permanently disable more anti-ship defenses to open a narrow insertion corridor before the enemy can organize a response with their ground forces. Then Thunderhawks quickly bring light armor (like the Predators we're discussing) to the surface via the secured insertion corridor within minutes, to more heavily secure the initial landing zone against counterattack by enemy ground troops.

Only at this point, after the landing zone is secured, do the Munitorum bulk landers come in with regiments of infantry and heavy armor, which is often an operation taking hours.



The "demolisher cannon" in 40k (used in several weapons platforms, including the Leman Russ Demolisher and the Astartes Vindicator) is quite clearly patterned in the launcher in the Sturmtiger, even up to the ring of exhaust holes surrounding the barrel to vent overpressure from the rocket motor.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturmtiger

Its range is terrible compared to a field gun, but it isn't really that close. The maximum range is 6,000m, but I doubt that it will be accurate or effective at that range.
Even if it were down to just a few hundred meters for accurate fire, the ability to land such large warheads on target would still be a useful specialist tool to apply a large amount of pressure on a prepared defensive position held by the enemy. The Space Marines don't try to use the Vindicator for everything!

[Sea Skimmer]

Not to mention the fact that the original .50BMG round itself was devised as an anti-tank round(back in WWI when tanks were much thinner-skinned), and is still used as an anti-material round capable of disabling engine blocks and penetrating concrete walls.

FYI but that is an often repeated myth. The design of the .50 BMG was for anti aircraft work, which is why it was water cooled even though it weighed like 250lb with water cooling + tripod, and begun before the German 13.2mm machine gun, which really was an AT weapon, was known by the Allies. Breaking aircraft engine blocks was exactly the kind of thing they had in mind designing it, but the cartridge was largely governed by accurate range considerations, and engineered direct scale up of the .30-06 round and .30al browning machine to meet said requirement quickly. That's part of the reason why the .50cal browning is so damn heavy, they just didn't have time to try to make it lighter, and since the AA tripod itself was so heavy no real need existed to make the gun lighter. You just had to have a vehicle to move it. A

When the US went to make an actual anti armor machine gun it turned into the mighty .60cal series of guns in WW2, which never got into service but had a way better weight-ability to 'kill armor plate' ratio. FN started work on a similar scale machine gun in the 1980s, BRG-15, but it never entered service due to the end of the cold war. The Soviet KPV series though was designed to attack armor as its primary goal, but it has about twice the muzzle energy of .50 BMG out of hand. You often find it as a baseline for vehicle armor protection for good reason.

[U.P. Cinnabar]

You're right, it was an anti-aircraft round originally; I was confusing it with the Soviet 14.5 mm.

[Rogue 9]

To my knowledge it's always been that way. Sure you aren't thinking of the Razorback IFV?

No, but I WAS conflating the Vindicator assault gun (built on the Rhino chassis) with the Predator tank (ALSO built on the Rhino chassis).

As to the rationale, the Astartes use equipment that's easily and rapidly deployable from orbit. The Leman Russ design hardly qualifies. I mean, a Thunderhawk transporter can carry a Land Raider, sure, but it can also carry two Rhino-chassis vehicles (read: anything else), while a Russ is heavy enough that even if you adapted the Thunderhawk's clamps to hold one, it would only hold one. The Guard uses bulk landers for which that isn't a problem.

Hm. Air-transportability is a valid concern, yes. That actually makes a fair amount of sense, that the Marines are forced by their deployment pattern to accept either single MBT-weight vehicle (in which case they might as well pick the biggest, baddest one they can carry) or a pair of vehicles of half the weight (in which case they just have to sigh and accept the weight restrictions).

Pretty much. The Lord Inquisitor fanfilm project's trailer has a pretty good shot of a Thunderhawk delivering a Land Raider (despite the stupidity of the Grey Knight surfing on the top of the one in the foreground). Forge World used to sell a model of it, but no longer does; I guess mainly because logistics isn't sexy. The 40k wiki has pictures of them with Rhinos, though, taken from the old books.

[Sea Skimmer]

With the caveat that you can find Space Marine Chapters who do... pretty much everything across the rainbow of military deployments. About the only thing they don't do is wet navy.

The Raven Guard for example are pretty much just literal damn ninjas. They DO "sneak about for a month working out the enemy's dispositions" (though with their abilities it's probably only a week or less) before executing a lightning attack in the dark of night that completely wipes out the bad guys' strongpoints.

White Scars, meanwhile, are a highly mobile army-- they've got tons of bikes, landspeeders, amped-up APC's and whatnot. They're basically Mongols in space. Lots of lightning maneuvering, encirclements, flanking and what not.

Do remember though the Mongols were not a light or medium force. Quick moving yes, but this was because they had a tremendous level of logistical support in the form of large herds of remounts, exceptionally so as 2-3 remounds was not uncommon in the history of cavalry. At the personal level they were extremely heavily armored archers and lancers, with armor horses, as heavy as anything could be in that era. They were also professionals in an era in which standing armies were rare and small. That's what let them carry out complex tactics, not that they had quick horses.

While they may well vary a great deal, the default of 40K space marines is clearly to be some kind of medium force, like real marines tend to average, and not a heavy force, as created. Their advantage would be striking with armor somewhere the enemy has no armor, rather then being able to combat the best the enemy has.

[Simon_Jester]

A lot of chapters seem to cultivate both medium and heavy capabilities- e.g. having both fast Predator tanks and extremely durable, heavily armed Land Raiders. Or having both fast-moving jetpack infantry and plodding, heavily armed and armored Terminators. Plus, of course, being aerospace-mobile and therefore able to do vertical envelopments and so on.

[Cykeisme]

While they may well vary a great deal, the default of 40K space marines is clearly to be some kind of medium force, like real marines tend to average, and not a heavy force, as created. Their advantage would be striking with armor somewhere the enemy has no armor, rather then being able to combat the best the enemy has.

For sure, a large part of their military value is in their mobility, which largely stems from their ability to deploy rapidly and accurately from space, which as you mentioned allows them to take the initiative and attack where the enemy is unprepared.

However, at the same time, they're supposed to offer a level of force concentration, in a very small area, that is rarely matched. I suppose this ought to should work quite well in combination with the aforementioned mobility.

So they might attack the highest quality of troops the enemy has, but only engage a portion of that force and move on.

Admittedly, I suppose it does get over-the-top when you come upon the idea of Terminators climbing onto traitor Titans and crippling them with hammers, or a small force of fifty or so men striking at the headquarters camp of a millions-strong enemy force and killing their command staff..


Edit: Err, somehow it went over my head that we're discussing purely armor-vs-armor engagements here.
In which case, what you say definitely holds true. Space Marine armor certainly doesn't have anywhere near the sheer numbers required to engage full-strength armored columns. They'd have to use air-mobility to choose their battles, carefully accomplishing specific strategic objectives.
Even when trying to render the enemy army incapable of fighting, they'd have to aim at crippling enemy logistics and support first, rather than attempting to chew up the enemy force by attrition on the open field.

[Q99]

Heavy bolter is anti-infantry; it's not going to have THAT much effect on a tank (though a 40K heavy bolter versus a modern tank... hmm). Plasma cannon is shorter range than a lascannon, but longer than a multi-melta. Would very definitely take out a modern tank pretty decisively. Ditto the standard Marine rocket launcher with a krak shell. An autocannon might also hole a tank, but is more likely to be used against infantry and light vehicles IIRC.

Bolter fire would fairly rapidly mess up the fragile bits- machineguns, optics, etc.. Hm, shooting the treads may work...

Going for the kill directly isn't strictly necessary, a mobility kill or a hampering of perception enough that it has to slow down/stop and the Marine can get close.

[Simon_Jester]

I'm not sure an Abrams is a well protected tank by 40k standards. I doubt its armor is light by 40k standards, but I also doubt it's heavy. A Land Raider almost has to be a lot tougher, for instance.

If the tank doesn't know the Marine is there for some modest amount of time, the Marine has a decent chance of at least damaging the tank and maybe putting it out of action- though the risk is high that the tank will be intact enough to target and kill him. But if the tank starts out with the main gun more or less aimed at the Marine, he's doomed.

[Sea Skimmer]

The armor is highly variable in the first place, remember a MBT is basically a heavy tank turret on a medium tank hull by conception. So you would hope 40K could exceed this merely by the fact of fairly clearly still having 'heavy tank' as a category of vehicle, as well as a superheavy tank for that matter. And that those vehicles really do weigh up to hundreds of tons and are by whatever means, still able to get into action at all.

However they should also still have a lot of inevitable weaknesses of modern vehicles. That should also mean Guard heavy tanks wipe the floor with lesser armor just like M1s slaughtering T-62s, which I think is what happens in the game.

If we allowed 200 tons I'm sure we could make a very workable superheavy tank today that was near utterly proof against 120mm fire on the flank and 140mm weapons on the front, while mounting a 160mm gun for anti tank work or an 8in howitzer for artillery roles and I think you'd find that somewhere impressive even by whatever is claimed for 40K stuff of similar size.

The front turret armor of the M1 is the only part offering a really high level of protection, but it's incredibly high considering what is fired upon it. The RHAe numbers people throw around tend to obstruct the actual value of this kind of protection, when it has an inch thick ballistic vest like mesh of uranium in it. The shear sharpening effect also affects it as armor, your going to need something really serious to get through this at all.

On a 360 degree 'anything goes' basis the normal models of M1 tank could only really be counted upon to utterly resist very heavy machine gun fire, and only .50cal if we wish to avoid any risk of serious suspension damage. The thinnest armor anywhere is 30mm RHA welded together as the bottom and lowest shell. Most of the side though would resist 30mm APDS with the baseline side skirts, which are not all equally protective, a front bias exists that can stop heavier fire.

A couple different ERA kits exist for all models of M1, the latest one with ARAT-2 with the curved moveable tiles, meant to actually provide an ERA which is highly resistant to automatic weapons fire, and all the fragments from explosions and EFPs. Pretty much what you'd want against the 40K Bolts and ilk, but not magic either.
Like this, note how end result is a 3D armor angle on the big flat side of the tank. That really helps matters against lighter low mass fire.
http://www.bestdreamworks.com/hobby/items/1449//h1.jpg

[Sea Skimmer]

Because I was curious, numbers should be taken as highly approximate - weight calcs for Baneblade hull armor only. Assumes armor density the same as steel plate, and I estimated the top-rear-belly armor since it isn't given anywhere. All numbers rounded down as I went.

Length 13.5m ~ 44ft - cut to 35ft for calculations of side and belly plates, and 25ft for roof plate
Width 8.4m ~ 27ft
Height 6.3m ~ 60% taken for average actual hull and barbette height so 12.5ft

front 200mm 340sqft @ 42lb sqft = 57 tons
side1 200mm 437sqft @ 42lb sqft = 73 tons
side2 200mm 437sqft @ 42lb sqft = 73 tons
rear 100mm 340sqft @ 42lb sqft = 28 tons
roof 60mm 675sqft @ 42lb sqft = 33 tons
belly 40mm 945sqft @ 42lb sqft = 31 tons

Total 295 short tons, interesting how that turned out on my part given the claimed weight of around 300 total. But my number just for the armor box of the hull, and with some of the protection very thin and vulnerable. The suspension alone on this thing would weigh something silly. It should be thought of as a 600 ton tank at least, which might make an M1 tank a light tank. Also notice the murderous weight penalty of trying to armor a tank proportionally heavily on the sides. This is why big vehicles become a serious problem.

[U.P. Cinnabar]

Not just that, but imagine the damage this thing would do to bridges and roadbeds, not to mention it'd probably sink like a stone in soft mud, given the ground pressure it would exert.

[Elheru Aran]

Not just that, but imagine the damage this thing would do to bridges and roadbeds, not to mention it'd probably sink like a stone in soft mud, given the ground pressure it would exert.

Would not there be a proportional increase in materials sciences as far as bridges and roads went, though?

Granted mud is mud, as noted earlier there's only so much you can do about that. I presume the solution is simple brute force. That, or you just don't send Baneblades into mud. Maybe they air-drop gravel across the entire battlefield before the fighting starts? I could totally see the Imperium doing precisely that...

[Simon_Jester]

A lot of Imperium road and bridge infrastructure is portrayed as being little or no more advanced than what exists in the present day. Moreover, the Guard often operates in wilderness areas (where any roads have to be constructed out of raw dirt by combat engineers) or on underdeveloped planets.

[Elheru Aran]

That is largely correct, yes. Simple brute-forcing the oversize vehicles through the ground would seem to be the likely solution, but I can't say I'm aware as to how practical it would be.

As a minor note, here's a general size comparison between a Leman Russ and an Abrams from Imperial528 here. No guarantees as to scale. The main gun is ludicrously out of scale on the LR.




Offhand, though I can't say with certainty because the Russ model lacks tracks (and of course we can't be sure that the scale is correct), it does appear to ride rather higher above ground than an Abrams, so... that's something?

(it says something that the barrels of those heavy bolters look to be the same caliber as the 120mm Abrams gun... namely that the tabletop model is really poorly scaled, I guess)

[Simon_Jester]

The problem is that realistically scaled gun barrels on miniatures would be ridiculously small. For instance, eyeballing a .50 caliber machine gun barrel is no more than about three inches across, maybe more like two. 40k miniatures are done at a scale of something like 36 inches of real object to one inch of real material. That corresponds to a gun barrel somewhere between 1/16 and 3/32 of an inch or so in diameter, which is so thin it's going to be very, very breakable.

Likewise, a 120mm gun bore, scaled down to the correct size, would have a 3.33 millimeter interior diameter, and an outer diameter of less than a quarter of an inch. Now, that's about the diameter of a pencil so it's at least manageable, but then you run into problems where the bore of the Russ's gun barrel doesn't look much larger than the bores of various infantry weapons.