Force Sub Winter 1941, Russian Front Tanks vs Mechs

[Dendrobius]

Fair enough, recap on what we do know.

Canon: 5km/s average velocity, ability to impart enough KE and KE ONLY to shake ground substancially

Official: 175mm KE penetrator, sabot round

And that's all we know.

In terms of pure KE, I think this would be at least as powerful if not downright outclassing the T90's main cannon?

In the background story of the series we also know that this cannon is effective against other tanks of its era, the Type 61 Federation tank.

Considering these factors, is it really that far a stretch to say that the effectiveness of the cannon should be at least on par with the T90?


Federation Type 61 tank. Notice it's well sloped armor and low silhouette. A sign that they haven't lost good design yet. The cannon we're talking about can take this out. Unfortunately, no official data on armour is available, or at least I can't find any.

[Dendrobius]

Damn, image doesn't work. Go here
http://www.bluesat.unsw.edu.au/~wing/T61.jpg
To see the Fed tank.

No, it was designed outright to be a cannon firing sabot KE penetrators.

[Darth Wong]

That's all the info we HAVE! For crying out loud, it says KE penetrator. It ain't gonna be made of bloody Kleenex paper, will it?

No, but it can't be too heavy if it doesn't generate massive recoil at the muzzle velocity you quote.

We don't know what it's made of, we don't know the mass. And we never will. We do see the effects of the round, which is that hitting the ground near the Gundam, it was able to shake the Gundam with concussion WITHOUT any explosive effects. In other words, purely by KE power.

There is no reason whatsoever why even an enormously fast near-miss would shake a Gundam. There is no force-coupling unless there is an explosion and shockwave. This merely indicates that the Gundam was either unstable or its pilot panicked.

[Darth Wong]

Damn, image doesn't work. Go here
http://www.bluesat.unsw.edu.au/~wing/T61.jpg
To see the Fed tank.

No, it was designed outright to be a cannon firing sabot KE penetrators.

Thanks for the image. The two-gun turret is indicative of a low-recoil design (unless the turret gets spun around by the off-axis recoil from each shot). Perhaps the shells are very low-density material, which would explain the low recoil and feeble effects.

[Durandal]

Oh, adjustment to calculations. Big Tray is around 100m, not 200m

So that brings it down to 6 cubic km of vaporised rock.

pi * 100^2 * 200 = 6283185 m^3

Actually, you'll have to do a triple-integral of the volume of a cylinder running through the side of a cone to get the total amount of material vaporized.

[Darth Wong]

The Zeons are not idiots. They started the One Year War, and in less than a month they wiped out half the human race. They're not pansies like Starfleet or the UFP. These guys are ruthless. Nerve gas, nuclear weapons, colony drops which in the series obliterated (wiped off the map) 1/6 of the land mass of Australia, they did it all.

The ability to freely use weapons of mass destruction does not necessarily translate into engineering prowess when designing conventional weapons.

[Pablo Sanchez]

Federation Type 61 tank. Notice it's well sloped armor and low silhouette. A sign that they haven't lost good design yet. The cannon we're talking about can take this out. Unfortunately, no official data on armour is available, or at least I can't find any.

TWO BARRELS? What is this, Red Alert? Unless they always fire in tandem (in which case one larger piece would be much much better) those guns must have far less recoil than any modern MBT main gun.

[Dendrobius]

Or perhaps the tank was designed to fire both barrels simultaneously, with a degree of toe in so that they would hit the same spot? Not that far fetched, considering the degree of toe in wouldn't be that great.

Another thing about recoil. We saw a Gundam fire a Beam Rifle at a Zaku, and the Zaku was thrown back (not toppled, THROWN) a good 5m before hitting the ground. No explosion nor propellants or control failure, it was due entirely to being shot. The clicher? The Gundam has never been shown to experience recoil from firing its Beam Rifle. So either it's just violated Conservation of Momentum big time, or it has some seriously great recoil compensation device...

[Sea Skimmer]

Or perhaps the tank was designed to fire both barrels simultaneously, with a degree of toe in so that they would hit the same spot? Not that far fetched, considering the degree of toe in wouldn't be that great.

Another thing about recoil. We saw a Gundam fire a Beam Rifle at a Zaku, and the Zaku was thrown back (not toppled, THROWN) a good 5m before hitting the ground. No explosion nor propellants or control failure, it was due entirely to being shot. The clicher? The Gundam has never been shown to experience recoil from firing its Beam Rifle. So either it's just violated Conservation of Momentum big time, or it has some seriously great recoil compensation device...

Unless you have adjustable mountings that would only work at one range. If the mountings can adjust then the guns must be even weaker then we thought.

And your ignore option three, they simply dont have very much recoil because of there low mass rounds. That is far more likely.

[Dendrobius]

Hmm...true (with regards to triple integration to get precise rock volume vaporised). A tad hard to get accurate measurements to do that though, and I'm too lazy to do that when I had an 80% exam which included triple integration just yesterday. Even if you scale it down some more, it's still a feckload of a lot of rocks vaporised for what, 3660kW or something like that of a reactor?

The kind of destruction we see in urban combat scenes utilising MSs is on par with tank combat. Remember when the Russians had to fire at their Parliament back when Yeltsin was still in power? That tank shot didn't go through the building but made a big hole and a huge puff. You see the same effect with the 100mm machine guns of the Gundams, which are broadly similar to the 120mm ones of the Zakus...it ain't explosive at all, its KE all the way.

[Darth Wong]

Or perhaps the tank was designed to fire both barrels simultaneously, with a degree of toe in so that they would hit the same spot? Not that far fetched, considering the degree of toe in wouldn't be that great.

Another thing about recoil. We saw a Gundam fire a Beam Rifle at a Zaku, and the Zaku was thrown back (not toppled, THROWN) a good 5m before hitting the ground. No explosion nor propellants or control failure, it was due entirely to being shot. The clicher? The Gundam has never been shown to experience recoil from firing its Beam Rifle. So either it's just violated Conservation of Momentum big time, or it has some seriously great recoil compensation device...

Maybe the beam vapourizes a thin surface layer of armour, which creates a mild jet propulsive effect. This is how they figure to use stand-off nuclear detonations to deflect asteroids (albeit obviously on a much smaller scale).

[Pablo Sanchez]

Or perhaps the tank was designed to fire both barrels simultaneously, with a degree of toe in so that they would hit the same spot? Not that far fetched, considering the degree of toe in wouldn't be that great.

That's a bad idea. That means that unless the gun mantlet features precise machinery for adjusting the convergence point, the tank can only hit spot-on at one given range. At 2 km, it's important to be sure of a hit.

This just proves that the MSG weapons were designed entirely to look cool (almost as if some cartoonist drew them... must maintain suspension of disbelief!) Since we're dealing with two 175mm shells inside a turret, its almost certainly an autoloader (one 120mm shell is heavy enough). There's not enough room for two autoloaders, so you're talking about one very complicated autoloader; which by the way must have a truly sad capacity, considering that the turret appears no larger than a modern MBT's, AND has the added space-eater of an extra large-caliber gun.

A single larger caliber gun (say, 240mm) would be more powerful than both of the 175s combined, more space efficient, easier to sight, simpler to mount, cheaper to build, better balanced, and significantly lighter than the two-gun arrangement.

Another thing about recoil. We saw a Gundam fire a Beam Rifle at a Zaku, and the Zaku was thrown back (not toppled, THROWN) a good 5m before hitting the ground. No explosion nor propellants or control failure, it was due entirely to being shot. The clicher? The Gundam has never been shown to experience recoil from firing its Beam Rifle. So either it's just violated Conservation of Momentum big time, or it has some seriously great recoil compensation device...

You can't have a recoil compensator contained entirely within the Mobile Suit without violating CoM. The recoil has to go somewhere. Artillery pieces with this type of machine to reduce the effect of recoil don't make Newton's equal and opposite reaction go away, they transfer it more slowly, and into the ground (which doesn't complain as much as the gun carriage).

[Sea Skimmer]

Hmm...true (with regards to triple integration to get precise rock volume vaporised). A tad hard to get accurate measurements to do that though, and I'm too lazy to do that when I had an 80% exam which included triple integration just yesterday. Even if you scale it down some more, it's still a feckload of a lot of rocks vaporised for what, 3660kW or something like that of a reactor?

The kind of destruction we see in urban combat scenes utilising MSs is on par with tank combat. Remember when the Russians had to fire at their Parliament back when Yeltsin was still in power? That tank shot didn't go through the building but made a big hole and a huge puff. You see the same effect with the 100mm machine guns of the Gundams, which are broadly similar to the 120mm ones of the Zakus...it ain't explosive at all, its KE all the way.

Very surprising that a impacted fused HE-FRAG round would explode on impact and make a hole, NOT. Its not like the Russians where firing APFSDS at the building, all there tanks carry HE-Frag with variable fusing as part of their basic load. The puffs of smoke was that of the blast.

Your example suggest the Gundam's use HE rounds, not AP ammunition. So I dont see what your point is. HE doesnt need alot of velocity to cuase its damage. With an explosion moving at 25-30,000 fps another few thousand in one direction makes little differance.

[Pablo Sanchez]

Very surprising that a impacted fused HE-FRAG round would explode on impact and make a hole, NOT. Its not like the Russians where firing APFSDS at the building, all there tanks carry HE-Frag with variable fusing as part of their basic load. The puffs of smoke was that of the blast.

Precisely. People tend to forget that real-life fragmentation munitions are singularly unimpressive in the visual sense.

[Darth Wong]

Hmm...true (with regards to triple integration to get precise rock volume vaporised). A tad hard to get accurate measurements to do that though, and I'm too lazy to do that when I had an 80% exam which included triple integration just yesterday. Even if you scale it down some more, it's still a feckload of a lot of rocks vaporised for what, 3660kW or something like that of a reactor?

Except that they were obviously not vapourized. As I said before, the energy state increase involved in such an event on the scales you describe would have GLOBAL consequences and would annihilate everything for dozens of km around.

The kind of destruction we see in urban combat scenes utilising MSs is on par with tank combat. Remember when the Russians had to fire at their Parliament back when Yeltsin was still in power? That tank shot didn't go through the building but made a big hole and a huge puff. You see the same effect with the 100mm machine guns of the Gundams, which are broadly similar to the 120mm ones of the Zakus...it ain't explosive at all, its KE all the way.

You should not judge armour-piercing effectiveness of tank rounds based on their comparative effects against masonry. That indicates similar natures, but not necessarily similar lethality against armour.

[Sea Skimmer]

Very surprising that a impacted fused HE-FRAG round would explode on impact and make a hole, NOT. Its not like the Russians where firing APFSDS at the building, all there tanks carry HE-Frag with variable fusing as part of their basic load. The puffs of smoke was that of the blast.

Precisely. People tend to forget that real-life fragmentation munitions are singularly unimpressive in the visual sense.

The problem is Hollywood almost always uses gasoline rather then actual explosives for movies. When they do use real explosive, such as in Saying Private Ryan, the lack of fireballs becomes quite apparent.

[Pablo Sanchez]

The problem is Hollywood almost always uses gasoline rather then actual explosives for movies. When they do use real explosive, such as in Saying Private Ryan, the lack of fireballs becomes quite apparent.

Just gray puffs, a more of a POW than a roaring noise.

[Dendrobius]

Lord Wong, question. If those rocks were not vaporised, WTF happened to them!? And furthermore, visual evidence shows glowing rocks as well. Any theories or ideas if it's not vaporisation? It ain't a phaser the Apsaras III was using.

OK, the Russians were firing HE Frags against the Parliament. The sabot rounds of Gundam shows the same effect. What does that say? I honestly don't know. Any ideas?

[Pablo Sanchez]

Lord Wong, question. If those rocks were not vaporised, WTF happened to them!? And furthermore, visual evidence shows glowing rocks as well. Any theories or ideas if it's not vaporisation? It ain't a phaser the Apsaras III was using.

OK, the Russians were firing HE Frags against the Parliament. The sabot rounds of Gundam shows the same effect. What does that say? I honestly don't know. Any ideas?

They're not sabot, and the MSG forces like to use anti-personnel rounds against armored vehicles?

[Darth Wong]

Lord Wong, question. If those rocks were not vaporised, WTF happened to them!? And furthermore, visual evidence shows glowing rocks as well. Any theories or ideas if it's not vaporisation? It ain't a phaser the Apsaras III was using.

No, but as I said before, vapourization of such a large quantity of rocks will produce lots of side-effects which we simply don't see.

For example, where is all of the vapour? Where are all of the effects associated with gigaton-range energy releases? Why did the explosive expansion not shatter the mountain instead of coring out a hole while leaving the rest essentially untouched? Why does the fireball not rise and expand slowly, the way a nuclear-yield fireball should? Is there no BUOYANCY in the anime universe either?

Simply put, there is no evidence for the kind of energy necesary to vapourize all of that rock. So you can't have your cake and eat it too; if the energy is present, you should have side-effects. No side-effects, no energy. What happened to that mountain may be a matter of conjecture, but since it is obviously not a normal mountain, it's anyone's guess, isn't it?

OK, the Russians were firing HE Frags against the Parliament. The sabot rounds of Gundam shows the same effect. What does that say? I honestly don't know. Any ideas?

It says that the Gundam shells can physically shatter masonry. Nothing to get too excited about.

[Sea Skimmer]

Lord Wong, question. If those rocks were not vaporised, WTF happened to them!? And furthermore, visual evidence shows glowing rocks as well. Any theories or ideas if it's not vaporisation? It ain't a phaser the Apsaras III was using.

OK, the Russians were firing HE Frags against the Parliament. The sabot rounds of Gundam shows the same effect. What does that say? I honestly don't know. Any ideas?

SABOT simple means there is a sub caliber round surrounded by an outer shell that breaks away. That doesn’t mean it's an AP round. They likely just use HEDS, maybe HEFSDS rounds.

[Sea Skimmer]

Lord Wong, question. If those rocks were not vaporised, WTF happened to them!? And furthermore, visual evidence shows glowing rocks as well. Any theories or ideas if it's not vaporisation? It ain't a phaser the Apsaras III was using.

OK, the Russians were firing HE Frags against the Parliament. The sabot rounds of Gundam shows the same effect. What does that say? I honestly don't know. Any ideas?

They're not sabot, and the MSG forces like to use anti-personnel rounds against armored vehicles?

While there's little point, you could build a discarding sabot HE round.

[Dendrobius]

They are most definitely not HE round in any case, sabot or not. Gundam is anime, and the good thing about it is that if it's HE, they do the Hollywood 'everything is made of petrol' special effects for it.

In fact, this does reinforce the idea that HE is useless against Gundams. In an episode, we see the Guntank firing at MSs to no real effect, and we see that it fires HE due to the huge explosions on when its shot hits bare rock.

Whereas the 100mm machine gun of the Gundams are far more effective against MSs.

[Sea Skimmer]

They are most definitely not HE round in any case, sabot or not. Gundam is anime, and the good thing about it is that if it's HE, they do the Hollywood 'everything is made of petrol' special effects for it.

In fact, this does reinforce the idea that HE is useless against Gundams. In an episode, we see the Guntank firing at MSs to no real effect, and we see that it fires HE due to the huge explosions on when its shot hits bare rock.

Whereas the 100mm machine gun of the Gundams are far more effective against MSs.

So because the effect is realistic, it can't possibly be true?

"WARNING ANTI LOGIC LEVELS REACHING CRTICAL LEVELS!"

[Dendrobius]

Sea Skimmer, I'm merely showing that IN GUNDAM, HE does Hollywood whereas Sabot seems to resemble real life HE.

WHERE'S THE ANTI LOGIC IN THAT?!

Does not SCREEN VISUALS OVERRIDE 'realism'?