Accuracy of Modern Tank Guns

[Balrog]

Very interesting Sea Skimmer, thanks much.

[Micro-Balrog]

To the original point:

Modern tank guns are equipped with electronic fire control systems. Once the range to the target (and several other variables, such as wind speed) are input, incredible accuracy can be achieved. For many decades, the issue with tank guns has not been the ballistics of the projectile or the gun itself, but the difficulty in rapidly making the calculations necessary to track and engage a moving target at such distances (two-three kilometers is the range at which modern tanks can shoot practically in combat. However, the doctrine of the Israel Defense Force is to open fire as soon as enemy tanks are spotted, even if you can't always establish a first-round hit - even if it is at five kilometers, a range at which it is very hard to hit anything).

In addition, modern tank fire control systems save data from previous shots, and are able to improve their ability to a degree. This is why when tank crews in Israel attend Master Gunner classes they will attend them with their tank. This allows the fire control system of the Merkava Mark 4 to learn and improve (To some degree - we're talking getting from , say, 90% performance to 92%). [All numbers are not specific because I am not, myself, a tank commander or crewman].

It is even possible -indeed it's been done in the 1973 Yom Kippur War - to nail a helicopter or even a plane with your tank gun, though of course it requires some good conditions.

It is true - as people stated above - that helicopter can engage tanks at eight kilometers or even more with modern missiles. However it's worth noting that modern tanks have soft-kill active defense systems that are to some extent capable of mitigating the missile threat. Aircraft have always been very dangerous to tanks, however obviously in the sort of full-scale combined arms conflict in which tanks and aircraft fight each other both sides will engage all sorts of complex countermeasures such as air defenses, decoys, and so forth.

[Sea Skimmer]

That makes sense. The armor on the Merkava 4 also seems to be heavily geared towards defeating ATGMs over the widest arc of the turret and upper hull as possible, and does very well of it in combat, but getting blown apart in the process. It probably doesn't actually offer particularly high resistance against sabot rounds. Being modular if the KE threat went up the tanks could be given different armor modules with something a lot denser inside of them. That fits with firing at longer ranges, and the fact that the best Egyptian and Syrian tanks simply aren't all that good of vehicles, but they wouldn't be jokes either if they closed to 2km ranges. Their ammo is stuff physically compromised to Israel, barring any secret Chinese ammo either of them might have. With the approaches to Israel being relatively wide open compared to say, central Europe or Korea, its easy to see where that goes for firing ranges. Against the best tanks today I'm not too sure 5km sabot shots would penetrate much. It's far enough for some real velocity drop off. The Israeli laser missile is probably pretty effective against a T-72A at any distance, maybe or maybe not on an M1A1.

APS stuff can work fairly well against low angle ground fire at this point, but vertical coverage remains a big problem. You can armor the top of the tank more, but all tanks are at serious weight premiums already on what they choose to protect. The IDF itself was an early adaptor of top attack stuff with those secret missile tanks, though they needed to be secret because they would have been easily jammed when first introduced. It seems to me that the ultimate weapon is the unending US project for a guided KE tank shell, but that work keeps being rebooted because it's obsolete before it's done.

Combine arms certainly are key, but it's just a reality that the tank has lost a fair bit of its relative importance. All big Cold War militaries became very tank heavy, and it really just got self defeating. Even if the Cold War had somehow kept going the new generation big caliber gun tanks on both sides would have seen much lower production rates. We can all think of ways to kill enemy tanks...without risking a tank itself getting blown up with 3-4 people and several million dollars of equipment. Thanks to technology we can make just about anything work at this point.

What this means for a directly relevant example is, soon 81mm mortar rounds are going to be commonly equipped with guidance, meaning any existing one of those mortars is suddenly an indirect firing tank killer. APS is great at that point, but boy are tanks going to need it to last any length of time on the battlefield at all. Since they are invaluable as assault weapons people are just going to end up paying for it.

[Swindle1984]

Apologies for resurrecting the thread after a month of dormancy, but I believe I have some relevant info.


https://www.thebalance.com/the-abrams-t ... on-3345048

According to this article from September, the M1A3 Abrams will enter service some time in 2017 and is expected to use "precision munitions" capable of hitting targets at 12km.

Basically the problem is tracking a target; tanks don't have AA gunsights and tracking mechanisms, nor do they have the kind of proximity-fuzed shells you use when you actually want a shell fired from a gun to destroy an aircraft...

During WW2, a German Tiger tank attempted to shoot down Soviet fighter planes using its 88mm gun and successfully hit and destroyed a low-flying plane on a strafing run with its second shot.

http://www.defensionem.com/tank-shoots-down-a-plane/

And during the Falklands War, a British FV101 Scorpion light tank (one of only four deployed, I believe) successfully shot down an Argentine jet fighter with its 76mm gun; I can't find a source for that online, but it's in the excellent Combat and Survival: What It Takes to Fight and Win book series, I believe either volume one or volume two. Unfortunately, my copies are in storage and I can't look up the details. I don't know how many shots were fired before one made a hit.

But, in both cases, the gunners were firing at planes flying on a predictable course that several previous aircraft had flown on, and both aircraft were flying low and slow.

I know of no other incidents of a tank shooting down a fixed-wing aircraft, nor do I know of any instances of a tank successfully shooting down a helicopter, however, the M1A2 Abrams does use the M830A1 HEAT round for its 120mm gun, which has a proximity fuse and greater fragmentation, partly to give the tank the ability to shoot down any low-flying helicopters moving slow enough for the gunner to engage.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M830#M830A1_HEAT_MP-T

The M1028 canister round fires 1,098 9.5mm tungsten balls, basically acting as a gigantic shotgun; it's primarily intended as an anti-personnel or light vehicle round, but it was also designed with engaging low-flying aircraft in mind. Again, I don't know of a single instance of either round actually being fired at an aircraft, but then again the guys we're currently fighting aren't exactly flying close air support missions against us.

The prototype MBT-70 tank that eventually spawned both the M1 Abrams and the Leopard 2 was equipped with a 20mm autocannon specifically for defense against low-flying aircraft, and Russian tanks have universally been armed with a 12.7mm machine gun specifically referred to in the user manual as an anti-aircraft gun since WW2; unlike the .50-cal/12.7mm machine gun on the Abrams, it can elevate high enough to engage aircraft and comes with a flip-up anti-aircraft sight (looks like a spider web).

North Korea has taken it a step further and armed their tanks with both a 14.5mm machine gun (a serious upgrade over the 12.7mm) and what appears to be an indigenous copy of the SA-7 shoulder-fired surface-to-air missile.


Pokpung-ho II; details of the anti-aircraft armament are a little difficult to make out, and there's a pair of AT-5 anti-tank missiles on the turret as well.


Chonma-ho I; note that actually using the SAM requires someone to be standing on the engine deck, fully exposed to enemy fire.


Pokpung-ho II; rare close up. Note the 12.7mm machine gun, the anti-aircraft sight is folded for storage/transport, two AT-5 anti-tank guided missiles (adding missiles to a tank indicates a potential lack of confidence in the accuracy of the 125mm gun), and what appears to be a copy of the SA-16 SAM on the back deck.


Presumably, the Norks are worried about South Korean and especially American air supremacy; I assume Dear Leader saw footage of the Highway of Death and didn't want a repeat of his own.

I don't know of any other tanks with dedicated anti-aircraft weaponry in service.

[Zeropoint]

I can't help noticing that the tank crew look old and/or unhealthy.

[Sea Skimmer]

A lot of the troops in the KPA are lifetime service. It would figure that older more reliable troops would get the more complicated and riced up equipment.

North Korea can produce MANPADS but not heavier SAMs on any useful scale, they put them absolutely everywhere as a result. Saddam has an inept Army, North Korean forces would be far more dangerous under all reasonable conditions. That's what you get when you create a crazy military garrison state that manages to last so long on foreign aid. This is aided by North Korean troops and equipment schemes being entirely geared towards war in Korean conditions.

The 12km guided weapon for the M1, in its now 23 years of unending cycling into new projects glory, because prior ones ended up too electronically obsolete before they were finished in flight testing, will be dependent on external targeting support to employ that range. I don't think its going to actually appear in 2017, and the sum of the A3 changes are going to be applied incrementally because the US congress never let M1A2SEPxyz production lapse as the Army originally intended. That that article all but says, the total plan is really not set at all. Some M1s started getting the new suspension shock absorbers but not road wheels years ago, the old suspension just dies after something like 1,500 miles under the weight of the tank. The Army might want the tank lighter, but the rating of the new suspension works out to be 84-85 tons.

[Sea Skimmer]

Just looked at a actual budget document because google finds those quick enough, and the XM1111 Mid Range round/follow on project has no funding line now. So the tank may start to have the fire control and breach mod needed for a guided round and AMP fusing, but no actual projectile will be forthcoming quickly.

It does not strike me as a great priority anyway, it never has been taken as one by the US Army. Such long range munitions take up space on the tank and can only be used with careful coordination. Money always ends up gravitating towards upgrading weapons for a close fight. Like right now 30mm or possibly 40x180mm for Stryker, and a growing push towards a 50mm gun, a smaller version of the 1990s 50mm Supershot basically, for the Bradley that could backfit to a new 30mm mounts. That all consumes its money in every way, and the US Army is in the budget cut era for the long haul.

On a random note also a XM1158 program is now qualifying improved 556-762 tungsten AP rifle rounds, because body armor now exists that stops the existing ammo.

[Swindle1984]

To be fair, the T-64, T-72, T-80, and T-90 are all capable of firing gun-launched guided missiles. It was an attempt to make up for poor accuracy with conventional munitions at long range, required the tank to be stationary and actively painting the target with a laser the entire time (flight time is 3-5 seconds, IIRC), and in practice the Russians have rarely loaded more than two missiles per tank because they take up more room than a conventional round. These missiles have a range of 4-5km and I can't recall ever hearing of a single one being fired in anger.

We tried the same concept with the MGM-51 Shillelagh on the M551 Sheridan light tank and the M60A2 "Starship" Patton tank. What a fucking disaster that was! Firing the gun fucked up the alignment of the missile guidance system, so if you used the 'conventional' munitions you couldn't fire a missile afterward. The caseless ammunition for the gun often cracked and fouled up the barrel, requiring an evacuation system to clear the chamber for the next shot, which significantly reduced the rate of fire. The missile itself was a shit-show too; the igniter and propellant were susceptible to heat and humidity, the placement of the guidance system meant you couldn't start tracking/guiding the missile until it was 730 meters away (which is a ridiculous minimum firing distance) and it had a maximum range of only 2,000 meters, so you had a short-ranged missile with a VERY limited engagement envelope.

We built over 88,000 MGM-51's, and we fired a grand total of six of them in combat, and at bunkers, not the tanks they were intended to kill! And only in the Gulf War, so they sat around gathering dust for thirty years.

We stuck with the Sheridan for decades because it was the only light tank in service (and was supposed to be replaced by the M8 Buford, but despite being a much better- and cheaper- design and getting glowing praise after actual combat testing in Iraq, we never adopted it and instead opted to put a 105mm gun on the Stryker, a vehicle whose role is questionable to begin with.), but someone was smart enough to kill the M60A2 after only 6 years and replace it with the M60A3 (and the M1, shortly afterward).

A lot of the troops in the KPA are lifetime service. It would figure that older more reliable troops would get the more complicated and riced up equipment.

Being a soldier for life also means three hots and a cot for life, which is by no means a guarantee for the average Nork. How many people have starved to death in the last decade alone?

North Korea can produce MANPADS but not heavier SAMs on any useful scale, they put them absolutely everywhere as a result.

And still the majority of their air defense is 37mm, 57mm, and 85mm anti-aircraft guns, which were obsolete by the 1950's. A legitimate threat to a low-flying helicopter, but not even capable of engaging bombers or fighters. Probably the biggest threat they pose is to transports dropping paratroopers and/or as field guns for engaging infantry and thin-skinned vehicles. Still, North Korea has them frigging everywhere, and in massive clusters.

Saddam has an inept Army, North Korean forces would be far more dangerous under all reasonable conditions.

While I agree that the Norks should, theoretically, be more competent and better motivated (by fear, if nothing else, but fanaticism probably plays a big role) compared to Saddam's army, I should point out that Saddam's army wasn't nearly a foot shorter than their neighbors to the south because of life-long malnutrition. Saddam also had much more modern hardware, at least during the first Gulf War. He had one of the largest standing armies in the world, modern T-72's (though we didn't know how awful the monkey models really were until we started killing them en masse), modern MiG fighters, and his artillery (courtesy of Gerald Bull, genius that got completely fucked over by the US and Canada after the CIA had him and South Africa provide said artillery to Saddam, then he got murdered by the Israelis) significantly outranged ours. His artillery having nearly twice the range and greater accuracy was a major concern when we were gearing up for the invasion, but then it turned out that his guns had no air defenses and all the tractors for moving them had been relocated elsewhere, so we just blew them up with air strikes. That incompetence you pointed out at work.

North Korea, meanwhile, has utter shit for hardware. The overwhelming majority of their air defenses are Soviet and Chinese leftovers from the 50's and 60's, ditto for their armor. They're still fielding T-34-85's from WW2 as infantry support in some units! Nork defectors have stated that fully half their armor is inoperable due to a combination of poor maintenance and a lack of fuel. Their most advanced foreign tank is a T-62, and their domestic tanks are clones of the T-62 with upgrades from a 1980's-era T-72. And there's little to indicate that their engineering is any better than China's.

Their fighter jets are all decades obsolete (except for a squadron of MiG-29's guarding the capital), they've resorted to painting the outlines of planes on tarmacs to try to fool our spy planes and satellites into thinking they have more planes than they really do, and all of their pilots combined get less flight time than one average American fighter pilot because of, again, a lack of fuel and poor maintenance.

Their small arms are primarily left-overs from the Korean War, their most common machine gun is basically a ZB-26 (same gun the Bren was based on) with a magazine because the belt-fed version jams too often, and numerous people (Chinese, Vietnamese, South Korea, and American) have noted that their domestic Kalashnikov clones are shit that either jams or runs away (keeps firing after you release the trigger), so that their troops prefer older models imported from Russia and China.

The majority of their sidearms are either Tokarev clones or .32ACP pistols! Hell, they're the only military that still fields the RPG-2, which was obsolete by the early 60's! And body armor? Forget it! Even Russia and China can't afford to equip the majority of their troops with body armor (though Russia, at least, is making inroads), how would North Korea pull it off?

And while they have shitloads of artillery, most of it is obsolete and how much is still operational? Most of it has been sitting in the same firing position since the ceasefire, and they've been faking artillery positions by piling rocks and logs in the vague outline of a howitzer.

So while North Korean troops are probably more competent and more motivated than Saddam's troops, this is still a conflict where one side is mostly equipped with leftovers the Soviets considered obsolete in the 1960's, and the other has the latest gear for the 21st century. Human wave attacks didn't work in the first war, and I doubt they're going to be any more effective in the next one.

That's what you get when you create a crazy military garrison state that manages to last so long on foreign aid. This is aided by North Korean troops and equipment schemes being entirely geared towards war in Korean conditions.

I'm not entirely certain what you mean by this. North Korea is practically a medieval state with WW2 Soviet trucks and AKM's. Do you mean that their equipment is relatively simple and not reliant on advanced technology they can't support?

The 12km guided weapon for the M1, in its now 23 years of unending cycling into new projects glory, because prior ones ended up too electronically obsolete before they were finished in flight testing, will be dependent on external targeting support to employ that range. I don't think its going to actually appear in 2017, and the sum of the A3 changes are going to be applied incrementally because the US congress never let M1A2SEPxyz production lapse as the Army originally intended. That that article all but says, the total plan is really not set at all. Some M1s started getting the new suspension shock absorbers but not road wheels years ago, the old suspension just dies after something like 1,500 miles under the weight of the tank. The Army might want the tank lighter, but the rating of the new suspension works out to be 84-85 tons.

As with all things, we have the capability, but not the means. Not for years, anyway.

[Swindle1984]

Just looked at a actual budget document because google finds those quick enough, and the XM1111 Mid Range round/follow on project has no funding line now. So the tank may start to have the fire control and breach mod needed for a guided round and AMP fusing, but no actual projectile will be forthcoming quickly.

I don't see it being a big priority either. Current low-intensity conflicts don't have a need for such munitions, a war against Russia would be at relatively close quarters in European terrain, and a war against China would be mostly naval. It's a nice capability to have, but there's no pressing need for such a thing.

Like right now 30mm or possibly 40x180mm for Stryker, and a growing push towards a 50mm gun, a smaller version of the 1990s 50mm Supershot basically, for the Bradley that could backfit to a new 30mm mounts.

The new 30mm gun we're testing as a potential upgrade for the Stryker and the Bradley is seriously impressive; a friend of mine is participating in the trials, here's what he had to say about it:

The new 30mm is fucking amazing. We've tested it against newer stuff like a BMP-3 and a non-monkey model T-72, complete with composite armor and ERA, that we got from somewhere. Probably Ukraine.

It fucked them both up good; the BMP-3 is supposed to be protected against the 25mm round at 300 meters; this murdered the shit out of it from more than twice that range. The new 30mm round is way more effective than anything the 25mm can do; they won't even give us the full stats and ballistics data on it, they're keeping its full performance a secret.

It kills light armor dead, but in tests we weren't allowed to use it against infantry; it's a point weapon for armor or buildings, we're not allowed to use it like a machine gun the way they used to train Bradley gunners to do. We're only supposed to engage infantry with the coaxial gun. Naturally, when they gave us a bunch of mannequins out in the open and told us they were enemy infantry, I gave the order to engage with the 30mm. There wasn't anything left. I got yelled at, but not too bad, because the 1SG had a chubby too.

The new fire control system and C3/C4 system is great too. The commander can manually take over from his station, or let the gunner do his job. The Strykers are all linked via something like wifi, so a gunner in one Stryker can target a vehicle or position and the commanders in every other Stryker nearby can have their gunner lock onto the same target with the push of a button. It really increases situational awareness, helps people know where the enemy is even if he's behind cover or out of their LOS, allows us to concentrate fire, and is just really handy all around. We haven't tested it yet, but supposedly the same uplink system will let a Stryker paint a target, then retreat behind cover, and another vehicle with an indirect fire weapon like a mortar, missile, or howitzer can start pounding the same target or position without the spotter actively painting it. Supposedly we'll also be able to network with other vehicles, like the M1A3 Abrams when it comes out, the F-35, and an upgraded Apache so we can all paint targets for each other and whoever is most appropriate takes them out. Right now it's really easy to use, like a video game almost. The MGS version has a new 105mm round that is indirect fire and semi-homing, and supposedly we can just paint a target and then retreat while another Stryker with the 105 round blows it up from behind cover; we're not part of the group testing that one though.

The other Stryker variant that they're replacing the original version with retains the M2HB, but adds a Javelin ATGM so it can engage armor. Honestly, we probably won't adopt that many because there's better vehicles we can be engaging IFV's and MBT's with (like other IFV's and MBT's), and deleting the Mk.19 reduces effectiveness against infantry, particularly in fortified positions. But it's nice to have.

The only downside to the new 30mm gun is that while swapping out ammo for the gun is ridiculously easy and so much better than the Bradley, having to completely reload the gun requires two crewmen to get out of the vehicle and stand on the hull while they reload. It's a pain in the ass, exposing yourself to enemy fire, but supposedly they've already got a fix for it and the guys say it isn't actually that bad. It's still faster than reloading the Bradley once it runs dry.

Personally, I'd be interested in Britain's new 40mm that fires plastic cased, telescoped rounds. That's the direction we're going with the LSAT and related small arms, a bigger round gives us more firepower, and the gun itself is smaller and lighter than the 30mm we're looking at, so it's really a better choice for upgrading the Bradley and Stryker, in my opinion. It was at least good enough that the British went with it instead of our 30mm when we offered it.

That all consumes its money in every way, and the US Army is in the budget cut era for the long haul.

Yep. In fact, we've halved the number of Abrams tanks and Bradley's in service since Obama took office; most of our M1A1's are now in storage in a California desert, in anticipation of being upgraded (eventually) to the M1A3. We've also binned all of our air defenses except the Patriot, and even though we paid to develop the MEADS as a replacement for the Patriot, Germany and Italy are buying it, and it vastly outperforms the Patriot in every way possible, we're not adopting it ourselves.

On a random note also a XM1158 program is now qualifying improved 556-762 tungsten AP rifle rounds, because body armor now exists that stops the existing ammo.

Yes, but none of our enemies are really using that body armor. Russian armor has relatively identical performance to ours, but they can't issue it to the majority of their troops, only 'elite' units. Their new helmet is rated to stop a 9mm Makarov at 5 meters; the PASGT we issued in the 1980's could stop a .44 Magnum at less than a meter (granted, it would dent the hell out of it and probably give the wearer a concussion, but it wouldn't kill him.). China is the world's largest exporter of (cheap, in every sense of the term) body armor, but they only issue it to troops posing for photo ops; the majority of their generals seem to think that issuing body armor would be 'coddling' the troops and are against widespread adoption. North Korea can't even afford to feed their troops, much less give them all flak jackets.

Developing new AP rifle rounds is basically just staying ahead of the curve, and new rounds like the M855A1 and Mk.318 Mod 0 have enough of a boost in performance to tide us over for a few years. The new 6.5mm plastic cased, telescoped round for the LSAT project has significantly improved performance over 7.62x51mm NATO, just from an improved ballistic coefficient, so if we go that route I'm sure we'll stay on top for years to come, particularly since the main strategy of countries like China and North Korea has consistently been to throw more bodies than the enemy has bullets.

I am looking forward to the new, lightweight body armor using sintered boron nitride/silicon carbide ceramic plates, "bulletproof uniforms" made of kevlar and boron carbide nano wires, and graphene. It'll be interesting to see what sort of actual performance that stuff has once it makes out of the lab.

[Sea Skimmer]

The new 30mm gun we're testing as a potential upgrade for the Stryker and the Bradley is seriously impressive; a friend of mine is participating in the trials, here's what he had to say about it:

That's pretty interesting, I think that would have been the XM813 in the Army coupla design he's talking about? As they the Army is also testing some Norwegian RWS coupla design as an alternative for Stryker only, but I don't think that's had any actual solider trials. The Norwegian design is IIRC somewhat lighter but also really lightly armored.

No surprise the 30mm appears much better against everything, its a lot more powerful. Army only kept the 25mm viable at all so long by adapting a DU round, and pushing the powder charge so high barrel life is only 170 of the latest stuff.

The original penetration requirement for Bushmaster was only a 1in plate at 60 degrees at 1km. Come a long way since.

Personally, I'd be interested in Britain's new 40mm that fires plastic cased, telescoped rounds. That's the direction we're going with the LSAT and related small arms, a bigger round gives us more firepower, and the gun itself is smaller and lighter than the 30mm we're looking at, so it's really a better choice for upgrading the Bradley and Stryker, in my opinion. It was at least good enough that the British went with it instead of our 30mm when we offered it.

That's originally a US project... US sold them all the technology and patent rights around 1998, though our weapon had been in 45mm. Relevant US work started directly in the 1970s, but goes back to the 1940s and 50s. Ares designed CTA cased everything in the 1980s.

The Army 45mm CTA was an attempt to replicate 35x228mm AP performance in a much more compact loading, since that Swiss thing is huge. In this they directly succeeded, at least in terms of basic cartridge comparisons as the gun itself was never perfected, and gained much greater HE performance, but CTA ammo is troublesome. Some of the problems got solved by the British-French team after another 15 years of research ending onlyrecently, but some you can't do a lot about. Such as while physically more compact ammo configured like that is a lot less ballistically efficient. You need more gunpowder in it to makeup for that, and all else aside that means the barrel heats up proportionally faster. That's not a problem for 5 rounds but it is for 100 rapid fire, the entire point of these guns.

Some congressional report exists that neatly lists and explains other problems, but I can't locate it at the moment. Some problems can be dealt with more then others, it would seem apparent the Europeans did solve the pesky chamber sealing problem. That's partly just from the rotary chamber. The US has kept up telescoped ammo work, but not rotary chambers through the trunnion.

So basicallythe Euro 40mm is a a 5mm downgrade from the old late-low end cold war desired level of AP performance. Because the high end was always taking 35x228mm and instead of making it more compact, go the other way and straight wall it it out to make the 50mm Supershot which was also partly telescoped. This was then fired from a normal Bushmaster action. That projected was taken more seriously and longer then the 45mm CTA seems to have been, but all these weapons got to live fire on real vehicles .

The present 50mm supershot is different in turn, somewhat shorter and designed specifically to go with the 30mm XM813. And 40mm SS just floats around....because unlike all other options its a direct drop in for 30mm bore stuff, and keeps up the total ammo supply. It ranks at amid point between 30mm and 40mm CTA for AP power.

The 40mm CTA and 50mm SS are basically just single shot weapons in practical terms, at which point it seems to me the bigger round is very favorable. Realistically the CTA has no chance, if the US Army wanted it they would have pounced earlier.

Yep. In fact, we've halved the number of Abrams tanks and Bradley's in service since Obama took office; most of our M1A1's are now in storage in a California desert, in anticipation of being upgraded (eventually) to the M1A3. We've also binned all of our air defenses except the Patriot, and even though we paid to develop the MEADS as a replacement for the Patriot, Germany and Italy are buying it, and it vastly outperforms the Patriot in every way possible, we're not adopting it ourselves.

The cost of the German buy just doubled to 9 billion Euros and is being 'renegotiated', this happened in the past couple months. So that salemay not be happening anymore, while Italy only wanted a single battery for a long time, specifically to defend Rome. That will be entirely depend on what Germany does. The US cancelled it because we don't have enough money to buy PAC-3 warshots in the first place and that's a problem if you want to field ~60 MEADS batteries armed only with that missile.

MEADS is way superior on radar and mobility, but it also needs 3 radars per battery, vs 1 for Patriot. MEADS was a directly replacement for HAWK, thus the same 2+1 radar configuration, but that does seriously increase the unit cost. At 5 million a shot the PAC-3s add up absurdly fast, the big Patriot missile is still closer to 1-2 million, and far superior as an anti aircraft weapon because the range is much greater. That's become a lot more important with the increase in Russian and Chinese tactical air and bomber firepower.

The original idea was that MEADS would have a secondary cheap missile of about 100km range to improve its anti aircraft as opposed to anti missile/terminal defense performance called Low Cost Interceptor but the GWOT ate that money. Also they intended to use truly cheap technology so it could counter swarming cruise missiles, but would have sucked against any target able to evade.

As it is 60Patriot batteries isn't a joke, and a new wasteland of money of a program has been launched to replace the radars on existing equipment, with a 360 degree requirement. The intend is to use a generation newer AESA technology, so long term this will work out much more capable then MEADS...in maybe 2025. Directly adapting the Marine GATOR radar is one possibility.

Yes, but none of our enemies are really using that body armor. Russian armor has relatively identical performance to ours, but they can't issue it to the majority of their troops, only 'elite' units.

Oh sure, but elite units are the most likely ones to actually fight or confront us in some kind of standoff. So it's a little more relevant then it might be.

They don't universally issue body armor because its too expensive due to the limited shelf lives of the vests, but that doesn't mean they couldn't issue large amounts suddenly in war either. The vests have limited lives even kept in the box, but its certainly far better that way. In the case of Russia were talking about a country that successfully hid the fact that it had 50% more tactical air defense vehicles then the US knew about in East Germany for two decades.

Also in fairness a better AP round is also useful against armored suicide bombs, and buildings if you have a gatling gun on a helicopter.

I am looking forward to the new, lightweight body armor using sintered boron nitride/silicon carbide ceramic plates, "bulletproof uniforms" made of kevlar and boron carbide nano wires, and graphene. It'll be interesting to see what sort of actual performance that stuff has once it makes out of the lab.

Sintered silicon carbide is already common but a bit inferior to much more expensive boron carbide. Think you have your nitride and carbide references flipped though?

IIRC the biggest desired use for Boron nitride is in fact to make it into nanotubes, then lace the nanotubes through a boron carbide or similar ceramic plate before you sinter it all together as reinforcement. Carbon nanotubes could also be used for this if that tech ever pans out, very small scale ballistics tests have now taken place. Key problems are actually arranging the nanotubes in any useful sense, and then huge thermal expansion problems in processing and service from the disimilar material. Embedding stuff like .3% synthetic nanodiamonds is also something being well explored. One big diamond wont work as armor, but diamond that's already dust is still diamond hard.

For the flexible armor uniform thing a bunch of avenues seem to be working for being both fireproof and bulletproof, but to really work well against a rifle we need that Dupont M5 fiber to pan out. It would let you take a normal IIIA soft vest and make it about 50% lighter, and able to stop rifle rounds, though the blunt a trauma problem might remains. It could also be used as a much stronger backing layer for hard armor.

Some metal armor is now becoming viable too that has titanium and aluminum armors with ceramic fibers embedded. Same thermal expansion problem, but the end result is you get armor that's locally harder then tungsten is, so it can start to breakup that kind of penetrator. That may already be in some classified use, but I doubt it. Evenutally though this will make light armor vehicles a lot better protected without covering them in tons of ceramic armor.

[Sea Skimmer]

To be fair, the T-64, T-72, T-80, and T-90 are all capable of firing gun-launched guided missiles. It was an attempt to make up for poor accuracy with conventional munitions at long range, required the tank to be stationary and actively painting the target with a laser the entire time (flight time is 3-5 seconds, IIRC), and in practice the Russians have rarely loaded more than two missiles per tank because they take up more room than a conventional round. These missiles have a range of 4-5km and I can't recall ever hearing of a single one being fired in anger.

Russia never exported those missile systems, and it was something like 1 in 4 T-64s and T-80s actually had thef irecontrol because it was such a huge cost increase. The main point was it let them shoot back against western ATGM vehicles, rather then just being forced to charge to close the range. 4-5km range was enough for that, and largely limited by the tank sights anyway. Apparently the launch blast blinding the gunners visual target tracking was a persistent problem.

We tried the same concept with the MGM-51 Shillelagh on the M551 Sheridan light tank and the M60A2 "Starship" Patton tank. What a fucking disaster that was!

Yeah but it was the 1960s, what do you expect? Similar vintage Russians stuff was worse. The accuracy of many Soviet ATGMs is simply low. Also give some love to the MBT-70 monster tank. That was by far the most absurdly freedomized of them all.

the placement of the guidance system meant you couldn't start tracking/guiding the missile until it was 730 meters away (which is a ridiculous minimum firing distance) and it had a maximum range of only 2,000 meters, so you had a short-ranged missile with a VERY limited engagement envelope.

That was the original missile, they moved to B model which was 3,000m, the same as the original TOW. I've seen varying claims for minimal range, the missile gathering system certainly began functioning sooner then 730m but you would probably miss. It was not a great weapon, but the assumption at the time was a Soviet T-62 would have low accuracy past 1,500m and very little past 2,000m so you'd have entire 1km band to engage in with sorta impunity. That's enough time to fire several missiles. This was not going to work because the missile and gun were just not very good, but the idea was not horrible. Russia went and fielded tank missiles to avoid that vulnerability.

Some models of XM813 concept actually had an internal TOW system too, with generally four missiles in blisters on the upper sides of the turret. This was ditched in no small part on cost grounds, the computerized TOW sight would actually be a serious fraction of the total tank price. The early models of XM813 also had the Bushmaster as a coax instead of a retracting couplaon MBT-70. This died for normal coax gun.

We built over 88,000 MGM-51's, and we fired a grand total of six of them in combat, and at bunkers, not the tanks they were intended to kill! And only in the Gulf War, so they sat around gathering dust for thirty years.

Yeah, but we also had a million plus rounds of 105mm APFSDS from the same vintage we never fired or barely fired, because by the time of the Gulf War only 1 105mm armed tank battalion saw combat, and by then it was only carrying the best two models of 105mm shot around. And since then they were all ditched from service before Iraq ect.. lots of stuff never gets used. The actual cost of even 80,000 of those thing was nothing compared to the money being spent at the same time in Vietnam.

The big problem was just how bad the damn 152mm gun worked in the first place. In Vietnam they just removed all the gun ammo from them, went around with nothing but machine guns and that actually worked pretty well. A lot better then an M113, nothing like the weight of a M48.

While I agree that the Norks should, theoretically, be more competent and better motivated (by fear, if nothing else, but fanaticism probably plays a big role) compared to Saddam's army, I should point out that Saddam's army wasn't nearly a foot shorter than their neighbors to the south because of life-long malnutrition.

Its actually ~3 inch difference, and they are still taller then ROK kids were in 1950. I don't think this would seriously hinder them in a war setting. Probably have much worse recovery rates from wounds though, and more vulnerability to disease and infection in general if it came to a long conflict. It's really not going to matter in combat as long as they've been fed during service. Humans are tough.

Saddam also had much more modern hardware, at least during the first Gulf War.

Yeah and that was basically a problem. His army had so many different kinds of crap, and so many different calibers of shell including non interchangable 155mm and 152mm models, that his force could not really be logistically supported. Nor did could this ever have made for good training routines, and as far as the artillery went in particular it just wasn't really capable of shoot and scoot or counter battery tactics. They didn't have the survey ability or the command and leadership to try. So fighting from fixed positions with no assured resupply of ammo they utterly lost the duels to much shorter ranged American guns that moved. Air support destroying all the Iraqi counterfire radars helped this, but it functionally didn't matter, it just turned it really extra completely one sided.

Functionally what it means is a super 155 52cal gun really can shoot shell 40km or more,depending on what model and such, but even if its relatively accurate at that distance, its relative. Your actual concentration of fire at range is not great. The solution is just more rocket launchers, and North Korea has gone crazy at that since even before the Gulf War. Other then the famous 170mm guns they mostly just use 122mm howitzers and only moderate amounts of 152mm artillery. That does have something to do with the physical size of KPA soldiers. But that's smart. They want to be able to train people to fight with what they have. Saddams guys were not, at least in his regular army and reserve. Some Republican Guard divisions were, but not all.

North Korea, meanwhile, has utter shit for hardware. The overwhelming majority of their air defenses are Soviet and Chinese leftovers from the 50's and 60's, ditto for their armor. They're still fielding T-34-85's from WW2 as infantry support in some units!

Sure, I grant you that. But if you are a US Marine landing from a helicopter do you want to be told the local defense group is KPA reserve infantry, or KPA reserve infantry plus an unknown number of fully operational T-34 tanks that might be camping your landing zone? The North Koreans still have 900,000 people on duty, and the ground typically favors short range engagements.

Also the North Koreans also have lots of those PT-76/85 style light tanks around,specifically to cross all the rice paddies, and go up all the narrow mountain trails. T-34 would be horrible in the desert but Korea is Korea.

Nork defectors have stated that fully half their armor is inoperable due to a combination of poor maintenance and a lack of fuel. Their most advanced foreign tank is a T-62, and their domestic tanks are clones of the T-62 with upgrades from a 1980's-era T-72. And there's little to indicate that their engineering is any better than China's.

I'm sure the artillery shells they make still mostly explode. Lack of fuel makes it pointless for them to keep all their tanks operational in all reality, but they have a absurd number, and they focus attention on units actually deployed near the DMZ, and above all around the capital.

So while North Korean troops are probably more competent and more motivated than Saddam's troops, this is still a conflict where one side is mostly equipped with leftovers the Soviets considered obsolete in the 1960's, and the other has the latest gear for the 21st century. Human wave attacks didn't work in the first war, and I doubt they're going to be any more effective in the next one.

You might consider the nature of all those ridges, and how well 21st century troops can attack up them either. A reason exists why the lightly equipped Chinese and KPA could stonewall the US in the first place without fielding any tanks at all. Since then the ground has only gotten denser and worse and deeply fortified. The KPA would loose sure, but they've got more heavy AT weapons then they used too now, and simply no good counter exists to people spamming MRL systems at you. Its not exactly vital if only half their guns work either,that's why they pile them up. They full expect massive losses from air raids.

Air power can crush North Korea, that isn't in doubt, but they have so many targets and so many heavy fortifications the amount of time needed to actually hit them all is considerable. The US has now dropped nearly 50,000 bombs on ISIL, every one guided, and they remain an army in the field! The ROKs own air power is still fairly weak, and dependent overall on just a handful of fully equipped airbases. It couldn't just bomb the KPA into submission in a day or two even against no air opposition at all. Unlike Saddam the KPA would also have the ability to jam and some radios and radars GPS on a useful basis, and deploy any cyberwarfare annoyances it might have handy,

North Korea is no doubt inferior to China on technology, but that's still way superior to the kind of hardware Saddam could make himself, and people would not sell him anything he wanted. Saddam had a domestic conventional arms industry but it was literally a couple specific factories, not a broad based concern.

I'm not entirely certain what you mean by this. North Korea is practically a medieval state with WW2 Soviet trucks and AKM's. Do you mean that their equipment is relatively simple and not reliant on advanced technology they can't support?

[/quote]

Yeah. When it comes to the hard line of it, they know where they rank, and what kinds of equipment they can build. Such as they can't build a great tank, but they did go and make lots of those obsolete howitzers they had be mobile on APC hulls for example. Then organized armored corps in which lots of those vehicles are pushed far forward to directly back up the lead T-62 battalion. Stuff like this carries over and over again and leads to a relatively more effective force. The US comes up with weird requirements and not always optimal looking weapons because it desired to be able to invade anywhere. They train lots of 'sniper' units which are more of just elite skrimishers to try to bog down US troops in depth. They don't have the special forces capability they once did offensively though, lack of fuel and hard currency nerfed that.

The North Koreans have kept this kind of military self improvement up since 1953, while Saddam was just a warlord with a small core of officers and men trained on largely British lines and doctrine,and then this huge army of Soviet and Brazilian hodgepodge crap organized to hold a trench line that was far overextended.

[Swindle1984]

They don't universally issue body armor because its too expensive due to the limited shelf lives of the vests, but that doesn't mean they couldn't issue large amounts suddenly in war either. The vests have limited lives even kept in the box, but its certainly far better that way.

That shelf life is mostly a CYA issue (unless we're talking ballistic nylon vests); I've still got an old PASGT vest, last from a batch of several I had in the closet dating back to the mid-to-late 80's. The rest all got shot up when I decided to test them.

Every single one consistently stopped 9mm, .45ACP, .357 Magnum, 00 buckshot, and 12-gauge rifled slugs. 7.62x25mm Tokarev occasionally penetrated at ranges of 10 yards or less, but it wasn't consistent. I didn't bother testing any rifle rounds because those would just zip through when the vests were brand new.

These were issued vests, complete with dirt, sweat stains, and everything, so they weren't new in the package. I'll have to dig out the one I still have left, I think the previous owner wrote his name and unit in it.

So I don't think shelf life is a serious factor in why Russia and China aren't issuing body armor. Russia's problem is explicitly the cost involved; their Ratnik program is geared toward fixing that, but their budget just can't field an entire army's worth of body armor. Not rapidly, anyway.

I also don't see anyone being able to suddenly produce and issue large quantities of body armor when a war goes down. China might be able to pull it off by commandeering all the kevlar vests they produce for export, but most of that is rated to stop pistol rounds only and is intended for cops in third-world countries, not front-line troops in a war zone.

Sintered silicon carbide is already common but a bit inferior to much more expensive boron carbide. Think you have your nitride and carbide references flipped though?

Almost. Silicon carbide was correct, but I meant boron carbide rather than boron nitride.

http://www.gtresearchnews.gatech.edu/ar ... -soldiers/

Some metal armor is now becoming viable too that has titanium and aluminum armors with ceramic fibers embedded.

The level IV plates in my carrier are a hybrid; boron carbide sandwiched between steel plates, with a ballistic nylon spall plate (not attached, separate) on top. They're rated to stop multiple rounds from .30-06 AP. Given the expense, I haven't bought a second set to field test, and I don't own a .30-06 anymore; I do have some steel-core AP rounds in 7.62x51mm though, so if I ever do get a second set of plates and decide to waste the money, I could test it for myself.

For the flexible armor uniform thing a bunch of avenues seem to be working for being both fireproof and bulletproof, but to really work well against a rifle we need that Dupont M5 fiber to pan out. It would let you take a normal IIIA soft vest and make it about 50% lighter, and able to stop rifle rounds, though the blunt a trauma problem might remains. It could also be used as a much stronger backing layer for hard armor.

Lightening the vest is an excellent goal, but I don't think we'll have a complete uniform that can stop bullets any time in the foreseeable future.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2 ... 214943.htm

The "bulletproof t-shirt" made of boron carbide nanowires seems promising, and if you make a uniform out of a blend of that stuff and kevlar (I have a kevlar balaclava, why can't I get BDU's made of the same stuff?), it would be fire resistant and provide a hell of a lot more protection against things like razor wire and shrapnel. As you said, even if they make a uniform jacket/pants that can physically stop a bullet, you're still going to have a lot of trauma to the person inside said uniform; there's a reason vests are so stiff, and it ain't for promoting good posture.

Also in fairness a better AP round is also useful against armored suicide bombs, and buildings if you have a gatling gun on a helicopter.

The M134 minigun chews through walls just fine without AP rounds, mostly through volume. Cinderblock and thin concrete walls don't actually offer much resistance to rifle-caliber rounds (not for very long, anyway), and for thicker concrete or stone walls you'd just use a Mk.19 or a rocket rather than waste small arms ammo. The only reason to load a minigun with AP rounds is if you're engaging lightly armored vehicles, in which case, once again, a rocket or 40mm would do the job much more efficiently.

MEADS is way superior on radar and mobility, but it also needs 3 radars per battery, vs 1 for Patriot.

The way I've always heard it, from the technical descriptions, is that MEADS works just fine with one radar per battery, but can network multiple radars and batteries.

Also give some love to the MBT-70 monster tank. That was by far the most absurdly freedomized of them all.

Well, it did give birth to the M1 Abrams and Leopard 2, so it wasn't a failure by any means. But yes, it was quite absurd.

-Joint US-German project
- Germans get pissed because Americans keep picking retarded things to add to it, take their 120mm smoothbore gun and start their own project
- American version has 152mm gun/missile launcher that utterly failed in M60A2, a 20mm anti-aircraft gun, and a rotating cockpit for the driver that caused vertigo and nausea
- It's not working
- Ah, fuck it, let's just take the parts that work and combine them with what the Germans came up
- Abrams

That was the original missile, they moved to B model which was 3,000m, the same as the original TOW. I've seen varying claims for minimal range, the missile gathering system certainly began functioning sooner then 730m but you would probably miss.

Friend of mine who's ex-82nd rode in a Sheridan for a few years, did a tour in a certain South American country. They actually dropped with Shillelagh missiles, but were ordered to mount a Dragon ATGM on top of the turret to engage targets closer than 800 meters. When he went into Iraq, they gave him a pair of AT4's to engage Iraqi tanks with in case the Shillelagh and gun rounds didn't work out.

He's thankful he never had to fire the gun in anger, except once just for shits and giggles so he could say he had. He did end up firing the Dragon though. I'll have to see if he's up for providing details.

The early models of XM813 also had the Bushmaster as a coax instead of a retracting couplaon MBT-70. This died for normal coax gun.

I can't think of any mass-produced tank that had a coaxial autocannon, other than the 20mm on the AMX-30. Beyond that, the BMP-3 and the Chinese knockoff are the only vehicles I can think of with both a gun and a coaxial autocannon.

The big problem was just how bad the damn 152mm gun worked in the first place. In Vietnam they just removed all the gun ammo from them, went around with nothing but machine guns and that actually worked pretty well. A lot better then an M113, nothing like the weight of a M48.

That's partly because they couldn't get the gun to work in the first place, and partly because they didn't have enough ammo to go around when Vietnam kicked off. Troops loved it because of its mobility compared to the M48 and M113, but it was ridiculously vulnerable to RPG's and especially anti-tank mines. There's plenty of photos of Sheridans with the steel turret sitting atop a melted aluminum hull. The ammo for the 152mm was also especially vulnerable to cookoffs if an RPG round or mine penetrated the hull; catastrophic explosions generally aren't good for crew survival.

Its actually ~3 inch difference, and they are still taller then ROK kids were in 1950. I don't think this would seriously hinder them in a war setting. Probably have much worse recovery rates from wounds though, and more vulnerability to disease and infection in general if it came to a long conflict. It's really not going to matter in combat as long as they've been fed during service. Humans are tough.

I exaggerated. The South Koreans purposely pick the tallest people they've got for border duty, for the intimidation factor.

But yes, life-long malnutrition would be a serious hindrance in war. Less body mass, less muscle tone, brittle bones, long-term health issues, susceptibility to disease and injury, etc. are going to result in poor combat performance. They won't have the endurance, strength, or mental alertness of troops who have been well-fed all their lives, and that means more casualties, even if it's just from fatigue.

A guy who's half-starving and fed almost solely on rice also isn't going to have the best morale, especially once constant bombing disrupts the supply line and he gets even less food. Cutting off a Nork unit from the rest of the army, waiting for their supplies to run low, then airdropping some McDonald's with leaflets telling them they'll get more if they surrender could actually be a viable tactic.

But if you are a US Marine landing from a helicopter do you want to be told the local defense group is KPA reserve infantry, or KPA reserve infantry plus an unknown number of fully operational T-34 tanks that might be camping your landing zone?

Hull armor on a T-34-85 is 47mm at its thickest, 40mm on the sides, and 20mm on top. Turret is 60mm front, 52mm side, 30mm rear, and 16mm top. That's all rolled homogenous armor (not all of it of especially good quality); photo evidence and Nork defectors all indicate no additional armor has been added.

A Ma Deuce firing M903 SLAP ammo can penetrate 34mm of hardened steel at 500 meters, the Raufoss Mk 211 can penetrate 50mm of RHA at 500 meters. So even something as simple as an M2 machine gun can pose a legitimate threat to a T-34, at least from the top, sides, and rear. Not an especially good one, mind you, but a threat nonetheless.

The HEDP round fired from the Mk 19 automatic grenade launcher can penetrate 51mm of RHA, so again, a legitimate threat. The M203 and M302 40mm grenade launchers fire HEDP rounds that achieve the same penetration, so the grenadier in a squad could potentially penetrate a vulnerable point in a T-34.

Of course, using a heavy machine gun or 40mm grenade launcher against a tank is more of a desperation tactic. An M72 LAW (which the USMC recently ordered 10,000 more of) could penetrate 200mm of RHA in the M72A1 version; the M72A4 and M72E9 both get greater penetration, though I'd have to look up the numbers on those. Obviously the AT4, SMAW, and other weapons would be even more effective.

The point being, the T-34 isn't any more of a threat than, say, a BMP-1. And the T-34 has absolutely terrible visibility, very low situational awareness for the crew. They didn't do so well in the Korean War against 1950's weapons, they're sure as hell not going to be any more effective against modern weapons.

Also the North Koreans also have lots of those PT-76/85 style light tanks around,specifically to cross all the rice paddies, and go up all the narrow mountain trails.

These definitely are a tactical advantage, particularly since we no longer have light tanks of our own. But they have even lighter armor than on the T-34; thickest armor the PT-76 has is 25mm on the front of the turret. And while they have hundreds of them, less than half are believed to be operational due to lack of fuel and maintenance.

You might consider the nature of all those ridges, and how well 21st century troops can attack up them either. A reason exists why the lightly equipped Chinese and KPA could stonewall the US in the first place without fielding any tanks at all. Since then the ground has only gotten denser and worse and deeply fortified.

Air strikes, cruise missiles, cluster munitions from M270 MLRS', etc. would go a long way to softening them up, and we also have more sophisticated ways to deal with minefields than we did in the late 40's/early 50's. We really don't need to charge up Hamburger Hill with infantry if we can just level the whole damn thing and move on.

and simply no good counter exists to people spamming MRL systems at you.

155mm howitzers significantly outrange MLRS systems like the BM-21, much less the Chinese 107mm MLRS system the Norks also use. Combine that with air strikes and guided missiles and it's unlikely most MLRS systems would get a shot off, especially since the majority are in fixed positions we've already targeted and prioritized. It's the ones hidden away that will be mobile when shit goes down that pose a threat, and they'll be scattered and largely ineffective without proper spotters, all while trying to avoid an enemy that has air supremacy and satellite surveillance.

ir power can crush North Korea, that isn't in doubt, but they have so many targets and so many heavy fortifications the amount of time needed to actually hit them all is considerable.

You don't need to take them all out, just the ones near your objective. If Korean War 2: Electric Boogaloo broke out, our first objective would be a decapitation strike on Dear Leader. Probably with orders to capture him alive, rather than make him a martyr/allow high command to pretend he's alive and in a bunker somewhere.

The US has now dropped nearly 50,000 bombs on ISIL, every one guided, and they remain an army in the field!

This is because, unlike North Korea, ISIL doesn't particularly have a bunch of fixed fortifications and largely blends in with the populace. You also assume we're seriously attempting to blow them up, rather than making a half-assed show for the public while actively aiding and abetting them so they'll overthrow Assad.

There is a huge difference between a mobile, nebulous enemy that isn't tied down to any particular location and a bunch of artillery positions that have been dug into the side of a hill for the last fifty years.

North Korea is no doubt inferior to China on technology, but that's still way superior to the kind of hardware Saddam could make himself, and people would not sell him anything he wanted. Saddam had a domestic conventional arms industry but it was literally a couple specific factories, not a broad based concern.

Saddam had shitty T-72 clones and domestically-produced Scuds that worked as advertised. Kim can't even launch a Dong without it crashing or exploding.

Hell, they can't even get all of their small arms to function for a propaganda video made specifically to show how scary and awesome they are:

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYdNpU843Rs[/youtube]

Look at the guy right in front at the 1:50 mark. His gun won't fire!

They can't even maintain the finish on their AK's properly; half of those guns are bare steel.



North Korea poses no serious offensive threat to South Korea (beyond lobbing artillery over the border at Seoul), and their only defensive threat is being too much of a pain in the ass to be worth the effort. Which is why we would go for a decapitation strike right off the bat and try to kill/capture Kim Jong Un at the start of hostilities.

[Swindle1984]

More strictly on topic:


Rheinmetall's new 130mm promises a 50% performance increase over the hottest 120mm load available. Whether it can actually deliver that remains to be seen:

http://defense-update.com/20160614_rhei ... m-gun.html

The 130mm round seems to have the same diameter as the 120mm, but nearly twice the case volume. Much better performance than the 120mm, which is hitting the limits of what it can do, but without the weight and bulk issues of the 140mm gun we experimented with in the 80's and early 90's. Still, I'm reasonably certain that the 130mm gun will all but require an autoloader; if the case diameter is the same as the 120mm and only length is different, then perhaps we could dust off the FASTDRAW system? Two revolver-style 18-rnd autoloaders, with additional rounds stowed as usual wouldn't be too shabby.



China seems to be adopting a similar approach with its new 125mm gun:

http://www.popsci.com/china-builds-worl ... es-hide-it

They've got a ridiculously long barrel (L60, as opposed to the Leopard 2A6's L55 and M1a2 Abrams' L44), and instead of the two-piece ammunition common to the Russian 125mm guns China currently uses, it uses one-piece ammo like ours. They seem to be trying to get similar performance to the 130mm gun while retaining the same bore diameter (to avoid having to design new projectiles?). The one-piece ammunition should allow them to use long-rod penetrators, whereas the autoloader and two-piece ammo on the Russian gun limits them to short-rod penetrators.



And Russia is going full retard wanting to upgrade to a 152mm gun:

https://www.rt.com/news/258473-armata-t ... ful-shell/

They've tested the 152mm on a T-72 and T-80, and the T-14 reportedly has plenty of room in its turret for the upgrade. I'm just curious if this thing is going to actually go for high-velocity penetrators or focus mainly on HEAT rounds. And how much ammo can they store in that unmanned turret?

[Sea Skimmer]

The 130mm round seems to have the same diameter as the 120mm, but nearly twice the case volume. Much better performance than the 120mm, which is hitting the limits of what it can do, but without the weight and bulk issues of the 140mm gun we experimented with in the 80's and early 90's.

Yes it seems much more reasonable. However a yet further improved 120mm gun using the same overall technology, which would fire ammo you could not use in the older guns of that caliber.

Still, I'm reasonably certain that the 130mm gun will all but require an autoloader; if the case diameter is the same as the 120mm and only length is different, then perhaps we could dust off the FASTDRAW system? Two revolver-style 18-rnd autoloaders, with additional rounds stowed as usual wouldn't be too shabby.

Rheinmetall claimed the 130mm was scaled to be the biggest round you could still manually load. This would be very awkward, but the Leopard 2 tank could not be rebuilt with an autoloader gun easily. For a clean sheet tank the autoloader design would kinda depend on the style of tank. Fastdraw is good for a bustle, but that alternative chain drive autoloader had 43 rounds in the same space, using rather more moving parts.

They've got a ridiculously long barrel (L60, as opposed to the Leopard 2A6's L55 and M1a2 Abrams' L44), and instead of the two-piece ammunition common to the Russian 125mm guns China currently uses, it uses one-piece ammo like ours. They seem to be trying to get similar performance to the 130mm gun while retaining the same bore diameter (to avoid having to design new projectiles?). The one-piece ammunition should allow them to use long-rod penetrators, whereas the autoloader and two-piece ammo on the Russian gun limits them to short-rod penetrators.

At the time that gun was revealed the reports on China internet were that the purpose of said gun was to launch full caliber shells at the highest possible velocity, supporting guided rounds and the like at very long ranges. So a sort of hybrid tank-artillery piece or tank destroyer kind of gun concept. Since then nothing more has been seen on it.

They've tested the 152mm on a T-72 and T-80, and the T-14 reportedly has plenty of room in its turret for the upgrade. I'm just curious if this thing is going to actually go for high-velocity penetrators or focus mainly on HEAT rounds. And how much ammo can they store in that unmanned turret?

It's completely for the sabot rounds, and making sure those are effective at longer ranges, and perhaps I would suggest, without requiring the highest quality of ammo in the world to do it. A HEAT round would be a lot more effective then a 120mm but its still not going to be amazing against a future tank. The fact that it still has to be a shell with a solid nose is not helpful.

The Russians got several different 152mm tanks into the prototype or advanced mockup stage, I know project 474 Molot had 34 total rounds and is fairly similar to what the T-14 has become. It was the basis of US intel reports on 'FTS-3'. It used two fastdraw style drums feeding a central drum that rotated with the turret. I would expect the T-14 to have a similar amount of ammo, having all three crewmen together saves a huge amount of space. I'm not a fan of that crew seating as an idea, but one can't argue with it on that basis.

The 2A83 152mm gun of late cold war vintage has been photographed on the proving ground, and on a couple vehicles that were for demo purposes only, its pretty damn big but hard to say anything on probably chamber size. The US 140mm gun led to problems with HUGE in part because had a chamber that was IIRC nearly as big as the chamber on the 155mm G5 gun.




The carriage is for a WW2 era 152mm gun Br-2, which was a big weapon for its caliber. Also could take an 203mm howitzer.

Any future Russian 152mm gun ought to be a clean sheet weapon but the propaganda reports are unclear on if this is the case or the 2A83 is actually being used.

[Swindle1984]

Rheinmetall claimed the 130mm was scaled to be the biggest round you could still manually load. This would be very awkward, but the Leopard 2 tank could not be rebuilt with an autoloader gun easily. For a clean sheet tank the autoloader design would kinda depend on the style of tank. Fastdraw is good for a bustle, but that alternative chain drive autoloader had 43 rounds in the same space, using rather more moving parts.

Rheinmetall has explicitly stated that the 130mm gun is for the new tank it's jointly developing with France, not for the Leopard 2. They have a new series of high pressure rounds for the L55 gun that gets 20% more penetration than current rounds, but they're hitting the limit of what you can do with the 120mm and the new ammo wears the gun out fast; they've stated that the new ammo and the L55 are basically a temporary holdover so the Leopard 2 can engage the T-14 until the new tank and 130mm gun come online.

At the time that gun was revealed the reports on China internet were that the purpose of said gun was to launch full caliber shells at the highest possible velocity, supporting guided rounds and the like at very long ranges. So a sort of hybrid tank-artillery piece or tank destroyer kind of gun concept. Since then nothing more has been seen on it.

Yep; it's definitely intended for use in a vehicle (fume extractor, etc.), and is supposed to be super high-velocity. Beyond that, all we have is speculation.

It's completely for the sabot rounds, and making sure those are effective at longer ranges, and perhaps I would suggest, without requiring the highest quality of ammo in the world to do it. A HEAT round would be a lot more effective then a 120mm but its still not going to be amazing against a future tank. The fact that it still has to be a shell with a solid nose is not helpful.

Thing is, a 152mm HEAT round, even with a tandem warhead to defeat ERA (and Russia loves tandem-charge warheads, even though they're the biggest users of ERA and most of NATO doesn't have widespread use of it), isn't going to be all that effective against tanks like the Abrams, Leopard 2, or Challenger 2. The BGM-71 TOW has the same diameter warhead, and the Abrams has survived multiple hits from TOW's; or at least, survived enough to be salvaged, repaired, and returned to service. Hell, even a monkey-model M1A1 that had a catastrophic ammo explosion when ISIS hit it with a TOW (provided courtesy of Uncle Sam ) was surprisingly intact, despite having nowhere near the armor protection of a 'real' Abrams. So they really would have to be using sabots to get any real effectiveness out of the gun.

The Russians got several different 152mm tanks into the prototype or advanced mockup stage,

The 2A83 152mm gun of late cold war vintage has been photographed on the proving ground, and on a couple vehicles that were for demo purposes only, its pretty damn big but hard to say anything on probably chamber size.

This is a 2A83 gun on a T-72 hull. Every article I've read says the Russians are using a modernized version of the same gun, but who knows how accurate that actually is.

The T-14's turret was specifically designed so it could upgraded to a bigger gun later on. I'd be curious to get some photos of its autoloader, as well as the ammunition for the 152mm gun, so I can picture how many rounds it would carry and how.

The US 140mm gun led to problems with HUGE in part because had a chamber that was IIRC nearly as big as the chamber on the 155mm G5 gun.

The issue was less the chamber, and more the weight of the gun itself. The turret needed a HUGE counterbalance in the rear, at least on the version the Germans tested in the Leopard 2. The turret also needed a more powerful motor to swing such a big, heavy gun with the same speed and smoothness as the 120mm. I imagine it was the technical issues with implementing it that killed the 140mm rather than the problem of figuring out how to stow a decent number of rounds for it.




The M1 CATTB had an autoloader and was, for a time, selected to become the basis of the M1A3 (the M1A2 was just beginning production when the CATTB was undergoing testing), but the end of the Cold War killed it and until the T-14 came along, we didn't need anything more powerful than the 120mm.









Bigger gun, more armor, more fuel efficient engine, the CATTB was a beast. There's speculation that at least a few of its features have influenced the M1A3, given the possible prototype/test model that was photographed during transportation.



It's not as if bigger changes haven't been made to a tank during upgrades:






Something else I'd like to see is upgrades to older tanks. A lot of countries like Greece, Turkey, Egypt, etc. have large numbers of obsolete tanks. They can't afford to replace them all with new tanks, but they also can't maintain their army at the same size if they just get rid of the old ones. So upgrades to keep them competitive make sense, especially since most countries fielding these older tanks are going up against enemies that also are fielding mostly older tanks.

One of the most common tanks, at least in western-aligned nations like Taiwan, Greece, Turkey, etc. is the M60. The M60A3 is pretty much as far as anyone has upgraded, and a lot of countries are still fielding M60A1's. America had a solution:



The M60-2000. Basically, they plopped the turret from an M1A1 Abrams, complete with 120mm gun, onto the hull, upgraded the engine, and called it good. This would be a dramatic step up in performance for countries fielding the M60; Egypt could only benefit from this upgrade, given that they're the largest user of the M60 and second largest user of the M1. Bam, huge boost in performance for their armored divisions and more compatibility between vehicles. But for some reason, this upgrade never sold, even though it makes perfect sense.

Hell, there's even a surprising number of M48 Pattons in service, some of which are still armed with the original 90mm gun, instead of the M48A5 upgrade with the 105mm gun. Taiwan has over 500 (100 of which are M48/M60 hybrids), South Korea has 800, Turkey has nearly 800 in active service and another 1,400 in reserve, etc.



The Super M48 upgraded the M48 into something on par with the M60A3 or a little better, with applique composite armor, optional ERA, a 105mm gun that was an improvement over the one on the M48A5, etc. The reason the Super M48 never caught makes perfect sense, given that it was offered when the market was flooded with cheap (or even free) tanks more advanced than the M48 due to the Cold War ending and Russia having to sell half its army just to make payroll, but given how many are still in service with countries that often can't afford to replace them (or at least, not quickly), offering the upgrade again just makes sense. It keeps the tanks relevant instead of consigning them to the role of missile-magnet so the enemy hopefully runs out of ATGM's by the time the good tanks roll onto the scene, and lets poorer nations still carry a big stick against their neighbors.

It'd be interesting to see just how far you could push an obsolete design and keep it effective on the battlefield.

[Sea Skimmer]

Rheinmetall has explicitly stated that the 130mm gun is for the new tank it's jointly developing with France, not for the Leopard 2. They have a new series of high pressure rounds for the L55 gun that gets 20% more penetration than current rounds, but they're hitting the limit of what you can do with the 120mm and the new ammo wears the gun out fast; they've stated that the new ammo and the L55 are basically a temporary holdover so the Leopard 2 can engage the T-14 until the new tank and 130mm gun come online.

I just checked the original press release and it does in fact say it could be adapted to existing vehicles. The primary goal is of course for an entirely new tank, Rheinmetall would much rather build more then less! One can observe that the 130mm cartridge does not appear to be wider then the 120mm so this is pretty straight forward as a concept.

The new notional 120mm upgrade is being called by the company L55A1. Weight of the 130mm is 3000kg, which is actually still less then the 3,300kg the M256 version of the German 120mm weighs. American gun was made much heavier to simplify the recoil system and allow the use of a weaker but tougher, more reliable and cheaper gun steel. It was still the 1970s afterall when this was decided.

The XM291 reverted to the original German levels of steel strength, and all the new 120mm guns the US has worked on since have used varying levels of further weight reduction insanity. Like carbon fiber wrapped barrels for optimal dumb. It will be interesting to see how much actually does get saved if the M1A3 actually does get a new gun. With Trump as president that feels much more likely.

Thing is, a 152mm HEAT round, even with a tandem warhead to defeat ERA (and Russia loves tandem-charge warheads, even though they're the biggest users of ERA and most of NATO doesn't have widespread use of it), isn't going to be all that effective against tanks like the Abrams, Leopard 2, or Challenger 2. The BGM-71 TOW has the same diameter warhead, and the Abrams has survived multiple hits from TOW's; or at least, survived enough to be salvaged, repaired, and returned to service.

It would be a lot more effective then a TOW-2A vs M1A2+ I suspect, and Russia has now pyrotechnically advanced to a triple warhead shaped charge 125mm shell already, the extra charge fires slightly off axis to blow a wider hull in enemy ceramic or spaced armor. Small fore charge detonates ERA like normal. This produces little added effect against normal RHA measurements, but against specific threats its very useful in principle. US warhead designers themselves are long interested in stacked EFP warheads meanwhile, to produce a similar 'channel blasting' effect. The same idea in fact as new segmented sabot round, just in a higher velocity range. Future Combat System, dumb as it was on the face, funded a lot of work towards this end.

Large shaped charges are not dependent on simple warhead diameter scaling, once you get past a couple of pounds of explosives the designs start to incorporate waveshapers to regulate the explosion and at that point your total warhead mass becomes a lot more important then the diameter. The liner thickness itself can be made higher, and stronger materials then copper used and still squished into the jet. Really heavy warheads like Hellfire a much more dangerous as a result, and a 152mm HEAT round would be approaching that. Typical 95lb x 152mm round would have about a 24lb filler, that's as big as a Hellfire already, just hampered by the geometry of being a shell.

For velocity reasons though a lighter round is likely, but cut that filler down by a third and its still 18lb of charge inside. The front of the turrets of western tanks can probably handle that but not so much anywhere else.

Hell, even a monkey-model M1A1 that had a catastrophic ammo explosion when ISIS hit it with a TOW (provided courtesy of Uncle Sam ) was surprisingly intact, despite having nowhere near the armor protection of a 'real' Abrams. So they really would have to be using sabots to get any real effectiveness out of the gun.

As far as I can tell all models of M1 tank don't have more then 80mm thick steel around the rear of the bustle and possibly less. The combination of crew storage racks and ERA mods sorta gives that a chance to survive a grenade but anything else will just blowup the ammo. That's part of why as heavy as it is we still call the M1 an MBT and not a heavy tank. A proper heavy tank would put the composite armor all the way around the turret and on the engine bay, M1 just doesn't. Anything of serious caliber and potentially even 85mm gunfire from a T-34 is going to go through this on the rear arc. But it should not kill the crew by default.

The issue was less the chamber, and more the weight of the gun itself. The turret needed a HUGE counterbalance in the rear, at least on the version the Germans tested in the Leopard 2. The turret also needed a more powerful motor to swing such a big, heavy gun with the same speed and smoothness as the 120mm. I imagine it was the technical issues with implementing it that killed the 140mm rather than the problem of figuring out how to stow a decent number of rounds for it.

Yeah....huge. They found no real technical problems that could not be solved, the problem was most solutions pushed up weight,and if you actually upgraded the tank suspension and drive train with 1990 tech to deal with this weight as going to go up yet more. That new turbine the army never fielded could have kept fuel consumption from rising though. With no armor increases at all over an M1A2 the thing was already on track to become an MLC 80 tank. RAND did studies for clean sheet but still conventionally turreted tanks and reached the same conclusion, turns into 80 ton level of tank.

Only good way around that is to go to an unmanned turret, which is one of the things those various M1 tank driver test beds were researching when the plug was pulled. Very similar to T-14 all and all. Then you can get away with almost no turret armor at all and make your hull and front roof absurdly thick.

Bigger gun, more armor, more fuel efficient engine, the CATTB was a beast. There's speculation that at least a few of its features have influenced the M1A3, given the possible prototype/test model that was photographed during transportation.

I'd agree that seems likely. Someone probably wanted to physically look at it for design changes that might be forgotten. I have one of of the CATTB computer model reports around concerning a Thumper like turret, they are very interesting since among other things it specifies that the frontal armor with 40in turret weighs 550lb square foot,and 50in turret 750lb square foot. The bustle extension they model as very thin, basically just structural and I assume Thumper was built the same. CATTB had a lot of different stuff behind it.

The M60-2000. Basically, they plopped the turret from an M1A1 Abrams, complete with 120mm gun, onto the hull, upgraded the engine, and called it good. This would be a dramatic step up in performance for countries fielding the M60; Egypt could only benefit from this upgrade, given that they're the largest user of the M60 and second largest user of the M1. Bam, huge boost in performance for their armored divisions and more compatibility between vehicles. But for some reason, this upgrade never sold, even though it makes perfect sense.

It never sold because its at least half the cost of an entirely new tank, and since these tanks tend to be very old and are gaining weight they also need new engines too, which makes the process even more expensive. It would only make sense if a national force absolutely had to keep up its total numbers of effective MBTs in the short term. But places like Turkey and Egypt are more concerned with being physically rid of very old tanks like the M48 and M60 then upgrading them. They want to put that funding into new tanks they can make locally. The ROK already did this in the 1980s with heavy US assistance. I think Egypt still has T-55s for reserve infantry divisions, those had some major western supported upgrades at one point but the result is not too impressive.

The reason the Super M48 never caught makes perfect sense, given that it was offered when the market was flooded with cheap (or even free) tanks more advanced than the M48 due to the Cold War ending and Russia having to sell half its army just to make payroll, but given how many are still in service with countries that often can't afford to replace them (or at least, not quickly), offering the upgrade again just makes sense. It keeps the tanks relevant instead of consigning them to the role of missile-magnet so the enemy hopefully runs out of ATGM's by the time the good tanks roll onto the scene, and lets poorer nations still carry a big stick against their neighbors.

The problem is that kind of upgrade is still in fact just a missile magnet as far as protection goes against a Kornet , and also highly vulnerable to modern tank fire at any range it can be hit. It just doesn't make sense as a place to dump a huge amount of money and without a 120mm gun you're not going to be able to be certain of destroying a high end T-72 or T-80 from the export market. The M48 and M60 are just too old. If you own them, it still a serious mobile infantry support gun, but the role is limited to that. Too many alternatives exist.

It'd be interesting to see just how far you could push an obsolete design and keep it effective on the battlefield.

A lot of that depends on the specific qualities of a design, the problem is heavily upgrading an old tank is what features are we actually reusing? To be worthwhile an old tank upgrade ends up replacing all major components except the hull and turret steel structure. At this point why not make the leap to replacing that too,when it will give you such a better end product? The M48/60 were reliable in service sure, but you're planning to replace all the reliable parts with new parts! The fact that they are tall and need a lot of armor surface area meanwhile is a problem an upgrade can't solve, but a new tank can.

[Sea Skimmer]

That shelf life is mostly a CYA issue (unless we're talking ballistic nylon vests); I've still got an old PASGT vest, last from a batch of several I had in the closet dating back to the mid-to-late 80's. The rest all got shot up when I decided to test them.

Well first generation kelvar might have been tougher, but it certainly is in fact an issue for modern vests and fibers. Zylon/PBO fiber for example had to be pulled from the market completely because a vest made from it did fail before warranty, killing a PA state trooper, and it turned out the fiber was actually only stable for about 2 years. Spider silk armor has never appeared precisely because of this problem too, they've never found a way to keep it strong for more then a few months.

I also don't see anyone being able to suddenly produce and issue large quantities of body armor when a war goes down. China might be able to pull it off by commandeering all the kevlar vests they produce for export, but most of that is rated to stop pistol rounds only and is intended for cops in third-world countries, not front-line troops in a war zone.

Huge amounts of kevlar and other synthetic fibers are made all the time to be turned into boats and such things, as well as other defense products like missile casings The grade of fiber is lower and the yarns are generally bigger, but you certainly can use it as armor with a heavier weight of vest. You would need to use steel or titanium plates with it though, pressing the ceramic ones is a highly specialist industry. Probably one of the few things anyone could mass produce anymore. Not millions, but enough for front line troops.

Lightening the vest is an excellent goal, but I don't think we'll have a complete uniform that can stop bullets any time in the foreseeable future.

Probably not because it's going to need to be a breathable material for comfort, and that's going to require some kind of nanotechnology solution in the design, but that could come many different ways too. A good first step would just be a uniform that stops the rocks and dirt and very small metal particles in an explosion from embedding into the skin and helping create giant wounds and burns. That's very possible in the near future. Outright silk would already work, just far too expensive for that scale of issue, the Army did design silk underware on the basis it would matter most there.

The "bulletproof t-shirt" made of boron carbide nanowires seems promising, and if you make a uniform out of a blend of that stuff and kevlar (I have a kevlar balaclava, why can't I get BDU's made of the same stuff?), it would be fire resistant and provide a hell of a lot more protection against things like razor wire and shrapnel. As you said, even if they make a uniform jacket/pants that can physically stop a bullet, you're still going to have a lot of trauma to the person inside said uniform; there's a reason vests are so stiff, and it ain't for promoting good posture.

Yeah, and that' s where we need shear thickening or shear hardening materials, that locally stiffen under impact. This stuff exists, but nothing can absorb enough energy yet to deal with a rifle bullet. Stab vests employing it already exist in the UK. This is also a place where how carcinogenic some test materials are has become a problem. I have a lot of articles built up on it now, the question mark is still over carbon nanotubes. Ceramic wiskers, the super material of the 1990s, kinda died off R&D wise because they produced to be similar to asbestos in lab animals.

The M134 minigun chews through walls just fine without AP rounds, mostly through volume. Cinderblock and thin concrete walls don't actually offer much resistance to rifle-caliber rounds (not for very long, anyway), and for thicker concrete or stone walls you'd just use a Mk.19 or a rocket rather than waste small arms ammo. The only reason to load a minigun with AP rounds is if you're engaging lightly armored vehicles, in which case, once again, a rocket or 40mm would do the job much more efficiently.

A normal UH-60 isn't going to use rockets or a Mk.19, but they flew around providing CAS and sniper cover with miniguns all the time on Iraq. I got this from the horses mouth specific to Sadr city, and the US certainly bought that ammo by the millions so someone was firing it all. Money is the only reason I can see not to do it and the war in Iraq cost something like 120 billion dollars a year in supplies.

The way I've always heard it, from the technical descriptions, is that MEADS works just fine with one radar per battery, but can network multiple radars and batteries.

It can operate with a single X-band radar in principle, but that's limited, in the same way a HAWK assault fire section had a limited capability. The X-band radar needs to sector scan to deal with TBM attacks and heavy air raids/jamming or low level targets in certain situations. The idea basically was the UHF radar always scans volume but has rather low precision, while one X-band could be in a TBM watch on a key sector and the other rotating to also deal with air threats. Shoot and scoot was also a requirement, and in that situation you physically need at least 3 radars if you always one one operating, but only for short periods. The others got to be moving.

So yeah one radar could be used, but at that point your not really getting an amazing system for what it will cost. It doesn't lead to a useful overall cost comparison. The UHF radar was the one part the US Army still wanted, and may still build at some point, it could easily support any SAM system we bothered to integrate it with.

Patriot only has one C-band radar, so it can fire control and search at least somewhat better then X-band, but sector limited. It is very good in that sector though, and if you have 3+ independent Patriot radars arrayed together the sector limitation is much less important.

I suspect US Army internal logic went down that line too, MEADS would implode the fire battery count, and while each battery would be a 2+1 thing, the net reduction would go way down with the funding on hand. This would mean many situations in which only 1 MEADS battery exists, and this would be a serious tactical limitation in terms of site placement and survival, if for example one radar simply breaks down during an attack or is hit. You need a lot of SAMs together like any other weapon system to be effective.

Meanwhile if you want mobile shoot and scoot tactics MEADS is still pretty big, and the new internal Army program for Multi-Mission Launcher is a much better approach for forward tactical air defense. AMRAAM/Sidewinder/Stinger/radar Hellfire and the C-RAM missile all on one platform. That solves a lot more problems. MEADS is better Patriot, but Patriot isn't exactly a terrible system even in 2016. The MPQ-65 radar has kept it much more current then it might have been, because it added a second traveling wave tube to create a dedicated ABM scan pattern. So the radar is internally really two radars sharing an antenna. Not as good as fully solid state AESA tech now desired, but much better then a single beam PESA. SPY-1(V)'s evolution over original SPY-1 radars was system, creating two beams, but not numerous ones. So that's why the US navy has been so slow to adapt solid state radars as well. We built the best PESA tech anyone could dream up.

Pretty good example of the pushing the limit of old tech stuff you were before. For now I expect new Patriot radar R&D will blunder forward, but the MML will have good chances of production and light air defense will exist again. Drones are forcing that.

When he went into Iraq, they gave him a pair of AT4's to engage Iraqi tanks with in case the Shillelagh and gun rounds didn't work out.

Interesting. Ask him if he knows anything about a claim a M551 got stuck in a tree in Panama and had to be blown up.

AT thing has been doctrinal in the US Army for a long time, if it was commonly obeyed or not, is only written doctrine. Issue LAW or AT4 to tank crews, because in theory it solves the problem of dead space around the tank and down slopes. In 2003+ Iraq it was also a way for the tank to defend against car bombs. Seems like a good thing to have around.

I can't think of any mass-produced tank that had a coaxial autocannon, other than the 20mm on the AMX-30. Beyond that, the BMP-3 and the Chinese knockoff are the only vehicles I can think of with both a gun and a coaxial autocannon.

The BMP-3 100mm is only firing a 250m/s is how it gets away with that too. I've read AMX-30s were actually produced with a .50cal coax, which seems not surprising. It was meant to be field changeable for whatever sense that would matter.

That's partly because they couldn't get the gun to work in the first place, and partly because they didn't have enough ammo to go around when Vietnam kicked off. Troops loved it because of its mobility compared to the M48 and M113, but it was ridiculously vulnerable to RPG's and especially anti-tank mines. There's plenty of photos of Sheridans with the steel turret sitting atop a melted aluminum hull. The ammo for the 152mm was also especially vulnerable to cookoffs if an RPG round or mine penetrated the hull; catastrophic explosions generally aren't good for crew survival.

Yup, and an M48 was certainly better, mine kit or not. But reality was Vietnam was horrible for US tank crews, some armor battalions had 25% crew casualties without seeing major battles. All the mine and IED hazards of Iraq existed, but made much worse by an enemy who was also a major threat in a ground battle. MBT-70 and M1 put heavy emphasis on saving the crew for good reason.

But yes, life-long malnutrition would be a serious hindrance in war. Less body mass, less muscle tone, brittle bones, long-term health issues, susceptibility to disease and injury, etc. are going to result in poor combat performance. They won't have the endurance, strength, or mental alertness of troops who have been well-fed all their lives, and that means more casualties, even if it's just from fatigue.

My counterpoint would be the KPA is also never expecting these people to lug 120 pounds of gear around the way the US some how does. And its just a reality that they can on paper call out 5 million troops. If 1/3rd of those show up to fight, and half of them have working weapons this is still a tremendous amount of force. They are deployed in depth in North Korea, so if you want to start isolating them then its still a major battle anyway. That's why commies hoard weapons, it worked for Russia in 1941, it won't work for North Korea but it certainly makes them far more challenging then any rational military North Korea could ever afford would be.

But if you are a US Marine landing from a helicopter do you want to be told the local defense group is KPA reserve infantry, or KPA reserve infantry plus an unknown number of fully operational T-34 tanks that might be camping your landing zone?

Hull armor on a T-34-85 is 47mm at its thickest, 40mm on the sides, and 20mm on top. Turret is 60mm front, 52mm side, 30mm rear, and 16mm top. That's all rolled homogenous armor (not all of it of especially good quality); photo evidence and Nork defectors all indicate no additional armor has been added.[/quote]

http://www.oocities.org/pentagon/quarte ... scheme.gif

The front of the turret is 90mm thick and effectively over 100mm at some angles, the hull is 45mm at 60 degrees, meaning more like 90mm of LOS thickness unless your projectile is falling pretty steeply. The T-34-85 armor is arrayed so everywhere on the 60 degree frontal arc had 75-90mm effective protection, .50cal machine gun isn't going to cut it against that. Meanwhile an 85mm shell will wreck any US vehicle that is not a tank, it doesn't have the HEAT round of the BMP-1 but its KE firepower is much higher.

Homogeneous armor is better for sloped armor BTW then WW2 face hardened types, to the extent the difference matters, in reality its more complicated but not that relevant here either.

A Ma Deuce firing M903 SLAP ammo can penetrate 34mm of hardened steel at 500 meters, the Raufoss Mk 211 can penetrate 50mm of RHA at 500 meters. So even something as simple as an M2 machine gun can pose a legitimate threat to a T-34, at least from the top, sides, and rear. Not an especially good one, mind you, but a threat nonetheless.

Yeah but you can say the same thing about some much much better tanks and even a modern MBT would be in trouble from the rear or top, even the side on the engine bay if you have no side skirt or only a thin rubber one as on some Russian tanks. On the front though a T-34-85 has just enough armor to make it a serious problem to kill with anything smaller then a 25mm chaingun or actual AT rocket. In that respect it was bit ahead of most WW2 medium tanks, a Sherman would certainly not hold up as well with its 1.5in thick slab sides!

The point being, the T-34 isn't any more of a threat than, say, a BMP-1. And the T-34 has absolutely terrible visibility, very low situational awareness for the crew. They didn't do so well in the Korean War against 1950's weapons, they're sure as hell not going to be any more effective against modern weapons.

The retreat to Pusan? Kind of a really bad time in the face of those T-34s. KPA only had 150 of the things as it was and little artillery.

155mm howitzers significantly outrange MLRS systems like the BM-21, much less the Chinese 107mm MLRS system the Norks also use.

This is not true, the BM-21 has had a 40km range rocket since the early 1980s and North Korea uses this round. Most 155mm stuff in the US inventory is limited to 30km with rocket assist or base bleed, only Excalibur glides to 40km. The ROK has some longer ranged artillery in service, but it also still has a bunch of US WW2 vintage artillery in service too.

Its the hundreds of mobile 240mm and 300mm launchers that are the big concern,but as for the 107mm, they have 4,000 of those. So even if half don't work, so what, that's still 2,000 tactical rocket launchers adapted for reasonably high angle fire in mountains. Look at the Israeli war in Lebanon in 2006 for how easy it is to stop people firing rockets at you. Hezbollah was using North Korean tactics and tunnel designs in that war, they've long been involved as small scale advisors for that purpose. The landscape is somewhat similar to Korea, far more so then a Kuwaiti desert. Israeli counter bombardment was not highly discriminating in its response either. The US counter to all of this is GMLRS, but that's not effective against rock tunnels. Certainly kill anything it can hit in the open or a building. But the US keeps all of 1 battalion of those in Korea.

You don't need to take them all out, just the ones near your objective. If Korean War 2: Electric Boogaloo broke out, our first objective would be a decapitation strike on Dear Leader. Probably with orders to capture him alive, rather than make him a martyr/allow high command to pretend he's alive and in a bunker somewhere.

Remember all those times killing Saddam didn't work? Decapitation would probably be able to get a lot of the Kim inner circle, which might lead to a coupe against him, or at least certain army commanders splitting off or surrendering, but its not realistic to plan a war on that basis.

This is because, unlike North Korea, ISIL doesn't particularly have a bunch of fixed fortifications and largely blends in with the populace. You also assume we're seriously attempting to blow them up, rather than making a half-assed show for the public while actively aiding and abetting them so they'll overthrow Assad.

Yeah they do in fact have a bunch off fixed fortifications, everyone does in this war and ISIL's includes lots of tunnels deep enough that non delay bombing won't destroy them. The US isn't aiding ISIL, other groups sure, and while the bombing is limited that only improves the effect per bomb because the targets are good and not suspected truck parks, even if its less overall. A vast number of structures are being leveled completely throughout that region by air strikes, but it eats through bombs fast.

There is a huge difference between a mobile, nebulous enemy that isn't tied down to any particular location and a bunch of artillery positions that have been dug into the side of a hill for the last fifty years.

North Korea isn't big, its not tiny either. After a solid month of ramped up heavy bombing you could expect a lot of that to be destroyed, but not in less time. That's not a small kind of time to have a ground war in. Its a lot of shear tonnage to destroy that many granite cut tunnels and half of however many vehicles and tanks you really think work.

Anyway since this really gets dependent on the scenario one envisions I'd just drop it, and should probably just start a tank technology thread. We have a subforum for that but its kind of pointless these days.

[Swindle1984]

It would be a lot more effective then a TOW-2A vs M1A2+ I suspect, and Russia has now pyrotechnically advanced to a triple warhead shaped charge 125mm shell already, the extra charge fires slightly off axis to blow a wider hull in enemy ceramic or spaced armor. Small fore charge detonates ERA like normal. This produces little added effect against normal RHA measurements, but against specific threats its very useful in principle. US warhead designers themselves are long interested in stacked EFP warheads meanwhile, to produce a similar 'channel blasting' effect. The same idea in fact as new segmented sabot round, just in a higher velocity range. Future Combat System, dumb as it was on the face, funded a lot of work towards this end.

But we both agree the primary intent of the 152mm is sabot rounds, yes?

Large shaped charges are not dependent on simple warhead diameter scaling, once you get past a couple of pounds of explosives the designs start to incorporate waveshapers to regulate the explosion and at that point your total warhead mass becomes a lot more important then the diameter. The liner thickness itself can be made higher, and stronger materials then copper used and still squished into the jet. Really heavy warheads like Hellfire a much more dangerous as a result, and a 152mm HEAT round would be approaching that. Typical 95lb x 152mm round would have about a 24lb filler, that's as big as a Hellfire already, just hampered by the geometry of being a shell.

I literally have half a dozen books on shaped charge and EFP design. You're not telling me anything new.

Isn't the US experimenting with molybdenum liners for their HEAT rounds now? I know they're testing double-liners, with a magnalium liner behind the copper liner so that after the copper jet penetrates, the magnalium liner behind it causes an incendiary effect behind/inside whatever got penetrated.

For velocity reasons though a lighter round is likely, but cut that filler down by a third and its still 18lb of charge inside. The front of the turrets of western tanks can probably handle that but not so much anywhere else.

Mmm, I dunno. They had an Abrams that survived multiple hits with both 120mm sabots and a pair of Hellfire missiles. And thermite grenades in the ammo bin. That one ended up getting dragged back to base, shipped back to the plant, and returned to service. Had the crew been inside, I doubt the top hits from the Hellfires wouldn't have killed at least some of them, but the tank itself was mostly intact. Side armor, especially on the turret, is also pretty thick; the thinnest parts of the armor, besides the top, tend to be dead spaces/voids with no crew or critical components behind them.

As far as I can tell all models of M1 tank don't have more then 80mm thick steel around the rear of the bustle and possibly less. The combination of crew storage racks and ERA mods sorta gives that a chance to survive a grenade but anything else will just blowup the ammo. That's part of why as heavy as it is we still call the M1 an MBT and not a heavy tank. A proper heavy tank would put the composite armor all the way around the turret and on the engine bay, M1 just doesn't. Anything of serious caliber and potentially even 85mm gunfire from a T-34 is going to go through this on the rear arc. But it should not kill the crew by default.

Details are classified and I'm not going to reveal specifics because of that (granted, my info comes from an Abrams gunner who may not have the most accurate information), but it's thicker than that and there is a ceramic layer, but only on the M1A2. The M1A1 did have a specific spot where a .50BMG or bigger caliber round could penetrate and hit an electrical line, gaining a mobility kill, but they fixed that on the M1A2 and, once that particular weakness became known, covered it over on the M1A1. There's a reason most M1A1's were retired recently, and it wasn't just the budget/getting ready to upgrade them to M1A3's (there's plenty of M1's and M1A1's in storage that could be upgraded just as easily). On an M1A2, an 85mm gun won't do jack squat; on the M1A1, if a T-34 (which has notoriously poor visibility and situational awareness, against a better designed tank with thermal, night vision, etc.) somehow snuck up on it and was at point-blank distance, it's possible, but doubtful. The M1A1 has, after all, taken multiple RPG hits to the rear of the turret and the only penetration I'm aware of is the 105mm tandem-charge RPG-29, and that didn't cause any injuries or damage any vital components/hit any ammo. On a monkey-model M1A1, the likelihood of a penetration is much higher.

And you are correct, a hit to the rear bustle shouldn't kill the crew; in the monkey-model example I gave, the explosion was vented upward, away from the crew compartment, as intended.

Only good way around that is to go to an unmanned turret, which is one of the things those various M1 tank driver test beds were researching when the plug was pulled. Very similar to T-14 all and all. Then you can get away with almost no turret armor at all and make your hull and front roof absurdly thick.

American, German, and Russian engineers all seem to be on the same page in this regard. Which means the successor to the Leopard 2 will likely have an unmanned turret as well.

You still need an armored turret though; a tank is only useful if it's armed, and a penetration of the turret would detonate the ammo or disable the gun/loader. Active protection and ERA, as the Russians have gone to, will only help you so much in this regard.

It never sold because its at least half the cost of an entirely new tank, and since these tanks tend to be very old and are gaining weight they also need new engines too, which makes the process even more expensive. It would only make sense if a national force absolutely had to keep up its total numbers of effective MBTs in the short term.

Which, at the time the upgrade was offered, they did. Many of these countries only have M60's, or a mix of M60's and M48's. Egypt opted not to upgrade at all, while Turkey instead turned to Israel for the Sabra upgrade to the M60, based on the Magach 7, which largely did the same thing as the M60-2000 but was more expensive, so they only upgraded a few. 20 years later, and Egypt is still using the M60 and intends to keep using it, so the upgrade (which would have been done domestically and using the exact same turrets they were already producing for their monkey-model M1's) would have made sense. It would have allowed them to ditch their Soviet tanks entirely instead of holding on to them.

The ROK already did this in the 1980s with heavy US assistance.

The Koreans still have M60 and even M48 tanks in active service; not many of the latter, and all in reserve units, but they're still in active service. The only tank South Korea has retired completely is the 35 T-80's they got from Russia, due to a lack of spare parts and ammunition. They're being held in reserve; kinda curious why they haven't done the obvious and offered to sell them to Ukraine.

I think Egypt still has T-55s for reserve infantry divisions, those had some major western supported upgrades at one point but the result is not too impressive.

Ugh. The Ramses II is just... well, they tried. They've got 435+ Ramses II's in service, plus a couple dozen unmodified T-55's, with the remainder in storage. And apparently plan to upgrade about another 160 T-55's. Instead of upgrading their M60's to be similar to their M1's, they upgraded their T-55's to be similar to their M60's. The engine has a high degree of parts commonality with the M60A3, and the gun is identical.

I honestly think the TR-85 is better, and Romania isn't known for an especially high quality arms industry.

The problem is that kind of upgrade is still in fact just a missile magnet as far as protection goes against a Kornet , and also highly vulnerable to modern tank fire at any range it can be hit. It just doesn't make sense as a place to dump a huge amount of money and without a 120mm gun you're not going to be able to be certain of destroying a high end T-72 or T-80 from the export market. The M48 and M60 are just too old. If you own them, it still a serious mobile infantry support gun, but the role is limited to that. Too many alternatives exist.

The M60A1, nevermind the M60A3, consistently beat Iraqi T-72's in the Gulf War. I'm pretty sure an M48 upgraded to the same standards as an M60 could take on the numerous monkey-model T-55's, T-62's, and T-72's in the Middle East. In fact, Israel did just that, with the Magach 4 and 5 upgrades for the M48 and Magach 6 and 7 for the M60; hell, they outperformed the Merkava Mk I and early production Mk II's.

The T-80 is largely a non-issue. It's too demanding of maintenance, and only Pakistan has them any significant numbers. The T-80 also isn't all it's cracked up to be, now that we've had a chance to look at it and see it in combat. Frontal armor is terrific, sides and top, not so much. It's a decent break-through tank, but anywhere that the enemy can maneuver, attack from concealment, or use ATGM teams and it's toast.

[Pelranius]

At the time that gun was revealed the reports on China internet were that the purpose of said gun was to launch full caliber shells at the highest possible velocity, supporting guided rounds and the like at very long ranges. So a sort of hybrid tank-artillery piece or tank destroyer kind of gun concept. Since then nothing more has been seen on it.

For what it's worth, that Chinese "supergun" was seen back in July apparently mounted in a turret on a ZBL 8X8 AFV chassis. Given that there wasn't any apparent fire control equipment on the turret, it's probably safe to say that it's purely a tech demonstrator at this point (though I don't know for what).

Who knows, we might here something about it at Zhuhai 2018 or 2020.

[Swindle1984]

The US isn't aiding ISIL, other groups sure

Sure, keep telling yourself that.


ISIL supplied with US weapons even before they captured any from Iraq
http://juergentodenhoefer.de/pictures-f ... e/?lang=en

US repeatedly "accidentally" airdrops weapons and ammo to ISIS
http://www.infowars.com/u-s-airdrops-we ... kes-gains/ (I know it's Infowars, but you can easily find other news articles about the same events)

Iraq accuses the US of funding ISIS
http://rt.com/news/227195-islamic-state-us-funding/

UN finds evidence of cooperation between ISIS and Israel
http://www.infowars.com/un-finds-credib ... se-forces/

Same, reported by Israeli media
http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-1.630359

Israel providing medical care to Syrian rebels
http://foreignpolicy.com/2014/06/11/exc ... an-rebels/

Iraq again accuses the US of funding ISIS
http://www.addictinginfo.org/2014/08/13/us-fund-isis/

Iraq shoots down two British planes loaded with weapons it claims were being delivered to ISIS
http://www.infowars.com/iraq-accuses-br ... mic-state/

More Israeli media reporting on link between ISIS and Israel
http://www.jpost.com/Middle-East/New-UN ... els-383926

Israeli troops threaten Syrian reporter for filming them aiding ISIS troops
http://presstv.ir/Detail/2015/03/06/400 ... a-reporter

Israel: Attacking ISIS would be a mistake
http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/1.623717

Iraq claims to have arrested American, Israeli advisers to ISIS
http://thesaker.is/iraq-arrests-isils-u ... -in-mosul/

ISIS' own press release says that allah has commanded them not to attack Israel
http://www.almasryalyoum.com/news/details/479626

Leader of ISIS was in US custody for 4 years, then released just in time to form ISIS
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news ... z36eDQA3ih

US and Israeli intervention in Syria fueled by oil pipeline, not military/terrorism concerns
https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... -pipelines

American-made missiles keep ending up in ISIS' hands
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world ... 34472.html

Israel says Assad beating ISIS is bad for Israel
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/ ... cNPjZz64fw

Leaked Pentagon report indicates US armed and trained ISIS to overthrow Assad, just like we armed Al Qaeda to fight the Soviets
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-05-2 ... dent-assad

With Syria crumbling into multiple factions, Israel's situation has never been better
http://www.jpost.com/Arab-Israeli-Confl ... ter-404909

Israel contemplating annexing Syrian soil to create 'buffer zone'
https://archive.is/wsNrO

A Clean Break: Israel's plan to overthrow Saddam and use proxy warfare to balkanize Syria
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Clean_B ... _the_Realm

How the west bankrolls ISIS
http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/ ... 38217.html

West making big mistake in fighting ISIS, says senior Israeli officer
http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/1.623717

US training Syrian rebels, including fighters who joined ISIS
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-syria ... FI20130310

US won't help Iraq fight ISIS if they accept help from Russia
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/us-iraq-cho ... sis-fight/

In new video, Al Qaeda thanks US for supplying TOW missiles
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-11-2 ... k-missiles



Israel is biggest purchaser of ISIS oil, with Turkey a close second
http://www.globes.co.il/en/article.aspx?did=1001084873

Amnesty International finds that majority of ISIS' weapons are from the US and supplied via Iraq and "moderate" rebels
http://www.cnn.com/2015/12/08/politics/ ... pons-u-s-/

Freudian slip? Obama says US is training ISIS in speech
https://www.rt.com/usa/272470-obama-training-isis-slip/

2 Turkish MP's claim Turkey provide sarin nerve gas to ISIS, instructed them to use it on civilians and blame Assad
https://www.rt.com/news/325825-sarin-gas-syria-turkey/

Leaked documents reveal Obama considered using chemical weapons on Syria, then blaming Assad
http://web.archive.org/web/201301292138 ... Assad.html

Texas plumber's truck gets sold to Turkey, then appears in ISIS video with anti-aircraft gun in the bed
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-12-1 ... isis-hands

Lawsuit reveals how Texas plumber's truck ended up in ISIS' hands
http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/ ... p-in-syria

Jewish reporter confused why ISIS hasn't attacked Israel or Jews
https://archive.is/9Qe5i

Israeli defense minister prefers ISIS to having Iran assist Syria
http://www.timesofisrael.com/yaalon-i-w ... -in-syria/

Israeli defense minister: In choice between Iran and ISIS, I prefer ISIS
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340 ... 15,00.html

Labour Party member in hot water after saying Israel's Mossad created ISIS
http://www.haaretz.com/jewish/1.711550

Russia accuses UK of helping ISIS by protecting their financial backers
http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/665021 ... ce-jihadis

Syrian army captures large quantities of Israeli ammo in ISIS cache
https://www.almasdarnews.com/article/sy ... aeli-ammo/

Hillary Clinton received secret memo stating Obama aided group that became ISIS
http://www.breitbart.com/2016-president ... -for-isis/

Israeli intelligence chief: We don't want ISIS to lose in Syria
http://news.antiwar.com/2016/06/21/isra ... -in-syria/

US officials refuse to comment on how weapons provided to "moderate" rebels keep ending up in ISIS' hands
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3pmbCjNZAfs[/youtube]

Hezbollah leader claims Obama created ISIS to destabilize Syria
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/216384

US protecting ISIS in case it's needed to overthrow Assad, says Russia
https://archive.fo/KJDjt

Leaked Podesta e-mails reveal Qatar and Saudi Arabia are funding ISIL
https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/3774

Defeating ISIS will make the Middle East even more unstable
https://archive.fo/DeEd7






Now, some of those sources have to be taken with a grain of salt, look for other, more credible sources saying the same thing, but for the most part it's verifiable. The US and Israel created and armed ISIS, just like all the "moderate rebels" so they could overthrow Assad and do to Syria what they've done to Iraq and Libya.

But all this is for another thread, which I don't feel like getting into right now.

[Simon_Jester]

Making hit-and-run assertions you're not prepared to defend is not something in line with the reasons this board was, once upon a time, created...

Firstly, if you take good sources and combine them with junk sources, you can prove ANYTHING, and then argue that the good sources 'justify' a conclusion that would fall apart if you stopped paying attention to the junk.

Tell me Hezbollah leaders and Russian spokesmen claim America created ISIL. My answer to that is simply "Well, he would, wouldn't he?" And repeating allegations over and over, from dozens of sources, in a major international conflict involving millions of people, is meaningless. The war's gone on for years; there's a lot of time for an echo chamber to form accusing people of evil conspiracies.

[Swindle1984]

Making hit-and-run assertions you're not prepared to defend is not something in line with the reasons this board was, once upon a time, created...

Or maybe I feel this is off topic and the person I was addressing is free to respond to it as he sees fit? And I don't feel like starting an entirely new thread to discuss one tangent out of several?

[Simon_Jester]

Then why did you spam forty-six links on a position you thought was an irrelevant tangent?