All the tanks that go to Ukraine go though Poland.
And he was talking about Polish order to buy sepv3
We sent tanks with DU armor to Saudi Arabia, I see no reason we couldn’t send them to Canada.
That’s not what I said, I said Poland bought SEPV3s.
Guys, enough with the arguing semantics and personal attacks… Any further will not be tolerated…
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Okay, I’m on the same page as you. Poland has submitted a request to have 250 M1A2 sepv3 built for them along with 88 recovery vehicles and etc. If they approved to be built, because of US policy they would have to be built without DU armor.
We simply re-routed tanks intended for US service to Poland to speed up delivery, these tanks were not subsequently modified to remove armor. They must not have DU if what you say is true… or Poland bought tanks with DU. Either way, US standard M1A2 SEPV3s are in Poland service… without any kind of export armor.
No, these tanks will be have to be built with another armor package with sepv3 systems.
From what I know my country did not get sepv3 with du
They do which is why Australia is getting a special variant of said armour i.e. apparently the US is developing a new armour for Australia:
It is possible that the US could allow Poland to have DU armour especially seeing as Poland (afaik) will also be the first nation to receive the US’s DU M829 rounds:
However I do not believe this to be the case as even the M1A1 FEPs that Poland bought had their DU armour removed:
Now that you mention it, yeah seems a bit high. I spit out a random number but Gaijin explained in their post that the weight had not changed from M1A2 → SEPV2.
Is this the same Gaijin that said:
Additionally, a significant weight increase from such an armor package would lead to overloading the first pair of torsion bars, which already are under an increased load on the M1 series due to the placement of the frontal armor being positioned significantly far towards the front of the hull, as well as the large armored fuel tanks either side of the driver.
And forgot they contradicted their very own logic when they added TUSK I and TUSK II i.e. obviously the US had to upgrade the M1s torsion and suspension to even accommodate TUSK I and TUSK II…
Gaijin stating the weight overall hadn’t changed was likewise disingenuous, their claim of this is based on the growth chart, however just looking at that tells us nothing i.e. Gaijin knows the SEPs had a weight reduction program implemented hence why the weight overall didn’t seem to change from the M1A2 to the SEP.
Point of fact if all we did was look at that growth chart one would believe the M1A2s turret only weighs 15.3 - 16.23 tons, however if we look at old M1A2s and their turret combat weight, we see something doesn’t add up:
Therefore the growth chart stating it was only 15.3-16.23 tons is odd and yes I understand combat weight is different but that difference is way too large:
Looking at the M1A1s turret combat weight we can see what the DU armour increased the turret combat weight by 3.8 tons:
Thus additional turret weight for the M1A2s makes sense, however there is still a huge difference between the SEPv3 turret weight and even the M1A1s i.e. even if we add the ARAT + appendages the SEPv3s turret weighs 16.23 tons, so now lets look at combat weight, meaning how much does each M829A3/4 round weigh (assuming 16.23 tons isn’t the combat weight already… which I believe it actually is):
If a full loadout is taken that would be 42 rounds so that adds an additional 1,960.14 lbs (0.98 short tons) so now we have a combat weight of around 17.21 tons, I don’t know about you but unless the 3 crew in the turret are to weigh 1.9 tons each I don’t see how the SEPv3s turret combat weight even gets to the M1A1s weight let alone the M1A2s.
This tells me the US got the SEPv3s turret weight down by a significant amount, however this growth chart doesn’t lead us to believe that is the case because the SEPv3s overall weight has still significantly increased.
The growth chart tells us next to nothing honestly because if we remove the add-on armour that is incorporated into the base SEPv3s weight you find out that apparently the M1A2 SEPv3 weighs the around the same amount as the original M1A2:
According to said chart the SEPv3 weighs 73.6 tons (short tons) and 40.7 of that comes from the armour / structure, within that (on the right) we see that TUSK I and TUSK II are included in that, their combined weight is 5.17 short tons (turret appendages can also be removed with said add-on):
73.6 - 5.17 = 68.43 short tons
68.43 short tons = 62.07 metric tons
M1A2 = 62.05 metric tons
i.e. the base SEPv3 weighs less then the SEPv1 and SEPv2 and around the same as the original M1A2…
Thus the growth chart is useless for telling us absolutely anything about the M1s and the armour upgrades they received as the M1s were obviously being upgraded whilst also getting their weight reduced at the same time, hence, there not being a significant increase in weight doesn’t mean they likewise didn’t receive an armour upgrade as can be seen by the SEPv3s weight being less then the SEP and SEPv2.
Edit: Also according to TRADOC:
and yes they were talking about the M1A2s specific KE armour as this document was talking about reducing the M1A2s weight by 47%:
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It’s not.
They are using values from the Swedish trials to justify the hull armor but totally ignore that the turret is massively underperforming according to the very same document.
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Poland are getting special armour that should be similar to the du package of sepv3
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Correct, as of around 1999/2000 all of the Non-DU armour packages have been stated to be comparable to their DU armour counterpart.
First of all, thank you for a detailed answer. Would you mind linking the sources for the pictures as well?
I’d like to state that Australia is getting a non-DU package, this is ture… however it is not because of a US law that is stopping us from sending them DU armor packages. It is because of international or Australian conflicts.
I have seen no indication that Poland’s SEPV3s will go without DU armor, and that does indeed support the evidence that they are getting unaltered SEPV3s.
The existing armor on the FEP models may have been inferior to the SEPV3, it is possible the foreign sales armor is improved over the original and was part of the deal with Poland. We will not know any of this for quite a long time of course… but I think it is unreasonable to assume the modern foreign sales armor is inferior to the older US armor packages.
Going from M1A1 to other M1A1 variants may yield more changes to the turret than just the armor packages. There are changes to a myriad of systems and the addition of a lot of wiring for new additional subsystems. The wiring replacement going from SEPV2 to SEPV3 saved over 2 tons of weight in the turret alone.
In any case, none of the aforementioned information suggests that DU was added to the hull. It is a plausibility… but since weight is a serious concern they likely wouldn’t have done it unless they were able to maintain the current weight of the tanks hull or reduce it.
First of all, thank you for a detailed answer. Would you mind linking the sources for the pictures as well?
Growth Chart - Pg 37 if using left hand side menu
I have seen no indication that Poland’s SEPV3s will go without DU armor, and that does indeed support the evidence that they are getting unaltered SEPV3s.
Yea I am not entirely sure as I haven’t seen much on the SEPv3s that Poland is getting, you might have to ask Mongaroth33 as their replies to both you and me indicate they may be from / or live in Poland.
The existing armor on the FEP models may have been inferior to the SEPV3, it is possible the foreign sales armor is improved over the original and was part of the deal with Poland.
True, but the FMS armour indicates it not being DU armour as that has always been the case for FMS armour packages.
We will not know any of this for quite a long time of course… but I think it is unreasonable to assume the modern foreign sales armor is inferior to the older US armor packages.
Misunderstanding, I do not believe the non-DU armour is actually inferior, this seems to only have been true prior to 1999/ 2000 i.e. in both the Turkey and Greek tank trials GDLS trialled a new non-DU armour package which according to the vice president for international business for GDLS (Peter McVey) was comparable to the US’s DU armour:
The Australians likewise stated the same for their M1A1 AIMv2/SA i.e. that it was comparable to the US’s DU armour.
It is likely that the US continues to use DU due to cost reasons.
In any case, none of the aforementioned information suggests that DU was added to the hull. It is a plausibility… but since weight is a serious concern they likely wouldn’t have done it unless they were able to maintain the current weight of the tanks hull or reduce it.
I used to believe they did add DU to the hull, and I likewise believed the SEPv3s completely removed DU altogether, however after going through enough documents my assumptions are that the US never upgraded the M1s hull with DU and instead upgraded it with a non-DU alternative probably due to weight reasons, after further reading the document I shared earlier this seems to be the case:
However before anyone thinks this means the hull wasn’t improved, we know it was:
Well, from my perspective… my particular unit / brigade in the US Army was at one point supposed to receive SEPV3s to replace our SEPV2s. This was cancelled when Poland ordered their SEPV3s, and as such all of those tanks are being re-routed for the Poland sale. What we didn’t see anywhere was mention of a change in the agreement wherein they would be using export armor packages. I suppose we will see when they arrive in Poland, as they will likely be marked “E” for export on the turret serial if they have some foreign armor package.
I think the 1999 / 2000 armor being comparable to previous DU armor is a greater indication that the SEPV3 simply moved away from the use of uranium in the armor altogether.
This is pretty concrete evidence in my opinion against DU hull armor for any Abrams variant… of course… could be wrong.
When it comes to the whole weight issue with DU, they found ways to mesh it without raising the weight that much so I dont think the whole DU weight thing is really valid. But either way I do believe is some form either DU or improved ceramics the armor was improved. I honestly dont even know how they are going to model sepv3 since there are no armor values out there for it. We know its pretty big upgrade since we can physically see the armor increase and I also do believe that they might not use DU anymore in NGAP. But I rather them not add it if they’re going to give it 1979 hull armor and the Swedish export turret armor.
Shouldn’t you also remove the weight of the underbody mine kit (“Hull Add-on Underbody”), making its weight drop even further to 66.03 tons or 59.9 tonnes?
That seems like a massive weight decrease and honestly makes me a lot more excited for the SEPv3 (and v4) knowing they won’t be fat AF
Factory standard gonna be fat: 83.5 metric tons with full equipment (mine roller, trophy system and counter weight).
This was cancelled when Poland ordered their SEPV3s, and as such all of those tanks are being re-routed for the Poland sale. What we didn’t see anywhere was mention of a change in the agreement wherein they would be using export armor packages.
Yea, it could be that Poland ends up being the first and potentially only country to have an M1 that has DU armour besides the US, I really don’t know I can’t find much documentation about it due to it being relatively new.
Apparently the M1A2-Kss and Polish FEP were marked as such, however it wasn’t the regular suffix “E” i.e. it was marked with a suffx “Ē”:
M1A2K:
I assume this implies an improved export armour package / turret, but you would probably know more about this then I would.
I think the 1999 / 2000 armor being comparable to previous DU armor is a greater indication that the SEPV3 simply moved away from the use of uranium in the armor altogether.
I came to the same conclusion when I read that Northrop Grumman was apparently planning on ceasing production of depleted uranium rounds, this made me think that the US may have indicated to Northrop that they were moving away from DU but honestly who knows, it does say the production may have moved onto someone else.
Also the Australian’s then seeking to develop a different armour package for their SEPv3 turrets makes me think the turret may still have DU in it?
I do know at some point it seems they stopped using the “U” suffix (indicating DU in the turret) and started marking tanks with the suffix “M”, however this marking doesn’t seem to have been given to just SEPv3s:
SEPv1/v2 (top) vs SEPv3s turret:
I can’t really figure out what the M is meant to stand for.
M is older than U, referred to improved turret armor models in the serial.