I deeply appreciate you finding the actual Jane’s page because this quote appears widely on the internet and I spent 30 minutes losing my mind trying to find out if it was true or not and failing. I should not have guessed regarding its veracity, I guessed wrong, and I apologize for that
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I completely agree with this.
Obviously it would be nice if we could see the testing - but its probably still classified. That said, I’m not aware of any shortcomings in Chechnya, I’ve read about tanks withstanding 3 - 6 RPGs before being destroyed eventually from French analysis of Russian tactics. I would bne interested to know what UVZ said on the matter as you mentioned.
I’m also not aware of any shortcomings in Syria. My understanding is that the Syrian Arab Army consists of mostly older T-72s but that the few T-90As which were used stood up to the test.
With regards to Ukraine, there has been one recorded instance of a T-72B3 being destroyed by another tank from the side. I think you are correct though, I’m pretty sure there have been recorded instances of Russian tanks being susceptible to top-attack missiles. I can’t imagine those Kontakt-5 roof tiles would function very different to Kontakt-1 tiles. I’m no expert on the matter, but I just can’t see them withstanding tandem top-attack missiles.
Ammo in-game only has a chance of cooking off. Probably for gameplay reasons. Its just much more noticeable at top-tier where there’s no explosive filler.
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I’ll try to find it, but RedEffect had some info on the UVZ vs. T-80 thing. Basically a Russian general blamed the poor performance of tanks in Chechnya solely on the T-80s, ignoring that T-72s suffered as bad, and advised that the Russian military adopt the T-72s and T-90s instead of the T-80s series going forward. Years after, he changed his tune and said the T-80 would have been the better tank going forward. Speculation he was receiving bribes or pressure to favor UVZ when the decision was made about which tank family for the Russian military to back, since they only had so much money for support and modernization, reducing the fleet from 4 different types of MBTs (T-64, T-72s, T-90s, and T-80s) to one would go a long ways in helping arm and update a tank fleet. Since the T-90 is pretty much a T-72 with a boob job and face lift, it makes sense why they went with the more universal platform. While the T-64 and T-80 share lineage, not nearly the same interchangeability as two different tanks built on the same chassis.
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Pulling heavily from Tankograd from this so I’ll link their excellent articles preemptively in hopes people read them;
While I agree non-segregated ammunition storages are a serious flaw, the autoloader in the T-72 is the safest non-segregated primary ammo rack you’re ever gonna find. The central location of the autoloader places it furthest from any potential perforation that might hit it, while most unsegregated primary ammo racks are pressed right up against some part of the armor in order to proudly maximize the chance of a detonation from spall. In the T-72’s case, it is located in the least likely zone of the tank to be hit (lower) (obviously referring to direct fire anti-tank threats, not top attack or mines here). This combined with the maximization of distance between sources of spall and the autoloader, an effective (for the era) spall liner, the provision of some basic liners and light protection around the autoloader, and the maximum amount of random equipment and meat bags between spall and the autoloader meant that the autoloader was always by far the hardest source of possible detonation for anything to reach post-pen; it’s important to remember the real problem ammo in the T-72 has always been the turret spares, which are rarely loaded by War Thunder players. Segregated ammunition is a better concept but it’s only recently fully become the norm, with the Abrams frontrunning the concept with the deletion of hull stowage much earlier than its competition; even when the T-72 entered service, it was still the norm for even primary ammunition to be unsegregated. It was only NATO’s boxy monsters a half decade later which started the trend to move ammunition behind blowout panels, it was simply the standard of the time, and as things went, it was probably the most survivable implementation of it; it’s indeed actually pretty historical for it to be a really annoying type of ammo to set off without a direct hit from a more major piece of fragmentation.
Even then, the shells themselves are actually surprisingly safe, so they’re not necessarily a guaranteed death on hit.
This is a reference, a picture of a T-72 that caught fire and eventually blew up after it was evacuated. You can see scores of undetonated OF series HE shells, even ones that were right next to the three shells that actually detonated. The main thing that’s really vulnerable are the propellant charges, which funny enough makes the sabot rounds arguably the most dangerous to receive shrapnel (owing to the integrated propellant).
Apologies if the response was unwarranted and I misunderstood, I just see a perception very often that the T-72 is uniquely vulnerable because of its autoloader, when it is instead the boring common type of vulnerable every other tank of the period was
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Germany & Sweden also have unclassified armor sets.
And these rules were set long before modern vehicles were in War Thunder.
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safest? i believe you, safe? hell no if i were forced to serve on one of this i would surrender on the first occasion, and t90m turrets have been popping with good consistency as well despite the fact that blowout panels werre placed on the rounds outside the autoloader. which does not paint a good picture for the safety of the system overall
and this is relevant how?
When it comes to photo evidence, yeah I’d tend to believe it. Same for declassified info from the Soviet archives.
And so much public info exists on Soviet tanks that I could verify the in game modelling solely using Swedish, Polish, and American sources, if you’re worried about “Russian Propaganda” or whatever
But sales brochures (in some cases from companies with histories of lying about their products and bribing politcians, cough lockheedcough) are all you need to accurately model NATO vehicles. Makes sense to me.
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None of which are relevant to their modern vehicles (SVT & TVM to model the 2A7V? Yea, no).
You can’t meme your way out of being wrong. You can easily verify Gaijin’s modelling of the vast majority of Warsaw Pact ground vehicles. In the air it starts getting questionable but primarily in terms of underperformance.
Another factor is that there are privately owned T-72s out there. Not modern versions but it helps when verifying a lot. Good luck finding detailed photos of an M1A2’s full composite array cut open with someone holding a tape measure next to its composition, because that’s what we’ve got for a number of REDFOR MBTs
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Yes they should
No he believes in Fox and the Clown news network
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There was an entire Russian armor thread here, and yes, several series of tanks have over performing armor given Gaijins values and the Russian open source data.
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My judgement is based on access to classified documents that I cannot talk about. So, I point out the unclassified things in an attempt to demonstrate how the “technical” information you have access to is limited, at best. You don’t know as much as you think you do.
Also. Reminder for everyone else. Gaijin has no good idea on how effective the armor on the Abrams tank is. Because the actual design and performance is classified.
Also, a question for everyone: If a nation cannot build a globally competitive electronic device of any sort, automobile of any sort, or airliner of any sort, why in the world would you think they can build globally competitive military equipment???
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LOL
Just… Yeah. They suck. This was funny and a good point.
When it comes to how well the M1 would do in a close quarters(which is what WT is) fight with the latest Russian armour what is your insight there? We are not talking old Iraqi tanks but latest armour as featured in the game and presumably with Russian crews.
What is your insight as to how that would pan out and bearing in mind Russia has Air support in the game.
We do have several documents and design requirements to go off of though
The initial (X)M-1 design requirements have long been declassified(¹), they are as follows:
- ‘‘Protection of the crew compartment against XM774 (simulating Soviet APFSDS) at 800-1200m’’
- ‘‘Protection of the crew compartment against 127 mm HEAT at 50° frontal arc’’
This armor package is BRL-1 and puts the RHAe vs KE at ≈350mm, and ≈636-700 mm vs CE @ 50° arc.
The IPM1 and subsequent M1A1 use the same armor as eachother(²) which is BRL-2, the turret featured increased volume. The threat simulant was XM833 APFSDS, that puts the RHAe vs KE at ≈400 mm @ 60° frontal arc.
Heavy armor had been in development for quite a while, so by october 1988 the M1A1 HA was fielded with HAP-1, this offered substantially improved protection. It’s threat simulant was M829E1, this gives us the 600 mm RHAe vs KE @ 60° frontal arc figure which is further backed up by the ARMOR Magazine(⁶) estimates as well as the U.S. document provided to Sweden for the tank trails(⁵).
HAP-2 was produced in an effort to increase multi-hit durability, this armor was fielded on the M1A1 HC and M1A2(²).
There were developments around improving the M1A2’s overall armor(³), but these would not be fielded due to weight, budget and production schedule constraints(⁴). The fall of the Soviet Union likely also played a part in the reduced urgency for upgrading armor.
The hull armour does not seem to have been upgraded during this time period, this is reinforced by the fact that the armor diagram presented to Sweden(⁵) of a U.S. M1A2 shows the hull to still be equivalent to the original (X)M-1 design requirements, it’s further backed up by statements found in source(⁴).
Another reason for why the hull armor very likely wasn’t upgraded is because U.S. studies concluded that only around 5% of all hits a tank sustains occurr to the lower front plate, with 35% to the upper glacis and 65% for the turret(⁸). This is also why the turret armor saw considerable upgrade efforts.
The M1A2 Abrams was also not focussed around protection increases(⁹), instead the focus was around digitalization, improving target acquisition, etc.
Now we come to the SEP, for this we have extensive, and I do mean extensive Budget allocation sheets (can be found here Army Financial Management & Comptroller > Budget Materials) which detail exactly what changes have been made for the SEP, the only concrete protection enhancement made was to the turret composite side armor(⁷), this was increased by 250% against shaped charge munitions.
And lastly, for some reason people who play video games seem to believe that the survivability onion only has a single layer which says: ‘‘Don’t be penetrated’’ and nothing else. Obviously, armor isn’t the only way in which a vehicle defends itself.
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I know this is a long post, just thought I’d be elaborate and use it as a reference in the future :P
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Pretty sure Conte knows the exact Armor composition better than anyone in this forum. Which is why he made his statement that people might think they know based on publicly available sources, but in reality they’re still wrong. On top of serving as a commander, he helped with the development and implementation of the M1A1 FEP upgrade package. Nobody here has that level of insight and there’s really no arguing it.
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First @Necrons31467 let me say this is a well thought out and comprehensive post. I really appreciate this as there are documents here I haven’t seen.
Second, as a reminder I cannot really talk about the armor per se. Just too easy to say something I shouldn’t.
However, I am going to try to politely demonstrate how this is just more of what I am talking about.
There are two problems with this. First, that you don’t know the classified armor penetration value of the APFSDS and HEAT rounds listed. Second, you don’t know what the actual performance the design achieved. A hypothetical would be a car that, when development began, was supposed to achieve 300 hp. In these scenarios this is a minimum. Engineers often exceed this minimum in their quest to achieve and the car will often end up with 320 hp off the production line. I hope that makes sense. This is well established that in acquisitions documents values are minimum or baseline and often exceeded in production. The only way to know for sure is to have access to the testing documents. Which AFAIK are all still classified.
The M1A1 HC’s actual protection is classified. This doesn’t really pertain to actual protection values. This is interesting but not really pertinent to what the values should actually be.
This is a tougher one to address. I really can’t talk about it. I think the only thing I can point out is that you still don’t know the composition of the NERA components, the actual effectiveness of the NERA components, or how, precisely, they achieved this increase. Furthermore, since the data, going all the way back to the M1, is not based on actual technical (testing, design of the armor documents, etc.) and built off of assumptions based upon design requirement documents, you are building just more sand castles on sand castles.
Furthermore, this doesn’t address the fact that there were definitely M1 hulls built with DU armor in the LFP. If one was built, it can be applied to all M1A1 tanks and above. The hulls for those are just reused to make M1A2’s. Your documents will clearly support that.
The bottom line is, your entire argument is based on an assumption based on limited data.
Not your fault. It’s supposed to be this way. We absolutely do not want our enemies to have any idea how our armor is made or how well it works.
I will say it again. Gaijin. Doesn’t. Know. What. They. Are. Talking. About. That’s okay. Nobody else does either. Except the people who work on this stuff for real. And they can’t say anything.
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