I desperately want the Abrams buffed, but this situation is full of people’s personal beliefs, anecdotal evidence, and emotional outbursts.
In fact, I’m actually pretty happy everyone has been reasonable so far right now.
Regardless of spall liners us crewmans wear flack jacket, that doesn’t necessarily point to abrams not having any spall mitigation method implemented.
As for integrall spall liner and for their validity check: Does the Abrams have a spall liner? No from what I could find
Count_Trackula provided more than enough sources
I think armor should be the #1 issue.
Doesn’t even have to be DU, as long as the thickness increases to a somewhat realistic level.
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I’ve been looking at that post for a while, however, I’m currently tired and not exactly the most intelligent person. I’m just sharing what I do understand. I have documentation which states it does not exist and others have documentation which says otherwise. I have not been able to find any inside the turret through images as some claim and cannot verify if it’s inside the armor. All I know is that if it is inside the armor, it doesn’t make sense to me based on my drawing above.
I do hope someone proves Gaijin and me wrong since I want the Abrams to have this, but I can’t see or convince myself it exists outside of suggestion.
As for vests, even though it doesn’t suggest there is no spall liner, it would still be a good thing for the Abrams to receive.
While helpful, Abrams tanks don’t get shot in the armor most of the time. It’s typically in the turret ring, which will not be helped by a spall liner or increase in hull armor.
That’s where my 6 suggestions above come into play.
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Definitely.
The turret ring should also be modeled as volumetric armor, with varying thickness along the circumference.
I’ve heard that the effective thickness should be something like 200mm RHA at the front.
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Even with that change, it won’t help much against tanks like the 2S38 sadly.
The turret will be a weak point no matter what you do. My suggestion is to make the Abrams more silent and increase armor where its weak points aren’t. This way you end up in a similar situation to the 10.3 Abrams.
The tank can take a hit from a misplaced shot but can’t sustain a hit from a well-placed shot. The tradeoff is that you’re faster in both mobility and fire rate.
Unfortunately, the top tier Abrams currently suffer from obesity while lacking armor even outside of their weak points.
And that’s the Abrams alone. I dare not mention the Merkava or Ariete lol. Those things need serious help.
And your proof that the SEPv3 uses DU armor is?
Because there are also a lot of people saying that they went with a new armor package, possibly without DU.
So some official sources for your claim would be appreciated.
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While I do not have a document on hand at this moment, it was a requirement for the SEPv3 to have added Turret and Hull Protection. I could be wrong, but I believe this was called NGAP.
Nothing about DU armor other than this, but the sources used for this book are truly amazing. It’s just the fact that nobody is going to discuss the DU armor in detail since it’s strictly classified so gaijin needs to improve the way they think about modern vehicles functional characteristics if they want to market themselves as a realistic tank shooter game. The quality of their assumptions is at the lowest point as of now.
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These paragraphs are hilarious because they simultaneously extol the virtues of certain individuals championing what would inevitably become the standard of armour, whilst pointing out that the US procurement establishment is systematically extremely haughty and bigoted.
On an unrelated note (I’m being sarcastic here)
I have found evidence which would seem to indicate M1A1HA has 0 hull armour improvements compared to the basic M1A1.
As Army units prepared for deployment to Saudi Arabia for Operation DESERT
SHIELD in 1990, Army leaders determined that the M1A1HA was the only version
superior to Iraqi tanks.
Army Chief of
Staff GEN Carl E. Vuono ordered that all units be issued the M1A1HA or receive
additional armor plating.
The only reference I’ve been able to find so far to the thickness of this additional armour M1A1 used to be upgraded to being equivalent to M1A1HA standard is literally a single 3/4" (19mm) steel plate on the turret cheeks only.
I.E. Evidence here indicates that M1A1HA isn’t really much different to M1A1, or if it is really different then the army actually doesn’t care.
Fair enough, but my main point was specifically about the DU.
Technological advancements happen all the time. They could very well have achieved the better protection with other materials than DU. We have no clue what NGAP is made of.
I’m too tired to find any source material lol
I’m sure someone else can find it for you, but I don’t have any of the sources on hand. I’m not going to lie to you.
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TUSK was meant for urban warfare, SEPv2’s improvements have been listed in Army Weapon Systems Handbook, which among other things states:
- Improved Frontal and Turret Side Armor
- TIGER Turbine upgrade & Transmission upgrade for improved reliability
- Improved APU
- Block I FLIR upgrade
- Common Operating Environment upgrade
Yesn’t. There’s a lot of complicated math involved in spalling and depending on the hardness of the backing plate it might not actually spall to the degree observed in-game.
CATTB’s spall liner was expected to be about an inch thick, and for the turret crew compartment to clock in at around 1,250lbs with about 5.7lbs per square foot. Source here: https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA228389.pdf
More a slap in the face “Hey guys we totally screwed you back in December of 2023, by pushing out the SEPv2 which is worse than the SEPv1 by most metrics and released yet another wallet warrior premium, but don’t worry we’ve released another SEP this time with the DU hull you wanted for you to grind out!”
Not like they haven’t been provided just under half a dozen estimates posted on the forums between the UVZ book they consider ‘unreliable’, Paul Lakowski, the estimates that Zaloga pulled probably out of thin, Michael Haskew’s estimates, and Tom Clancy’s estimates.
- UVZ was 750KE on LFP, which was in the original hull bug report that got forwarded.
- Paul Lakowski’s estimate was between 720mm and 770mm KE on the LFP depending on the size of the APFSDS penetrator, with it reduced to between 520 to 540 at 45°. Seen here: http://www.ciar.org/ttk/mbt/armor/Modern_Armor_III.pdf
- Zaloga puts the hull at 600mm for M1A1HA, in M1 Abrams vs T-72 Ural (ever subject of debate, since no one’s really sure where he got those estimates, and it’s telling his latest M1A2 book doesn’t include armor estimates at all)
- Michael Haskew’s estimate puts the hull at around 650mm KE in his Tanks book.
- Clancy in Armored Cav Guided Tour puts the baseline M1A2 hull being at least 18-inches of RHAe, or around 457mm.
It’s not like they didn’t have options to straight up low-ball it. Lakowski does provide the math behind his estimate, where as most of the other sources don’t.
And even if they did buff the LFP, it’d still leave the ever vulnerable turret ring which has decent odds of either:
- Killing your entire turret crew
- Punching through the firewall on your blowout panels and killing you that way
- Leaving you crippled if by some divine miracle you survive the first two.
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Yeah, they were truly bigoted and even to this day must be. The whole book is full of drama that was built around the creation of Abrams Tank, they hated the British because they came up with new type of armor that they did have to adapt and hated the Germans as they created much better cannon which they also had to adapt. Even a very nice TV series can be made based on the whole story if Hollywood was interested :D Also, it’s nice that military individuals didn’t hesitate to talk about these historical details of events instead of preferring being silent.
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It’s actually kind of funny, the Army Combat systems handbook shows about an equal amount of information about armor upgrades regarding Sep v2 and Sep v3. Both brochures say improved armor and pictures with weight simulation plates. I’d say the sepv2 brochure includes slightly more detail as it mentions armor improvements on the front and side.
The Sepv3 is from the 2016 edition and later publications of the handbook don’t mention
any more information on the armor upgrades. But all things considered why would anyone believe the Sepv3 has better armor and not the Sepv2 when the same level evidence exists for both.
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Unfortunately “improved armor” is not an acceptable word for Gaijin. They will say “Improved how? Maybe it just can survive multiple hits in succession which isn’t something modeled in WT”
SEPv3 will have no armor protection increase, and people need to realize that now because it is going to throw the forum into an uproar come its introduction because a lot of people are falsely assuming Gaijin will increase the protection.
They have all but said they will not without hard numbers of protection increase.
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i’ve no idea why would people prefer the abrams to stay at this condition, the abrams is literally an easy kill just for people to research their tanks + modifications by killing them, i mean USA can’t just make a tank and say hey guys i got this and this in my tank just for other nations to make new shells + new variants just to defeat it, and this topic has alot of reliable sources that can take underconsideration. It’s easy for gaijin to implement a soviet tank or a russian tank with all its informations since they can just ask the kremlin about it.
And i don’t believe a nation such as United States of America would make it’s official known worldwide tank this easy to kill.
Oh trust me I know and I know it isn’t enough by itself. This post was more for people who say Sepv3 definitely has upgraded armor but Sepv2 doesn’t, even though the same level of evidence exists for both. We really only have brief and vague statements with pictures of armor sim plates.
We’re never getting a primary source at least not for the next 20-30 years. Which is why I think @SPANISH_AVENGER idea of changing how armor values are given is so important.
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It’s a terrible idea.
You know how most people on this thread consider Soviet/Russian tanks to be hyped up nonsense? Does anyone really want vehicles stats to be based solely on propaganda and reputation? It opens a can of worms, this game is close enough to the History Channel as it stands, really no point in opening the floodgate.
As an example.
Some of these estimates are great, especially the Lakowski one, which is surprisingly academic, meanwhile lots of other estimates are the exact type of more or less baseless nonsense speculation pulled from thin air (completely typical for military “science”). If War Thunder transitions from factually informed designs and just jumps headlong into deranged babbling of “experts” like Clancy, we might as well just rename it to Call of Duty and let go of any pretense about realism or history.