Yeah I posted this way back but general descriptions of most incidents that involved DU are in this list with links to damage reports and interviews with the crew.
https://gulflink.health.mil/du_ii/du_ii_tabh.htm
To the best of my knowledge every incident involving DU exposure is in there so its a pretty useful starting point for gulf war era things
3 Likes
Because, by the logic of those who design the armour, they make probabilist assessments about where tanks are going to be hit. Notice how few tanks have really thick lower plates? Some WW2 stats showed almost all tank hits were to the upper 2/3 of the armour, so basically armour designers assume you can ignore armouring the lower 1/3 in order to save weight.
Same applies. If you assume the tank is shot center mass at long range, the shell isn’t going to be targetting any weakspots.
It’s pointless to armour against point blank shots, since during the 80’s against a peer adversary, the assumption was that any mass produced modern shell would shred any contemporary armour at short ranges, the game was to protect only against long ranges since too much weight and armour is needed for short range protection.
They want mobile tanks, so you cut the weight somewhere. Just happens to be lower plates, gun mantlets etc. Also you can’t armour mantlets as easily since you need optics and machine guns and so on. Turret rings are just accepted to be hard to hit since they occupy such a small proportion of the frontal area.
Only with the shift to asymmetrical warfare does the need arise to protect against targets outside the frontal 35 degrees from extreme distances. Hence why protection packages almost completely shift to comprehense HEAT protection on the sides, nobody is expecting Fulda gap situations.
This basically perfectly describes the SEP programs. They are commissionsed as a drip feed to retain labour and also new versions are designed to mobilise old storage stock and when there’s some way to strip out enough existing stuff (or reduce weight E.G. electronics modernisation) so you can slap something new on.
I’d say it’s absolutely no coincidence that all the abrams replacement programs like XM1202, the M10 booker and the Abrams X have literally all been ways to reduce the weight, not ways to make huge thicker DU armour on everything.
Probably contemporary protection is designed by APS instead of composites. Composites are likely seen as something to protect against whatever is left after APS has done its work.
That is not exactly how it works.
Whenever the US adds some new modules they are completely isolated to them selves. The modules are keep in the moderation but are built into the system removing all the extras components used to operate the attached module. This usually reduces a decent amount of weight.
Best way to describe it is they go from having 5 different controllers to control 5 modules to 1 controller to control 5 modules.
Not all of them, the Component Advanced Technologies Test Bed (CATTB) reduced weight from the engine, suspension, tracks, side skirts and turret basic structure while increasing armor weight, the CATTB weighs 63.04 metric tons empty.
There’s also the obscure M1A3 “Tank 1080” projected to weigh 70 short tons only because the 140mm gun is compensated by a titanium turret, the tank maintains the same turret structure design as the M1A2 but has increased armor.
8 Likes
I’m differentiating CATTB which is pre-SEP, from SEP and onwards.
Seems designs like M1A2 had some inertia due to pre-soviet collapse requirements, but things changed after 1991.
2 Likes
Yes you’re correct, TARDEC even had to hide the further development of the 140mm gun tube from the congress, they used the name “Lightweight 120mm” as the official euphemism for the 140mm ATACS, which is why some ppl belive the CATTB had the 120mm gun while in reality it’s the 140mm.
There’s some photos of the XM291 with the real 120mm L/56 gun tube in the background at the U.S. Army Watervliet Arsenal (Benét Laboratories), you can also spot the famous Thumper photo near the breach.
2 Likes
you absolute buffoon its the same tank
1 Like
Yeah, my bad, only 2.
1 Like
And that’s why we should treat congressional documents for what they are.
Deceptive documents with sole purpose to get congress to sign off on whatever the military industrial complex wants to throw money at, whilst trying to say the absolute minimum possible.
Its also why such documents cite random websites like Gary’s, imagine having to tell some of the most powerful people I your land what you’re actually doing. Instead you can lie by omission and bend over backwards to say as little as possible about the 0.8 trillion dollars you’ve spent. Anyone remember multi thousand dollar toilet seats?
Endless lying by omission and other deceptive practices, but people cite those documents like they’re truthful and not actually known to be suspect.
2 Likes
only 1 there is 1 confirmed CR 2 Kill
Bruh, literely you can see 2 different roads and nearby destroyed vehicles, also, first image from Ukranie unit, second is a Recon squad from Russian.
you do know that Russians capture destroyed tanks and move them and then pictures are taken again right?
just because its in a different location does not mean its a different tank/IFV.
you have to also look at the damage on the tank and compare to see if its the same.
5 Likes
Don’t forget the whole ‘our Ka-52s taking out a Leopard’ video… said Leopard 2 then turned out to be a Combine Harvester. I suppose to the Russians some modern Western farm machinery might well be 200 years in the future compared to their tech-base but we don’t routinely use them as MBTs.
Source supplied - 'Leopard 2' Tank Seen Destroyed In Russian Media Video Was Actually A Farm Harvester
If it is a Russian MOD source about ANYTHING to do with destroyed equipment it is usually a pack of imaginary tales, badly-formed falsehoods and dusted with enough obfuscation to muddy the waters. This is the bunch of jokers who claim the Moskva didn’t sink because it headbutted a few anti-ship missiles. It fell over because it was a bit breezy or something similarly inane…
Don’t use RU sources for forming opinions and certainly don’t wheel them out to give support to any argumentation of vehicle performance in War Thunder.
16 Likes
i thought the cattb had a 130mm gun
Yeah, the logic circle Gaijin is making here is so asinine. “Here’s a paper aircraft that we are outfitting for a top-tier position despite never being fitted with such but we can’t apply that logic to the prototype DU Abrams”.
Hey CMs or mods, can we forward onto the devs to remove the Yak-141, citing your own logic here? Just want to make sure we are being consistent with your implementation of top-tier.
13 Likes
Not quite, the XM291 was actually a dual-caliber system. You could swap the 140mm tube out for the 120mm tube. I believe the 120mm tube was actually rated at around 1,000lbs lighter in comparison to the M256 overall.
The reason they wanted it to be a dual caliber tube is because they wanted to be able to retain the ability to use existing stocks of 120mm ammunition.
I’m pretty sure the 120mm version of the XM291 was even used on the 120mm M8 Enhanced Capabilities Demonstrator
Some sources:
https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/tr/pdf/ADA228163.pdf
3 Likes
That’s exactly what i’ve said, while the XM291 is dual-caliber system, TACOM had to hide the further development of the 140mm gun tube from 1991 and onwards, because the congress no longer wanted to give money for the 140mm gun tube and ammo development, only for the 120mm gun tube.
Just to clear it up for some ppl, some documents like the Finite Element Stress Analysis for Component Advanced Technology Test Bed (CATTB) suggests that the CATTB uses the 120mm gun tube but that’s not true, LW 120 is the “nickname” of the 140mm gun tube.
-
Lightweight 120mm or LW 120 = 140mm gun tube
-
120mm XM291 = 120mm gun tube
Correctly, the M8 Thunderbolt used the XM291, but with a shorter 120mm L/44 gun tube. Watervliet designed and tested with the ATAC System Demonstrator (Thumper) 3 different 120mm gun tubes for the XM291, L/56 (Long tube), L/44 (Short tube) and one between these two lengths (Medium tube).
2 Likes
Afaik the U.S. army never tested nor designed a 130mm gun tube, although the XM291 is Engineered to permit use of bore sizes from 120mm to 155mm.
The CATTB only ever used the XM291 with the 140mm gun tube, while Thumper tested 3 different 120mm gun tubes manned and the 140mm unmanned.
I will write an article about the CATTB and the Thumper with correct information since every single article, blog or website lacks information about them, the CATTB in some aspects is even more advanced than the Abrams X.
3 Likes
so one square meter is about 10.8 square foot. so 5.7x10.8=61.56lbs per square meter. 61.56lbs is about 28kg, so my estimation of 30 kg per square meter for only the kevlar wasn’t that far of :)
granted i added extra steel and mounting weight to that which probably would not be necessary.
but i’m a bit confused how they then got 1250lbs (about 567kg) as a total for just the turret.
that would mean an area of 567/28=20.25 square meters, for just the turret. that does not sound correct at all. lets say, 2m tall cylinder with 1m radius. that gives an area of roughly 2m length and 2m width and 2m height (which seams reasonable in my head).
the lateral area of a cylinder: 2πrh gives 2 x π x 1 x 2=4 x π= about 12.6 square meters to cover ALL the walls. lets say you want the roof as well, add π x r^2=π x 1= about 3.14.
so a total of 15.7 square meters.
admittedly larger than i thought but still only 3/4 of their total.
is the turret volume really that big?