Side plates I’d agree, although it seems like the actual ARAT mounts themselves missing a good amount of thickness, which does make sense as you would want the backing plate to be thick enough to both hold the additional weight and prevent the blast from harming the mounting system.
Random question, anyone got any idea how much a M1A2 turret precisely weighs?
I know that HHI Corporation supposedly has a M1 Abrams turret stand rated for 37 tons here: M1 Tank Turret – HHI
Reason I’m asking is because I’ve been digging through NRC and came across some fun information:
Oasis Advanced Engineering apparently had a license for up to 88,000kg of DU between two M1A2s. here: https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML1319/ML13199A477.pdf
Oasis’ License got amended 5 times. Amendments 2-4 as far as I can tell simply no longer specify the number of Abrams and adjust it to only storage? Amendment 5 appears to terminate Oasis’ NRC license as seen here:
- https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML1328/ML13281A554.pdf (Amendment 2)
- https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML1508/ML15086A292.pdf (Amendment 3)
- https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML1528/ML15281A269.pdf (Amendment 4)
- https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML1619/ML16196A329.pdf (Amendment 5)
One other amusing thing to note is apparently a pair of GDLS technicians nearly set themselves on fire working on the side turret armor of an Abrams on November 29th 2006.
Source here: https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/event-status/event/2006/20061129en.html
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You’re looking st the wrong angle for the wrong thing. But that’s whatever.
P.S. It’s in short tons, IIRC
With this tusk (extra added armor) installed you have less side armor than without them installed lol. Bad design for multiple purpose projectiles.
That plate looks way thicker than 6mm
Against CE? No. TUSK was made for urban combat i.e. to defeat RPGs and the like, for that it provides a significant improvement, however the problem there being I have no clue if Gaijin’s implementation of TUSK / ARAT is correct in regards to the actual protection it provides for both KE and CE.
ARAT was designed to fight against a wide range of shaped charges, which I believe include EFPs which are considered as kinetic energy projectiles, not to mention that it also works under the same principle of Relikt with two flyer plates on each side at an angle.
From my past research, copper EFPs in Iraq could penetrate up to 100mm of RHA if the diameter was the right size so that’s likely the amount of protection it should offer against KE on it’s ~45 degree configuration. But this is too thin for what Gaijin demands from NATO nations.
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It certainly shouldn’t have 30 mm to 40mm of missing armor on the sides. That’s over 1” of armor protection
Talked it over with Trackula and read up on the company itself, concluded that they probably got allotted the large amount of DU in the license to experiment around with different DU arrays.
I’ve been looking at congressional budget documents and there is no indication that the m1a2 ever got depleted uranium in the hull. There was only a generalization about taking the armor packages out and replacing them between upgrading from the m1a1 to the m1a2 and it took 12 months to do so. Apparently, it took 2 years to upgrade between the m1a1 and m1a2 SEP.
The Heavy Armor produced is not said to be in the Hull in this document either, but inferences that Heavy Armor was included in the Block III tank as all the upgrade programs for the m1 Abrams were canceled and DOE plant for DU armor would be at risk of closure.
The only thing I’ve read from the testing public testing annual reports was that survivability was increased on the SEP somehow before it went to ballistic firing. Sub-1536 seems to indicate that DU hull armor was being prototyped in 2006. Sep V2 is the only chance of DU hull armor it seems.
Frankly at this stage I wouldn’t care if it was DU or not so long it was actually improved instead of being a worse copy + paste of the preceding SEPv1.
I’ve seen sources claim the hull itself was upgraded with armor- regardless if it was DU or not.
The sep and sep 2 already have less side armor protection against kinetic(with tusk installed) than the m1a2. So it needs a buff
If only EFPs worked in game like they do IRL. Bloody anaemic TOW-2B with inferior performance to a hand-made weapon of ~160mm diameter with a glass liner and low detonation velocity explosives.
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That was dated 1992. This was even before the FONSI and stated goals of cutting the 1996 armor protection upgrade into AIM and SEP Abrams. SEP V1 is very much a part of this.
You could try Sim Air.
As a general aside…
Does DU even have a better modifier than RHA as it is?
The M1s with DU are based off of the Swedish trial protection values.
That’s the point; the SEP program came after the cancelation of both the m1a2 upgrade program and the ASM program. Sub-1536 is an official document that states, regardless of accuracy, that only 5 hulls contain DU at various army schools in 2006. It doesn’t matter if the DOE was wrong (in context of the Army), but it was probably referring to the program called Sep Increment 2 and that’s a definitive statement on the matter because technically the DOE should not be wrong even if a lot of other information gets redacted and you never see it.
No. You’re citing a 1992 document, the SEP program incorporated the armor package improvements of 1996. The document Gaijin cites even mentions the results of the tests and the FONSI statement to go ahead in late 2001.
https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-1998-07-14/html/98-18674.htm
More about the plans to incorporate upgrades to the SEPs. M1A2 SEP P3I program cited in this document.:
The 5 hulls happened before 2006. Scroll down to page 21 in the document Gaijin cited, and you will see that the tests of DU in the hulls, already conducted, lead to the FONSI statement and cutting the armor upgrade into AIM and SEP Abrams as planned in 1998.
https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML0605/ML060590665.pdf
We see here that these budget forms show Frontal Armor Upgrades happened well before 2006.:
Search M1 ABRAMS TANK (MOD) (GA0700) to see that this covers AIM, M1A2 SEP, and SEP Retrofit package.
We know that the armor was provided by the DOE, and that the turrets were always authorized to have DU in them without limits. The only thing the obsolete version of SUB-1536 that Gaijin tries to claim limits DU to 5 hulls (it doesn’t, it’s been amended and many hulls have received the upgrade) is show that the armor layout used from the tests resulting in the 2001 FONSI statement didn’t include the turret side armor upgrades, confirmed to have DU in them.
We have the budget forms showing DU armor going into hulls and the sides of turrets.
Again, search “Abrams Upgrade Program” and you will see that M1A1 and SEP variants received frontal armor upgrades and turret side upgrades, as identified as DOE armor in previous budget forms.
The DOE and NRC are not wrong about Abrams hulls being authorized unlimited DU use, like the turrets always have been. Since Aug 2006, the NRC removed any limits on DU in hulls.
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