First two sources mention a frontal armour upgrade but not where on the tank - still likely the turret
Veterans Affairs PowerPoint presentations are hardly a good source, they’re made by doctors and lawyers, not engineers. That one you posted also conflicts itself - it claims there’s DU in the hull, then shows a diagram that implies it’s only in the front of the turret.
fortunately we have proof for the SEP v3 because I believe the armor got visibly thicker
when a source says frontal armor upgrade and turret side armor upgrade its safe to assume frontal includes the hull, that might not be on the source you were responding to but that is said in other budget sheets
But do you have values for that increased armor thickness?
For all Gaijin knows they just needed a bigger volume of armor the get the same protection as the DU armor, just like for all Gaijin knew 3rd gen DU armor offered lower protection than esrlier DU armor.
So the turret front and sides, nice find!
Then why would they show an image of the turret front to denote the “frontal” upgrade and not the front of the whole tank? Same with the “side” diagram that clearly just shows the sides of the turret highlighted.
different upgrade package at a different time
What’s the source on this one out of curiosity? Because I’m not getting much of anything via reverse search
Still the same. US tanks don’t have spall liners, no turret armor, no hull armor. It’s hilarious playing the Strv 122 with spall liners and working turret/hull armor and then vsing any variant of the Abrams and being able to frontally pen it anywhere.
How did I miss this in the past?
This is a literal confirmation that M1A1 AIM, M1A2 SEP and M1A2 SEPv2 should have improved hull armor.
The Abrams do have turret armor…
Don’t mistake issues with the hull [turret ring and unknown composite structure of the front hull] with the turret.
Devs know this already, what we nor the devs know is by how much.
And DU in hull is only in SEP3, hence why SEP3 increases mass by multiple tons empty.
But that document by the War Related Illness and Injury Study Center clearly states that “Abrams tanks built after 1998 have DU reinforcement in armor plating in the front of the hull”.
And that’s where they should just estimate it based on the available information, like they’ve estimated the armor of many of the unknown/classified MBTs we already have ingame.
Why can every MBT’s armor be guesstimated under the premise that it’s actually unknown, but we can’t estimate it when it comes to the Abrams?
Why 4 tons got added to the SEPV2 with zero armor improvement?
That’s just poorly written.
It obviously meant to only mean the turret.
Otherwise how do explain the fact all illustrations and actual warnings are of the turret?
Let alone the multi-ton increase of SEP3.
We already know SEP2 doesn’t have DU in the hull, the US government said so.
The only way to know what improvements to the conventional composite array in the hull they made is to cut it open or get the document that specifies.
An estimate still requires a baseline number to work with and a visualization of the armor; aka a cut open hull.
@Ladies_Man_217 SEP1 with TUSK1 and mine plate: 65,450kg.
SEP2 with TUSK2 and mine plate: 67,460kg.
It’s a 2010kg difference, not 4 tons, and part of that is the shingles.
I expect that an amount of that is added armor inside the hull, but not a higher density material change.
Because SEPv3’s armor was improved EVEN further, with an even denser and heavier package!
I mean… are we now going to brush off any documents under the premise that they are “just poorly written”…? :/
When?
Of course. Let’s say those shingles add 500kg, and the new turret equipment adds 100kg. You still got +1,400 extra kg of unexplained additional mass. To me, that alone is more than enough evidence of the improved hull armor, since, otherwise, most other tech found on SEPv2 is already found on SEP itself.
One of the main, whole points of SEPv2 was its improved armor protection after all; there’s a reason why SEPv2 is still used in 2024, and SEP is not!
I want to see inside a SEP2’s hull as much as you or anyone else.
I’m just saying it’s not DU, cause of previously shared documents.
I myself didn’t document their links in the forum, so I apologize for not being of assistance to supply those to you.
But this document states it to be the case;
And “it’s poorly written” isn’t really a good argument to dismiss it…
That’s not a manufacturer’s document, and that document also proves there’s no hull DU armor with the illustration.