You heard me. I’m going to talk about the turret armor (and the hull armor :)) of the M1A2s. shocker I know. But to be clear, it’s pretty bad. Now of course there will be players who have the Ariete saying: “but my tank has NO turret armor.” that will be addressed here as well. To preface this here are my stats just so people can’t claim: “Murica main skill issue just get gooder clickbaiter skill issuer!”
As we can see from the screenshots the Strv 122, and the whole Leopard 2A5 and up family have superior turret protection. In addition, all Strv 122s and the 2A7 type tanks have spall liners, which no Abrams has. Additionally from the pictures we can see that the Ariete’s off angle protection is actually comparable to the M1A2s. The Leopard family off angle protection is far greater than the M1A2s despite their armor actually being thinner in that area, with a 35+230+45 array, and the M1A2s having a 19+300+101 array, so the KE and CE multiplier for the Leopards is extremely superior to the Abrams. Some might say: “But the Abrams has a 5 second reload, a whole second faster, which means it’s just as good but in the firepower category.” Maybe? I only have one US tank with an aced crew, and it is the M1A2. Still others might say: “I see the Gotland emblem on your Strv, why do you care about the American tech tree? Wouldn’t you rather just use your superior tanks to stomp bad US mains?” Not really. I’d rather both tech trees have competitive vehicles to fight with, I haven’t played the US tech tree outside of ground sim to spawn an F-16C since I got the Strv 122s. They’re just not good. The minor difference in reload compared to the huge differences in armor and spall liners enable the Strv 122s to do hull down, and cqc combat unlike the M1s which have to rely on ambush as their turret and hull armor will not be able to survive a hit.
I am aware that many sources have been found regarding the Abrams family armor for the M1A2 and up. I do not believe that the “No DU in the hull, only in SEPv3.” argument is valid because we do not know if NGAP has DU in the first place, but even if there is no(? after 2006) DU in the hull that is not grounds to dismiss every single armor improvement strategy. I have seen a budget justification from 2002 or 2004 that was for a large hull and turret armor improvement program, among others. So we know that the armor was improved incrementally between the M1A2, (which is still not accurate and based on the Swedish export trials) and the SEPv2. If the Abrams had a 840-900mm turret face and 800 for 64 degree sides due to the thicker armor array, and maybe a 550-630 hull from the 32+360(?)+101 array, vs the 727 for the Strv 122’s 35+520+45 array, then it would be a, like the 122, very good vehicle, and I might play them again. Until then they are just going to collect dust.
