Afaik that is most likely correct, the Army apparently replaces those side skirts with an “ARAT side skirt” to minimise the weight increase:
They just forwarded Object 195 which has a 152mm gun.
It would reach some 900-1000mm pen in game.
Russia can and will probably get the first true lolpen round at top tier.
The only answer other nations have to it are 140mm prototypes which are much inferiour to the Object 195 (if it gets all its claimed / theoretical features since noone can confirm if any of those features actually work)
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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.