Russian MBTs: Firepower and Protection versus NATO counterparts

Machinery of War Discussion Ground Vehicle
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The Sword and Shield of The Great Russian Bear.

Good day all, I come to make a myriad of suggestions to improve the current combat effectiveness of Soviet and Russian main battle
tanks at high-top tier. This post will be mainly split into two parts, firepower and defense. Let us begin.

Firepower

Prologue
Beginning at ~9.3 and continuing to the top ranks, Soviet and Russian MBTs posses the powerful and venerable 2A46 main cannon and its derivatives. This 125mm smoothbore has fired rounds such as the steel 3BM9, the widespread tungsten 3BM42, to the modern 3BM60 and beyond.

A common trope within all vehicles which mount this gun, is the presence of an autoloader to load the cumbersome two-piece 125mm ammunition into the breech, while maintaining the low profile of the fighting vehicle. These autoloaders are the AZ and the MZ “Korzina”, found on the T-72 (+derivatives) and T-64/T-80 (+derivatives) respectfully. These autoloaders differentiate with the AZ being electromechanically driven and storing the cases parallel to the rounds within the hull, and the MZ being hydraulically driven and storing cases and rounds perpendicular to eachother.

AZ Automatic Loader (Image Gallery)



MZ Automatic Loader (Image Gallery)



Comparison of the two designs, AZ on left and MZ on right, (GIF)

Ingame Implementations
Now that the differences within the autoloaders have been put forward, it is time to touch upon their combat effectiveness. Within game, NATO 120mm armed MBTs with human loaders are capable of reloading at a rate as low as 5 seconds, with Japanese MBTs possessing the capability to lay a round downrange every 4 seconds! Compared to the reloading rate of the MZ of 6.5 seconds, and especially noticeable versus the AZ with a reload rate of a sluggish 7.1 seconds, you are going to often be out reloaded by your counterparts, causing you to have to fall back on your mediocre mobility to get you out of trouble. This discrepancy in reload speed can be easily remedied by reducing the combat reload time of the AZ especially to the much more reasonable figure of ~6.5 seconds, with the MZ (and the MZ on the T-64s and T-80B) being able to have a reload time reduction to ~4-6 seconds, a reasonable midpoint being 5.5s. These speeds are more than possible for the AZ and MZ, each demonstrated in the 2 videos linked below.

MZ Autoloader, T-80 (Video)

https://youtu.be/qh_I71FBLE4?si=gKXqRo9cGvedDcOZ

The reloading process for a shell begins at 0:05 and ends at 0:10, resulting in a roughly 5s reload time.

AZ Autoloader, T-90 (Video)

https://youtu.be/tvQuV77KzqM?si=_I0TdwhIG88Nl3ZV

2 shots fired within a 13 seconds time frame, making a reload speed of around 6.5s.

Overall, this simple change could greatly benefit Soviet, Russian and even Chinese tanks in battle against their opponents!

Moving on, defense and survivability.

Defense and Survivability

Prologue
Nadboi and Podboi are anti-radiation liners that form part of the NBC protection system of Soviet and Russian tanks. They are designed to negate the effects of radiation from a tactical nuclear weapon, such as the ones NATO and it’s allies would deploy in a hypothetical hot war in a theatre scenario, such as the Fulda Gap. The liner I wish to focus on is Podboi, the internal liner. Podboi is an anti-radiation liner made up of special woven sheets 4-5cm in thickness, in order to negate radioactive damage to the crew of the fighting vehicle. It is present on a variety of vehicles in real life, and it has the ability to function as a rudimentary spall liner, the part which is important to this discourse.

Nadboi external anti-radiation cladding (Image Gallery)




Podboi internal anti-radiation liners (Image Gallery)

Look for the similar rivets of the Nadboi liners and the rough texturing.





(In the image below especially, you can see the layers of the woven liner above the gunsight.)

(In the next 2 images, the liners are clearly visible behind the 2 guys.)

Ingame Implementations
Podboi should be added as a dedicated spall liner on most Soviet and Russian cold war vehicles, providing a nice survivability increase to the higher tiered main battle tanks, which all lack dedicated spall liners, sans the T-90M. As to be balanced ingame, they could have a reduced effectiveness of 85%-75% of the spall reduction of dedicated Kevlar sheeting. These would cover most of the important parts of the fighting compartment and provide some nice protection to the crew. See above linked bug report for more details and information.

Would you like to see these changes implemented ingame?
  • Yes, I would like these changes to be implemented as they are in the post.
  • I agree with the changes, but wish for a different implementation (State why below in comments).
  • No, I disagree with these changes (State why below in comments).
0 voters

I hope this was pleasant to read and I wish you all a wonderful day, feel free to comment and ask further questions! Thank you!
Edited 4/10/24 to add some images and reformatted some parts.

21 Likes
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+1.It’s time to improve the loading system. For rotary loading machines. It doesn’t actually take that long to load the next nearby shell.

although this may make the T series too op.
but, china’s MBT will also be affected. it a chance to narrow the gap with other factions in the competition

33 Likes
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A 4-5mm woven liner is not going to do anything to stop the spall generated by anything capable of penetrating the fighting compartment of a MBT.

And if we’re going to buff the speed of the autoloaders we should similarly buff the speed of the NATO mains down to 3-4 seconds because that’s how fast atleast the M1 can be run…

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not an expert but if we’re going for accuracy we might as well give the nato tanks their realistic performance too, since they’re underperforming majorly at the moment

23 Likes
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in the report
most of the hull section had 40-50mm of woven-liner
most of the turret had 15-25mm of woven liner
and the shell ejection area had 50mm

they were effective at disabling secondary fragments from HEAT jet
not sure about AP tho, since the article was broken into individual parts and acknowledged
and am not reading all that ngl

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  1. Russian autoloaders should receive a better reload for rounds of the same type, but the reload should be slower for different ammo types from the one loaded, which reflects real life.

  2. Anti-radiation liner should not be implemented into the game because a crap ton of post war vehicles have anti radiation liners, this can of worms would lead to a lot of vehicles having spall liners that don’t need them. Spall liners should be limited to only actual spall liners. It would lead to a lot of “x vehicle has an anti radiation liner why can’t it get a modeled spall liner?”

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It’s 40-50mm, and it was still decently effective. If the reload of Russian vehicles goes down to 6.5 seconds on average, NATO 120s can still outreload them by 1.5s. The Abrams and other NATO vehicles also have to practise the unsafe practise of the loader holding a round in his arms while one is in the breech, further fatiguing him and reducing subsequent shots reload time.

3 Likes
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Currently the Strv. 122s and derivatives have the best armour schemes in the game, with the Leopards also taking that place. Even the Abrams has an incredibly favourable armour scheme, with very good hulldown performance and the ability to do fast peeking shots. Major issues I can think of are basically the entire Challenger 2, most Abrams spall liner suggestions are very convoluted, (the Kevlar inside the cheeks is to keep the composite together btw). However I do entice you to go forth and do your own research, we both want the game to be as enjoyable as possible!

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  1. Would be odd to implement with arbitrary values, and would also cause some Russian and Chinese mains to do the same annoying “Germany Suffers” style whining and attempt to get the NATO 120s to have variable reloads as well, just causing an overall hassle to the devs and players. We want the game to be fun and balanced, no?

  2. A compromise change would be only introducing it on later vehicles, like T-72B onwards, T-80B/U onwards, and maybe BMP-2M and the such. The reason I suggest podboi as spall liners with a possible reduced effectiveness is that currently the Russian top-tier lineup is incredibly lacking in the spall liners that the majority of their competitors possess, with those that don’t posses a spall liner having a more favourable armour scheme and more crew, or better mobility and other aspects.

1 Like
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I don’t believe this would make them very overpowered, just give them a greater edge against the NATO tanks with more favourable armour schemes and reload rates. Podboi can also be implemented as a reduced effectiveness spall liner as to keep it semi-balanced.

1 Like
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T72 may be, but T80 is already very strong. but I also support this suggestion.

2 Likes
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No. The Ivan tanks are already overperforming armor-wise and are often using more modern ammo than NATO tanks are - Not to mention many of the later tanks are more modern modifications of what most of NATO has in the game. They don’t need anything else.

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Actually a good and well thought out post. Very nice!

I do have a few questions though:

I’m curious as to how this actually functions, and what makes up this. Any source so I can look into this would be very good. Another question on this was the “CBR” I’ve never heard of CBR, I’d assume it stands for “Chemical, Biological, and Radiation,” which veers from the standard use of “NBC systems.”

Kevlar is not effective against high caliber munitions or spall, this is the issue, Kevlar is used to stop low speed, high density, and (in relation to length) large rounds, not high speed, long rod penetrator, or it’s high velocity molten spall.

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T-72 B,T-90 and ZTZ99 deserves it. Their Main gun vertical guidance,armor penetration and backwards is disastrous.And, Soviet engineers used autoloaders because they had learned from the war in the Middle East that manual loading was not effective in rough terrain(Soviet tanks were inhumane in design than their Western counterparts).

4 Likes
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Thank you, I wrote this at like 0100 and forgot the actual term, it has been corrected!

Also in response to the kevlar thing, I just put that there because most people recognize spall liners as just kevlar, when in reality theyre much more reinforced layered sheeting.

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3BM42 and 46 are both Soviet era rounds, only 3BM60 is a post Soviet round. T-80BVM is an upgrade of old mothballed T-80BV tanks. T-72B3M is an upgrade of older T-72B3 tanks. Comparatively, Most if not all nations in this game have upgrades of their tanks from ~2010s, not just Russia. You’re cherry picking and ignoring the rest of the game.

4 Likes
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Uh… They already have some of the best survivability at top tier. They make the Challenger 2 and Ariette. let alone quite a few other tanks with major bugs like the Abrams. Look like unarmoured cars in comparison.

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Good post

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My 2 other most grinded ground trees are Italy and Britain, trust me I want the Ariete and the Challenger 2 to be as survivable as well. For now just upvote and comment on the actual CR2 massive thread, the guys running that have done a better job of cataloguing MoD info than I could ever.

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There are a lot of clips of Chinese MBT’s autoloader reloading twice in 7.1 seconds

8 Likes