[showcase, W.I.P.] What if modern tanks had purely steel armor packages?

Machinery of War Discussion Ground Vehicle
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You probably never wondered, but I think some people would find it interesting, what armor could existing tanks potentially have if their armor packages were pure steel. Pure heavy metal, no ceramics! In the end, you could take nominal numbers and multiply them by around 1.78x to find about depleted uranium (DU) armor potential, if you’re feeling American or Soviet-Kazakh.

P.S. the steel value in this case is 1.00x of WW2 steel, note that in-game MBTs usually have 1.15x steel protection equivalent due to high hardness.

Russia:

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T-80BVM:
image
220mm steel UFP, around 600mm turret front. 220mm at 68deg gives around 587mm effective armor. Wondering why it’s better than that in the game, even ignoring ERA?

Germany (identical to Sweden, in game Leo2A7/Strv122 have same thickness but different materials):

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Leopard 2A7: image
355mm UFP and almost 950mm thick turret. Notice that despite such thin hull, it has additional 100mm composite screens, which I didn’t include.
Leopard 2PL: image
Polish upgrade introduces thick composite screens on the turret, if they were made of steel the turret thickness would be 1,4m (the turret armor itself is slightly reduced).

America:

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M1A2 Abrams: image
420mm thick hull, 960mm average right cheek and 1.15m average left cheek. Now, do you remember the DU Abramses? Imagine having hull effective armor of 748mm and turret cheeks armor between 1700mm & 2050mm… say goodbye to the chassis with insane uranium’s mass, though!

Britain:

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Challenger 2: image
While Challie gets seemingly adequate armor - the angles are pretty decent, it actually has poor thickness. And we all know how badly it’s placed, too… 580mm LOS hull armor, 510mm thick turret.

France:

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Leclerc: image
Around 620mm turret next to the empty mantlet. Since there are no visible weld paths, I added data from KNDS website. Pretty much perfect to defeat any Russian munitions, if it was full-steel!

Italy:

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Ariete: image
It would have 195mm thick hull, giving it 380mm effective armor, and 310mm thick turret would give it 540mm LOS. Even full-metal armor won’t save Ariete! The STEEL screen from WAR kit would give it additional 150mm armor, giving it potential 810mm of effective armor.

Israel:

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Merkava Mk.4: image
It’s 115mm UFP gives it 470mm LOS protection, while the turret composite is around 1.13m in it’s thickest parts. Make it steel, and the composites would be extremely bouncy!

The rest is being worked on, im having electricity & forum malfunctions… (empty spoilers)

Japan:

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konnichiwa

China:

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nihao

If you wanna see some other tanks, e.g. older ones, let me know in the replies!

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That comment on the T-80 will have people frothing at the mouth lol.

(its almost as if i can see the future)

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With all that weight at the front, good bye front suspension.

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guess who hid a 20mm plate and made overperforming textolite…

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I think some tanks like BM Oplot already have declining tracks due to immense armor weight

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In-game it’s between 510-525mm.
220mm @ 68° = 587mm.

Object 292 (same armour composition):

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image

T-80BVM:

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image

The 50-35-50-35-50 array was unusually dense for a composite array, which is why the KE efficiency is fairly high (70% of it already consists of steel), but it also resulted in a poor CE protection level:

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image

To make up for this deficiency it was used in combination with Kontakt-1.
Similar story for T-72B arrays, which initially only consisted of many layered steel elements.

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what apfsds round are you using, long rod have a modifier that gives them more angled pen which can lead to skewed stats. Use an early russian mono rod round, best way for an unbiased result.

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587 is using LOS, not normalized with APFSDS multiplier. That would be around 473mm in-game, but oh well, we see 510-525.

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That doesn’t matter, if you use the Armour Analysis tool and look for armour values measured with an APFSDS projectile selected, it will display vertical penetration armour equivalency, regardless of the slope the armour composite array is placed at.

I’m also using longrods because that’s what’s most representative of what you’ll face in actual matches.

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yeah, if you place a shot perfectly vertically it’ll still give 233mm instead of even 220… Even if we apply 1.15x steel multiplier, which is gonna be 150x1.15= 172.5mm, it means 70mm of textolite give 60.5mm more armor… 0.86x equivalent of steel protection, if only Russia has such technology for glass-reinforced plastic, the tanks would indeed be undefeatable!
Anyway, time to finish Asians and Brits

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The problem is that you’re working under the assumption that steel plates being spaced apart adds no beneficial properties to it’s effectiveness.

In reality the layering of steel plates with air gaps has been utilized in countless vehicles due to the obvious benefits it brings.

I’d be more inclined to attribute the effectiveness to that rather than the STEF overperforming against KE.

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there is absolutely no affect on tungsten/uranium rods on 3.5cm spaces when they are 600-800mm long.
Air gaps are only effective on distances that are impossible to apply on tanks, against KE, or generally are effective against early CE

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Your not getting it, long rod in game have a modifier which effects what stats is shown in your example. Its why everyone uses early Russian apfsds as it doesn’t have any so it gives the exact ke LOS protection in game. Not trying to argue but just telling you how everyone else does it and how you get a base value.

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Lots of testing was done on this, but to simplify it, a gap of 3cm isnt going to cause a long rod penetrator to tumble or lose any ke penetration.

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an alternate reality where FV4005 was ahead of its time instead of the other direction to where weapons were headed

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Indeed, which can be read here: Tankograd: T-80

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nothing here covers air gap affect on KE