T-80UD Armor Questions

Machinery of War Discussion Ground Vehicle
1

So far as I understand the T-80UD is a T-80U with a more T-72 style engine and transmission with a couple minor upgrades. One of those was supposed to have a new slightly upgraded turret armor composite array. I’ve never heard anything about the hull armor one way or another being any different from the T-80U.

In game, the T-80UD seems to match all this nicely when it comes to visuals, and the model texture appears to reflect the updated turret armor when viewed from above. The frontal hulls look identical except for the lack of mud guards on the lower hull for the UD.

When we look at the game stats and xray however, the turret armor array is identical to the original T-80U. Additionally, the frontal hull armor of the T-80UD is weaker (50-30–35-30-50) than that of the T-80U (50-30-50-30-50).

Are these changes to the turret and hull armor just a gameplay tweak for some sort of balance purpose, or is there something about the T-80UD armor I’m unaware of? I genuinely can’t find much detailed about the the tank in general in english that isn’t just the same page or two of generic background/stats copy-pasta, and was curious about the differences.

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3

Good catch. I can’t find much info on it having a slightly different glacis IRL, though it seems possible as there were substantial differences between the T-80U and T-80UD.
The T-80UD used as derivative of the T-64s engine as it was made by the Kharkiv plant who were developing that engine, vs the T-80/B/BV/U which were made in Leningrad, now St. Petersburg, which used gas turbines.

Would be worth translating this in your browser, it doesn’t really answer your question but it’s a good description of the tank.
http://btvt.info/1inservice/t-80ud/t-80ud.htm

4

Actually, now that I’m looking at it, there’s a few weird things going on.

  • they appear to have changed the T-80U hull model this patch, as the drivers viewport weakspot is now much larger
  • the T-80UD uses the exact same X-ray model as the T-80U, despite it having different listed thicknesses
  • The T-80U’s hull protection overall seems to have decreased, it can now be penetrated by DM53 even on the K5 blocks, when I don’t think it could before

None of this was in the patch notes for whatever reason.

1 Like
5

isn’t the t80U a we have ingame a later version with newer ufp ?
i think i read that somewhere …

6

Much appreciated for the link!

So it does look like the UD is supposed to have an improved turret armor array over the U

Screenshot 2024-03-15 142151
Screenshot 2024-03-15 1421511200×484 69.8 KB

Going by that link, it does show the T-80UD with both a different turret and frontal glacis array next to the original T-80U, but the in-game model has the basic U turret while the hull arrangement definitely doesn’t appear to be what’s shown here.

Screenshot 2024-03-15 142122
Screenshot 2024-03-15 1421221740×1480 383 KB

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Even the upper plate ERA arrangement on the right doesn’t look like any T-80U variant Im aware of.

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Tower of the tank 478B cast base and installation circuitry of the built-in road on the top part of the frontal unit The corps

As a side note, that translation is great

9

I think it would be perfectly fine for the T-80UD to recieve stabdard T-80U frontal armor, be given a better round, and then be moved up to 10.7-11.0 since we already have a premium russian MBT that sits at 10.0 in the form of the TURMS.

As of right now the T-80UD seems fine where it’s at, but a bit redundant.

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10

The 50-30-50-30-50 Array should have a protection at 68 Degrees of ~450mm KE OR 560mm LOS. With a correct and accurate mass efficiency of about 1.3 against Long rod kinetic projectiles. The vehicles in game have a ME of about 1.46 because gaijin applied the LOS values as Flat pen equivalent protection values, which is obviously wrong.

All of the other T-80U variants including 292, T-90s, and T72Bs with the 60-60-50 array are all wrong too. They should all have about 450mm KE OR ~560mm LOSe against Long rod penetrators underneath the K-5… If the UD has the version with a little less textolite and a little more steel it wouldnt move the armors efficiency drastically. It would probably be around the same Historical protection of the vehicle at ~450mm KE, or flat pen equivalent.

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11

The T-80Us after rechecking Still are exactly the same at 640mm KE (erroneous) at 68 degrees and also consistent with Gaijin’s Protection excel sheet.

12

DM53 could always pen T-80U’s hull with K5 over the last year at least.
People just have little experience with this due to how few T-80Us are in matches these days.

@Guardians6521
It’s 518mm on my end.
With K5 it adds up to 640 makes sense, as that’s the ammo we know pens it.
After all, I doubt M829 perforates K5 + armor, pretty sure it’s M829A1 and onward only.

13

M829 should be able to penetrate the BASE array underneath the K-5 at around probably something like 700m or less. And from some math, A1 looking at LOS values and equivalencies only should be able to pen a K-5 tank under 1200m. which is not a realistic combat range of course. but thats why A2 was developed. a boosted velocity A1 penetrator with a sacrificial steel tip to simply increase the combat range effectiveness. With the corrected protection of the base array (Because K-5s effectiveness is about right) it should bel like ~570-580mm KE (~750mm LOSe protection)

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Can you elaborate on flat pen vs angled?

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DM-53 could do that before: DM53 fired out of L55 was the only thing that could and still probably is.

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This does not.
This link shows an improved armour array and improved steel for T-80U/UD and T-72B’s that didnt go into series because of collapse.

17

Warthunder uses the NATO derived flat penetration equivalent protection to display protection of a vehicle. The soviet union used a Line of sight value. And a nominal defeat value in line of sight. I can prove this.

Heres a simple example though.

3BM4 is a homogenous steel monobloc long rod penetrator with 285mm flat pen, and 162mm thickness of plate perforated at 60 degrees, or 324mm LOS penetration.

Take this round and aim it at T-62s ufp woth an impact angle of 60 degrees. The protection equivalent will only show ~176mm. But T-62s ufp we know to be a 100mm steel plate sloped at 60 degrees. This provides a LOS protection value of 200mm RHA.

So what you can do, is convert the 176 the T62 is showing you to a true RHA LOS protection value.

You take the 176 T62 provides and divide it by the flat penetration of 3bm4 which is 285. This gives a percentage of penetration against 3BM4s flat pen. Now take this value and multiply it by 3bm4s angled performance at 60 degrees and it gives you exactly 200mm. This is the T-62s true LOS protection.

You can only do this with monobloc long rod penetrators that you have the ammo data for using lanz odermatt to calculate the performance, or AP rounds using the slope tables and the equations for that. You cannot use composite penetrators like 3bm22, or M735 to calculate protection because they act differently and cant be calculated using lanz and you also cannot use steel penetrators you do not know the hardness (BHN) for.

And this is how gaijin fucked up the 13 t series tanks. They took the Soviets LOS protection values and applied them at flat penetration equivalents. Only the T-72As (60-105-50) T-64A (80-105-20), T-80B (60-105-45), and T-64B (60-35-30-35-50) have the correct (within about 25mm) LOS protection and flat pen protection. They were corrected before. I can also prove this with some source material.

So they took a 530mm LOS protection value for T-72B and applied it as a flat pen protection of 530mm, which converted to LOS is 661mm. Which is erroneous.

Like Look at T64Bs array. Which is very similar to obj 292 or T-80Us arrays.

How the fuck does about 1cm total more steel and a tiny bit less textolite increase the t80us armor performance by over 100mm LOS? Its completely impossible. Even with the hardness plate differences it cant possibly achieve that.

I basically wrote a 50+ page paper on how and why gaijin fucked up and can completely prove anything i have stated here if youre interested.

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18

Is that in regard specifically to the Hull armor? I was wondering about it, it didn’t look familiar.

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To the turret armour array, as the improved steel would be used for bothh hull and turret, but the turret would have another armour array design.

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“Big words hurt brain, me no change” - some higher up at gaijin after being given a 50 page thesis on why they are wrong (which cannot possibly be as they have all the secret documents in the world).

It does sound complicated but when you start to do the math on all the Russian tanks you just get a bit sad. What more information could you give to prove your correct as they’ll just pull out the documents with the values on and say there right despite them using said values wrong…

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21

Yea i do get sad because all of the math checks out and thats why i dont play past 10.3 in my brit tech tree. Bc at that br the only tanks i cant pen and should is the T-72B, obj 292, and 775. Not going up in br where i cant pen an entire line up when i should.

It would also literally help russian tanks to have their brs lowered because their soft stats are shit. And their brs are propped up by their fake armor and really late ammunition.