T95 Medium - T95E1 but better

TLDR its the T95E1 we have in game but with a stabilizer and more advanced FCS

T95

[Would you like to see this in-game?]
  • Yes
  • No
0 voters

The T95 Medium project stemmed from the Tl-1 project which sought to create a tank based around the 90mm smoothbore T208 gun, designed to fire new high length to beam ration fin stabilized sabot rounds, what we of course now know as APFSDS. This project would lead to some pretty advanced tanks for the early 1950s. The version that I am talking about today is the base model T95. The T95E1 is already familiar to players of the American ground tech tree, and the T95 is extremely similar, essentially the only differences being a different mounting for the main gun and a more advanced fire control suite.

The T95 shares a hull with the T95E1, that is to say it has a heavily sloped 95mm upper front plate, a less heavily sloped 127mm lower front plate, a 560hp Continental AOI-1195 engine paired with a XTG-410 4 speed transmission.

The differences in the two vehicles present when we look at the turret. Most notably, the T95 replaces the optical coincidence range finder with the unique T53 Optical Tracking, Acquisition, and Ranging (OPTAR) System. OPTAR send out multiple pulses of incoherent infrared light and searched for returns. The major problem with this system being that incoherent light tends to scatter quite badly and as such offered multiple different returns which the gunner would have to manually sort through to find the correct return based off of a visually estimated range. The system was mounted in an armored bulb on the right side of the turret. It was only ever trialed on the T95 medium where its perceived fragility and the issues with multiple returns caused the army to drop electro-optical systems all together until the introduction of proper lasers. In game this could be modeled in one of a few ways. It could work like a normal laser range finder, it could work like an extremely quick optical or slow laser rangefinder, or it could be ignored all together and the vehicle could be modeled with just an optical rangefinder.
OPTAR

The other notable difference between T95E1 and T95 is the mounting of the main gun. On the T95, the T208E13 (essentially identical to the T203E9 on the T95E1, just weighted differently) was mounted a few inches further back in a rigid T191 mount. The notable change in this mount was that the T191 was fully stabilized in both azimuth and elevation. This also resulted in a slightly different, distinctively flatter gun mantlet. Attached below are a few profile shots of the vehicle and the spec sheet from Hunnicutt’s ‘Abrams: A history of the American MBT’ book

front

Profile.PNG

spec sheet

Sources:
Abrams: A history of the American MBT, R.P Hunnicutt, 1990
Tank Data 3 (Proving Grounds series), Harold E. Johnson 1972

11 Likes

+1, Would be a nice addition to the game

1 Like

Does this also have the composite armor, or was that a further variant? Regardless, I’d love to have this as well. The rangefinder could be a more limited LRF, and should be modeled as slightly better than a regular optical rangefinder. +1

1 Like

The project yielded 2 different hulls, T95 and T96. T95 was a steel hull built around the 90mm, the T96 had the composite in the hull and was built around I believe a rifled 120 but Im not certain about that. So long story short no this one unfortunately does not have the hull composite

3 Likes

Ah darn. That’s ok though.

Neither the T95 nor T96 program were planned with composite armour during their inception in 1954/55.

The two were simply a 90mm medium gun tank and 105mm heavy gun tank program respectively. But due to the fact that the T95 turret ring diameter was increased to be identical to that of the T96, and the armour of the T96 had to be lower than that of the T95 to keep within its weight limit, the T95 chassis was seen as superior for both roles and the T96 project got canned and incorporated into the T95 in 1956.

This was decided upon before any production work had begun and thus no T96 hull was ever made. The turret of the T96 was still planned to be used in what became the T95E4, T95E6, T95E9, T95E11 and T95E12. But none of these got built before the entire project came to an end in 1960.

It was in April 1957 that composite armour was ordered to be incorporated into the T95 program, and planned to be incorprated into the hull of the first pilot T95E6, and hull and turret of the second pilot T95E6. But again, none of these were built.

Source: Hunnicutt Abrams p.44-90

1 Like

+1 as replacement for T95E1, that thing is so useless and worst of all, extremely slow despite almost same T/W and dimensions as a T-54

2 Likes

T96 sounds epic. We should really get This one and the T96. Gaijin did dirty by making the T54E2 prem imo. The current T96E1 is very stale. With a terrible reload. Having the T95 Medium and T96 at 8.3 or maybe 8.7 respectively would be fantastic

Text
. We need composites

folder it with the current one and its a yes from me +1

i hope in this addding

1 Like

I love the T95E1 so honestly I’d love to see this thing as well, take my +1

2 Likes

That looks pretty cool! I think it would be a good event vehicle maybe

nah is ok in the us tech tree

Or that too 😂

Long as it’s added