Yes the TOGS gunsight was mounted on the mantlet in the CR2, but not on the MLI. As a result a shot to the mantlet is more likely to lead to an F kill (loss of ability to aim / fire the gun) than it was on MLI. You don’t need to penetrate the armour to achieve an F kill.
“Inefficient” is not the same thing as “weak”, if the armour was weak they would have called it that. Inefficient just means that the amount of armour you need to achieve the desired protection is more than would be necessary with other designs.
Yes I have that document. It dates from early in CR2 development and also states:
VDS are planning to investigate improvements to the mantlet armour design during development
The MLI mantlet design is “similar” to the CR2 mantlet but without the TOGS
The armour on the CR2 mantlet is “somewhat” more limited than on the MLI mantlet (somewhat typically does not mean less than half - as it currently is in game)
So that document does not rule out a 500 mm mantlet on CR2.
There are other documents available on the CR2 mantlet besides that one though, which also happens to support the idea of a 500 mm mantlet.
Such as one which states Vickers Defence Systems (VDS) had carried out live fire trials against the CR2 turret which demonstrated, with a “high degree of confidence”, that the Challenger 2’s turret armour would meet the UK’s protection requirements; and that “the mantlet armour would survive multiple attacks while still leaving the gun free to elevate and depress”.
Funnily enough the UKs protection requirements specified a minimum protection value of 500 mm in the frontal arc. So it’s a pretty safe bet they were shooting that turret with rounds that had at least ~500 mm penetration. And yet the mantlet is explicitly stated to have survived just fine.
There’s also the fact that:
Leopard 2 was originally outright rejected from the UK tank competition because it had a weak spot in the frontal turret armour. Only after that was fixed was it allowed to compete
The full copy of that table Bossman posted includes the Leclerc, which has a note next to its entry stating there is a large frontal weak spot in the turret presumably (the mantlet). There is no such note for CR2.
Both of those points support the theory that the CR2 mantlet is not a weak spot in real life.
Totally agree, I’d say 400mm is a minimum but I wonder to what degree Gaijin nerfs mantlet armour intentionally for gameplay purposes.
The Leopard 2A5 is shown to have a very heavily armoured mantlet section, implementing that would make it extremely problematic when it was first introduced in the game. It’d be virtually impervious to any attack if hull-down.
But was the mantlet also a focus of these firing trails? Or were these tests primarily carried out to test the turret cheek protection?
the trials results so far have demonstrated, with a high degree of confidence, that:
…
The mantlet armour would survive multiple attacks while still leaving the gun free to elevate and depress.
So I’d wager the mantlet took at least a few hits during that trial.
Guys, I appreciate all the talks, but this is a Leclerc discussion, not a Challenger discussion. There already is a pretty big one specifically for it if you want to compare mantlet armor!
Nobody give a sht about challenger tanks, cause they r rly bullshits the same way they stucked in mad and destroyed in ukraine war. We talking here about Leclerc’s which currently dont even have proper F2 round!!!
Don’t think it’s been talked about, but they changed the CARC camo into, supposedly, a more faithful one for French tanks.
I, however, notice very little difference, at least in the Leclercs. They’re kind of greyed out and dirty by default so maybe that affects the camo…
You don’t have to worry. The people that have been reporting the Leclerc for the recent months have a strict policy of using only open source documents. That also means reports are hard to make tho, especially the few remaining ones concerning armor
I’ve been thinking about this for awhile; would it make sense for the Leclerc in game to have a LWS/LR? I think it has the GALIX System irl which points the turret towards a laser source to deploy smoke grenades but I’m not sure if thats enough for it to be added to a vehicle in WT (assuming it doesn’t actually indicate to the crew where the laser came from, other than turning the turret)
The Galix system is quite modular. The LWS/LR is not always mounted on GALIX systems. The Leclerc S1, S2 and S21 in game do not possess any LWS, at least not that we know of.
The Leclerc AZUR however has its LWS modelled. it’s the mast in the middle right of the turret. There is a pending report on it dating back from its dev server introduction but has never been corrected. https://community.gaijin.net/issues/p/warthunder/i/2QPU8eJZaDIP
