Who knows, but with the mantlet armour being so laughably weak the cheek armour hardly matters. If they buffed the mantlet to it’s historical ~500 mm (most likely value) then I wouldn’t mind the frontal arc protection going down to 600 mm.
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Nerf tanks without adding new max BR (14.0) is a mistake, we don’t play modern MBT to be OS at each random shot.
High pen and high armored tank versions should only fight similar specs tanks.
Leo 2a4, AMX 40, M1 and chally 1 should not fight against over armored tanks like challenger 2, Leclerc S1 or Leo 2a5, and these one should not fight against 2a7, Leclerc SXXI, challenger 3, Sep V2 … because only OS everywhere.
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Maybe if the OES sold better, it would get a 500mm mantlet. Like the 2A4M that totally for real definitely has a realistic mantlet with up to 500mm KE :DDD
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Some documents claim the Challenger 2 design features worse mantlet protection compared to the MLI due to, and I qoute: ‘‘A greater concentration of equipments fitted in or on the mantlet/rotor making the probability of an F kill greater given a strike. The design of the mantlet is also considered inefficient in armour protection terms.’’
The MLI is stated to have had 550mm RHAe for the mantlet, and if the Challenger 2’s design is significantly inferior from a protection point of view, I severely doubt the 500mm value.
Inferior not from protection, but due to the likely hood of damage to either the rotor bearings or electronic equipment… as it says…
It literally says it’s inefficient in terms of armour protection provided, and heavily implies this is a result from the equipment being mounted in the mantlet.
Inefficient, because it has no composite, and is thus heavy, it also leaves certain systems vulnerable.
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.
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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 report says:
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.
I wouldn’t be surprised.
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!
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Yup, I’ll leave it here.
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Lerclerc players : you guys have an armored mantlet ? O_o
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It’s even worse, first two MBT-70 were out of soft metal, so not only FCS wasnt there but the armour was far from final.
More like:" wait! You guys have armor?"
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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!!!
Hey @Smin1080p_WT ,
Now that historical reticles are being introduced can I report the Leclerc’s inaccurate reticle?
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You can tell by the writing they don’t really care and just want to jab at something that’s currently kicking the teeth in of the ruskis.
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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…
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