NATO return to Cold War force structure

[seahawk]

Because they had an T-14 to test that?

[Ssnake]

27 minutes ago, seahawk said:

Because they had an T-14 to test that?

Obviously, the appeasers of the west supplied their handlers with a test specimen, duh!

[Martineleca]

11 minutes ago, Ssnake said:

Obviously, the appeasers of the west supplied their handlers with a test specimen, duh!

As soon as the T-14 came out its unmanned turret was revealed to be a weak spot, the designers claimed that they needed to save weight, so contrary to almost every other tank model in history they planned comparatively little armor plating there, confident that the active protection system would fix any shortcomings. In the past 155mm artillery trials with regular shrapnel shells caused a surprising amount of damage to armored vehicles, direct fire with HE charges blew them to pieces.

[seahawk]

7 minutes ago, Martineleca said:

As soon as the T-14 came out its unmanned turret was revealed to be a weak spot, the designers claimed that they needed to save weight, so contrary to almost every other tank model in history they planned comparatively little armor plating there, confident that the active protection system would fix any shortcomings. In the past 155mm artillery trials with regular shrapnel shells caused a surprising amount of damage to armored vehicles, direct fire with HE charges blew them to pieces.

And based on this, you know that 120mm and 130mm HE won`t achieve this effect, while 140mm will?

[Martineleca]

14 minutes ago, seahawk said:

And based on this, you know that 120mm and 130mm HE won`t achieve this effect, while 140mm will?

The Nexter Ascalon as it's know is effectively a repurposed howitzer cannon of 52 calibers with muzzle velocity twice that of tank guns currently in service, the rounds it fires are 1.3 meters long released with 20 MJ of energy, that is quite the punch.

[seahawk]

That does not answer the question.

[bojan]

36 minutes ago, Martineleca said:

The Nexter Ascalon...

1. Muzzle energy of the cannon has very little to do with increased efficiency of HE round. Muzzle energy velocity of projectile squared times mass of shell /2. E = 1/2 * m * v^2.

2. Main power of HE shell comes from explosive inside shell, not from it's velocity.

3. In fact, due the need for thicker shell walls, in order to withstand higher acceleration involved in gaining higher velocities high performance guns can have less efficient HE shells than lower velocity ones, since less place is left for HE filler.

4. Any modern MBT would be at least heavily damaged with questionable reparability after 140mm HE hit.

  

1 hour ago, Martineleca said:

As soon as the T-14 came out its unmanned turret was revealed to be a weak spot...

Exactly. It is only 30mm proof and you don't need 140mm cannon to KO it, 120 or even 105 will be enough. Tanks are collection of compromises, not some sort of invincible monsters, and even best armored modern tanks have huge collections of weak spots... and that is a compromise all designers have to make, unless they end up consuming whole stash of Ferdinand Porsche's drugs and came up with new Maus.

Edited March 16, 2023 by bojan

[Martineleca]

20 minutes ago, seahawk said:

That does not answer the question.

Despite nominally having a smaller diameter, the Ascalon is more powerful than the K9 or PzH guns and has three times more muzzle energy than the 39 caliber M109 cannon with which the Cold War tests were done. The T-14 is rumoured to have weaker turret armor than an M60...

Edited March 16, 2023 by Martineleca

[bojan]

Read my post again.

Muzzle energy has very little to do with HE efficiency.

[Martineleca]

5 minutes ago, bojan said:

Read my post again.

Muzzle energy has very little to do with HE efficiency.

I was just answering our skeptical friend why large caliber concussion strikes have actually become more dangerous to MBTs over the last few decades, rather than less.

Edited March 16, 2023 by Martineleca

[seahawk]

6 minutes ago, Martineleca said:

I was just answering our skeptical friend why large caliber concussion strikes have actually become more dangerous to MBTs over the last few decades, rather than less.

That was not my question. My question is why you would need the Nexter 140mm and why 130mm, 120mm or 105mm won´t cut it.

[Josh]

130/140mm seems like a solution looking for a problem, IMO.

[bojan]

2 hours ago, Martineleca said:

I was just answering our skeptical friend why large caliber concussion strikes have actually become more dangerous to MBTs over the last few decades, rather than less.

Then why talk about muzzle energy when it is irrelevant factor there?

2 hours ago, Martineleca said:

Despite nominally having a smaller diameter, the Ascalon is more powerful than the K9 or PzH guns and has three times more muzzle energy than the 39 caliber M109 cannon with which the Cold War tests were done.

You either have problem formulating what you were thinking or you are not having a clue what you are talking about and are repeating marketing blobs you have heard/read before.

[Ssnake]

15 minutes ago, Josh said:

130/140mm seems like a solution looking for a problem, IMO.

While I think that 140mm is one step too far, there isn't much growth potential left in the 120mm caliber. May still be adequate until the 2040s, but by then you better had something more capable. So, it's the right moment to plan for a transition.

Also, caliber growth seems to be the right answer, given that all experimentation since the 1990s with rail, coil, thermo-electric, and chemo-electric guns seems to have yielded not a single promising prototype.

[Josh]

38 minutes ago, Ssnake said:

While I think that 140mm is one step too far, there isn't much growth potential left in the 120mm caliber. May still be adequate until the 2040s, but by then you better had something more capable. So, it's the right moment to plan for a transition.

Also, caliber growth seems to be the right answer, given that all experimentation since the 1990s with rail, coil, thermo-electric, and chemo-electric guns seems to have yielded not a single promising prototype.

What target can 120mm not deal with right now?

[Ssnake]

Please read carefully what I wrote. Right now, it's adequate. It's just that, like the 105mm gun in 1980, while still adequate it was time to switch over to a larger caliber, and smoothbore technology. A decade later USMC M60s no longer had ammunition overmatch with T-72Bs in frontal engagements. They weren't sent where the T-72s would be, so nothing bad came from it. Still.

That doesn't mean that 105mm guns aren't still around. Heck, some vehicles still carry a 90mm gun. But they are no longer a the preferred tool in the tank killing business. Sooner or later a target like the Armata (maybe just not the Armata) will come along. By that time we better be ready.

[seahawk]

A new tank fielded in the 2030ies, will serve till 2070/2080, so unless you want to up-gun later on, you better plan for some serious growth potential.

[bojan]

What is a maximum diameter of 120mm case? That is probably most likely caliber of the future gun. Necking up case will have beneficial effect on APFSDS performances while keeping hustle with up gunning at minimum and having minimal effect on ammo load.

Edited March 17, 2023 by bojan

[Ssnake]

We may actually return to 20...25 year replacement cycles, depending on how world politics play out. That's a rhythm where industry can do half-generation replacements of design staff, where junior engineers learn on one project, and then become the senior designers in the next.

[urbanoid]

29 minutes ago, Ssnake said:

We may actually return to 20...25 year replacement cycles, depending on how world politics play out. That's a rhythm where industry can do half-generation replacements of design staff, where junior engineers learn on one project, and then become the senior designers in the next.

Yeah, we may. Let's not bet on it though.

[Martineleca]

9 hours ago, seahawk said:

A new tank fielded in the 2030ies, will serve till 2070/2080, so unless you want to up-gun later on, you better plan for some serious growth potential.

The T-95 was supposed to sport a 152mm gun, a variant of the T-80UM2 Black Eagle as well, upgunned Abrams and Leopard 2 tanks were tested in the past, but rejected as funding dried up when End of History vibes took over. So it was always planned to further increase firepower on existing MBT models, it's just being done now, rather than 30 years ago...

[Stuart Galbraith]

On 3/16/2023 at 2:34 PM, Martineleca said:

I was just answering our skeptical friend why large caliber concussion strikes have actually become more dangerous to MBTs over the last few decades, rather than less.

And we abandon HESH, just when it becomes useful again. Ah, isnt that just like the MOD.

 

[Ssnake]

I don't think that "HESH is becoming useful again". It was sorta ingenious in the age of homogeneous armor, lost its ingenuity with the introduction of airgapped armor arrays and retained a certain value against light armor and for the demolition of up to medium-hard structures (rebar concrete walls of regular thickness).

On the downside, HESH requires substantial design compromises. That you're still pushing the idea indicates to me that you're not really taking notice of them because they are well known for decades

- a narrow band of comparatively slow impact velocities

- the resulting unfavorable trajectories,

- the necessity for upright storage,

- the requirement for a rifled bore

- the requirement to strike a hard surface for reasonable performance

- the requirement to strike said hard surface at not too shallow an angle

 

How anyone can still propose HESH as a round with a lot of potential is beyond me. It's 1950s crap that has made it into the 21st century only because the British MOD is full of penny-pinching nitwits.

[Tim Sielbeck]

The only thing they told us that needed upright storage was WP.

[Ssnake]

Okay, maybe not that one.