Posted on 09/02/2015 5:57:38 AM PDT by sukhoi-30mki
Just like Ruski-mil junk, this sure seems destined for short life on a real tank battlefield and instead is more designed for thumping small Country’s military and civilian populations.
“If it has true Chobham armour”
This should keep you awake at night: As far as I can tell, the M1A1 tanks we gave to the Iraqi army (and were subsequently seized by ISIS) did not have DU armor...but did have Chobham. I base this on the numerous articles that are quick to point out the lack of DU, but never mention Chobham.
I understand that it packs the firepower of an entire exploding chemical warehouse.
I have no idea about its capabilities or where it ranks in comparison with others of the type but I will say that reading a press release like this with the excessive sugary accolades puts me near to insulin shock. Would probably get the same from any other country’s press releases but still - Whew!
hmmmm...looks ...kinda familiar.
“Just scanning through that bunch of Chinglish, I didn’t see what type of powerplant it has.”
Dieser?
China’s stupid birth control policy assures us that grandpas will be driving these tanks by 2030. China has murdered its next two generations.
3 cylinder Yanmar
Smoothbore, I'd bet, the better to work with larger-diameter or dual-HEAT shaped charge HEAT projectiles. If it's a dual-HEAT projo [meant to defeat reactive armour; the first charge blows the reactive armour charge and the second cuts on through] like a PG-7VR round for the RPG, which has been around since the mid-1980s, at least, it'd explain the Chinese interest in reactive frontal armour. I'd guess you're right about the autoloader, but it had better be selective with the option to choose between HEAT/HE or a SABOT round if they figure on deploying the thing in platoons or companies.
Also loadout in there will be less than 30 rounds for the main gun.....
If all the rounds are the big fat fella. But they may have some shorter/skinnier rounds available as well- something like the 120mm STAFF round for the Abrams would seem do-able in a 140mm, and that big tube would be dandy for a canister round. And a lot has happened in miniaturization since the Soviets fielded the 152mm artillery nuke round; a couple of such rounds per battalion would pretty much end tank fights over bridges and the like, especially if terminally guided.
.. So much for the better projectile versus bigger projectile concepts.
Could be both. And bigger can leave more opportunity for future development, or even sleeving to use up obsolete/available smaller caliber ammo. We shall see.
My opinion...
I'll just add two other happy thoughts: that squared-off appearance of the turret rear sure does suggest blowoff panels in the main gun ammo storage rack, much like an Abrams. Which means they've thought out crew survivability to a greater extent than previously, which suggests that they really don't want to lose trained crews.
And that square-rear turret plus the similarly squared-off chassis in back reminds me an awful lot in a side profile view of the 6x6 square foot plywood target panels we used to blow neat little 4-inch holes through at 2-and-a half or three miles back in the late 1960s-early '70s. Now the Abrams crews can blow 5-inch holes through the same panels, while both the target and the Abrams are moving, and at night.
Not necessarily. On the Abrams the gunner and tank commander are on the turret right side [facing forward] but the Soviet practice [and past Chinese tanks have been based on Soviet designs] reversed the positions and eliminated the loader with an autoloader setup in everything since the T62. Yep, I'd bet the 12,7 roof gun is a remote-controlled setup similar to our CROWS unit for the .50 M2, but it may not be the commander who operates it in overwatch- the TC has to be inside playing with the computerized rangefinders and weather station, communicating with his crew, his platoon and his higher element, and whatever the Chinese have worked up along the lines of a Blue Force tracker, lest he receive an unwanted drone strike from a Hellfiresky, or the real thing.
All that stuff on the undercarriage looks like a mount to me - to connect to a mine roller or plow.
I'd wonder too if that turret shape might be a setup to receive modular ammunition resupply under armour, similar to what we had in mind for the Crusader/AFAS 155mm SP howitzer until that idea went away. The front attachments also offer the question as to whether or not the thing has an underbelly crew escape hatch at the driver's position, something the Abrams lacks.
China's birth control policy has given them 100 million disposable men.
That's something to think about.
Not real funny if you're looking at one through a laser target designator sight or a tank's main gun 'scope.
Hmmm. Spherical projectiles. What WILL those clever Chinese come up with next?
I stand corrected, and chagrined... guess I’m getting old... whatever happened to just making holes in things with sharp pointy objects or fast moving projectiles? :-p
No 'pology necessary, and since you learned something it was no waste of time or thought for either of us.
And making holes in things with sharp pointy objects and/or fast moving projectiles remains an important part of the job, and neither the old hard fast basics nor the latest theories, techniques and doctrines thereof should be overlooked. But that is no longer the only part of the job, and more and more, the new applications are becoming a really important part of it as well.
Sharp pointy objects, circa 1914:
The great guns slay from a league away, the death- bolts fly unseen,
And bellowing hill replies to hill, machine to brute machine,
But still in the end when the long lines bend and the battle hangs in doubt
They take to the steel in the same old way that their fathers fought it out --
It is man to man and breast to breast and eye to bloodshot eye
And the reach and twist of the thrusting wrist, as it was in the days gone by!
Along the shaken hills the guns their drumming thunder roll --
But the keen blades thrill with the lust to kill that leaps from the slayer's soul!
For hand and heart and living steel, one pulse of hate they feel.
Is your clan afraid of the naked blade? Does it flinch from the bitter steel?
Perish your dreams of conquest then, your swollen hopes and bold,
For empire dwells with the stabbing blade, as it did in the days of old!
--Donald Robert Perry Marquis, Dreams and Dust
-More- press-agent puffery for you *here*. The duties of a Public Information Officer were among those I detested the most, and which I performed very poorly to the best of my ability.
First, thank you for posting that ... his verse rings like that of Kipling. I had not previously heard of him. Through the magic of Project Gutenberg I found many of his works. I’ll be loading some of that on my Kindle.
Secondly, the work is apparently titled (appropriately) “The Bayonet”. It speaks a timeless truth.
Finally ... is your namesake a cockroach?
He was from Walnut, Illinois, not too far from my own digs where among other pasttimes I've been a scribbler and picture-taker for a couple of now-defunct newspapers, including the now long-gone Chicago Daily News.
Secondly, the work is apparently titled (appropriately) “The Bayonet”. It speaks a timeless truth.
He also has a pretty good one about submarines and those who cruise about in them as well. And other things. He is certainly in good company with the British poets of the WWI-WWII *between the wars* period, which they hoped was the *last Great War.* Innocent lads.
Finally ... is your namesake a cockroach?
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