The T-14 Is a New Russian Tank —And a Whole Lot More

War is Boring ^ | March 29, 2015 | Paul Richard Huard

[C19fan]

In March, a Russian motorist filmed a very unusual, camouflaged tank rolling down a street outside Moscow. Most likely, it was the mysterious T-14 — or Armata — heavy tank, which could represent a major evolution in Russian tank design.

The Kremlin has largely kept the T-14 under wraps, both literally and metaphorically. But we have a pretty good idea of what it can do.

[archy]

Like Ukrainian T-64 from 60-s...

My first thought exactly....

[archy]

I don't know why the Russians still have a love for an automatic loading system for tank shells, given the notorious history of unreliability of such systems on the T-64 and T-80.

They were also just all-out fascinated with the old Swedish turretless S-Tank, which also had a gas turbine, and an automatic loader, easier to pull off reliably when you have a fixed barrel that doesn't have to rotate/elevate in a turret. We had four of the things for evaluation at Knox too, with a lot of interest paid until the Swedes got some T-72s and their antitank ammo from Finland and did some live fire testing of the things. Front, sides, rear: it didn't matter: either kinetic or HEAT rounds would punch right through like the armour was a plywood gunnery target.

I always thought that a fixed gun tank destroyer based on a German Marder or Bradley chassis might have some applications. But I'd really hate to crew in one up against a tank crew that really knows how to shoot...and modern electro-optical equipment and gunnery computers take a lot of the required skill out of the picture. And we're getting close to the possible of a remotely operated or autonomous AT vehicle, too.

Oh well, all we really need is wheelies that can be hauled around by C130s....

[archy]

this think might be very effective at terrorizing civilian populations in eastern Europe.

Concur. And as an APC/SP arty gun killer? Oh yes....

[archy]

I don’t think a Sheridan ever fired a missile in anger...and I wonder if a Russian tank has either.

I'm pretty sure that several [though fewer than a half-dozen] 152 missiles were fired by 101 Airborne M551 crews during the *Operation Just Because* live fire/both ways gunnery exercise in Panama. The intent was not to defeat armor, but to reach out much further than the Panamanian Self-Defence Force's presumed AT weapons could; and I suspect they were expecting Cuban Saggers.

Remember too that Ivan has long preferred smoothbore main guns, much easier to use with HEAT rounds [whose shaped charge/Monroe effect] warheads are not as effective with a rotating projectile. And the Soviets were also early proponents of main-tube launched guided weapons, once again, the idea being to increase main gun range in a day when NATO TOW missiles, Sheridans and M60A3s were a likely threat.

I don’t understand what a missile can do that a HEAT round can’t.

Turn in flight. And follow a laser beam. Or guide in on a heat source.

If the Ruskies are still sticking to the missile and autoloader, they really are stuck in the past, IMHO.

Count on this: they will not likely completely abandon conventional main gun rounds. But if main gun-launched missiles give them double the range or a MUCH better likelihood of a first-round hit, or impact followon capability for massed platoon/company AT fires, or maybe a tank-launched main gun with an infantry support associated laser target designator, you can bet the Russians will tinker.

And if it can be retrofitted to past generations of otherwise vulnerable armor, or to obsolete lighter vehicles like second or third generation BMD/BMP/BTR vehicles, oh yes, they'll take a very hard look at some of those very cost-effective possibilities.

And in a year or so, Comrade Obama's apointees to the USAF will have done away with the A10's ground support capability. How fortunate for Ivan....

[archy]

I saw a cartoon from the 1930’s once. It envisioned one policeman controlling several tank like vehicles with a radio.

I think the Soviets liked this type of idea, and took it seriously.

Just be thankful they didn't see The 1940 Clark Gable/Hedy Lamarr potboiler Comrade X and take that one seriously. Or wait a minute- maybe they did...?

[archy]

And IIRC it’s a 500hp engine in the BMP-3,p> Which was the same HP as the Ford GAF engine in the WWII U.S. T26/M26 Pershing. Though I doubt that the Soviet rating was in SAE Brake HP, and may well not even be directly comparable to DIN HP ratings.

I've crewed in an M4A1E8 with a GAF in it. The transmission/clutch/final drive handled it quite well, as did the Israeli reengined Shermans that used a circa 500 HP Cunnins Diesel.

[lacrew]

“Turn in flight. And follow a laser beam. Or guide in on a heat source.”

Why is any of that necessary. With a HEAT round, if you can see it, you can kill it - well over 90% accuracy. So who cares if a missile can be guided...the tank crew guiding the missile is going to get blasted to hell and back while they’re playing Atari with the missile. Just shoot and kill.

As far as range advantage goes - yes a Russian anti-tank team hiding in the bushes can really reach out and touch someone from a long distance...and be more or less concealed while doing it. Even the TOW on the Bradley allows the vehicle to be in a hidden position. But range gets you very little when you’ve exposed the entire tank to launch out of the main gun. I don’t know the speed of these missiles, but they are subsonic, or less than 343 meter/second. So, they have to fly and be guided for 11 seconds...just to get out of the effective range of an M1. In a tank battle, that’s an eternity - using HEAT or Sabot, a tank will have engaged 2-3 targets in that time frame.

[archy]

“Turn in flight. And follow a laser beam. Or guide in on a heat source.”

Why is any of that necessary. With a HEAT round, if you can see it, you can kill it - well over 90% accuracy. So who cares if a missile can be guided...

It's certainly handy with a Javelin. Go for top or direct attack as necessary [Hey look: we're BEHIND him...and he's got no dismounts] and if Russia's Arena anti-top attack defense system works as well as they hope- which they are very likely to find out in the Ukraine- then it provides for a possible underbelly solution.

If terminal guidance is so superfluous, why then is it considered such an attractive feature of the Copperhead CGLP, as well as several models and generations of British precision guided versions of both 120mm and 81mm mortar rounds?

It's one more potential tool in the loader's rack. And too I wonder how far we are from homing antiradiation missiles for tank main guns. The Germans were working on something along those lines as far back as a decade ago, for naval use, but then too their naval equipment included the MONARC concept for a frigate-class warship equipped with the 155mm gun turret of the SP Howitzer 2000.

[lacrew]

The copperhead is guided by a forward observer...just like conventional artillery is spotted by a forward observer. And it isn’t a missile.

The Javelin is fired by dismounts.

Both are fine weapons, but not at all comparable to exposing the front of a main battle tank for a ten count, to guide a missile. If you’ve got a big gun that fires shape charges...just use it.

And the ‘tool in the loader’s rack’ argument doesn’t hold water. Everything, and I mean everything, in tank design is a trade-off. That missile in the loader’s rack displaces a conventional round.

Many moons ago, I was a tanker...and back then the old timers would talk about the M60, favorably....and talk about the Sheridan, unfavorably. Their complaints centered about the gun tube/missile launcher and the maintenance of it. According to them, it was lousy and un-needed. I believe them.

I think the Soviet/Russian doctrine makes them believe this is a good idea. Defense in depth...on a national scale against Hitler’s army, all the way down to the regimental level. Instead of lightly armed scouts, who see and report, they anticipate combat recon patrols, with BMP’s and tanks paired together. They see the enemy, they take a shot. In this scenario, a missile makes sense...since they are firing from an un-seen position...and probably against a scout or small element. Still bad doctrine though.

And I can think of absolutely no scenario in which a tank would fire an anti-radiation missile. Ignoring for a minute that aircraft/drones could fire these...what purpose would it serve? If a tank can see something, it doesn’t need guidance, it will just kill it with a sabot or HEAT. If it can’t see it....we have artillery and mortars.

BTW, if you are BEHIND just about any tank in the world, you don’t need top attack, you don’t need belly attack. Just hit the rear grill with just about anything.

[2CAVTrooper]

Back in the days when I was with DIVARTY 1AD, we had a Copperhead go unobserved.... Talk about SHTF. Graf was locked down for a few days until what was left of the round was found.

[2CAVTrooper]

You talking about the Strykers?

The MTVL was a superior vehicle IMO.

[2CAVTrooper]

The IP’s were a rare breed.

The only way to truly tell them apart is measure the distance from the front edge of the turret to the mounting lug for the recovery cable because a lot of the external upgrades filtered their way down to the baseline tanks.

[lacrew]

“we had a Copperhead go unobserved.b

I’m embarassed to say that my gunner once forgot to change his index from HEAT to Sabot on a Table VII engagement. It looked like we were aiming for the moon...and everyone at the range knew exactly what we had done.

[archy]

Many moons ago, I was a tanker...and back then the old timers would talk about the M60, favorably....and talk about the Sheridan, unfavorably.

And I was one of them. I took my 11Echo AIT at Knox in the mid-1960s [in an an M48A2C] and went on to subsequent tours in USAREUR in a '60A1 [our battalion was the armor support for an Infantry division, so we were mostly equipped with early M60s in the line companies, but the HQ co tank section in which I served as driver, then gunner and finally as HQ63 TC was a trio of M60A1s. We must have been doing something right; in 1966 2/70 Armor posted the Table Eight High Tank Battalion gunnery score for USAREUR...and there was MUCH griping among the then-existing USAREUR tank division units when they got to spend their weekends pulling extra training trying to catch up to the standard we had set. In the meantime, I also pulled serveral tours on the 5KM zone along the East German/Czech border [check the towns of Rotz and Weiden on a map; not too far from Graf] watching and listening for signs that the Eighth Guards Tank Army might be coming a-visiting. Army helos were Just getting the [first generation] TOW around then; the Bundeswehr was developing Jagdpanzer Rakette with the HOT missile, later superceded by followon versions of the TOW with longer range and more precise guidance...though the 90mm gun-mounting Jagdpanzer Kanone [cannon] was very much in service. The T62 was our primary concern at that time, 1966-1968, and anything that could help us whittle down the expected 17-1 numbers facing us was very much considered helpful.

As things turned out, I fell among bad influnces and naughty companions at Bad Toelz and Lenggries, and they managed to successfully convince me to throw myself out of crapped-out Luftwaffe C-119 *dollar-nineteen* transports in the general area of the West German jump school at Altenstadt, whereupon I was presented with a very nice set of German jump wings with the *diving duck* abzeichen rather than the usual *foreigners* wings that most Americans got...but I was in a regular Fallschirmjaeger company training class conducted in the German Language and my last name is Germanic, and I think they took pity on the poor Ami: after qualifying I rather unhappily reported to the Seventh Army Parachute Delivery Detachment then trying to figure out how to air drop the M551 Sheridan AR/AAV [mustn't call it a light tank!] in places where they might do the most good. The Soviet VDV had airborne delivered PT76, ASU and very early BMP para support vehicles, which they dropped with crews inside, ready to go. Some brilliant staff officer seems to have figured out that we could do the same, which dream punctured after we'd seen what was left of one M551 on which one of the triple-canopy chutes failed to open. As it was, even a good landing flat on the tracks broke suspension torsion bars, and a couple that winds put the vehicle in a nose-down or tail-down position resulted in probable mobility kills at the very least. But as part of the process, I did qualify as a Sheridan crewman. Yes, the *caseless* M8 main gun rounds had their problems, one being cook-offs of reload rounds from the still-smouldering residue from a first shot. No, the Sheridan was not as accurate with conventional rounds as a M60A1; we proved that at Table 8 at Graf. But at 3 klicks, a first-round hit with the missile was pretty much a sure thing, if there was no WP smoke between us and them to burn away the guidance wires. WE only carried 20 rounds of conventional main gun rounds, and 9 missiles, not a real happy prospect when thinking about those 17-to-one odds I mentioned. Oh yeah: after the first round is fired, you have the loader dump a CO2 fire extinguisher shot into the open main gun breech to prevent a cookoff of the Burst On Target round....

Problems with the gun/missile launcher may or may not have been equally true with the M60A3 with the launcher; I'm pretty sure they carried more rounds, at least, though they weren't even close to being swim-capable. Which was part of why we got a pair of AVLB *scissors bridges* mounted atop old M48 chassis. Though supposedly armed with only a .50M2 and a pair of M3 greaseguns inside, in fact our two AVLBs had more firepower than every other vehicle in the battalion combined. Not bad for a couple of single-shots....

Their complaints centered about the gun tube/missile launcher and the maintenance of it. According to them, it was lousy and un-needed.

The 11th Cav Blackhorse Sheridan outfits in Vietnam seemed to do pretty well with them, though that may have had a lot to do with the M625 canister rounds for the M8/M8E1 guns. The nylon *bag charge* ammo had a horrible habit of catching fire if a mine or B40/RPG penetrated the hull, and there was absolutely no way that the rate of fire of an M48 or M60 could be achieved: fifteen rounds a minute was possible with even a rookie driver with the M68 main gun, and a good Sheridan/M60A3 crew could get off two, maybe three on a really good day...if they had enough fire extinguishers. Having one M551 or M60E3 along with a conventional tank platoon [now four tanks instead of five] or with a HQ co tank section, yes; but instead of the *real* tanks? Oh no. On the other hand, the M551 was pretty good about not tossing tracks or high centering in mud...at least until they up-armored the hulls to cut down on mine losses. Tradeoffs? You betcha....

I think too that the use of the M551 by the 82nd Airborne during Panama was more a result of*anything is better than nothing* but that 152mm round makes a real nice door-knocker [Patton's Third Army tankers often took along a 105 howitzer-equipped Sherman when cities/towns couldn't be bypassed...and sometimes, a 155mm self-propelled howitzer.] Of the 14 M551s used in Panama by the 82nd, 4 were brought in by C-5 Galaxys after the airport had been secured, and 10 others were dropped by air 2 of which were destroyed when they landed; should have LAPESed or LVADed 'em in instead, I expect. Oh, one other neat Sheridan feature appreciated in Vietnam and Panama: the TC could take his turret control *Cadillac* outside the turret and *shoot from the hip* while riding on top, handy if you have concerns about mines setting off all your main gun rounds at once.

If a tank can see something, it doesn’t need guidance, it will just kill it with a sabot or HEAT. If it can’t see it....we have artillery and mortars.

So do the other people. Which is why a *fire-and-forget* missile that would home in on a forward observer that the TC and Gunner can't see could be a real useful thing.

Ever get a main gun kill on another tank? I have. Ever get a AFV kill with an ATGM? I have....[Nope, wasn't with a TOW or MGM-51 Shillelagh....]

[archy]

I’m embarassed to say that my gunner once forgot to change his index from HEAT to Sabot on a Table VII engagement. It looked like we were aiming for the moon...and everyone at the range knew exactly what we had done.

Happened at Knox, once upon a time, Steeles Tank Gunnery range, as I recall. The Survey Board eventually figured out where the round had impacted, something like 14 miles away. I think they'd waited a couple of days for the phone to ring hoping to hear that they'd hit some farmer's unoccupied truck...and dreading getting a call that they'd hit something with a formerly live human in it.

I also recall a night gunnery shoot with the TC's .50 in which a newly-minted TC was looking for the target light in his NOD, found it, opened up, and failed to shoot down the moon. Loader, gimme a SABOT....

[archy]

I'm pretty sure that several [though fewer than a half-dozen] 152 missiles were fired by 101 Airborne M551 crews during the *Operation Just Because* live fire/both ways gunnery exercise in Panama. The intent was not to defeat armor, but to reach out much further than the Panamanian Self-Defence Force's presumed AT weapons could; and I suspect they were expecting Cuban Saggers.

I lied! The 82nd [not 101 Abn] Sheridan gunners used M81 HEAT rounds, not Shillelagh missiles, in Panama. I had some thought that they had been trying for both range, and to avoid a stray round causing excessive civilian casualties. It was in Desert Shield/Storm/Sabre that the 82nd fired a half-dozen or so Shillelaghs, obtaining at least a couple of T55 and or T72 tank kills.

[archy]

You talking about the Strykers? The MTVL was a superior vehicle IMO.

Not the Stynker; the problems with wheelies remain, and if you're going to put up with their shortcomings, you ought to at least be able to ford the first river you come to rather than stopping at every blue line on a map. Okay if you're in a desert or arctic environment, but elsewhere, not so much.

As for the MTLV, that's a little closer. But more like:

M113 105mm assault gun proposal from 1977 by Krauss Maffei and Rheinmetall a sort of "StuG-113" if you like....

Length with tube: 6.04m
Width: 2.91m
Height, hull: 1.76m
Height, commander's cupola: 1.92m
Crew: Commander, Loader and Driver/Gunner
Ammunition: 42 rounds
Loaded weight: approx 14,000kg

Or, speaking of the Sheridan and MTLV: The Australians used a M113A1 variant in Vietnam that sported a M551 turret, though they thought that the automotive/mine damage problems with the hull and chassis of the 551 made it unsuitable for their way of doing things. But an M551 turret on the body of an M2/M3 Bradley? Hmmmm.

Or, if you like a conventional gun: How about one of those rapid-firing 76mm guns the Navy uses atop a Brad, either shoehorned into a M551 turret, or maybe in an overgrown CROWS mount....