Posted on 06/01/2017 6:18:38 AM PDT by sukhoi-30mki
A Russian innovation in armoured warfare has pushed Norway to replace many of its current anti-tank systems.
Active protection systems (APS) are being built into Russia's new Armata T-14 tank, posing a problem for a whole generation of anti-armour weapons, not least the US-supplied Javelin guided missile, used by the Norwegian Army.
The warning comes from Brig Ben Barry of the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) in London. He says this is a problem that most Nato countries have barely begun to grapple with.
APS threatens to make existing anti-tank weapons far less effective, and there is little real discussion of this among many Western militaries, he says.
Some countries are conducting research and trials to equip their own tanks with APS. "But they seem to miss the uncomfortable implications for their own anti-armour capabilities," he says.
Norway is one of the first Nato countries to grasp this nettle. Its latest defence procurement plan envisages spending 200-350m kroner (£18.5-32.5m; $24-42m) on replacing its Javelin missiles, "to maintain the capacity to fight against heavy armoured vehicles".
"There is a need for [an] anti-tank missile," it says, "that can penetrate APS systems".
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.com ...
According to Freepers tanks and A/C carriers are obsolete. Nothing to see here, move along.
Current technology is quite a lot smaller than the original rail guns and newer technology is shrinking them down constantly. 10-15 years ago people were saying it would only be a naval weapon because there was no way to get the power requirements down. Now they are talking about tank capable because scientists did get the power requirements down and stepped up the efficiency.
I believe that we are no more than five years away from something that could reasonably look like the old flame throwers. Pre-charged power cells on the back and a one shot tube like the old LAWs hooked to the power cell.
Scientists from DARPA have created a lot of magical things which we now take for granted. I have no doubt this a possibility.
Every system has vulnerabilities. The Armada is being set up for future unmanned, networked operation, with possible autonomous search and destroy capability.
Once there is no crew to worry about, we have a very dangerous adversary.
The Russians can’t afford new weapons. They are spending themselves into a coma.
They are selling this thing to countries that believe the hype.
It does. They abandoned the low profile “frying pan turret” idea - that forced their tank designs to expose their hulls to fight on hillsides as the low turret inherently means crap gun depression. The T-14 has Western gun depression but that comes with Western turret height. Here’s an older graphic showing how far up a given hill a T-72 has to drive to get the gun to clear the crest, entirely due to the bad gun depression, and comparing it to an M1 in hull-down, turret-down and hide.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cc/Hull_down_tank_diagram.png
Russian tanks have traditionally had to expose their hull to some degree to fight from behind hills or elevations. The T-14 doesn’t and as a result it can fight like a Western tank.
Ummm... we still haven’t repealed Newton’s Third Law, last I checked. Every action, equal and opposite reaction.
Man portable railguns are not going to be capable of penetrating tank armor unless you feel like having the railgun rip your body in half when you fire it. A tank killing rail gun needs to be anchored to a fairly large mass to safely fire.
Also, the power required to fire such a railgun is not going to be found in a man portable battery pack anytime soon.
Sure, this new Russian tank has a lot of capabilities...but so did the T-90, T-80, and T-72...all still part of the active Russian forces. New platforms...new training...new specialized maintenance equipment...multiple spare parts systems...multiple types of ammo.
Upgrading the M1 series instead of developing entirely new platforms has its advantages.
BTW, the Russians still have T-64s, T-62s, and T-55s in their reserve forces.
Nobody is saying it is a perfect weapon system. What I am saying is that this is a threat that needs to be taken seriously and that our own vehicles need to be updated or replaced in response. The M1 currently doesn’t have an APS, it doesn’t have counterbattery, it doesn’t even have a camera array for all around vision.
Checkmate.
Interestingly, the Russians say there will not be an export version of the Armata nor have they tried floating the idea on the world arms market. The most they’ll sell is an uprated T-80 or T-90.
It appears that they *may* be selling off their older machines to help pay for these, according to some sources.
So looking at this design, I would just take out the 3 cameras and they would be blind.
A T-90 might be worth it but it will compete with Indian and Chinese models of itself.
Except the Air Force is alternately trying to get rid of them to protect the F-35, then upgrading them to maintain close air support and not look bad, then trying to get rid of the A-10 to protect the F-35 again...
Also, the APS is supposedly capable of taking out the Hellfire missiles in flight - the competing Israeli APS is certainly capable of doing so. The A-10 would have to use its gun.
Sounds like a great tank.
We need to duplicate it, or maybe start our own revolution using similar tanks supported by a small fleet of robots.
And there’s the minor little problem of *recoil*.
Diagram is incorrect - it has at least 6 active cameras and *may* have redundant backups.
They do have 5% of the speed of light projectiles which are just as deadly. The delivered energy will do more than enough damage to render the tank inoperable.
And really, not meaning to be disrespectful, but they that is kind of a Luddite remark. Something I use to hear when they were discussing Reagan’s star wars programs.
Well, remember, there’s lots of dumb countries out there who will buy used and now obsolete military equipment if it’s cheap enough. Many of them in Africa, for example. Also, I *think* India doesn’t have a T-90 clone for export and the Chinese don’t make a T-90 counterpart - they have an evolved T-72 derivative with a Leopard 2 style turret on it in the Type 99, but they don’t sell that for export.
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