Stunning that the Ruskies carried this flaw into each next generation. What on earth were they thinking?
No one mentioned it to them...until now
This was a design choice they made many, many years ago - that a higher rate of fire and lower profile would prevail over the increase in vulnerability. But with top attack weapons this vulnerability greatly increases. You probably saw pictures of tanks that went into Ukraine with cages on top of some of them, a field expedient to try to stop the top attack ATGMs, but it appears not to have been very effective.
“Stunning that the Ruskies carried this flaw into each next generation. What on earth were they thinking?”
Russian design philosophy has always been aimed at cost and producibility. The idea was to overwhelm the enemy. Casualties don’t matter. The lack of concern for casualties is because of the political system. Russia has three hundred thousand anti-riot police. If you’re not worried about what the great unwashed masses think about the way you are conducting a war, then you aren’t concerned with casualties. As the article stated and I can confirm, having worked on the Abrams and a lot of other armored vehicle designs, the number one concern for every design feature is, what does it do to crew survivability? Even just taking the practical consideration, highly trained tank crews can’t be produced by just a few weeks of training and reading the course material. The US had an investment in every service person, and they protect that investment. But the number one thing protecting the lives of US service members is that we elect our leaders.
“BREAKING - Two powerful blasts heard in Russian region of Belgorod bordering Ukraine - two witnesses - Reuters”
Russia’s arms industry has been in financial and technological decline since the last years of the USSR. Redesigning a tank’s internal shell loading mechanism requires an admission that the current tank design is defective and then detailed and expensive engineering work to fix it. In addition, Russia’s military leaders have a notoriously low regard for the lives and well-being of their troops. The result is that in the tradeoff between spending for greater tank combat power or crew protection, the crew loses.
Russia’s arms industry has been in financial and technological decline since the last years of the USSR. Redesigning a tank’s internal shell loading mechanism requires an admission that the current tank design is defective and then detailed and expensive engineering work to fix it. In addition, Russia’s military leaders have a notoriously low regard for the lives and well-being of their troops. The result is that in the tradeoff between spending for greater tank combat power or crew protection, the crew loses.
The autoloaders: the design is too small to add a human loader, so they have to keep the auto loader, which means they have to keep rounds in the turret to feed it. Can’t be fixed- you need a complete redesign which would obsolete all their tanks and add 33% more crew.
Soviet doctrine. Tanks and troops were considered disposable.
Now Russia doesn't have the same kind of numbers as the USSR did so the doctrine erroneous but they haven't changed their ways.