View Full Version : Invisible Tanks by 2012?
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/worldnews.html?in_article_id=490669&in_page_id=1811
Don't get too exited since that image is a 'what if', but apparently this is real... :o
This probably means that the export versions of tanks will only be in panned and scanned and the superior domestic versions will be widescreen 2:1 anamorphic:rotfl:
:D Chock
kiwi_2005
10-31-07, 08:08 PM
I was playing Crysis demo the other day and it got me thinking now only if the milatary came up with a Crysis suit for the infantry, surely they can do this. It amazes me how with todays modern techonology our soldiers still go out to battle in cotten clothing some lucky enough to wear upper body armor thats still flimsy as. Forget about spending billions on space techonology use the money to invent a Crysis full body suit:yep:
Well I'm pretty sure that the new digital camo that Canadian and American soldiers are wearing has some organic ability deflect infrared signatures. So thats not quite JUST cotton.
I can see crysis suits for Spec Ops but imagine funding a few Middle-Eastern wars of occupation at the cost of those! Lets see... what would it cost to have 150 thousand crysis suits... :p
JSLTIGER
10-31-07, 09:00 PM
Given that Crysis is set in 2020, I see no reason why this technology would not be possible by then. The real trick will be creating the power source to keep it running...contrary to what Duracell would have you believe, battery technology has not come all that far in the last twenty years, without a substantial breakthrough, it seems unlikely that things will change anytime soon.
Yes that does seem to be the case. Usually ideas for technology far outstrip the availability of necessary materials. A good example is railguns. Those things are insane (using electrical current like in electro-magnets to propel projectiles to really high speed without a conventional propellant). The only problem is that one or two shots wears out the rails!
Just think of all the secret half-finished designs in the bowels of agencies and development firms all over the world. I might be a lefty-pascifist-america-hating-uponfreedomshatting-bolshevik, but this stuff still turns my crank (to borrow from my grandpa's nomenclature).
What would actually be more funny, is if you could project the image of one of your own tanks onto an enemy one from a satellite; that way you wouldn't even have to bother turning up on the battlefield, you could just let the enemy destroy himself:rotfl:
:D Chock
antikristuseke
10-31-07, 10:59 PM
Yes that does seem to be the case. Usually ideas for technology far outstrip the availability of necessary materials. A good example is railguns. Those things are insane (using electrical current like in electro-magnets to propel projectiles to really high speed without a conventional propellant). The only problem is that one or two shots wears out the rails!
No, the real problems are recoil, cost effectiveness and an enegry source.
Yes that does seem to be the case. Usually ideas for technology far outstrip the availability of necessary materials. A good example is railguns. Those things are insane (using electrical current like in electro-magnets to propel projectiles to really high speed without a conventional propellant). The only problem is that one or two shots wears out the rails!
No, the real problems are recoil, cost effectiveness and an enegry source.
Are you sure?
Energy sources shouldn't be a problem for any rail gun. With a large enough compasitor bank you can get extreemely high voltage
from just a few small batterys if you only need it for a fraction of a second.
I don't know about millitary projects, but in amature rail gun projects (there are plenty)
the big problem is that the projectiles try to fuse with the rails so you get nasty weld
scars all along the rails.
I belive the millitary is looking at "one shot" rail guns for very heavy projectiles as an
alternative to cruise missiles.
baggygreen
10-31-07, 11:37 PM
As i understood it, there was no recoil, but the problem lay with the energy source as you mentioned. Id not heard of rails wearing out, tho i suppose it is logical..
Well if you take into consideration the speeds which the projectile is going to reach as it runs along the rails and then the subsequent friction caused you can imagine that finding a metal that is highly conducting but also heat and wear resistant can be tough.
Skybird
11-01-07, 12:57 PM
1.) It remains to be visible on thermal scanners, infrared, radar.
2.) Moving in dust and mud makes the hull being visible by the dirt on it.
3.) Sounds like a very sensible, easily malfunctioning technology.
4.) Camera projections remain to depend on the viewer's position, and so slight changes in angles will produce visual artifacts.
In the SB forum, a guy, an ex-tanker, just commented with this: "It's useless."
http://www.steelbeasts.com/sbforums/showthread.php?t=11012
Active camouflage:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_camouflage (thanks for the heads-up, JAS39! :) )
It probably makes more sense for aircraft, than for ground combat vehicles.
It's bound to breakdown in 3 days. ;)
CptSimFreak
11-01-07, 01:25 PM
1.) It remains to be visible on thermal scanners, infrared, radar.
2.) Moving in dust and mud makes the hull being visible by the dirt on it.
3.) Sounds like a very sensible, easily malfunctioning technology.
4.) Camera projections remain to depend on the viewer's position, and so slight changes in angles will produce visual artifacts.
In the SB forum, a guy, an ex-tanker, just commented with this: "It's useless."
http://www.steelbeasts.com/sbforums/showthread.php?t=11012
Active camouflage:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_camouflage (thanks for the heads-up, JAS39! :) )
It probably makes more sense for aircraft, than for ground combat vehicles.
I was thinking exactly same thing.
SUBMAN1
11-01-07, 01:36 PM
Yep - old news. This is more useful for a soldier, not a tank.
I see one problem that has not been described yet too - Light Emiting Diodes create just that - light. Don't ya think this would make a tank stand out like a sore thumb on a set of IR goggles? This further limits its effectiveness.
-S
Like a lot of camouflage, I don't think they'd really hope to make it invisible, just add to reconnaissance and ranging problems, i.e. the splinter camouflage on ships is nothing to do with hoping to hide the ship, it's to make determining its length tricky for a gun layer, similarly, the false canopy painted on the bottom of Canadian F/A-18s is to confuse your enemy for a second or two in a dogfight, which might be all the time you need to set up your own shot.
Anything which makes life harder for a gunner is always a bonus. It won't stop radar and laser rangefinders, or IR sensors, but it might stop a FAC from reporting its position before someone actually gets to train a rangefinder on it.
It is another thing to go wrong, no doubt about that, but hardly critical if it does. Highlights how I feel about the Astute's electronic persicope in some ways, that's just asking to screw up, so I hope they have an optical backup system.
:D Chock
Skybird
11-01-07, 02:14 PM
Chock, have you ever seen a tank negotiating terrain? It is a DIRTY job.
To the contras I already gave above, another one must be added: cost effectiveness (in the light of questionable practical need for such gadgets). It should be clear that equipping a tank with sophisticated optics and sensors is not a cheap thing.
Well if you take into consideration the speeds which the projectile is going to reach as it runs along the rails and then the subsequent friction caused you can imagine that finding a metal that is highly conducting but also heat and wear resistant can be tough.
As i understood it, there was no recoil, but the problem lay with the energy source as you mentioned. Id not heard of rails wearing out, tho i suppose it is logical..
It's not the friction thats the problem, its the high voltage that runs through the projectile.
The electricity runs up one rail, through the projectile and down the other rail. If there is
any tiny amount of resistance between the projectile and the rail then you will get
ultra hot sparks and metal welding.
In short:
Electrical resistance causes heat. Heat causes metallic melting.
There is always lots of electrical resistance between the rails and the projectile.
The rails and projectile will melt and weld.
To fix this you can either:
1) try to drop the temperature of the rails to just a few kelvin.
This requires a large setup and is not efficient. It also limits the power you can use.
It is never 100% effective.
2) try to reduce resistance between the rail and projectile.
there are many ways to do this, but they all increase kinetic friction.
It is never 100% effective.
The only alternative is a "one shot" weapon.
Regarding recoil:
There is plenty of recoil, but this isn't a big problem as long as the gun is fixed to the
ground or a large ship. It might be a problem with metal fatigue on smaller railguns.
Regarding friction:
It is theoretically possible to make a rail gun with zero friction because the projectile
does not need to touch the rails, so this isn't a problem.
Regarding energy source:
Again, not a big problem. As long as you have enough time than you can get as
much energy as you want into a bank of compasstours.
Whats so good about rail guns?
If you can make a rail gun that wont weld it's projectile to the rails, then a 1lb non-explosive
projectile could impact with enough speed to cause highly explosive force equivalent to
several tonnes of conventional explosive.
Range is limited by the curve of the earth.
What isn't so good about rail guns?
They are very big, immobile, hard to target over range, can only be used a few times
and they are somewhat unproven.
Well, equiping it with nothing is not cheap either if it goes bye bye the moment it enters a battlefield, something along the lines of 2.5 million bucks for an early M1-A1 I seem to recall. And yes, I know it is messy driving a tank, I have a good friend who drove them in the Falklands when doing EOD, and he filled me in on all the gritty details of it.
Digging into a hull-down position is of course a common tactic for tanks, so would it really be so hard for a crew member to unbutton his hatch and wipe a few lenses with a cloth when making such a prepared position, if it made it harder to spot that position from a recon chopper?
When you consider that even for something as bargain basement as an export variant T-72, some of the more sophisticated rounds it is capable of firing cost almost half the price of the tank itself, tanks are not the cheap and cheerful weapons people imagine them to be. As such, they are an investment worth protecting given they are a piece of equipment that could well turn a battle in your favour.
So if it costs (for example) 500,000 dollars to put such a system on a T-72, that's equivalent to it losing one round of ammo, but also something that could prevent it from being lost to a 200 dollar RPG round up its ass. If you view the battlefield purely in terms of economics, it might well prove worthwhile.
This is all speculation of course, but unusual ideas have sometimes proved decisive, who would have figured a bomb which bounces could do a job for example, before it was proved that it could?
:D Chock
Skybird
11-01-07, 04:33 PM
Cleaning the lenses? It is more about cleaning the hull. Consider a white screen in the cinema, and throw some tons of mud at it. Add some constant, omni-present dust floating in the air. Any picture projected on that kind of dirty surface will no longer be what it was meant to be.
Digging into a hull down position is only possible if such an entranchement has been prepared by bulldozers, which rarely, if ever, are present in a mobile battle, for example, or quick hit and run ambush, or you name it; they also do not get prepared while on the attack. Beyond that kind of prepared defensive psoitions, you can only use terrain elevations and natural and urban objects.
One tank shot does not cost 500K bucks, btw. I remember somebody having said something like 18.000 dollars being the equivalent of 5 or 6 training rounds, that is 3000 dollars per shot. real ammo may be more expensive, but certainly not half a million per round.
The system so far sounds too vulnerable, too visible (thermals, visual artifacts), as if it could open an economic bill that calculatzes well. There are other projects, that try to mimic the general patterns animals can generate when being in control of their pigments in the skin (octopus, for example), which sound more promising, imo. They do not depend on optical projection, but have the changing camouflage embedded in their armour/skin. Think of it as ink on the hull that could chnage it'S colour by a button pressed. It is a more generic camouflage pattern, but still one that could be adjuisted to the kind of terrain the tank is sitting on, and the background scatter.
Skybird
11-01-07, 04:36 PM
"And why the hell is this thread not being started in my beloved tank forum...???" :nope:
:lol:
Sorry Skybird, that was a typo, I meant to say one load of ammo, not one round of ammo: i.e. the Svir, for example costs almost 50,000 bucks a shot at current export prices, and it is by no means more expensive than some US stuff of a similar capability! Which means about 25 of them cost as much as spanking new T-72 with all the upgrades would, they being about 1.3 million dollars a throw. A much older variant Soviet-developed tank with Svir capability (i.e. any variant after the B model), would probably come in at about 100,000 bucks, so that is equivalent to its Svir capacity if it carried just two rounds, although four is a more typical load, never many more, due to the expense. Technically, such a tank could carry thirty of them if money were no object, although the wisdom of such a move would be hard to fathom.
Nevertheless, the point I was making was that anything you can do to stop your tanks being spotted has got to be worth a shot (if you'll pardon the pun), simply because even the cheap ones aren't actually that cheap, especially with an expensively-trained and valuable crew and pricey ammo on board, let alone the cost of the thing itself.
The Gulf War was a case in point for tanks in prepared positions, where the 1st Hammurabi, 2nd Medinah Manarwah Armoured Divisions, the 3rd Tawakalna al Allah and 6th Nebuchadnezzar Motorised Infantry employed just such a tactic initially, in an attempt to balance things against the M1s they knew were coming and although it does deny the tank one of its primary tactical modes, can be a sound tactic against tougher opposition if the location remains concealed, which unfortunately for the Iraqi crews, didn't happen. Most probably the Iraqis employed this tactic because they knew the M1s had better thermal imaging sights than their T-72 units did, as well as better armor, so not giving your position away with a hot engine and using a big lump of dirt in front of your glacis plate was about the best they could hope for. Some of their tanks had their own dozer blades to enable them to dig themselves in, others were in revetments built by other equuipment. In such a situation, tanks would obviously benefit from camouflage which hid them from reconnaissance and they would not necessarily be detectable from IR sources in a desert environment if they didn't have their engines running, although in such temperatures, they'd probably still give off a heat source of some description.
So I suspect such a 'stealth' system on a tank would only really be of use if it were A) actually fitted B) actually switched on, which might defeat the object if it required the engine running to provide power, especially if it had a gas turbine engine, which light up on IR like a Christmas tree. And C) able to spoof any aerial reconnaissance sorties conducted to spot spossible ambushes.
And of course they'd have to hide any tank tracks or evidence of preparations too, which wouldn't necessarily be too easy! Point A is not as odd as it sounds when it comes to Soviet equipment incidentally, as many of the systems employed on Soviet-developed tanks are only actually fitted when an engagement is expected, such as the Shtora Electro-optical jammer system, for example.
Such an optical stealth system would clearly not be of much use in combat of course, again as evidenced by the Gulf War. Thermal targetting was how the vast majority of Iraqi tanks were destroyed by M1s in mobile engagements, many through the smoke which obscured visual targetting, and being better equipped in respect of IR equipment, very few M1s actually took any fire at all, with, I believe only seven instances of T72 hits from the Iraqis having been recorded, which of course does throw major doubt on any benefits of purely visual camouflage actually during an engagement, especially at night, which was when many Gulf War engagements took place. So a tank in such circumstances could be painted in the perfect camouflage and it still wouldn't make any difference if an IR-equipped tank knew where to look for it.
I think it's an interesting idea, and I wouldn't totally dismiss it, as to do so is to imagine that it would only be one development in isolation of all others. I know what you are saying is probably how it will turn out to be Skybird, but IR jammers may get more sophisticated for example, forcing a move back to assisted optical targetting in the visual spectrum. Who can say for sure, if we are talking about over ten years in the future? Certainly projector technology is improving, for example, LG have said that they think they are less than ten years away from producing a 'holographic' TV where the picture can literally be viewed from all angles.
If the military think there's an idea that can give them an edge, it's amazing how deep you find their pockets are!
:D Chock
Skybird
11-02-07, 04:29 AM
Chock, why the heavy workload of writing, if you seem to agree with much I said? the porblem of thermals not being spoofed by such a prjector camouflage, we both have mentioned. The low scores of the Iraqi tanks against the americans also came from the 120mm Rheinmetall being able to deliver precise blows over a significantly higher distance than the T72 (although I admit that Americans often found themselves in a very confused situation when running into the dune fields and occaisonal ambushes from T72 in reverse iron horse formations (hope that descirptiuon fits), resulting in intense close range fire exchanges. Plus the bad weather and thunderstroms they had, plus the sandstorms in the North it was, I think.
Where I disagree is that a camouflaged tank in an entranched position would have better chances to remain unharmed by aerial recognition. the entracnhement itself would be very well visible, and thus: be a target for preparatory artiellery at least. so a tank using such a camouflage would probably need to stay away from any defensive installations.
I still think that the active camouflage approach is the better, less sensitive approach: generate generic active paintschemes depending on the colour of your actual background. Because the camouflage pattern being used today already can produce surprising results in dissolving the contours of a tent, a vehcile, whetaver. When living in osnabrück, I once ran into a camp of a training BW unit in the forest. A M113 with a tent was on th side, between some bushes and trees. I was less than 50, 60 m away before I became aware it was there. From double that distance, it seemk to be not there. Such camouflage patterns only loose their use when in the open, or when their coliurs do not match the colours of the ground they are on. If you get these colours to match each other, then the camouflage scheme does the job it is supposed to do, and it does it sufficiently well. since all this does not help that much against mutli-spectral sensors, currently no more expesnive, but probably more sensible devices would be needed - not from a standpoint of mechanized groundwarfare, I would estimate.
If you really want to make a tank invisible to all surface sensors there are, you would need to build a mechanic mole.
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