Warnings over Russia's new tank Armata

[Skybird]

I got used to see news snippets dripping down the internet wires, how advance dit is and how good and technologically superior. Especially when such news is coming from Russian sources it seems almost natural to label it all as propaganda.

However, some weeks ago I got some input form a German source indicating that the German intel services are deeply concerned about the advanced capabilities of this tank, and now the British Telegraph joins the chorus and quotes from a British secret internal paper that paints this tanks a squite superior to anything NATO currently could field, labelling it as the most decisive technological improvement in tank design since 50 years.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016...an-super-tank/

I do not know whether it really is that superior and NATO is lost, but the derogatory mocking about it as just another of those "Russian toy tanks" I have never shared. I think this tank is dangerous, and very much so, and I am not certain that Leopard 2 or Abrams or Challenger 2 or K2 or Type- 90 or Merkava could stop or keep up with it. It looks a bit like when the T-72 was shocking NATO with its capability to take the Leopard-1 - often claimed to be the best tank of its era - out of the equation.

The internal document, written by a senior Army intelligence officer, states: “Without hyperbole, Armata represents the most revolutionary step change in tank design in the last half century.”
(...)
The paper also raises concern over the Scout, a light armoured fighting vehicle due to be introduced for British forces from next year. “In a familiar story of measure and countermeasure, the intelligence assumptions that informed the procurement of Scout as a superior battle-winning platform may now be open to question.”
The document says that on top of the Armata tank, Russia is adding “six additional armoured vehicles to the stable”, including a heavy infantry fighting vehicle and a self-propelled artillery system.
The intelligence report, which it stresses should “not be interpreted as an official MoD statement”, also raises the spectre of far superior Russian tank numbers, with plans to build 120 Armata tanks a year from 2018.
It points out Russia already has a fleet of 2,500 tanks with a reserve of 12,500, which is “35 times the size of the fleet in the British Army”.
“With such numbers, decisive effect is credibly achievable and losses are less important,” says the document.

However, also this:

Lord West of Spithead, a former First Sea Lord, said he was “very concerned” about Russian rearmament. “At the moment, their economy is a war economy,” he said. “They have got the GDP of Italy and they are trying to spend the same on defence as America. What they are doing is unsupportable and when something is unsupportable, then anything could happen.”

But when Europe can live on tick, and America could just print money as it needs it - why should the Russians feel stopped from doing something similiar? Currently, btw, they are buying physical Gold like crazy, since several years already.

I have seen videos of its internal cockpit. That thing is modern. Ultra-modern, and it has something that one needs to get used to to find in Russian tanks: space. It has an advanced level of automatization and sensors. Active defences that greatly reduce NATO's efficiency against tanks. Especially in the defensive area it looks superior to western tanks, including German, Israeli and American designs.

I say: watch out for this thing. It looks ugly, but it could be a game changer.

[Oberon]

NATO is overdue for a new MBT, but we're still lagged in Bush-fire mode, designing and building stuff for Middle Eastern conflicts rather than to go toe to toe with Moscow. By the time we've caught up, it'll probably be China that we'll be squaring off against.

I know the Leopard is getting a new version at some point, and honestly IMHO it would make sense for Britain, France and Germany, and even the US if they want to, to get together and pool resources to make a standardized tank for NATO, something that is high-tech but doesn't break the bank...if western weapons designers know how to make such a thing.
I mean between the UK, Germany and the US, we built three damn fine MBTs, and the Leclerc isn't really to be sniffed at even though it's always billed as the butt-monkey of MBTs.

[Catfish]

Originally Posted by Oberon

[...] and honestly IMHO it would make sense for Britain, France and Germany, and even the US if they want to, to get together and pool resources to make a standardized tank for NATO, something that is high-tech but doesn't break the bank...if western weapons designers know how to make such a thing.
I mean between the UK, Germany and the US, we built three damn fine MBTs, and the Leclerc isn't really to be sniffed at even though it's always billed as the butt-monkey of MBTs.

But Brexit.

[Jimbuna]

Originally Posted by Catfish

But Brexit.

So be it. We'll look after our tiny island and mainland Europe can look after itself. We all know how that has panned out over the last century.

@Oberon

Good insightful post Jamie. Tis a pity we only got to visit the Yorkshire Air Museum together and not the likes of Bovington.

[Catfish]

^ I just wonder how cooperation or teamwork will look like, after the Brexit.
After all it was England (i prefer not to say the UK) who voted for leaving.
But I guess where's a will there's a way.

[Skybird]

In Finland, in a region where they have temps of -30°C, for months the central heating of several towns and villages was targetted by massive hacker attacks that prevented the central core installations from starting to work. For months. Quite a problem with -30° around you. They had to fall back to the dratsic solution of almost cutting all internet and computer wires into the network controlling these heatings.

As long as Britain does not cut the comourer and communicaiton wires leading from and to its island, all the talkign of the likes of "the continent looks for itself, Britain stays for itself" is pointless. Even more when considering that without said wires the British finance industry is toast. During the 60s, 70s, 80s, any Sovjet invasion of NATO Europe would have been opened by a massive volley of nuclear atacks on NATO'S airfield and CCCI.network. Any Russian attack today would be opened with a massive Russian cyber-attack that already would have started months before the conventional military actions begin.

And the Geneva convention and Hague Convention never have had something like cyberwar on mind at all.

Its impossible for Britain to not care for the continent. Whatever happens on the continent, will find britain too. Geographic isolation does not have the same meaning anymore like it used to have.

Have a volley of EMP bombs shattering the fundament of modern civilization and taking electricity out of the equation - then we talk again.

[em2nought]

Originally Posted by Oberon

IMHO it would make sense for Britain, France and Germany, and even the US if they want to, to get together and pool resources to make a standardized tank for NATO

Let's call it the F-35, maybe it can have tracks, but with VTOL capability?