Soviet tanks as far as the eye can see

[August]

I want one for up at the cabin.

[em2nought]

The only way to win the cold war wa$ to not play. We didn't win, we're broke too.

[Stealhead]

Originally Posted by August

I want one for up at the cabin.

For the right amount of coin you could have one I saw a show on The Military Channel about guys that own/rebuild old tanks and there are some T-62s in private ownership in the US and a few older BMPs as well.Some guy in California owns an M-60 Patton if that is legal in CA I assume a demilitarized T-72 would also be legal seeing as the Pattons where in use by the USMC and ANG in the early 90's and guys own those.

[Oberon]

Originally Posted by Stealhead

They all appear to be T-72s in the shot August posted with a few T-62s in the mix the turrets are all pointed 180 aft as well making Id a slight bit harder and no good side views of the tracks if you could see the wheels you could ID one from the other easy the skirts say T-72 to me so does the main gun barrel.

You could ask an old T-72 crewman but you can not because one would be unable to properly greet a former T-72 crewman because his arms will have been sliced off by the auto loader.

I wonder this place is like the Anniston Army Depot where they rebuild M1A1a and A2s and all assorted parts actually all AFVs of the DOD get refurbished there.I have a friend that works there it looks sort of this Russian place only more organized and they take the ERA off but those in the Russian pictures likely had the plastic explosive removed you can do that with the ERA for the Abrams as well I have seen M1A1/2s inside C-5s and 17s and they had the ERA on them and the load master told me that they remove the explosives but leave the container on the hull.

They ship the AFV to Anniston Army Depot via train or flat bed truck and in all they get a layer of reddish rust on them while they sit outside waiting for refurbishment.

Russian depot yards are just very sloppy for some reason.

Yeah, the auto-loaders seemed like a good idea in theory. Still, we've lost a few loaders to getting in the way of the cannon over the years I'd wager.
Interesting to see T-72s in there too, presumably they can be reactivated in an emergency, like the US boneyards? Kind of lacking the whole protective environment though... Makes you wonder just how many are sitting in warehouses out in the Urals... You know how the Russians hate throwing anything away when it can still be used...

I didn't know M1A1s and A2s had ERA though, I thought they relied on the Chobham armour being one tough cookie to crack. I had heard rumours though, on the turret or around that area IIRC, to protect against RPGs.

Did Israel also have a ERA system which exploded before the grenade hit the hull in order to prematurely detonate it? I think there was also talk in the future of using hull point-defence lasers to hit grenades before they had a chance to hit the tank, I don't know how far ahead that is though. Probably around the same time as our chameleon tanks.

[August]

I'm told that it could be that the ERA has been removed and it's casing left on the vehicle.

[Kongo Otto]

text from the first picture:
http://paul-itk.livejournal.com/9681.html

Which roughly means:
"Kharkov Armoured Repair Plant "specialized in the overhaul and modernization of the T-64, T 80, T-72 tank engines 5TDF and GTD-1250. Plant also overhauled tank sights, laser range finders and a range of guided weapons. At the time of the collapse this Soviet factory produced approximately 60 tanks,and repairs 55 engines per month.



So i assume this repair plant was given up when the Ukraine gained independence from the Soviet Union in 1991.

[Stealhead]

Originally Posted by Oberon

Yeah, the auto-loaders seemed like a good idea in theory. Still, we've lost a few loaders to getting in the way of the cannon over the years I'd wager.
Interesting to see T-72s in there too, presumably they can be reactivated in an emergency, like the US boneyards? Kind of lacking the whole protective environment though... Makes you wonder just how many are sitting in warehouses out in the Urals... You know how the Russians hate throwing anything away when it can still be used...

I didn't know M1A1s and A2s had ERA though, I thought they relied on the Chobham armour being one tough cookie to crack. I had heard rumours though, on the turret or around that area IIRC, to protect against RPGs.

Did Israel also have a ERA system which exploded before the grenade hit the hull in order to prematurely detonate it? I think there was also talk in the future of using hull point-defence lasers to hit grenades before they had a chance to hit the tank, I don't know how far ahead that is though. Probably around the same time as our chameleon tanks.

Here is a shot of an M1A2 with the latest ERA: http://desmond.imageshack.us/Himg853...pg&res=landing

My guess is that weapons being weapons and armor being armor one is always trumping the other Chobham has been around since the late 1970's that is plenty of time for someone to think of a counter.The ERA has changed since the kind that I saw in 2003~2007 in fact back then the containers where much more box shaped.My guess with my extensive training with explosives(not) is that the the containers are curved out for a reason perhaps to increase the chance that the threat warhead is destroyed by the ERA.As I understand no M1A1/2 Abrams was destroyed out right some got disabled and then the Americans did not want to leave a tank behind so if they could not remove it quickly they took what they could of value out and destroyed it.

Look at any destroyed Abrams and you will that Uncle Sam finished it off :http://www.militaryimages.net/photop...s_learned5.jpg
http://www.militaryimages.net/photop..._learned5a.jpg
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi.../B-23-1991.jpg

Now this is what a destroyed by the enemy tank looks like:
http://www.dubbs.info/images/graphical/image059.jpg
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_zUe7sq7m3h...%2BGeorgia.jpg
http://s51.radikal.ru/i132/0903/d3/dcf3f2b9fde3.jpg
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-WZQplcqRYd...+destroyed.jpg

Which one of these is not like other?



@August got 50K? then here you go..http://www.mortarinvestments.eu/prod...2#currency=USD

Oh man could you have some fun with this thing..http://www.mortarinvestments.eu/prod...2#currency=EUR

[Oberon]

Originally Posted by Stealhead

Here is a shot of an M1A2 with the latest ERA: http://desmond.imageshack.us/Himg853...pg&res=landing

My guess is that weapons being weapons and armor being armor one is always trumping the other Chobham has been around since the late 1970's that is plenty of time for someone to think of a counter.The ERA has changed since the kind that I saw in 2003~2007 in fact back then the containers where much more box shaped.


@August got 50K? then here you go..http://www.mortarinvestments.eu/prod...2#currency=USD

Nice, thanks for the pic. I guess in the era (pardon the expression) of the IED then improving armour is going to be a priority, although most conventional armour is decent enough to repel most IEDs. Also, like you say, no doubt there are better armour piercing weapons coming into play.

[Stealhead]

Perhaps not so much anymore we are not in Iraq anymore and as I understand NATO has no or very few MBTs in Afghanistan IEDs are a weapon of insurgency so the the West will probably start focusing more on traditional threats again and forget the past in Vietnam they did not have ERA but they did have lots of chain link fence which it turns out is pretty good at defeating an RPG before it hits armor.

I think all Abrams lost where just overwhelmed by RPG spamming and the crew and systems to contain damage got overwhelmed it is also hard to judge because the insurgents more than likely sat and watched the the tank get prepped for destruction by the crew and engineers then let it burn for an hour or so and then posed for the photo not showing the many dead that it took to disable the M1 to the point that due to enemy activities the tank had to be destroyed because it could not be salvaged.If 200 6 years old attack you you will go down but not in same manner as you would if Mike Tyson punched you in the face..

Also much of this data would be classified as well in fact I think many an Abrams crewman is more than happy to allow you to think that you can hurt him when you really cant or not as badly one might think.The ERA is supposed to defeat any anti armor warhead more than an IED though I think it would not do much to an explosive under the hull but most IED are not made of a tank killing warhead unless it is simply a massive amount of explosives but I am betting that any one planting an IED would rather make 200 smaller IED that will kill or seriously wound troops in something softer skinned than to try and take out a tank but not the crew inside with any degree of certainty.

I think you will start seeing active threat warhead killing systems on AFVs soon like the laser system that you mentioned then you will have the hull armor the ERA and the ACM(active counter measure) meaning that an attacking warhead would have to defeat 3 different systems. Requiring the attacker to try and get multiple warheads onto the same spot it will become a smaller scale MIRV counter MIRV.

[TLAM Strike]

Originally Posted by Oberon

...although most conventional armour is decent enough to repel most IEDs. Also, like you say, no doubt there are better armour piercing weapons coming into play.

At one point the other side was forgetting about penetration and just using sheer kinetic force to take out armored vehicles.

This Abrams was hit with the force of several 155mm shells buried in the road.



The Commander, Gunner, and Loader were all killed while the Driver survived. The force of the denotation tore the turret off the hull. Fortunately it is difficult to hull around that much explosives. Although a single 155mm shell can be quite devastating on its own:


I don't believe anyone was killed in that attack but it immobilized that Abrams.

[Stealhead]

The good thing about the Abrams and the Challenger tanks is that they are without a doubt the most survivable tanks for crewmen out there.No armor is perfect there is always a weakness somewhere.

How many 155mm did that take TLAM?Do you have any idea? I have seen a video of a Striker that had it was estimated 3 155s go off under it.No one was killed and the most serious injury was a broken back that makes me think that it would take at least double to have popped that Abrams turret.Of course the Strikers lower hull was designed with such things in mind the Abrams was not.

155s are nasty in deed my dad very nearly got killed by an NVA 155 shell that hit the the fire base he was resting in it completely blew away the structure he was in at the time which was made of sand bags and the cases that arty shells are stored in it also killed several men and broke another guys back and severed his spine the guy was supposed to head out on an R&R trip to Hawaii to visit his wife instead he got confined to a wheel chair for the rest of his life.

[TLAM Strike]

Originally Posted by Stealhead

How many 155mm did that take TLAM?Do you have any idea?

It was either 3 or 5, more likely it was the incident involving 5 of them.

[Oberon]

IEDs are nasty, I'm not sure of the type that got one of our Challies, I imagine that it's hush-hush. Probably not a 155mm though, because scuttlebutt has it that the same area on the Challie was penetrated by an RPG-29 a few months before the IED incident. Either way, we've painted over that hole now.
Looks like we also might use ERA as well, judging by the make-up of this Challenger II.



And then of course there's the grills at the back against RPGs (great idea by the way chaps, thanks for that, I think it was the US that came up with that one first?).

[TLAM Strike]

Originally Posted by Oberon

Looks like we also might use ERA as well, judging by the make-up of this Challenger II.

affirmative the Challenger II has ERA skirts for the tracks.

And then of course there's the grills at the back against RPGs (great idea by the way chaps, thanks for that, I think it was the US that came up with that one first?).

Nope it was those darn Nazis who thought of it first:

"Drahtgeflecht Schürzen" basically metal plates of armor to protect the sides of the hull and turret (if applicable)

Although the Russia's version was closer to the Slat Armor we use today:

[Oberon]

Of course, the side skirts, I'd forgotten about them. Hard to put them to the grills we have today, like you say the Soviet version is much more like our modern defences...good pics by the way, I honestly didn't know the Soviets had such things. Must have come in useful during the push into Berlin!

So, I wonder how things like 'Trophy' are going to affect the battlefield in the future years, has the US done anything more with it since testing it on a Stryker? The Russians reckon that they've developed a countermeasure already, but that remains to be seen.