Last week was almost Russian Tank Week on BattleSwarm, but a plethora of news intervened (like Vladimir Putin intervening in the affairs of neighboring states).
But one interesting tidbit I didn’t get to was the fact that Russia has introduced a new generation of tanks (and mechanized fighting vehicles more generally, all based off the same base platform).
So is the new Russian T-14 Armata main battle tank something to worry about, or does the M1A2 Abrams retain clear technological superiority?
To my very, very outsider eyes, the answer is somewhere in-between.
First the description from Jane’s:
The T-14 is Russia’s first truly new tank design since the T-72, designed in the early 1970s. Based on the Armata Universal Tracked Platform, the T-14’s most attention-grabbing feature is its unmanned turret, with all of the MBT’s three crew (commander, driver, gunner) seated in a well-protected crew compartment at the front of the hull.
Notably, the unveiled turret dispels suggestions the MBT would be armed with a coaxial 30 mm cannon, in addition to its 2A82A 125 mm main gun. Indeed the pre-production vehicles paraded by Russia feature neither a 30 mm cannon nor a coaxial machine gun (MG) armament as expected, although the production vehicles might eventually feature the dual 30 mm cannon/7.62 mm MG.
Although the T-14’s turret features a large bustle, it remains unclear whether this features the autoloader/weapon-handling system for the MBT’s main gun or serves another purpose (meaning the T-14 would retain the vulnerable hull-mounted carousel system present in previous Russian MBTs). Some reports also indicate Russia has not entirely abandoned its ambitions to arm Armata with a 152 mm main gun. If this is the case, it could explain why the T-14’s unmanned turret has an unusually high profile relative to the position of the 125 mm main gun, with the turret possibly designed to incorporate growth potential up to the 152 mm calibre.
T-14 is armed with a remote-controlled turret (RCT) armed with a 7.62 mm PKTM MG, with the unit also functioning as the commander’s independent sight. The gunner’s sight is mounted to the left side of the main gun and shielded by a two-piece armoured door to protect it from small arms fire. A barrel reference unit is mounted above the base of the 2A82A main gun, which notably lacks a fume bore extractor (which would be superfluous given the turret is unmanned). Metrological, satellite communications, GLONASS, datalink, and radio communications antennae are fitted on the roof of the turret.
The MBT’s turret is literally covered in a variety of launcher and sensor systems understood to be linked to a new APS system, which some reports call ‘Afghanit’. At the base of each side of the turret are five large and fixed horizontally arrayed launch tubes covering the 120° frontal arc of the turret. These bear a strong resemblance to the launchers for the earlier Drozd and Drozd-2 APS, which fired a hard-kill 107 mm unguided projectile armed with a high-explosive-(HE) fragment warhead to defeat incoming anti-tank guided weapons (ATGWs).
The T-14 is also fitted with four sets of smaller-calibre launchers, with each unit armed with 12 launch tubes. Two horizontally trainable launcher units are fitted on either side of the top of the turret, while two apparently fixed and vertically facing launcher units are recessed into the top of the tank’s turret.
It is unclear whether this second system fires hard-kill (ie warheads) or soft-kill (ie anti-infrared/laser-obscuring smoke) munitions, or a combination of the two. It is also unclear if the vertically mounted units are fireable, or simply storage for reload units for the two trainable launchers. One limitation of the Drozd systems were that they provided no protection against threats emanating from above the tank, so mounting the fixed launchers vertically could be one way to provide protection against top-attack threats.
Providing warning and guidance for the APS system are two types of sensors mounted around the T-14’s turret. Two large sensors, believed to be electro-optical/infrared (EO/IR)-based laser warning receivers, are angularly mounted on the front of the turret providing 180° coverage, while four smaller sensors (covered but believed to be radars) are mounted around the turret providing 360° coverage.
Armata features a notably different hull design to the T-72/90. One striking difference is the road wheels, which are of a different design to the T-72/90’s, while the Armata features seven road wheels, to the six of the previous MBT designs, with the drive wheel at the rear. This is similar to the T-80 MBT family, which also has chassis with seven smaller road wheels.
It is not known whether Armata is equipped with a gas-turbine or a diesel engine [given how the Russian chain of command swore off gas-turbine engines after the T-80’s performance in the first Chechen war, probably diesel. -LP] , but the T-14’s powerpack is mounted at the rear of the MBT, with two internal fuel tanks mounted on either side, and exhausts also mounted on either side. Day/night cameras are mounted around the T-14’s turret to provide situational awareness, while a forward-looking EO/IR (FLIR) system is mounted on the front of the hull for the driver. The driver’s hatch has no periscopes. When driving buttoned-down, the driver may be in a reclined position, using a set of periscopes mounted on a second hatch directly behind him.
NII Stali is understood to have designed a new form of steel armour for the Armata family. Speaking to TASS, a NII Stali representative said the “steel armour alloy, named 44S-sv-Sh [44S–], is approved by the Armata’s developer. The alloy’s operational testing has been started and it can be used in prospective vehicles’ parts”. The use of the 44S-sv-Sh steel in Armata is intended to provide protection at a similar level to STANAG 4569 (first edition) Level 5. The high level of 44S-sv-Sh’s protection is ensured by the short-grained material structure, the optimised legation process and the special heat processing. The steel has also been designed to maintain its characteristics in very cold conditions.
The Armata design is also understood to utilise explosive reactive armour (ERA) within its base design (rather than the appliqué ERA tiles seen on previous Russian MBTs), with views from above the MBT showing a distinctive tiled pattern indicative of ERA on the top of the vehicle’s chassis and turret. Although what appear to be ERA tiles are present on the turret roof, much of the sides of the turret appears to be just a thin cladding covering the various APS and sighting systems rather than armour. Appliqué armour (unclear if passive or ERA, or both) is fitted to the forward two thirds of the T-14’s sides, while the rear third is protected by bar armour to provide clearance for the T-14’s exhausts.
Here’s a picture of the front by way of NPR:
I’m not going to get into the electronics/sensor/packages, since it’s all devil-in-the-details stuff impossible to evaluate at this point. (The active protection system could be very interesting, but there’s no way of knowing how it stacks up to Israel’s Trophy or the still-under-development U.S. Quick Kill.)
The big reasons I think the M1A2 retains overall superiority:
That said, there are a number of interesting features on the T-14:
All this assumes that significant numbers of the T-14 actually get built, given that Russia has cancelled at least two separate tank programs (Black Eagle and the T-95) to follow on to the T-72/T-80, and that their economy is really biting the yak in the wake of the oil price collapse and Ukraine sanctions. But the shared Armata platform probably helped reduce development and production costs, and I suspect it will get put into production, as a big new main battle tank seems like exactly the sort of thing Vladimir Putin likes seeing built.
This is just a quick overview based on limited information. Those with more information and/or deeper subject knowledge are welcome to sound off in the comments.
Update: Missed this Jane’s update on the T-14’s armor.
The base armour on the new tank consists of metal-ceramic plates. Novosibirsk-based company NEVZ-Ceramics has already launched serial production of this product, according to Andrey Nikitin, the head of the company’s armoured ceramics bureau. “We finished the trials this year and the elements revealed their declared capability,” he said.
Nikitin said the new metal/ceramic armour provides one-and-a-half times more resistance than fully metal systems.
Tags: Andrey Nikitin, autoloader, M1A2, Merkava, Military, Russia, T-14 Armata, tanks, Ukraine, video, Vladimir Putin
20 yrs ago, talking with a tanker at Fort Hood who was transitioning to the A2, I asked what the big differences were. First thing he mentioned was, “fold-down cup holders!”
Hi!
Well, I don’t want to be a downer, but I cannot agree with any of the insights presented in this article.
– Let me remind you that the USSR was a pioneer in APS design and implementation. There should be no problems at all. Zaslon APS made in Ukraine can intercept old 125mm APFSDS shell travelling at 1800 m/s, and Zaslon is from the 90’s IIRC. Also, the “big” APS munitions on the turret ring cannot possibly be EFP charges. If an EFP charge exploded there, it’d damage the adjacent charges and tear off parts of the turret shell. Yes, the turret is hollow.
– All tanks still use steel in them. Tank armour is a system, with multiple materials acting in concert. Steel is only a part of a complex array. This steel is specifically alloyed and processed so that it retains optimal characteristics even in extremely cold weather, i.e Artic conditions. That’s the gist of it.
– High profile means little to nothing in today’s world of thermal imaging gun sights and tomorrow’s world of QWIP chip sights that are hypersensitive to differences in temperature and can make out the thermal signature of tanks from dozens of miles away. And modern guns and cannons are so accurate now that if you point it at something, you’re going to hit it dead center, on the move, at 30 km/h. That’s the sort of standard set by the Germans and South Koreans.
The weird shaping is for radar stealth. The high “forehead” is most likely empty space for now. It’s to allow the future 152mm gun to depress.
There are no shot traps, because the turret is hollow and anything that hits it will go through. Besides, shot traps are non-existent in the modern world. Current APFSDS shells are highly angle-insensitive. You’d need angles of 82 degrees or more to cause a ricochet.
And the radically low-profile turret thing would have been a horrible idea. The gun would be totally incapable of depressing unless the turret was an oscillating one. But it still wasn’t a pipe dream. Turns out that that wasn’t a Russian tank, but a Serbian one apparently named M-20UP-1. Possibly a derivative of the T-14, but not the T-14.
Yes, the sight is definitely a vulnerable point, but that’s just how it has to be. It wouldn’t matter if you put it on the turret roof. The periscopic tube or fiberoptic cables running from the roof to the gunner’s station would still be in the same area, and since the turret is armourless, anything that hits it would damage it. And plus, if that big ol’ sight was on the roof, it’d obstruct the commander’s view (which, may I add, is very, very generous).
– You would, and you certainly will! That is, if you attend RAE 2015 and manage to get into one of those closed-door discussions.
– I would like to note that reliable autoloaders have been around for nearly 60 years already.
– That incident wasn’t actually due to engine problems. If you actually watch full video of the 15-minute incident, you can see that not once did anyone actually have to access the engine. The story is this: Uralvagonzavod wanted their own test drivers for the parade, but the Army wanted military drivers. They argued back and forth, and UVZ finally let it slide. So military drivers were assigned to drive the T-14 – but here’s the catch – that decision was made just a few weeks before the parade. The drivers had no time to train properly. They and the tanks were sent to Moscow by train from UVZ’s own proving grounds, and when the drivers got there, they still didn’t get any practice. They had to learn the parade procedures, and rehearse driving down the streets, learning the routes, etc. So in the end, one of the noob drivers accidentally pressed the parking brake. If you watch the video, you can see how the tank abruptly stops instead of slowly decelerating. He panicked, and didn’t know what to do. Assuming that there was a malfunction (obviously he knows that it’s a new tank), he calls for help. The guys that were supposed to help also assumed that it was a malfunction (obviously), so they brought a tank to tow it away. *But the parking brake was still on*. Notice that the tank wouldn’t even budge. So, still not knowing what to do, they called the UVZ technicians. One of the technicians jumped in, and the tank drove away in seconds.
Long story short: Human error.
– Integrated reactive armour is neither new nor a response to anything. It’s not to counter the Javelin either. That’s the job of the roof-mounted APS grenades, which will definitely as they should, because that stuff’s not new either. It uses the same technology from the Arena from more than a decade ago, except with modified grenade-launching techniques. The new ERA (called Granit, IIRC) is simply a highly advanced ERA that is designed to destroy modern and future APFSDS projectiles better than Relikt can, and much better than Kontakt-5 can.
T-72s and T-80s in Chechnya went in without ERA at all during the initial thrust. Incompetent personnel and poor logistics meant that the invasion was so rushed that they didn’t have time to fill the ERA tiles before entering combat. They aren’t filled in peacetime, you see, for precautionary safety reasons. Also, because of the state of the economy, a lot of the ERA’s explosive filling was stolen: http://www.ciar.org/ttk/mbt/armor/armor-magazine/armor-mag.2001.ja/4chechen01.pdf (last page, footnotes) And, well, they got shot in the rear, sides, top, etc, etc. The ones that did have ERA were invulnerable from all angles except the immediate rear.
I would also like to take this opportunity to note that the number of losses of tanks was much, much, much lower after the initial thrust and subsequent foolish parade march” down the streets of Grozny (some general thought that Soviet intimidation tactics would work). And I would also like to note that most of the time, when the tank was pierced or was listed as a “loss”, it *didn’t* send its turret sky-high.
Looks like Tiles beat me to it.
“NII Stali is understood to have designed a new form of steel armour for the Armata family.” Unless this new steel armor has radically improved properties, it seems unlikely to be even as effective against HEAT and/or kinetic penetrating rounds as the Chobham ceramic composite armor used by the M1 and British Challenger tanks, now into (at least) its third generation.” – It is not a purely steel armor system… Current information confirms that it will use some form of ceramic, problem a mix of nanostructured Alumina and Boron Carbide (both of which are manufactured by NEVZ, who will produce Armata’s ceramics). Both form of ceramics are years ahead of what Abrams A2 SEP, or to be specific, Heavy Armor Package 3 uses. Based on the fact that Abrams’ composite is designed and manufactured at Idaho National Labs, it must be a form of Silicon Carbide. SiC is a common. and great material for ceramic composites, however…B4C is significantly stronger (~15%) and lighter (some 3/5 less dense) than SiC, while also being more resilient to shattering by a small amount. Moreover, NEVZ (as already mentioned) has began producing *nanostructured* ceramics, which are lighter, stronger, harder, and more reliable (less imperfections) versions of their former selves. The common figures are ~50 percent harder, and ~30% lighter, which brings the Alumina far past SiC, never-mind the B4C. They are also coated in another nanostructured material, which helps performance in extreme temperatures and other conditions. Case in point, the ceramics alone almost guarantee higher thickness-based performance than HAP-3, and easily on a weight-basis as well (due to the weight of DU).
It is actually unknown if Armata will use this improved steel or not, as both sources and people contradict on it. Chances are that, like older Soviet MBT’s, it will use a mix of RHA and HHS, with the possible addition of this new stuff (which is a fair bit stronger than Russian HHS).
The turret is far smaller than what it may appear. There is an inner module (ie the actual turret) with a thin layer of metal that covers up sensors, and helps to lower the. High-profile has a lot to do with the very tall commanders’ sight, which actually helps with situational awareness, and increasing sight depression. Where an Abrams would need to expose the entire turret for the TC to get a good view (say, looking over a ridge-line), Armata could get away with only exposing the sight. It also needs to be said that the crew is further down in the vehicle than in any other tank today.
– Showing off the FCS would be idiotic…why advertise a secret. We do however, know that is uses a Kazan-designed thermal for both the TC and gunner. Specifications are only rumors, but here-say puts them slightly above the Attica series the Leo 2 uses.
Any modern tank could pull off what the A1 did in DS, it really wasn’t all that impressive of a feat.
So far 50 mph seems like a conservative estimate, in all honestly. The T-14 has the highest power-to-weight of any modern MBT (possibly outside of the Type-10) at ~27.1 hp/t, one of the lowest ground pressures at 0.845 kg/cm2 (my own calculation), 7 gears in both directions, and the highest peak-hp torque of any tank engine in service at over 3900 ft/lb. The engine is also variably-powered, and could theoretically up-rate to 1800 hp+ simply by changing with the ECU, at the expense of reliability.
Tiles covered the “stall” incident perfectly…it had nothing to do with the transmission or engine. In fact, the A-85-3A has been tested for decades via its’ smaller brother, the 2A.
The reactive armor is of a new generation, and can’t be labeled ERA or NERA. Rather, I call it MERA (mildly explosive reactive armor). It uses a thin layer of explosive in combination with multiple, varying plates in order to induce violent movement and yaw into the jet or rod; by using vibrations. Single-layers are rated at HEAT and tandem-HEAT according to an insider, while dual-layered (as probably used on the modular side armor kit) MERA is rated against APFSDS. it also poses no risk to infantry nearby, because it doesn’t fire a plate.
In fact that is a huge misconception…ERA barely poses a danger at all, and HEAT rounds would certainly kill the infantry around at a greater chance than the ERA itself.
Object-640 (it isn’t called Black Eagle officially) was never a Russian MOD program, at all. It was a desperate attempt for Omsk tank plant to stay alive, and failed. T-95 might not be procured, but was never truly cancelled as it lives on in Armata.
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