We’ve already covered why Russia’s T-14 Armata tank isn’t all that. Here’s a somewhat more balanced look from David Willey of The Tank Museum:
The first ten minutes covers the basics of Soviet tank design (the philosophy of favoring firepower over just about everything else, and how political rivalries led to various Soviet tank designs). Then he goes into the details of the Armata.
Much of the Armata comes from the abandoned T-95 project. “Although the T14 is looked at as new, it actually relies on systems and ideas from some much earlier projects.”
“The smoothbore 2A821M 125mm cannon is an upgrade from the weapon on the T-90. Russian sources claim its muzzle energy is far greater compared to the Rheinmetall 120mm gun.”
The unmanned turret means no need for a fume extractor.
Theoretical fire rate of 10-12 rounds a minute. I suspect this is highly optimistic and the fire rate is probably the slower one round every ten seconds we already covered.
“The new Vacuum One armor-piercing, fin-stabilized, discarding-sabot round is fitted with a 90cm [900mm] long rod penetrator. That’s unusually long. It is said to be capable of penetrating one meter of rolled homogeneous armor at about 2000 meters.” That is quite long. The rod penetrator on the U.S. M829 APFSDS round is 684mm long. Western consensus seems to be that the Vacuum One and Vacuum Two penetrator cores are made of depleted uranium or tungsten.
“The A853 engine was a copy of a German x-shaped engine from the war years…the A853 was not however a reliable product, and from all reports it seems to have had major issues.”
When working, it theoretically has twice the horsepower of a T-72 engine and capable of reaching 56 miles and hour with a range of 500 kilometers.
“The T14 has new 70 centimeter diameter road wheels, and an electronically adjustable suspension system on at least the first two road wheels, and possibly the last ones, and [that’s] called an active suspension system but is fitted over a main torsion bar suspension. It also has rubber-blocked tracks.”
The Armata’s sealed crew compartment will have air conditioning, which was introduced in Russian tanks with the T-90M in 2016. (Starting with M1A2 SEPv2, the Abrams has cooling, but it’s mainly geared toward cooling the electronics.)
Digital screens with remote cameras.
“The gunner can see his target, but he can also choose through those screens a relevant ammunition type.”
“The chassis and turret are equipped with a ‘Malachit’ dual explosive reactive armor system, and on the front sides and the top there’s stealth coatings.” Assuming the ERA is actually there and not fake, as on so many captured and destroyed Russian tanks in Ukraine.
“The active protection system has a radar to detect and tract incoming anti-tank munitions it states a maximum speed of incoming interceptable target is 1700 meters a second, or Mach 5.” Let’s just say I have grave doubts that it actually works. The Pentagon went with Israel’s Trophy active protection system over Raytheon’s homegrown Quick Kill system for M1A2 SEPv3, and Raytheon is good at developing reliable, high tech weapons. Unlike Russia.
“The top of the vehicle is still vulnerable to top attack munitions.” So much for defense against Javelin. Which first entered service in 1996.
“However, on closer inspection a number of these technologies and features are not fitted to some of the vehicles. Some you can see there’s covers where the technology or that piece of equipment should be on others is fitted for, but not with.” And that was on parade demonstration vehicles before sanctions. Odds that Russia would have enough parts to fully equip high tech parts to all Armatas supposedly in Ukraine would appear to be slim.
Though reusing a lot of features from the abandoned T-95 project, “the new T14 tank is a radical departure in sense of its scale, its layout, its design features and technology from that era of evolutionary Soviet-designed vehicles.”
“Originally intended to replace all Russian army tanks, the Russian military had planned to acquire about 2,300 T-14s between 2015 and 2020…but by 2018, delays were announced until at least 2025. Subsequently announcements indicated the apparent cancellation of the main production run.” In between it announced it was going to build 100 of them, though that number may have included other armored vehicles using the same platform.
“The [Russian] Deputy Minister of Defense said, quote, there is currently no need to mass produce the Armata when it’s older predecessors, namely the latest variants of the T-72, remain effective against American, German, and French counterparts.” Here the Deputy Minister of Defense is engaged in a time-honored Russian rhetorical device known as “lying his ass off.”
“The gradual tightening of sanctions, and then with the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the problem of sourcing the essential microelectronics has come to the fore. Russian industry has been critically dependent on foreign microelectronics and associated technologies. These are no longer available due to sanctions.”
“The sights from France and other components are no longer available.”
“Other issues come into play that affect the wider Russian defense industries. One is the perennial Russian problem of corruption. Since 2011, a staggering 72,000 officials have appeared before the course on corruption charges.”
“The mythic way many Russian military systems and products have been promoted and sold has met a crushing reality in Ukraine.”
Even though there may only be 20 test vehicles available, there is an expectation they will make appearance in the battle. A British ministry defense statement said, and I quote, any T-14 deployment is likely to be a high-risk decision for Russia. 11 years in development, the program has been dogged with delays reduction in planned Fleet size and reports of manufacturing problems. If Russia deploys a T-14 it will likely primarily be for propaganda purposes. Production is probably only in the low tens, while commanders are unlikely to
trust the vehicle in combat.
So even a balanced, objective analysis of the T-14 Armata isn’t particularly optimistic about its chances in combat.
Yesterday’s post on autloaders made me wonder how Russia’s T-14 Armata main battle tank project is coming along. The answer seems to be: not so hot.
Despite a reduction in Russian defense spending caused by lower oil prices, which came after the Kremlin opted not to cut production, the Russian military is charging ahead with its Armata combat vehicle program. It is being overseen by Rostec Corporation – the Moscow conglomerate that specializes in consolidating strategically important companies in Russia’s defense sector.
This includes the Armata T-14 main battle tanks (MBT) first demonstrated during the May 2015 Victory Parade in Moscow. Sergi Chemezov, Rostec Corporation’s chief executive officer, told reporters last week that while any new projects would be discontinued the Armata projects – which include the T-14 as well as the T-15 heavy infantry fighting vehicle and T-16 armored repair and recovery vehicle – were still on track.
However, when these tanks might be delivered is still very much in question.
As of January, the Russian Ground Forces (RGF) had not taken delivery of its first batch of the third-generation T-14s, and delivery has been delayed multiple times around. Delivery was expected on the first nine tanks by Russian tank manufacturer Uralvagonzavod (UVZ) in 2018, before the target date was pushed back to 2019.
Work on the Armata project began in 2010, when the Russian Ministry of Defence terminated work on “Object-195” – the T-95 program. The entire project was seen to be a huge technological leap from Soviet-era military hardware designs and from the ground up the T-14 is very much distinct from past Soviet/Russian tank platforms.
The outline of the tank, from its hull to its long and boxy turret, which resembles Western tank turret designs, is a notable departure from past Soviet designs.
Interestingly, the conventional long, boxy turret wasn’t part of the early Armata sketches released, which showed a radical, low-profile design theoretically made possible by the autoloader. That was completely gone by the time the first prototypes appeared (and stalled) at the 2015 Moscow Victory Day Parade.
It isn’t just the profile of the Armata T-14 that sets this tank apart from its predecessors.
Among its innovative characteristics is its unmanned turret, which includes a remotely controlled 125mm 2A82-1M smoothbore main gun with fully automated loading. The turret’s magazine contains a total of 45 rounds of ammunition, but the main gun can also fire laser-guide missiles. In addition, the 2A82 125mm gun can even be upgraded to the 2A83 152mm gun, while the T-14 can also be fitted with secondary weapons such as the Kord 12.7mm machine gun or a PKTM 7.62mm machine gun.
I don’t believe the the T-14 can ever be uparmed with the 152mm cannon. There simply doesn’t seem to be enough room to fit it in. That was what was supposed to go in the cancelled T-95/Object 195 program, which was a larger platform, and which Russia killed in 2010 after Uralvagonzavod produced a prototype which it never showed to the press and for which no field maneuver footage seems to exist. Which means it was even more good old-fashioned Russian vaporware than Black Eagle, of which they seemed to have produced one running prototype. Oh, and they also said Black Eagle could have been uparmed to the 152mm cannon as well. So a 152mm cannon-armed T-14 isn’t just vaporware, it’s third generation vaporware (if not even older).
As important to its offensive capabilities is the MBT’s ability to keep its crew protected. Here too is where the T-14 excels. This tank features a low-silhouette that reduces exposure to enemy fire, and that enhances the safety and survivability of the three-man crew.
The “low-silhouette” point is simply wrong. The T-14 is 3.3 meters high, compared to 2.2 meters for the T-90 and 2.44 meters for the M1A2. That’s higher even than the World War II M3 Lee tank the Soviets (who got them via Lend-Lease) called “a coffin for seven brothers.”
The driver, gunner and tank commander are housed in a crew compartment that is located in an armored capsule at the front portion of the hull, isolated from the automatic loader as well as the ammunition storage in the center of the tank.
The crew compartment is made from composite materials and protected by multilayer armor, which according to analyst reports can withstand a direct hit of nearly any type of round that currently exists including sub-caliber and cumulative rounds.
This smells like more hype. The crew compartment does seem to be very well-protected, but it remains to be seen whether it can stand up to a strike from a Javelin or Hellfire 2. RPG-29s (hardly state-of-the-art anti-tank tech) have taken out Challaneger 2s and Merkavas when it hit them just right, and they had proven Chobham composite armor rather than whatever composite armor Russia has managed to develop.
Supposedly the T-14 was tested in Syria, according to TASS, and if you can’t trust Russia’s own propaganda organ, who can you trust?
Here’s a video that discusses various T-14 problems from a YouTuber who tends to be a lot more positive about the T-14 (and Russian tanks in general) than I am.
The main problem plaguing the T-14 is the same one plaguing the rest of the Russian military: Russia is broke and they can’t maintain their current military infrastructure, much less adequately fund future weapons development. They were broke before oil prices hit the toilet, and the strain of Vald’s Excellent Adventures in Syria and Ukraine haven’t helped. That’s why dry docks sink and nuclear subs explode.
And even if all those problems are overcome, Russia has only ordered 100 of them, and production seems to be so slow they may not even hit that. Its fate may be like the Type 3 Chi-Nu tanks Japan produced late in World War II: A formidable peer to American tanks on paper, but produced in such small numbers they never saw combat.
