A fair amount of tank news has built up in the hopper over the last month or so (some, but not all, related to the Russo-Ukraine War), so let’s do a roundup.
The U.S. Army has announced that it’s not doing an M1A2SEPv4, and instead will produced the M1E3.
The U.S. Army is scrapping its current upgrade plans for the Abrams main battle tank and pursuing a more significant modernization effort to increase its mobility and survivability on the battlefield, the service announced in a statement Wednesday.
The Army will end its M1A2 System Enhancement Package version 4 program, and instead develop the M1E3 Abrams focused on challenges the tank is likely to face on the battlefield of 2040 and beyond, the service said. The service was supposed to receive the M1A2 SEPv4 version this past spring.
The SEPv4 will not go into production as planned, Army Under Secretary Gabe Camarillo told Defense News in a Sept. 6 interview at the Defense News Conference in Arlington, Virginia. “We’re essentially going to invest those resources into the [research and] development on this new upgraded Abrams,” he said. “[I]t’s really threat-based, it’s everything that we’re seeing right now, even recently in Ukraine in terms of a native active protection system, lighter weight, more survivability, and of course reduced logistical burdens as well for the Army.”
The Abrams tank “can no longer grow its capabilities without adding weight, and we need to reduce its logistical footprint,” Maj. Gen. Glenn Dean, the Army’s program executive officer for ground combat systems, said in the statement. “The war in Ukraine has highlighted a critical need for integrated protections for soldiers, built from within instead of adding on.”
Ukraine’s military will have the chance to put the M1 Abrams to the test when it receives the tanks later this month. The country is fighting off a Russian invasion that began nearly two years ago.
The M1E3 Abrams will “include the best features” of the M1A2 SEPv4 and will be compliant with modular open-systems architecture standards, according to the statement, which will allow for faster and more efficient technology upgrades. “This will enable the Army and its commercial partners to design a more survivable, lighter tank that will be more effective on the battlefield at initial fielding and more easy to upgrade in the future.”
“We appreciate that future battlefields pose new challenges to the tank as we study recent and ongoing conflicts,” said Brig. Gen. Geoffrey Norman, director of the Next-Generation Combat Vehicle Cross-Functional Team. “We must optimize the Abrams’ mobility and survivability to allow the tank to continue to close with and destroy the enemy as the apex predator on future battlefields.”
Norman, who took over the team last fall, spent seven months prior to his current job in Poland with the 1st Infantry Division. He told Defense News last year that the division worked with Poles, Lithuanians and other European partners on the eastern flank to observe happenings in Ukraine.
Weight is a major inhibitor of mobility, Norman said last fall. “We are consistently looking at ways to drive down the main battle tank’s weight to increase our operational mobility and ensure we can present multiple dilemmas to the adversary by being unpredictable in where we can go and how we can get there.”
General Dynamic Land Systems, which manufactures the Abrams tank, brought what it called AbramsX to the Association of the U.S. Army’s annual conference in October 2022. AbramsX is a technology demonstrator with reduced weight and the same range as the current tank with 50% less fuel consumption, the American firm told Defense News ahead of the show.
The AbramsX has a hybrid power pack that enables a silent watch capability and “some silent mobility,” which means it can run certain systems on the vehicle without running loud engines.
The tank also has an embedded artificial intelligence capability that enables “lethality, survivability, mobility and manned/unmanned teaming,” GDLS said.
The Army did not detail what the new version might include, but GDLS is using AbramsX to define what is possible in terms of weight reduction, improved survivability and a more efficient logistics tail.
The Army awarded GDLS a contract in August 2017 to develop the SEPv4 version of the tank with a plan then to make a production decision in fiscal 2023, followed by fielding to the first brigade in fiscal 2025.
The keystone technology of the SEPv4 version consisted of a third-generation forward-looking infrared camera and a full-sight upgrade including improved target discrimination.
“I think the investment in subsystem technologies in the v4 will actually carry over into the upgraded ECP [Engineering Change Proposal] program for Abrams,” Camarillo said. “However, the plan is to have robust competition at the subsystem level for a lot of what the new ECP will call for, so we’re going to look for best-of-breed tech in a lot of different areas,” such as active protection systems and lighter weight materials.
For instance, the Army has kitted out the tank with Trophy active protection systems as an interim solution to increase survivability. The Israeli company Rafael Advanced Defense Systems develops the Trophy. But since the system is not integrated into the design of the vehicle, it adds significant weight, sacrificing mobility.
The Army plans to produce the M1A2 SEPv3 at a reduced rate until it can transition the M1E3 into production.
Which looks to be 2030.
Nicholas Moran looks at what this might or might not mean in practical terms, with an emphasis on what it doesn’t say:
“We have about 10 years that the SEPv3 is the latest and greatest.”
“They are actually going to backfill some of the v4 modernizations to the v3.”
“‘The Abrams tank can no longer grow its capabilities without adding weight and we need to reduce its logistical footprint.’…There’s two parts to that one sentence that have a lot of digging into.”
“The Abrams started at 55 tons…now the v3 is 72 1/2 tons. If you add the Trophy APS, that’s an additional two and a half tons on its own. Then you put the reactive armor tiles on the side. Oh! Let’s put a mine plow on the front. Now your M1 is breaking 83 tons.”
One way to shed weight is with a smaller turret, like the Abrams X.
“What it doesn’t say in here, and what they’re not saying, is just how much weight are they trying to shed. Because if you’re trying to shed five to ten tons, that’s one thing. If you’re trying to shed 20 to 30 tons, then that’s something else entirely.”
The Abrams is essentially an analog tank which has had digital systems bolted onto it. “the upgrades that we have paid for our tanks have not been integrated upgrades from basically the ground up.” We’ve bolted on integrations modules, each of which adds weight.
“You can probably shave a few tons without touching the form factor of the M1A2 one bit.”
“Rip out the guts. Rip out all the electrics, all the electronics, and replace it from something that is designed and programmed from the ground up to be completely integrated.”
Replace the M256 cannon with the XM360, “which, as far as I know, does work. You install that you’ve shaved a ton off already.”
Replace the turret hydraulics with electrics.
Swap out copper wiring for fiber optics.
“So getting it from this current 73 tons down to, oh, let’s say 65 tons, probably isn’t all that hard.”
“If you want to take off more weight, you’re gonna have to look at a more radical redesign.” Like an unmanned turret.
If you mean fuel efficiency, you can pull out the current gas turbine engine and replace it, either a more efficient turbine or something else.
“The Army has spent a lot of money paying Cummins to develop the Advanced Combat Engine. This is an opposed module, opposed piston modular engine, and it can be configured for 750 horsepower. I believe it’s just a six cylinder version to the 12 cylinder or piston version, which is a 1500 horsepower, the same as a turbine the same as modern MTU. It would make some sense that the Army is going to look very hard at this.” The AEC is a bit funky, with two pistons per cylinder working together to compress the gas. They claim it offers about 25% fuel economy and a similar reduction in waste heat.
They might also look at a hybrid power train.
You can also save logistical weight in spare parts. “If you were to rip the guts out of the tank and start from scratch, you can probably come up with a maintenance and logistics system for maintenance which is much more refined and efficient.”
“‘The war in Ukraine has highlighted a critical need for integrated protection from soldiers built from within instead of adding on.'”
“This has apparently been in the works for the better part of three years now. In 2020, the director of operational test and evaluation put out his annual report, and when it gets to the M1A2v3 section, it basically says ‘Guys, this is getting a little bit out of hand. The tank is a tad heavy.'”
“The Army understands that they’re pretty much at the limit.”
All this is being done now because Ukraine finally made them pay attention to things that had already been identified as problems but not addressed. “Something like the Ukraine conflict is a little bit of a kick in the pants, and it’s probably going to attract somebody’s attention and say ‘OK, yeah, this is what we need to do it.”
Trophy adds so much weight because you need to balance the turret. Redesigning the turret from the ground up solves that issue.
Modular open systems architecture standards: “The backbone, the central nervous system of these things, is a new version that’s compatible across vehicles.”
Chris Copson of The Tank Museum offers up an assessment of the use of tanks in Ukraine’s summer offensive (posted September 29).
“One commentator has been dubbing it ‘Schrodinger’s summer offensive.’ Is it or isn’t it, and it appears to be currently tentative at best.”
“We’re also seeing the tank struggling to assert influence in what has increasingly become a slog dominated by artillery.”
“Putin’s special military operation saw the Russian army fought to a standstill, and they’d suffered huge losses in men and material. But they’re still in possession a swathe of Ukrainian territory running through the Eastern Donbas right the way down to the coast of the Black Sea.”
“Russian forces have fallen back into a defensive posture behind layered defenses minefields, anti-tank obstacles and barbed wire.”
“Ukrainian response has been probing attacks in greater or lesser strength, and they’re starting to use some of their Western supplied military equipment to attempt to break through before the Autumn rains, and the rasputitsa, the roadless time, puts an end to the campaigning season.”
“Zelensky fought for supplies of modern Western military material, and, after quite a bit of hesitancy, it’s begun to arrive.”
“So far there’s been enough, we think, to equip up to 15 Ukrainian brigades, and each of those is going to be around about 3,000 personnel and about 200 vehicles of all types.”
He covers the trickle of Challenger 2s, Leopard 2s, Abrams, etc., and the capabilities of each, which we’ve already covered here.
“In the early stages of the invasion, February and March 2022, Russian tank losses have been estimated at anything from between 460 and 680 from a total inventory around about 2,700 in BTs. Both of those figures are estimates from Western or Ukrainian sources and they’re now putting the figure well over a thousand.”
“An awful lot of these losses seem to be in tanks and AFVs either stuck bellied out through poor driving, or run out of fuel. That’s just poor logistics.”
Russian tank units lack enough infantry support to protect their armored columns from Ukrainian anti-tank units.
“We’re starting to see images of Ukrainian Leopard 2s and Bradleys knocked out by mines or artillery in attempts to breach Russian layered defenses.”
Ukraine’s western tanks have much higher repairability than T-72s. “Western MBTs [are] designed so that an ammunition or propellant explosion actually vents to the outside, and this tends to maintain damaged vehicle’s integrity and make it repairable, as well as increasing the likelihood of crew survival.”
Damaged Leopard 2s are already being repaired.
“Because Russian industry is under the cosh, a shortage of chips and high-tech components, and that is because of the western embargo. The solution their general staff has come up with is to pull tanks out of storage, and this includes some very elderly models indeed. Some of the estimated 2,800 T-55s which comes into service.” Cold War designs.
“Commissioning tanks after decades in store is a huge undertaking. It’s not just a question of charge in the batteries, it’s more like a total rebuild.”
“They’re not likely to be in peak condition,” but might be OK in static defensive roles.
“There is evidence that at least one has been used as a vehicle-borne improvised explosive device.”
“Against tanks like Challenger, Leopard or Abrams in an open country tank engagement, it’s fairly obvious they wouldn’t make the grade.”
Keeping all the different western tanks supplied and running is going to be a huge challenge to Ukraine. “A range of different and very unfamiliar, in some cases artillery pieces, trucks, logistic vehicles. Now the range is huge. Finding trained mechanics and procuring a huge range of spares. It’s going to be a colossal headache.”
“Artillery is really of central importance to the Russian, and before that the Soviet, way of war. And it’s the primary lethality in deep and close battles. Now perhaps 70% percent of Ukrainian casualties so far are being caused by Russian artillery.”
“At present a [Russian] brigade grouping is assigned a brigade artillery group, BRAG, and that’s two battalions of self-propelled howitzers and a battalion of multi-barreled rocket launchers. Use is made of forward observers, unmanned aerial vehicles and artillery location radars to identify targets.”
“At its most effective this uses the Strelets reconnaissance fire system to pair tactical intelligence and reconnaissance assets with precision strike artillery, and that gives you real-time targeting [Reckify?] uses the 2K25 Krasnapol 152mm laser guided round, which is able to inflict accurate strikes.” But it doesn’t work so well with cloud cover.
“We’ve also heard quite a lot about the Lancet range of loitering munitions for precision targeting. The Lancet-3 drone has a 40 minute flight time and it counts a 3kg warhead.” Oryx credits over 100 kills to Lancets. “These mostly have been self-propelled artillery, but also tanks.”
“With the constant presence of surveillance drones and satellite intel, it is getting just about impossible to hide anything on the modern battlefield.”
“The main take-home from the current conflict, and this might be stating the blindingly obvious, is that the battlefield is a very open place these days, and tank tactics have to evolve to take this into account.”
One thing we haven’t seen much of recently: Russian air power.
“There seems to be some progress around Robotyne, and the Challenger 2, Maurder and Stryker IFVs of the 82nd Air Landing brigade have been deployed to bolster 47th Brigade. And there seems to be some penetration of the Russian air defenses. Ukrainian offensive has broken through the first of three defensive lines, but the progress is really slow, because you’ve got minefields, dragon’s teeth and anti-tank ditches, and the Russian forces are very well dug in.”
The Uralvagonzavod factory in Omsk, in Siberia, hasn’t manufactured a new T-80 hull since 1991. And work on the T-80’s GTD-1250 turbine, at the Kaluga plant, likewise has idled in the decades since the Soviet Union’s collapse.
No, for nearly 30 years the Russian army has replenished its T-80 fleet with old, refurbished hulls and engines. Those hulls and engines obviously are beginning to run out as Russian tank losses in Ukraine exceed 2,000. For context, there were only around 3,000 active tanks in the entire Russian armed forces when Russia widened its war on Ukraine in February 2022.
Uralvagonzavod produces just a few dozen new T-72B3s and T-90Ms every month: far too few to make good monthly tank losses averaging a hundred or more. That’s why, in the summer of 2022, the Kremlin began pulling out of storage hundreds of 1960s-vintage T-62s and ‘50s-vintage T-54s and T-55s.
But the T-62s and T-54/55s, as well as only slightly less ancient war-reserve T-72 Urals and T-80Bs, are a stopgap. Some get fresh optics and add-on armor; many don’t. To sustain the war effort into year three, year four or year five, the Russian armed forces need new tanks. Lots of them.
Thus it was unsurprising when, two weeks ago, Alexander Potapov, CEO of Uralvagonzavod, announced his firm would resume producing 46-ton, three-person T-80s “from scratch.”
It’s a huge undertaking. While the Omsk factory still has the main T-80 tooling lying around somewhere, it must also reactive hundreds of suppliers in order to produce the tens of thousands of components it takes to assemble a T-80. That includes the gas-turbine engine.
During the T-80’s initial production run between 1975 and 2001, Kaluga built thousands of 1,000-horsepower GTD-1000 and 1,250-horsepower GTD-1250s for the type. A thousand or more horses is a lot of power for a 46-ton tank: a Ukrainian-made T-64BV weighs 42 tons but has a comparatively anemic 850-horsepower diesel engine.
The T-80’s excess power explains its high speed—44 miles per hour—and commensurately high fuel consumption, which limits its range to no more than 300 miles. Why then would Kaluga bother with a new 1,500-horsepower turbine?
As long as certain Russian forces—airborne and marine regiments, for example—value speed over fuel-efficiency, it makes sense they’d want even more power for their new-build T-80s. A 1,500-horsepower engine also would give a next-generation T-80 lots of growth potential. Uralvagonzavod could pile on tons of additional armor without weighing down the tank.
A few quick thoughts:
This hardly expresses confidence in the future of the T-14 Armata, does it now? (Speaking of which, they withdraw it from service in Ukraine, evidently without engaging any enemy tanks in anything but an indirect fire role (assuming they weren’t lying about that as well.))
If they’re struggling to produce just a few new T-72B3s and T-90Ms, why would producing T80s be any easier?
Russia announces a whole lot of things that never come to pass. In many ways its their default mode when announcing MilTech Wunderaffen.
Restarting a production line that’s been idle 30 years isn’t just difficult, it’s damn near impossible. At lot of the people who had the knowledge of how to actually build the things have probably died, and Soviet-era schematics are not an adequate substitute.
I’m pretty sure they have the capabilities to build the heavy equipment parts. The modern electronics? Not so much.
Like a lot of Russian announcements since the beginning of Vlad’s Big Adventure, this is probably a bluff to overall the gullible. I’m sure the Russians intend to restart production of T-80s, but I wouldn’t count on doing it very soon, or producing terribly many.
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11 Responses to “Tank News Roundup For October 18, 2023”
I fear that the M1E3 is rather like the big Ford carriers: The ultimate expression of a weapon system that’s on its way out.
The reason I say that is that what’s going on in Ukraine right now is just the tip of the iceberg with regards to the rate of change and innovation vis-a-vis drones and other technical advances.
Where I think this is going will likely be a manned component that doesn’t have anything more than a RWS for local self-defense, and a bunch of semi-autonomous assets that may or may not include a traditional cannon. The tank of the last half of this century is basically going to be a mobile command post, connected wirelessly and with hard-wire backups to the armed autonomous systems.
In other words, why burden the tank with the turret at all? Put the turret on a separate vehicle, or even have several “turrets” available to a single manned command post. Think of the weight that would save, and also consider what you’d be saving weight-wise if you never intended for the crewed component to go mano-y-mano with other vehicles in direct-fire combat…
Basically, consider the option of what might look like a Stridsvagn 103 with no turret at all, tele-operated either wirelessly or with a wired backup. Along with that, you could have a whole bunch of essentially disposable assets hauled along by another semi-autonomous “hanger” vehicle that would serve as a recharge/refuel station for what we could imagine as heavily-armed Roombas…
The future is very, very unlikely to look at all like the present or the recent past. I think that trying to cram all the weapons, all the armor, and a crew into the same vehicle is probably a fool’s game. Separate functions, separate missions, separate vehicles. You could armor the living hell out of a semi-autonomous Strv 103 and send a couple out on your flanks and front, while you sat safely behind the control console drinking your coffee. On the defense, fiber-optic hard lines that were well-buried could keep you quite unnoticed by anyone until you opened fire on them.
Basically, why is the gun necessarily on the tank in the first place? Once you’ve got the “vetronics” to the point where you can go with an unmanned turret, it’s folly to persist in keeping that unmanned turret on the vehicle with the crew.
I venture to predict that there are so many things that we haven’t even considered, let alone anticipated, that it’s not even funny. Ukraine is like the Russo-Japanese War, in that the war and weapons are merely pointing the way towards what is coming… And, the shape of things that actually eventuates will be just like that, where nobody really saw the full depth of the horror until it was too damn late.
Weren’t the Ukrainians finding a lot of bolted in surplused-off French sighting systems – previous gen day optics and night sights – in the latest generation Formerly-Red-Army tanks they captured? I doubt there’s any more of those in the warehouse for new production.
For semiconductors I have read reports that certain consumer goods, washing machines and such, are getting in past the sanctions and being ripped apart to harvest the chips to use in military applications.
As long as the turret control system doesn’t keep the spin-dry setting…
The Cummins Advanced Combat Engine is an American version of the Russian 5TDF opposed piston engine used from the outset in the T-64 tank. The 5TDF engine was a major source of trouble to Engineer Morozov during the T-64 launch and was directly responsible for UVZ developing the T-72, as Kharkov did not deliver functional T-64s to the Red Army until 1970. The ChTZ-Uraltrak 12H360 four stroke diesel ‘X’ engine in the T-14 is probably a better development candidate, both mechanically and thermodynamically.
The Russians have several thousand T-80s with relatively modern fire control systems which can be cannibalized to facilitate “new” T-80 production in their current sanctions environment. The T-80 turret and fire control systems were the basis for the early versions of the T-90 tank, developed by UVZ when Morozov again fell on his sword by failing to launch the T-80 on a timely basis.
Just because the Russians sucked building a similar engine doesn’t mean Americans will suck building something off the same basic design. A whole lot of Russian tech sucks, because Russia, and Cummins has a pretty good track record building heavy diesel engines.
It would be a mistake to say that because it shares the same basic layout that the engines “share design”. After all, the latest Lexus V8 has about as much in common with the very first V8 built, by Leon Levavasseur, as it does with any other ICE engine.
I suspect that the Cummins is going to avoid most of the issues that the Russian engines encountered, if only because Cummins knows what it is doing and has a pretty good handle on the heat aspects of it all. The Russian engine was notorious for problems managing heat and cooling of the engine, despite a bunch of really innovative ideas they implemented. It may be that they got a little out ahead of themselves and the state of the art in terms of what they could affordably manufacture in a timely manner.
On the other hand, they’re Russians. Notorious for great design work that fell down when it encountered the less-than-stellar production conditions… Which is why most of the really successful Russian/Soviet products that were designed so that you almost couldn’t screw up manufacturing them succeeded, and anything that required German-level attention to detail and precision manufacture did not.
I don’t think there’s anything really inherently wrong with the opposed-piston designs, but I will note that the lineage of that layout is full of “not so great engines” that didn’t do so well due to heat issues and materials technology of the times not being up to the job. It may be that “the time has come… ” for them. At last.
From the latest clip from Tucker, with Vivek returning to discuss Israel … the latter explained the lauded deal normalizing relations between 🇮🇱 and 🇸🇦 included the USA transferring nuclear technology to Riyadh. Not just that, but with the agreement there would not be the usual oversight the USA requires when sharing nuclear tech with allies.
Googling related phrases brings up articles showing … yeah, looks pretty likely true.
WHAT IN THE ACTUAL FUCK?!?!?!
Lord, please save us from the government other people voted for and deserve.
“Just because the Russians sucked building a similar engine doesn’t mean Americans will suck building something off the same basic design. A whole lot of Russian tech sucks, because Russia, and Cummins has a pretty good track record building heavy diesel engines.”
“It would be a mistake to say that because it shares the same basic layout that the engines “share design”. After all, the latest Lexus V8 has about as much in common with the very first V8 built, by Leon Levavasseur, as it does with any other ICE engine.”
Opposed piston engines have two crankshafts, one each at their outboard extremes. The span is in feet, not inches in a 1,500 bhp class engine. These crankshafts have to be joined together by a long span gear train or linkage, either of which suffer massive elastic deformations which in turn create about a dozen different engine misbehaviors. Those elastic deformations are all the more complex due to the inherent torque pulsations of a two cycle engine. You cannot design this out of an opposed piston engine without a massive weight penalty.
Additionally, Cummins adding an extra opposed cylinder set introduces more severe crank wrap in each crankshaft, creating serious cross cylinder coordination issues. 1,500 bhp diesels typically create over 5,000 lb-ft of torque which winds up the crankshaft like a torsion spring.
Two stroke diesels have significantly higher brake [horsepower] specific fuel consumption (BSFC) than four stroke diesels because the two strokes don’t fully combust their fuels. This creates the characteristic smoke signature of Russian T-64 tanks and the American M113 APCs powered by the DD 6V53TT. It is why two stroke diesels cannot be emissions certified without catalytic afterburners which run red hot and take up prodigous space.
These issues are due to the laws of physics and thermodynamics which cannot be violated, unlike civil or criminal laws.
Considering that the Saudis sponsored and paid for the Pakistani nuclear program? This is superfluous and a really bad idea at the same time. Saudi Arabia almost certainly has access to nukes, if not actual possession thereof.
The Biden administration has so thoroughly f*cked us in the Middle East and elsewhere that it isn’t even funny, any more.
Don’t think that Biden’s deliberate running-down of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve was either coincidental or unintentional. That was a key part of the plan, for his owners. Look for all this crap to interlock and put us into a vice we’ll play and pay hell to get out of.
That’s my reaction, too. This isn’t funny anymore. Dozens, hundreds of related stories (doxxed special forces? “oops”) where the supposed “adults in the room” are fools or outright traitors … and with zero consequences.
Kirk: What you’re asking for isn’t really a tank. So, why does it need a tank’s armor? Use the AMPV hull, and place your drone carrier just behind the front lines. Heck, give the FISTs a couple extra vehicles and merge the drones in with them. That might fit well with the whole networked fires approach that we’re going to have to go to in order to dodge enemy drone-based counterbattery. Use these units to provide recon and fires against the enemy, and then roll the tanks in while the enemy is disorganized from the drone and artillery attacks.
Also, anybody know just how big the new 50kw laser being deployed on M-SHORAD is, all-up? Could that fit into an unmanned turret, say, in the space vacated by the TC and gunner? That’s powerful enough to swat drones from a fair distance; you just need the sensors and FCS to cue it. A hybrid drivetrain should have plenty of electricity to spare. I’m not saying that would be easy to pull off, but it should be at least somewhat possible.
And, of course, there’s counter-drone. M-SHORAD (50kw) and IPFC-FEL (300kw) are coming. If they work half as well as promised, the only issue should be target acquisition and identification (IFF for friendly drones?). Challenging, and limited to LOS of the laser cannon, but if you cut a tank or two from a task force and replaced it with a couple extra laser cannons, and gave the AFVs sensors and F-35-style LPI mesh networking, would that help answer the threat? If the enemy is operating truly massive swarms that can’t be jammed or shot down, then the objective should be finding where the swarms are operating from and smothering the general vicinity in long-range fires.
None of this is guaranteed to work, but I can see something of a path forward that keeps a fast, well-armored vehicle with serious firepower as a major component of future armies. It might not reign supreme, but then, when have tanks *ever* really performed well without combined-arms support?
one point about the vetronics: I’m sure that Colonel Moran has forgotten more about tanks than I’ll ever know, but I do know, as a computerka, that fiberoptics do NOT transmit power. So while improvements may exist to be made, like consolidating redundant/disused cable, that’s not the answer. Fiber is also hellishly fragile vs copper wire, and you can’t exactly patch a broken piece with a gum wrapper. It’s also quite expensive.
Guns still exist because even cheap missiles are hellishly expensive. You load 40 Javelins on a missile tank, at $78K per missile (never mind launcher or CLU) that’s $3.12 million worth of ammo for one mission. A whole tank costs $3 million. And if (if) you can shoot that missile out of the sky with 50 rounds of 30 mm ammunition at $100 a round, or with 20 $1000 35mm rounds from a Gepard, you win. Main gun tank ammo is in the neighborhood of $1000 to $10,000 per round and nobody is shooting it out of the air with a Gepard.
I fear that the M1E3 is rather like the big Ford carriers: The ultimate expression of a weapon system that’s on its way out.
The reason I say that is that what’s going on in Ukraine right now is just the tip of the iceberg with regards to the rate of change and innovation vis-a-vis drones and other technical advances.
Where I think this is going will likely be a manned component that doesn’t have anything more than a RWS for local self-defense, and a bunch of semi-autonomous assets that may or may not include a traditional cannon. The tank of the last half of this century is basically going to be a mobile command post, connected wirelessly and with hard-wire backups to the armed autonomous systems.
In other words, why burden the tank with the turret at all? Put the turret on a separate vehicle, or even have several “turrets” available to a single manned command post. Think of the weight that would save, and also consider what you’d be saving weight-wise if you never intended for the crewed component to go mano-y-mano with other vehicles in direct-fire combat…
Basically, consider the option of what might look like a Stridsvagn 103 with no turret at all, tele-operated either wirelessly or with a wired backup. Along with that, you could have a whole bunch of essentially disposable assets hauled along by another semi-autonomous “hanger” vehicle that would serve as a recharge/refuel station for what we could imagine as heavily-armed Roombas…
The future is very, very unlikely to look at all like the present or the recent past. I think that trying to cram all the weapons, all the armor, and a crew into the same vehicle is probably a fool’s game. Separate functions, separate missions, separate vehicles. You could armor the living hell out of a semi-autonomous Strv 103 and send a couple out on your flanks and front, while you sat safely behind the control console drinking your coffee. On the defense, fiber-optic hard lines that were well-buried could keep you quite unnoticed by anyone until you opened fire on them.
Basically, why is the gun necessarily on the tank in the first place? Once you’ve got the “vetronics” to the point where you can go with an unmanned turret, it’s folly to persist in keeping that unmanned turret on the vehicle with the crew.
I venture to predict that there are so many things that we haven’t even considered, let alone anticipated, that it’s not even funny. Ukraine is like the Russo-Japanese War, in that the war and weapons are merely pointing the way towards what is coming… And, the shape of things that actually eventuates will be just like that, where nobody really saw the full depth of the horror until it was too damn late.
Weren’t the Ukrainians finding a lot of bolted in surplused-off French sighting systems – previous gen day optics and night sights – in the latest generation Formerly-Red-Army tanks they captured? I doubt there’s any more of those in the warehouse for new production.
For semiconductors I have read reports that certain consumer goods, washing machines and such, are getting in past the sanctions and being ripped apart to harvest the chips to use in military applications.
As long as the turret control system doesn’t keep the spin-dry setting…
The Cummins Advanced Combat Engine is an American version of the Russian 5TDF opposed piston engine used from the outset in the T-64 tank. The 5TDF engine was a major source of trouble to Engineer Morozov during the T-64 launch and was directly responsible for UVZ developing the T-72, as Kharkov did not deliver functional T-64s to the Red Army until 1970. The ChTZ-Uraltrak 12H360 four stroke diesel ‘X’ engine in the T-14 is probably a better development candidate, both mechanically and thermodynamically.
The Russians have several thousand T-80s with relatively modern fire control systems which can be cannibalized to facilitate “new” T-80 production in their current sanctions environment. The T-80 turret and fire control systems were the basis for the early versions of the T-90 tank, developed by UVZ when Morozov again fell on his sword by failing to launch the T-80 on a timely basis.
Just because the Russians sucked building a similar engine doesn’t mean Americans will suck building something off the same basic design. A whole lot of Russian tech sucks, because Russia, and Cummins has a pretty good track record building heavy diesel engines.
It would be a mistake to say that because it shares the same basic layout that the engines “share design”. After all, the latest Lexus V8 has about as much in common with the very first V8 built, by Leon Levavasseur, as it does with any other ICE engine.
I suspect that the Cummins is going to avoid most of the issues that the Russian engines encountered, if only because Cummins knows what it is doing and has a pretty good handle on the heat aspects of it all. The Russian engine was notorious for problems managing heat and cooling of the engine, despite a bunch of really innovative ideas they implemented. It may be that they got a little out ahead of themselves and the state of the art in terms of what they could affordably manufacture in a timely manner.
On the other hand, they’re Russians. Notorious for great design work that fell down when it encountered the less-than-stellar production conditions… Which is why most of the really successful Russian/Soviet products that were designed so that you almost couldn’t screw up manufacturing them succeeded, and anything that required German-level attention to detail and precision manufacture did not.
I don’t think there’s anything really inherently wrong with the opposed-piston designs, but I will note that the lineage of that layout is full of “not so great engines” that didn’t do so well due to heat issues and materials technology of the times not being up to the job. It may be that “the time has come… ” for them. At last.
OT but HOLY SHIT!
From the latest clip from Tucker, with Vivek returning to discuss Israel … the latter explained the lauded deal normalizing relations between 🇮🇱 and 🇸🇦 included the USA transferring nuclear technology to Riyadh. Not just that, but with the agreement there would not be the usual oversight the USA requires when sharing nuclear tech with allies.
Googling related phrases brings up articles showing … yeah, looks pretty likely true.
WHAT IN THE ACTUAL FUCK?!?!?!
Lord, please save us from the government other people voted for and deserve.
“Just because the Russians sucked building a similar engine doesn’t mean Americans will suck building something off the same basic design. A whole lot of Russian tech sucks, because Russia, and Cummins has a pretty good track record building heavy diesel engines.”
“It would be a mistake to say that because it shares the same basic layout that the engines “share design”. After all, the latest Lexus V8 has about as much in common with the very first V8 built, by Leon Levavasseur, as it does with any other ICE engine.”
Opposed piston engines have two crankshafts, one each at their outboard extremes. The span is in feet, not inches in a 1,500 bhp class engine. These crankshafts have to be joined together by a long span gear train or linkage, either of which suffer massive elastic deformations which in turn create about a dozen different engine misbehaviors. Those elastic deformations are all the more complex due to the inherent torque pulsations of a two cycle engine. You cannot design this out of an opposed piston engine without a massive weight penalty.
Additionally, Cummins adding an extra opposed cylinder set introduces more severe crank wrap in each crankshaft, creating serious cross cylinder coordination issues. 1,500 bhp diesels typically create over 5,000 lb-ft of torque which winds up the crankshaft like a torsion spring.
Two stroke diesels have significantly higher brake [horsepower] specific fuel consumption (BSFC) than four stroke diesels because the two strokes don’t fully combust their fuels. This creates the characteristic smoke signature of Russian T-64 tanks and the American M113 APCs powered by the DD 6V53TT. It is why two stroke diesels cannot be emissions certified without catalytic afterburners which run red hot and take up prodigous space.
These issues are due to the laws of physics and thermodynamics which cannot be violated, unlike civil or criminal laws.
@Howard,
Considering that the Saudis sponsored and paid for the Pakistani nuclear program? This is superfluous and a really bad idea at the same time. Saudi Arabia almost certainly has access to nukes, if not actual possession thereof.
The Biden administration has so thoroughly f*cked us in the Middle East and elsewhere that it isn’t even funny, any more.
Don’t think that Biden’s deliberate running-down of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve was either coincidental or unintentional. That was a key part of the plan, for his owners. Look for all this crap to interlock and put us into a vice we’ll play and pay hell to get out of.
@Kirk
That’s my reaction, too. This isn’t funny anymore. Dozens, hundreds of related stories (doxxed special forces? “oops”) where the supposed “adults in the room” are fools or outright traitors … and with zero consequences.
Kirk: What you’re asking for isn’t really a tank. So, why does it need a tank’s armor? Use the AMPV hull, and place your drone carrier just behind the front lines. Heck, give the FISTs a couple extra vehicles and merge the drones in with them. That might fit well with the whole networked fires approach that we’re going to have to go to in order to dodge enemy drone-based counterbattery. Use these units to provide recon and fires against the enemy, and then roll the tanks in while the enemy is disorganized from the drone and artillery attacks.
Also, anybody know just how big the new 50kw laser being deployed on M-SHORAD is, all-up? Could that fit into an unmanned turret, say, in the space vacated by the TC and gunner? That’s powerful enough to swat drones from a fair distance; you just need the sensors and FCS to cue it. A hybrid drivetrain should have plenty of electricity to spare. I’m not saying that would be easy to pull off, but it should be at least somewhat possible.
And, of course, there’s counter-drone. M-SHORAD (50kw) and IPFC-FEL (300kw) are coming. If they work half as well as promised, the only issue should be target acquisition and identification (IFF for friendly drones?). Challenging, and limited to LOS of the laser cannon, but if you cut a tank or two from a task force and replaced it with a couple extra laser cannons, and gave the AFVs sensors and F-35-style LPI mesh networking, would that help answer the threat? If the enemy is operating truly massive swarms that can’t be jammed or shot down, then the objective should be finding where the swarms are operating from and smothering the general vicinity in long-range fires.
None of this is guaranteed to work, but I can see something of a path forward that keeps a fast, well-armored vehicle with serious firepower as a major component of future armies. It might not reign supreme, but then, when have tanks *ever* really performed well without combined-arms support?
one point about the vetronics: I’m sure that Colonel Moran has forgotten more about tanks than I’ll ever know, but I do know, as a computerka, that fiberoptics do NOT transmit power. So while improvements may exist to be made, like consolidating redundant/disused cable, that’s not the answer. Fiber is also hellishly fragile vs copper wire, and you can’t exactly patch a broken piece with a gum wrapper. It’s also quite expensive.
Guns still exist because even cheap missiles are hellishly expensive. You load 40 Javelins on a missile tank, at $78K per missile (never mind launcher or CLU) that’s $3.12 million worth of ammo for one mission. A whole tank costs $3 million. And if (if) you can shoot that missile out of the sky with 50 rounds of 30 mm ammunition at $100 a round, or with 20 $1000 35mm rounds from a Gepard, you win. Main gun tank ammo is in the neighborhood of $1000 to $10,000 per round and nobody is shooting it out of the air with a Gepard.