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Originally Posted by Lchoy
Sorry to derail, but any thoughts on how the new Russian T-14 tank stacks up against the modern US Abram? Would Canada even have anything to match against it?
Thank you
LChoy
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think of the T-14 as an extension of where the American's wanted to go when they were developing their future combat system concept that was cancelled.
The T-14 is almost to be the lego of tanks becausee of the unmanned turret. They can easily produce a whole bunch of battle field weapons based around the chasis.
think of it this way. You can have a self propelled artillary piece, or a troop carrier or a anti-aircraft system all based around the same propulsion and crew training system. Its something that is very smart.
The T-14 is different from where the Russians were in terms of tank design. Their philosophy going back to the T-34 was to build simple tanks with big guns in overwhelming numbers to combat the American's technical superiority. The T-14 is built with enhanced crew protection, First of all with the un manned turret you don't have crew members surrounded by ammunition like you do in other tanks.
Its got state of the art passive armor and combines it with an reactive armor and then adds a active defense system that's designed to destroy incoming rounds and missiles before they strike the tank.
What I don't really like and I'm sure that anyone that's operated in tanks won't like is this tank is basically Nintendo controlled, because there's no one in the main turret, battlefield awareness is probably a little big compromised as they will depend on cameras and sensors.
The Russians have also been doing things a little different for a while. Not only can the main gun fire your standard anti-tank and anti-armor rounds like Heat and Sabot. The Russians can also fire an extremely long rang anti-tank rocket through their main gun for additional range.
The biggest problem for the Russian tanks has also been based around the use of an auto loader system, which tends to make its reload time a bit slower then the man operated loader on the M1 tank.
Supposedly the T-14 is twice as fast as the M1A2 and has a slightly better operational range.
The T-14 has a slightly harder punch with a 125 mm smooth bore as opposed to the M1's 120 mm smooth bore. The T-14 looks like it can carry more rounds.
What made the M1A1 really special, well there's two things. The sighting system was beyond anything that that anyone else had. Because it was so well stabilized it was and is hidiously accurate not only from long range, but while its moving. Its the tank that rarely misses. As well, its very well protected, with its depleted uranium armor on the A2's. It does have a active protective system, but that's more based around spoofing missiles, where the Russian system is based around destroying incoming rounds and missiles before they can reach the tank.
Right now the consensus thinking is that a tank battle comes down to who see's who first and can fire first.
It also comes down to surviving a hit and continuing to fire.
The Russian t-14 looks like its faster, it has a slightly longer range then the M1 series. I believe its protection systems are slightly more next generation.
We don't know much about how the sensors work on the T-14, the M1 series really depends more on crew awareness then anything else and being interlinked to other elements in theatre, we don't know if the T-14 has that kind of interoperability.
But the T-14 like the new generation of Russian submarines represents a huge un thought of leap forward away from traditional Russian thinking and it might be the tank that surpasses something like the current M1.
Currently the American's are working on the next generation of M1's which are the M3's but the main change with those is that they're lighter and faster. The Russians seem to have overcome the weight and heaviness problem with lighter next gen armor and active protection systems.
As far as the Leopards, the new generation leapards are very similar to the M1a2's in terms of speed, canon sighting and armor.
If I was to say anything that the T-14 is a next generation tank and they got there first.