The Armored Vehicle Thread

OSINT accounting of Russian tanks pulled from storage, comparing the pre-war to the most recent sat images.

On "cope cages", just how thin is the roof of a tank turret that "cope cages" are used by Russian, Ukrainian, and Israeli tanks to protect against bombs carried by commercial drones?

its not that the cage adds any notable thickness to the roof, its that they cause it to explode away from the roof.

The air-gap is the actual protection, not the cage itself, the cage is just there to set it off.

An explosions power rapidly degrades over any amount of distance, like we are talking exponential degradation... so for small explosives that amount of distance basically neutralizes them.

If you want an exact measurement though, that varies by tank.... your looking at about 40mm on the roof, with older tanks having having thicker armor there then modern ones, since shaving the roof down has been a consistent way to save weight.

For context your generally looking at 800+mm on the front.

Edited by Imca on Dec 17th 2023 at 3:51:28 AM

Wait, an M4 Sherman's roof would be thicker than an M1 Abrams' roof?

The Sherman also only had about 40mm of roof armor, same as the Abrams, but given that the frontal armor of a Sherman was 75 to 150mm depending on the version... vs the Abrams 800-900mm.... yea, its a very good point demonstrator.

I was more meaning once you left WWII and got to "modern" or cold war tanks, but.... well yea... this is is a pretty good indicator of what I mean given that you have to go that far back for it to start getting weaker.

Edit: Given that tank armor thickness is measured in the equivalence of RHA that it provides protection at... this probably does mean that by raw "thickness" the shermans roof is thicker, since the Abrams has the advantage of modern metallurgy.

One thing you need to understand when comparing older to newer armored vehicles, is armor is very heavy... this sounds obvious, but like, I mean even beyond the obvious it is very heavy.... so a lot of advances in armored vehicle warfare, not even just tanks, but any vehicle with armor from light vehicles up to warships.... isn't just "how much thicker can we make it" but also "how much more effeciently can we apply it" and later generations of armored vehicles actualy drop armor from previous generations in locations where they dont need it.

Warships by the end of the time period at which they were heavy armored, were using a system called "All or Nothing"... where the non critical parts of the ship would have less armor then you would find on a WWII tank.... but the critical parts of the ship were hundreds of MM thick.... tanks have done something similar where they removed armor from the roof, and the floors, so that they could put more on the front (since tanks try to fight with the front facing the enemy, even in a retreat you use the reverse gear....) and especially on the front of the turret (you can hide the hull, you cant hide the gun)

The exact layout looks like it might change soon, given that the T-14 exists, and the M1A3 is also looking like its going to move to an unnamed turret, but well... then we get into speculation territory and not the question as asked.

Edited by Imca on Dec 17th 2023 at 4:12:31 AM

Also, top armor has a tendency to be thinner because few threats come from above rather than horizontally in direct fire.

Until recent decades, the primary threat from above was aircraft munitions like bombs or Hellfire missiles or plunging fire from long range artillery. In the case of the latter, you didn’t need very thick to be resistant to HE or HE-Frag ammo from howitzers. There is no real defense against the former short of copious amounts of Anti-Air or aerial supremacy.

Yea, like Tom noted as well, the few threats that did come from those angles?

If 155mm or even the smallest of aircraft droped bombs hits the tank directly, your just fucked... there is so much explosives in those it's getting through. Same problem with mines from below.

And armor in real life unlike videogames isnt really some kind of damage reduction, it's more of a yes or no state... a binary.. either the attack gets through ot it doesn't... any thing that gets through has more then enough energy behind it to do nasty things to the inside of the tank and its crew.

So why bother, it's just dead weight, and not getting hit in the first place, by being more agile is a better defence any way.

Edited by Imca on Dec 18th 2023 at 2:46:58 AM

Also unlike a video game, armor degrades with damage. It wears down. Just because your tank survived a direct hit by a 155 projectile doesn’t mean it’ll survive the next with the same gusto and effectiveness.

Eventually all armor wears down and fails. The effectiveness and resistance of armor is best utilized as a second chance to keep fighting or retreat, not a shield of invincibility.

Air-dropped munitions can also strike with an appreciable amount of velocity and force depending on how high they were when they were released and how much they weigh. There were accounts back in 2011 of the French Air Force dropping concrete practice bombs on tanks. Turns out, if you can get it to land on the roof, 500lbs of concrete will penetrate the floor of the tank just fine. It just wasn't until very recently that you could drop a bomb with real-world pickle barrel accuracy.

Fond memories of the instructor at Basic assuring us that our body armor would probably stop a bullet, but it's really only guaranteed to stop the first bullet. When that happens, take cover.

In fact, the armor is expensive. Take cover before they manage to shoot you, and save some taxpayer dollars on those SAPI plates.

Edited by AFP on Dec 19th 2023 at 7:10:32 AM

They were also using those concrete bombs to knock out oil derricks without exploding them to avoid the massive fires an explosive strike would have set off.

The 50mm cannon under development meant to replace the 25mm Bushmaster.

Haven’t watched yet, is it the same gun that’s going to be outfitting Stryker Dragoons?

Stryker Dragoons are the 30mm bushmaster. This beasty is something that has been kicking around for a while at this point.

Outside of Avdiivka, the 47th Mechanized Brigade uses M1A1 Abrams Tanks to slow the Russian advance.While only 31 were given so far, the 47th says they’ve been used for over a month with great effect.

Abrooms finally doing what it was designed for.

Wrecking Russian stuff on Europe.

And they're already down one M1150. I think the Ukrianians only received 6 of those and they're important.

Army Gets 120mm ‘Nemo’ Mortar Turret Toting Armed Vehicle Prototype

The US Army is testing a 120mm carrier based on the AMPV platform with the 120mm N Ew M Ortar a Partia and Kongsberg designed automatic mortar capable of fast firing salvos and direct fire. Which is a major improvement over the M113 and Stryker based platforms that are essentially manual loaded mortars firing from a open back on those vehicles.

Edited by AngelusNox on Mar 10th 2024 at 10:50:59 AM