Military Ground Vehicles of Your Nation Mk X

[Iltica]

Damn, guess 800 wasn't that far off. Thanks anyway.

[Schwere Panzer Abteilung 502]

How much armor is strictly necessary for tank2tank combat in generation 3? (let's say late 80's-early 90's)
LOS thickness seems to vary between 650-950mm but I can't find much on what can pen what. I know the RHA equivalent varies between compositions and all but is there any rule of thumb for what is considered "enough"?

not really a rule of thumb. It largely depends on doctrine and shit. Leopard I has been a very succsssful tank despite being not well armored. IIRC Challengers set the standard in the west for armor protection when they were introduced but have since been overtaken by the Abrams.

[Taihei Tengoku]

How much armor is strictly necessary for tank2tank combat in generation 3? (let's say late 80's-early 90's)
LOS thickness seems to vary between 650-950mm but I can't find much on what can pen what. I know the RHA equivalent varies between compositions and all but is there any rule of thumb for what is considered "enough"?

not really a rule of thumb. It largely depends on doctrine and shit. Leopard I has been a very succsssful tank despite being not well armored. IIRC Challengers set the standard in the west for armor protection when they were introduced but have since been overtaken by the Abrams.

Didn't we have a post earlier on how Leo 1A4 was better protected than every other steel tank in the West?

[Schwere Panzer Abteilung 502]

Was there? I didn't see it. Well, the original Leopards weren't particularly well armored compared to their counterparts in the Chieftain, T-62, and M60. Or maybe it was, i don't know as much as I'd like on Cold War warfare.

[Iltica]

How much armor is strictly necessary for tank2tank combat in generation 3? (let's say late 80's-early 90's)
LOS thickness seems to vary between 650-950mm but I can't find much on what can pen what. I know the RHA equivalent varies between compositions and all but is there any rule of thumb for what is considered "enough"?

not really a rule of thumb. It largely depends on doctrine and shit. Leopard I has been a very succsssful tank despite being not well armored. IIRC Challengers set the standard in the west for armor protection when they were introduced but have since been overtaken by the Abrams.

Doctrine is a fickle thing, especially for an export tank I imagine. Maybe it would be better to sort armor into tiers based on what types of weapons it is proof against. For example tier 1 would be proof against only rifle fire and shrapnel, 2 and 3 would be HMGs and maybe small autocannons it doesn't really matter. Thing is the requirements for the lower levels change less over time than the upper ones. A 50. cal today isn't much different than one from WWII, at least not compared to how far apart a 17 pdr and a 2A46 are. So it maybe it might be better to just try and avoid top-end weapons and focus on the things you know you can stop. If you try and protect against everything one could argue that it isn't really an MBT but a heavy tank, and it will only keep growing. This is complicated further these days, since even infantry can be fielding weapons like the RPG 29 and the Javelin putting you right back down to being only proof against MG nests, technicals, and such if you ignore them.

[Gallia-]

Was there? I didn't see it.

You were literally involved.

[The Akasha Colony]

How much armor is strictly necessary for tank2tank combat in generation 3? (let's say late 80's-early 90's)
LOS thickness seems to vary between 650-950mm but I can't find much on what can pen what. I know the RHA equivalent varies between compositions and all but is there any rule of thumb for what is considered "enough"?

not really a rule of thumb. It largely depends on doctrine and shit. Leopard I has been a very succsssful tank despite being not well armored. IIRC Challengers set the standard in the west for armor protection when they were introduced but have since been overtaken by the Abrams.

By the 1980s, it had essentially become a rule of thumb.

There were different ideas in the early to mid Cold War about how feasible protection against shaped charges was but by the late 1970s, it was becoming increasingly clear that such protection was possible at acceptable weight levels thanks to the introduction of special armor and that this armor was essentially a necessity for any future main battle tank. Which is why in relatively short order you have the Leopard 2, M1 Abrams, and Challenger 1 all entering service in the same time period and all possessing similar protection and in the same weight class even though they were preceded by radically different designs. Of course, relatively minor differences persisted in the layout and arrangement of this armor but it was pretty clear that the big Western powers were on essentially the same page.

Technological improvements had made the big differences in design due to doctrine largely irrelevant; it was now possible to make a tank that had sufficient firepower, armor, and mobility at a reasonable cost. And within the next decade, more and more of the remaining powers followed, with South Korea adopting the K1, Japan introducing the Type 90, and France working on the Leclerc. The USSR went a slightly different route and relied on applique kits and improved versions of their existing tanks, but they too recognized that a better balance of protection, firepower, and armor was possible.

[Iltica]

But what about strategic mobility? Sure the tank itself can be fast but if it weighs 60 tonnes you'll have the same problems with bridges, mud, transport etc that plagued heavy tanks.

[The Akasha Colony]

But what about strategic mobility? Sure the tank itself can be fast but if it weighs 60 tonnes you'll have the same problems with bridges, mud, transport etc that plagued heavy tanks.

Infrastructure improved. Bridges and roads all have lifespans which means that between the 1940s and the 1980s, many of them had been replaced or improved or new routes with modern construction techniques built. This was necessary for civilian purposes anyway as the flow of goods vastly increased as economies recovered from WWII, which itself provided plenty of reason to rebuild infrastructure that had been destroyed. The small trucks of the inter-war era gave way to the massive semi-trailers of the modern era.

On top of this, combat engineering capabilities improved. Bridgelayers became standard in practically every modern mechanized army and techniques for clearing paths for vehicles also improved. Driver training improved as armies digested the huge body of wartime experience that had been gained and some of them simply became less relevant as tank mobility improved. With power-to-weight ratios exceeding 20 hp/ton and big 50+ tonne hulls, newer MBTs could simply power through some obstacles that would have stymied a less powerful tank. Better recovery techniques and more recovery vehicles were also fielded to help extricate stuck vehicles more rapidly than in the past.

The penalties that heavy tanks in WWII suffered is to some degree exaggerated in the popular imagination; despite all of their mobility issues, they were still clearly seen as desirable and useful assets by a number of countries. This isn't to say that problems didn't exist, but in practice it was realized that whatever mobility issues they might have suffered from, their benefits were simply too important to ignore.

And at the end of the day, there was simply no alternative. Designing a tank that weighs 60 tonnes but is protected from nearly any conventional threat is a better option than designing one that is 35 tonnes and involves significant protection compromises, because protection is more important to a tank than the ability to cross a few alternative bridges. Being a well-protected, well-armed, and tactically mobile platform is fundamental to a tank's mission and role, more so than its ability to cross bridges. The weight might have impacted strategic mobility on occasion, but it was more than made up for by the greater tactical mobility afforded by better protection. The same choice is playing out these days in the realm of IFVs as weight increases to meet protection standards are forcing more and more vehicles to drop amphibious capability.

[Iltica]

35 tons is preposterous yes, I'm only arguing for something around 45- 50 metric tonnes. About the size of a Panther, the older generations of MBTs, and supposedly the T-14. This seems to be the upper limit before any of these things become a problem.
While you can enlarge the support vehicles along with the tanks if you have the resources, and the same goes for you own infrastructure, you cannot guarantee that the same engineering standards are present if you are fighting outside your own borders. Unfortunately, most wars anymore are fought in less developed countries where if there is any sort of roads or bridges at all they may be in terrible condition.

There may also be numerical advantages when transporting smaller, lighter vehicles in your own transports. For example, suppose you have transport planes that can carry 150 tonnes or so, you could carry 2 60-tonne MBTs at a time whereas if your MBT weighed 50 tonnes or less with the same gun you might be able to bring a 3rd. If you are going somewhere really remote to fight someone who opted for the 60-tonne class you're going to have half again as many tanks when you meet. Even if they are somewhat inferior in terms of protection as long as the lighter tanks still have enough firepower to destroy the heavier ones you would still have an advantage just from the greater volume of fire.
If the enemy's armor can stop your rounds on the other hand the best you can hope for with the same gun is for your heavies and theirs to plink off of each other until somebody hits a weak spot.

[Gallia-]

Things that don't care about tonnage: Ships.

[Iltica]

They also don't like to be rushed.. or leave the water.

[Gallia-]

A couple ships can deliver more tanks in a month than the entire US Air Force, cheaper.

Ships are the only things that should be carrying tanks.

[The Akasha Colony]

35 tons is preposterous yes, I'm only arguing for something around 45- 50 metric tonnes. About the size of a Panther, the older generations of MBTs, and supposedly the T-14. This seems to be the upper limit before any of these things become a problem.

The problem is that this is probably below the limit in which a tank can maintain the same protection levels expected of modern Western MBTs. The most important data point is probably the Japanese Type 10, which was designed to provide the same performance as the heavier Type 90 but in a lighter package. Despite significant design and engineering effort and the use of cutting edge technology and armor, the Type 10 is only able to achieve its sub-50 tonne weight at the cost of significant protection compromises, namely to the turret sides where it is functionally unarmored (it doesn't even protect the standard 60 degree frontal arc). 50 tonnes is probably the absolute lowermost limit for meeting lower-end Western protection standards without something exotic like an armored crew pod with no armor anywhere else. And even that is heavy enough to cause largely the same problems as would be encountered with a 60 tonne tank.

While you can enlarge the support vehicles along with the tanks if you have the resources, and the same goes for you own infrastructure, you cannot guarantee that the same engineering standards are present if you are fighting outside your own borders. Unfortunately, most wars anymore are fought in less developed countries where if there is any sort of roads or bridges at all they may be in terrible condition.

And yet this has not deterred Israel, the United States, or any of the NATO partners from fielding 60+ tonne tanks in these very undeveloped countries in the Middle East. Even Canada and Denmark, nations with neither the wealth or logistics chain of the United States nor the physical proximity of Israel, were willing to send Leopard 2s to Afghanistan. Despite ever more foreign interventions by the United States since the end of the Cold War, the M1 Abrams has only gotten heavier, not lighter. The same is true of the Leopard 2, Challenger 2, and Merkava. Even Russian tanks are getting heavier with their increasing quantities of applique.

In any event, poor infrastructure is why bridging vehicles and combat engineers exist. It is literally their job to deal with any obstacles like these.

There may also be numerical advantages when transporting smaller, lighter vehicles in your own transports. For example, suppose you have a transport plane that can carry 150 tonnes or so, you could carry 2 60-tonne MBTs at a time whereas if your MBT weighed 50 tonnes or less you might be able to bring a 3rd.

This is largely irrelevant because no one, not even the United States, which operates the most capable fleet of airlifters in the world, expects to be airlifting armored divisions, regardless of whether the vehicles weigh 50 or 60 tonnes. Slipping in one extra tank per C-5 load is not a worthwhile compromise if it makes all of these tanks more vulnerable to enemy fire.

It's also a fairly arbitrary argument, because suppose you had a transport capable of 120 or 180 tonnes instead?

If you are going somewhere really remote to fight someone who opted for the 60-tonne class you're going to have half again as many tanks when you meet. Even if they are somewhat inferior in terms of protection as long as the lighter tanks still have enough firepower to destroy the heavier ones I'd bet they would probably win just by the volume of fire.

If you were going somewhere really remote to fight someone and trying to airlift tanks out there, chances are he'd have many more than you because even a 50 tonne tank is incredibly difficult to move and supply by air. You would need to be a far wealthier nation than the target in order to field a force matching his so far from home while he is operating from interior lines. And if this is possible, the weight of your tanks is irrelevant because you presumably have such a massive margin of superiority in everything else that it hardly matters how many tanks you bring. And if you are willing to forego protection, why stop at 50 tonnes? Why not strip it down to a 30 tonne tank destroyer? You'd probably have to do this anyway if air transportation is a serious requirement.



It is obviously possible to construct arbitrary scenarios where a given design optimized specifically toward that idea might out-perform a generic tank design. But that doesn't actually mean anything because modern tanks are designed to function in an extremely wide range of environments and scenarios against a wide variety of threats. Saving 10 tonnes from a 60 tonne vehicle is not a huge paradigm shift; it will still require large strategic airlifters, it will still consume large quantities of fuel, it will still require heavy bridging vehicles because it will not be amphibious, it will still be well beyond the weight limits of undeveloped infrastructure. But conversely an additional 10 tonnes of armor is a huge thing.

[Iltica]

What if you have to reinforce somewhere really far inland?

[Gallia-]

Trains.

[Allanea]

There may also be numerical advantages when transporting smaller, lighter vehicles in your own transports. For example, suppose you have a transport plane that can carry 150 tonnes or so, you could carry 2 60-tonne MBTs at a time whereas if your MBT weighed 50 tonnes or less you might be able to bring a 3rd.

This is not as important as it might sound. This is simply because the weight of the MBTs is only a tiny part of the many many problems that are encountered when airlifting armored troops.

As an example, the United States military would require 5-14 days, using 30% of all C-17 Galaxy planes in the fleet, to transport a single Stryker Brigade.

A US tank brigade requires 478 C-17 sorties to airlift. Most of this is not the airlifting of the brigade's Abrams tanks [of which there is about 100], but about the various auxiliary vehicles. Even if you could stuff four tanks in a C-17 [which is just never going to happen], you'd be using more than 400 sorties. Airlifting hundreds of tanks to the other side of an ocean will require either require Big!NS amounts of planes or take weeks of time. Most likely it'd require both.

If you want to move a tank division across the ocean and you have two weeks of time you should load it onto huge RORO, float it across the ocean, and unload it there.

[Allanea]

In fact, even if the M1 Abrams was perfectly weightless, only 3 of them could fit in a C-17, so a tank division armed with weightless Abrams tanks would require more than 420 C-17 sorties.

[The Akasha Colony]

What if you have to reinforce somewhere really far inland?

Then you negotiate with a neighboring nation for ground access from their ports, which is what NATO has done with Pakistan. You have to negotiate for air corridor rights anyway for your airlifters so it's not like this would be avoided. Or you ultimately just have to admit it's an impossible task, there are some things that just cannot be practicably done. And one of those is trying to support a major armored force entirely by air.

The weight of your tanks will be immaterial toward this task, because it's not the weight of the tanks that matter. Tanks are only a tiny fraction of an armored division's footprint. A US armored division weighs in at over 100,000 tons of equipment and personnel and requires nearly 2,000 tons of supplies per day. And most of that isn't the tanks, since the division has fewer than 300 of them.

It took the entire logistical effort of the USAF's mobility command to deploy a single division to Saudi Arabia in the lead up to ODS. It took them 20 days. The Navy's flotilla of pre-positioning ships arrived a whopping one day later.

[Iltica]

Alright, 55 tonnes it is. :/
Oddly enough, the type 90 is actually right around the target weight and appears to have marginally thicker frontal armor than the original Leopard 2 but this has much thicker side armor so maybe around however heavy this thing is.

[Gallia-]

The Navy ships were Algols, not PPF. The FSS arrived in something like 26 days to deliver the 24th ID (Mech) division ready brigade's equipment. The Air Force could barely fly in the 82nd in the same time period.

That said, it could probably have delivered the same brigade with the same airlift assets in the same time period, just costing a lot more.

[Austria-Bohemia-Hungary]

But what about strategic mobility? Sure the tank itself can be fast but if it weighs 60 tonnes you'll have the same problems with bridges, mud, transport etc that plagued heavy tanks.

Relevant.

[Purpelia]

Whilst we are on the topic of mobility, both strategic and tactical, how does the famous Russian mud factor into all that? Like, could a major factor in why Soviet tanks are so light and why the T-14 is went out of its way in high tech just to maintain >50 be that conditions such as those make heavy vehicles problematic?

I am mainly asking because I have always imagined Purpelia having a similar mud season.

[Schwere Panzer Abteilung 502]

not really a rule of thumb. It largely depends on doctrine and shit. Leopard I has been a very succsssful tank despite being not well armored. IIRC Challengers set the standard in the west for armor protection when they were introduced but have since been overtaken by the Abrams.

Didn't we have a post earlier on how Leo 1A4 was better protected than every other steel tank in the West?

Found it! Strange, I don't remember that at all.

[Fordorsia]

How much did the M4A3E2 suffer from its additional armour? I was wondering why the US didn't just make as many as possible instead of M4A3s, as the Jumbo was "only" 9 tons heavier, with a massive increase in protection. Mechanically it must have been fine if they used it a bunch, right?