Kommissar
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Just some info I've come across concerning Cold War Soviet tank development and performance over the years. I just wanted to share it with the devs or anyone interested.
1) The first piece is an article from Jane's. When I first read it, I was rather surprised. I went to another forum full of grogs to confirm if the article indeed appeared where it said it came from. Actually, kipanderson from this board was a member of that board as well and confirmed that the article was genuine. This is what the article said:
Jane's International Defence Review 7/2007, pg. 15:
"IMPENETRABLE RUSSIAN TANK ARMOUR STANDS UP TO EXAMINATION
By Richard M. Ogorkiewicz
Claims by NATO testers in the 1990s that the armour of Soviet Cold War tanks was “effectively impenetrable” have been supported by comments made following similar tests in the US.
Speaking at a conference on “The Future of Armoured Warfare” in London on the 30th May, IDR's Pentagon correspondent Leland Ness explained that US Army tests involving firing trials on 25 T-72A1 and 12 T-72B1 tanks (each fitted with Kontakt-5 explosive reactive armour [ERA]) had confirmed NATO tests done on other former Soviet tanks left behind in Germany after the end of the Cold War. The tests showed that the ERA and composite Armour of the T-72s was incredibly resilient to 1980s NATO anti-tank weapons.
In contrast to the original, or 'light', type of ERA which is effective only against shaped charge jets, the 'heavy' Kontakt-5 ERA is also effective against the long-rod penetrators of APFSDS tank gun projectiles, anti-tank missiles, and anti-armour rotary cannons. Explosive reactive armour was valued by the Soviet Union and its now-independent component states since the 1970s, and almost every tank in the eastern-European military inventory today has either been manufactured to use ERA or had ERA tiles added to it, including even the T-55 and T-62 tanks built forty to fifty years ago, but still used today by reserve units.
"During the tests we used only the weapons which existed with NATO armies during the last decade of the Cold War to determine how effective such weapons would have been against these examples of modern Soviet tank design. Our results were completely unexpected. When fitted to the T-72A1 and B1 the 'heavy' ERA made them immune to the DU (Depleted Uranium) penetrators of the M829A2 APFSDS (used by the 120 mm guns of the Cold War era US M1 Abrams tanks), which are among the most formidable of current tank gun projectiles. We also tested the 30mm GAU-8 Avenger (the gun of the A-10 Thunderbolt II Strike Plane), the 30mm M320 (the gun of the AH-64 Apache Attack Helicopter) and a range of standard NATO Anti Tank Guided Missiles – all with the same result of no penetration or effective destruction of the test vehicles. The combined protection of the standard armour and the ERA gives the Tanks a level of protection equal to our own. The myth of Soviet inferiority in this sector of arms production that has been perpetuated by the failure of downgraded T-72 export tanks in the Gulf Wars has, finally, been laid to rest. The results of these tests show that if a NATO/Warsaw Pact confrontation had erupted in Europe, the Soviets would have had parity (or perhaps even superiority) in armour” – U.S. Army Spokesperson at the show.
Newer KE penetrators have been designed since the Cold War to defeat the Kontakt-5 (although Kontakt-5 has been improved as well). As a response the Russian Army has produced a new type of ERA, “Relikt”, which is claimed to be two to three times as effective as Kontakt-5 and completely impenetrable against modern Western warheads.
Despite the collapse of the USSR, the Russian Tank industry has managed to maintain itself and its expertise in armour production, resulting in modern designs (such as the T-90, the T-95 and mysterious Black Eagle) to replace the, surprisingly, still effective Soviet era tanks. These tests will do much to discount the argument of the “Lion of Babylon” (the ineffective Iraqi version of the T-72M) and export quality tanks being compared to the more sophisticated and upgraded versions which existed in the Soviet military’s best Tank formations and continue to be developed in a resurgent Russian military industrial complex.
2) The second piece of info is from another poster responding to my thread about the above article. I thought it was pretty amazing stuff from someone who apparently worked in the industry during that time. I'm sure kipanderson will recognize the name:
I have written repeatedly on this matter over the years. See, for example, the Syrian TO&E thread. The shocking conclusion of the 1985 Defense Science Board Summer 1985 Study was that the U.S. was in big trouble on both sides of the armor/antiarmor battle. Russians could penetrate ours, but we couldn't penetrate theirs. Only the Hellfire missile was deemed still semiviable; TOW, Dragon and LAW were all basically useless, incapable of a frontal kill vs. even an ERA equipped T-55, never mind anything more modern. The situation was no better with the then standard NATO 105mm tank gun--firing anything. Without going into details, the capability of Russian ERA to defeat long rod penetrators, as well as HEAT, was known in the mid 80s. Of course, the Maverick was fine. Hard to defeat a 173 lb. shaped charge on something with most of the KE of a battleship round!
I was at Hughes Missile Systems Group working as the in house threat specialist when the news broke, and many were in shock. Out of this came a crash effort to revive the TOW. First came ITOW (Improved TOW) with a standoff probe to enhance penetration, followed by TOW 2, with a revised guidance scheme (thermal IR usable through smoke and dust in addition to usual xenon beacon, which isn't) full caliber redesigned advanced warhead and a standoff probe, followed by the TOW 2A with ERA stripping precursor charge, followed by TOW 2B (top attack via low overflight and downward firing charge directed into thin roof armor).
My now retired brother was in the 2/11 ACR as a Bradley commander in the late 80s in Germany. He was shown a plain TOW 2 and told, "If you ever are issued one of these, it's war." Best he ever had was ITOW. Our nightmare at Hughes was a lead attack wave of ERA equipped T55s attacking behind advanced obscurants I describe below, followed by the good stuff. We would've been out of TOWs in short order and would then have been facing slews of Russian armor in its own optimal firing range.
Numbers tell.
If you're wondering why our mighty M1 (of which we had a handful when there were thousands of T-64s and T-72s in East Germany alone, later T-80s) was in jeopardy, it's because we discovered that the Russians had fielded an answer to a tank we never
produced: the T95 family equipped with sandwich armor made of glass encased in steel (built M60s instead). Guess what the original M1 had? Yep. I know so because I read the declassification notice on the special security status of the M1's vierceous (glass) core armor. The HEAT solution to the M1 was fielded in all sorts of weapons in the 1960s, and we didn't find out until several years AFTER the Yom Kippur War when we performed technical exploitation on ammunition captured by the Israelis. Bear in mind that this ammunition had to be effectively obsolete before Russia would allow it to be exported. The "obsolete" ammo turned out to be able, even in something, say, the size of what the SPG-9 fired, to pierce an M1 frontally. Most ungood, as my father would say.
While we're used to seeing steel penetrators in Saddam's HVAPFSDS round, the Russians long had tungsten and had DU long rod penetrators operational in quantity by the 1980s. Per Suvorov's INSIDE THE SOVIET ARMY, steel penetrators are monkey models reserved for ignorant foreign purchasers and wartime extreme demands when putting something into battle is better than nothing. Ditto the armor arrays on export tanks, at least, during the Cold War. Suvorov's list of the differences between a Russian BMP and the monkey model should prove most enlightening and is broadly applicable to the whole export weapon issue. The Kornet's the closest the U.S. has ever come to modern front line Russian antiarmor weaponry.
Other nasty discoveries included better explosives
than we had, wave shapers for HEAT rounds (enhanced penetration) and the discovery that Russian HEAT warheads were designed to take advantage of their own momentum. We, though, tested HEAT warheads statically, resulting in an understatement of their penetration by some 30-40%. 30-40%! To this, add broadband obscurants capable of defeating all sorts of surveillance and targeting means, denying us long range kills critical to whittling down the armored horde, hard kill tank defense weapons, such as Drozhd, new generations of antimateriel warheads capable of shredding Bradleys the way the BM-21 was designed to shred M113s (deliverable by long range MRLs and TBMs), etc. And don't forget all those flying tanks (HIND and FROGFOOT)!
SIDEBAR
NATO airbases were vulnerable to all kinds of Russian munitions for killing TAB V aircraft shelters, they had loads of rocket boosted runway busters (we had to buy France's Durandal and develop others), ARMS to take out NATO radar, etc. And lots more SAMs than we thought they had! The air defense system was not only vulnerable to what I've described, but also to jamming, was readily saturable, and was a prime target for Spetsnaz.
AWACS, for example, was only at one airbase.
END SIDEBAR
The U.S. spent BILLIONS on a crash get well armor/antiarmor program. AT-4 replaced LAW after even ILAW (Improved LAW) seemed hopeless. Dragon suffered the same fate, eventually being replaced by Javelin. We've already discussed TOW, now about to go wireless. The M1 was upgunned to the Rheinmetall 120mm smoothbore and coupled with our uber round: the "Silver Bullet" which went through crash development and deployment. Did you notice that before the Desert Storm Hail Mary attack jumped off, every vanilla M1 in that effort was pulled and replaced by M1A1HAs (120mm gun and DU armor array) sent straight from V Corps in Germany? We sent our very best against monkey model T-72s because our standard M1s could've been killed frontally by weapons which would amaze you with their mundaneness. Every tank family from T-55 up had a gun launched ATGM version, and artillery (including mortars and MRLS) was widely equipped with precision guided munitions.
The above is a partial list of just how bad things were, and this is without factoring in the massive espionage penetrations of the 1980s, which meant that they were reading our mail, knew where our nukes and chemical munitions were in Europe, could read much of our classified message traffic in real time, trail our SLBMs, etc.
Hope this was useful.
Regards,
John Kettler
[ June 28, 2007, 03:02 AM: Message edited by: John Kettler ]
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