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T-72 discussion, split from "Bring back something like the CF-5"

Armymatters

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geo said:
gravyboat... what few CF5s were still in storage are presently being distributed to places for mounting on pedestals.... Matter of fact, there's one that I can see outside my office window.... in pieces, on the ground & up to it's canopy in snow.... they aren't going anywhere.

some time ago, was watching the top 10 countdown of the world's best Tanks. The T72 was somewhere around #6 or 7.... crew have to be custom selected (shorter than 5'6") armour sacrificed for speed leaving crew exposed - result being; crew more scared of that bad boy than we would be.

Don't forget that all Russian tank designs have a nasty tendency when hit to cook off ammunition blowing the tank up when a round penetrates the fighting compartment... Don't want to be too close to a Russian tank when it is it...
 
All?.... not sure about that....
certainly the T 72 but won't swear about "all"
 
It's a problem with the auto-loader setup... the ammunition is stored in a carrosell spll?? under the turret... and there is a lack of significant armor between the turret and that carrosell Spll???  Unlike the more common setup with blow off pannels on the exterior and heavy magazine doors on the interior..

But I digress.
 
geo said:
All?.... not sure about that....
certainly the T 72 but won't swear about "all"

It is because of the autoloader and how the ammunition is stored. From the T-64 to the T-90, excluding the T-80 Black Eagle variant, they all have virtually the same autoloader. That autoloader has the tendency to cook off ammo if hit. The only difference the T-80 Black Eagle has a seperate crew and ammo compartment, blow-out panels on the ammo compartment, new autoloader, better armour, and various other changes.
 
Armymatters,

When you post stuff like the above, please post your sources also. You have been told before, and you know darn well, that your posting style tends to portray someone who has practical experience in the subject. Some, but not most here, know that not to be true. For the sake of those that don't know your experience is all from books and reading, PLEASE POST YOUR SOURCES FROM NOW ON. We've asked for this before, you are out of chances here. I don't think you want to push the matter.

Take this as fair warning, you won't be asked again.

Inferno,

You may also want to take note. Quoting something you've read doesn't mean it's true, current or yours. Post your sources when make statements like the one above.
 
It is because of the autoloader and how the ammunition is stored. From the T-64 to the T-90, excluding the T-80 Black Eagle variant, they all have virtually the same autoloader.

Whoa, I'm going to call BS on this one.

The T72 is a distinctly different tank from the T64 and it's updated derivative, the T80.  The T72 is a simpler, less complex, cost-reduced tank than the T64/T80, and specifically DOES NOT USE THE SAME AUTOLOADER. The autoloader on the T72 was developed from scratch by a competing design bureau and used a completely different actuation mechanism.

I didn't find a reference on the T90's autoloader, but as T90 is a development of T72, it seems likely that they share an autoloader mechanism.

And "Black Eagle" has a bustle ammo bunker, and so uses another different autoloader. So that is at least 3 different autoloaders in T64/T80, T72/T90, and "Black Eagle"

Reference: http://www.knox.army.mil/center/ocoa/ArmorMag/ja98/4sewell98.pdf

Wikipedia gets it right too: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T72

Those references are not difficult to find either - I knew off the top of my head that the autoloaders were different, and it only took a few minutes with Google to find references. It is VERY easy to chase down factual BS these days....

DG
 
Armymatters said:
It is because of the autoloader and how the ammunition is stored. From the T-64 to the T-90, excluding the T-80 Black Eagle variant, they all have virtually the same autoloader. That autoloader has the tendency to cook off ammo if hit. The only difference the T-80 Black Eagle has a seperate crew and ammo compartment, blow-out panels on the ammo compartment, new autoloader, better armour, and various other changes.

Just to echo what Recce DG said..... I call BS on this one as well.

Armymatters....better let us in on how you are such an expert on all these subjects. You've been bouncing all over the place spouting off on all topics.

Just because you read Janes doesn't mean your an expert.

I'm tired of this.......

Regards
 
RecceDG said:
Wikipedia gets it right too: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T72 

Please bear in mind that Wikipedia should hardly be considered "authoritative." As noted at the site you quoted, the page was changed very recently:
T-72: From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This page was last modified 19:10, 24 February 2006.


Now, of course I'm not saying anyone here altered the entry. There's no indication what changes get made, but it's entirely possible that someone may change an entry merely to make a point: "see it's in Wikipedia...must be true."  For chuckles, watch the Arab-Israeli pages; sometimes they get changed 10-12 times per day, to suit personal viewpoints - - hardly rigourous academic standards.
 
Franko said:
Just to echo what Recce DG said..... I call BS on this one as well.

Armymatters....better let us in on how you are such an expert on all these subjects. You've been bouncing all over the place spouting off on all topics.

Just because you read Janes doesn't mean your an expert.

I'm tired of this.......

Regards

I am using an US Army editorial as my reference:
http://www.knox.army.mil/center/ocoa/ArmorMag/ja98/4sewell98.pdf
 
And I said "virtually the same", not the same. I was refering to the concept of the autoloader, which in all designs, besides the Black Eagle, a carousel-based autoloader. I am sorry if i didn't make this clear.
 
Franko said:
Dead link.    ::)

Regards

Funny, works for me... but I will give another link that gives the similar arguement:
http://armor.kiev.ua/fofanov/Tanks/EQP/al-640.html
It has the schematic of the Black Eagle autoloader as well. I already have a full page schematic of the T-64 and T-72 autoloader on my desk (I don't have a scanner to scan it for you guys).
 
Black Eagle according to Jane's Defence:

Development/Description           

Late in 1997, during a defence equipment exhibition held in Omsk, Russia briefly showed the first example of a new MBT called Black Eagle (Chiorny Oriol).

This was essentially a T-80U MBT chassis fitted with a new two-person turret. It was subsequently revealed that this turret was in fact a mock-up.

Some sources have indicated that Black Eagle is being developed at the Omsk Machine Construction Plant for the export market and may well also include some foreign components in its design, especially in the area of optics and fire control.

At a subsequent defence equipment exhibition held in Omsk in June 1999 the Black Eagle was again shown. This time, however, it featured a new chassis and a complete turret. It is believed that this vehicle has the development designation of Obiekt 640.

The standard production T-80 series MBT has six road wheels either side with the drive sprocket at the rear, idler at the front and track return rollers.

The latest Black Eagle MBT features a new and longer chassis with seven road wheels either side with driver's compartment at the front, turret and fighting compartment in the centre and power pack at the rear.

The longer chassis of the Black Eagle has enabled the armour protection at the front of the hull to be considerable increased.

The turret is a new design which was previously offered for installation of a T-80U chassis called the T-80UM2, although this designation has since been adopted for another version of the standard T-80U MBT.

The new two-person turret is armed with the standard two-axis stabilised 125 mm 2A46M smoothbore tank gun, which is fed from a bustle-mounted automatic loader. This is separated from the turret crew by an armoured bulkhead. Blow-out panels are located in the turret roof.

The installation of the bustle-mounted automatic loader not only increases the combat survivability of the Black Eagle MBT but would also enable the 125 mm gun to fire more advanced ammunition with greater armour penetration characteristics.

The T-64, T-72, T-80 and T-90 all feature a 125 mm smoothbore gun fed by an automatic loader mounted under the turret. This enabled the turret crew to be reduced to two, commander and gunner.

The 125 mm automatic loading system first loads the projectile (or in some cases a guided missile) and then the charge.

Combat experience has shown that this design of automatic loading system makes the MBT highly vulnerable when projectiles penetrate the hull. This usually causes the ammunition to ignite so causing the turret to be blown off.

The use of a bustle-mounted automatic loader will increase the combat survivability of the Black Eagle as well as allowing the gun to use new generation ammunition with enhanced armour penetration characteristics. It is also probable that the installation of an automatic loader will enable a higher rate of fire to be achieved. At this stage it is not clear as to whether a new family of 125 mm ammunition has been developed for this MBT.

A computerised fire-control system is fitted to enable stationary and moving targets to be engaged with a very high first round hit probability. Mounted on the roof is the DV-EBS wind sensor, which feeds information to the computer.

The gunner's stabilised sight has day and thermal channels and an integrated laser range-finder which feeds target information into the fire-control system.

In addition, the commander also has a roof-mounted day/thermal sighting system so allowing the Black Eagle MBT to carry out hunter/killer target engagements.

An Ainet automatic fuze setting system is installed which allows the crew to set the 125 mm high-explosive fragmentation projectiles to explode over the target for maximum effect.

In Black Eagle the gunner is seated on the right and the commander on the left, and both are provided with roof hatches.

A 7.62 mm PKT machine gun is mounted coaxial with the main armament and a 12.7 mm NSVT machine gun is mounted above the right side of the turret, this can be aimed and fired under complete armour protection.

For a higher level of battlefield survivability, the Black Eagle MBT is fitted with the latest Kaktus Explosive Reactive Armour (ERA) which provides a higher level of protection against both kinetic energy and chemical energy attack over the frontal arc.

The latest Drozd-2 active protection defensive aids suite is also fitted although as an alternative the Arena system could also be installed.

No firm details of the Black Eagle have been released although it is estimated that it has a combat weight of about 50 tonnes and is understood to be powered by a 16-cylinder turbocharged diesel engine developing 1,200 hp.

Standard equipment includes day and night vision equipment, NBC system, front mounted dozer blade, fire detection and suppression system and a battle management system.

Future Russian MBT           

There have been persistent reports that Russia is developing a new MBT, perhaps armed with a 152 mm smoothbore gun fed by an automatic loader. It is possible that Black Eagle could be back fitted with this new 152 mm smoothbore gun.

T-95 MBT           

Early in 2000 it was stated that a new MBT called the T-95 had been developed and available details of this are given in a separate entry. It is understood that this has yet to enter volume production. As of early 2005, this vehicle had not been seen in public.

Status          

Black Eagle remains at the prototype stage. Elements of the Black Eagle have been offered on the export market as part of various upgrade packages.

Contractor         

Omsk Machine Construction Plant.

The thing isn't even in service....never been proven in the field. Basically a test bed.

Jane's is a trusted source for most militaries......or are they just out to lunch as well?

Regards
 
recceguy said:
Inferno,

You may also want to take note. Quoting something you've read doesn't mean it's true, current or yours. Post your sources when make statements like the one above.

I'm sorry, I was under the impression this was common knowledge...

While I know wikipedia isn't the foremost authority on all information, it is fairly proficient at being a good starting place for finding information.

Source for auto-loader issues: "Another common, but not universal, issue is survivability; many autoloaders store their ammunition in the turret basket, increasing the possibility of a catastrophic explosion should the armor around the ammunition be punctured."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auto-loader

Source for armored compartments with blow off pannels: "Fuel and ammunition are in armored compartments with blow-off covers to reduce the risk of and protect the crew from cooking off if the tank is damaged."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M1_abrams#Armor

If it were a topic that was somewhat more contraversial I would go digging through schollarly journals, I even have access to them right now, but that would be like referencing the date of the Sept. 11th attacks.
 
From the schematic that I just posted, in theory, if the Black Eagle actually does go into production (not bloody likely, I know), it should be more survivable than the traditional Russian carousel based autoloaders which have proven themselves to crew hazards in combat. I am aware that some Western tanks have a bustle type autoloader (see the French Leclerc as an example), which in theory should be more safer as instead of the ammunition being stored in the crew compartment, it is instead stored in a seperate compartment.

Also, apparantly, the T-72 autoloader has an additional hazard as well, this time while loading for the gunner. According to this link (http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htarm/articles/20050713.aspx), the Russians did not think of putting a slide-up metal sheet to keep the autoloader from loading the gunners arm.
 
The article you cite states:

Russian tanks from the T-64/T-72 family onward have been using autoloaders. These autoloaders look like a carousel. When it is time to load the 125mm gun, the carousel swiveled to the ready position, and the cassette with the round and propellant bag is aligned with the main guns chamber. The cassette gets lifted up, and the main round is rammed in first, followed by the propellant charge. The gun then fires, and the process is repeated for the next round. This is a system that has the benefit of working well with the compact Russian tank designs. It has allowed Russia to field a lot of tanks and to keep them in the field due to the elimination of the extra crewman. However, it is not a well-designed one. The Russians (at least in one T-72 at the Aberdeen proving grounds) skimped on providing at least one item of safety gear that would have been cheap (a slide-up metal shield to keep the autoloader from loading the gunners arm). The autoloader in the T-64/T-72/T-80 pretty much stores the ammunition in the crew compartment and that means that if one of those gets hit, the crew is not going to have a very enjoyable experience (but it will be mercifully short).

This clearly claims that the T64 and T72 are from the same family (which they are not) and the description of the autoloader is clearly that from the T72

Compare to the article from Armour magazine, which states (P 28):

Another design saw an upgrade to the T-62. This tank used the 125mm D-81 gun with a totally new model of autoloader. Whereas the Kharkov design used a fork which selected the correct munition by index, placed both projectile and charge in a line, and then loaded them, the Vagonka design was more elegant, simple, and safer. Kartsev’s team used a cassette and a chain hoist and rammer, in which the charge was located in the top slot of the two-section cassette and the projectile in the bottom. The hoist pulled up the selected cassette, loaded the projectile, dropped, loaded the charge, and then dropped the cassette back into the floor carousel. The only drawback was that, unlike the T-64’s recovery of the “puck” from the expended round, the UVZ design had a port and ejected the “puck” out of the back of the turret. This compromised its NBC protection, but was simple and reliable.

Note, however, that the "load the gunner's arm" feature is typical of the T64 autoloader Armour (P 27):

The T-64 suffered from too many innovations adopted too fast. [ ...  ... ] Lastly, the D-68 gun was highly unreliable, with the exposed autoloader gaining a bad reputation for grabbing the uniforms of the hapless gunner and commander and stuffing them into the breech.

It thus seems likely - given that the Armour article cites 28 Russian sources (books and articles) in it's bibliography, where the "Strategypage.com" article makes no citations at all - that the author of the stategypage.com article has mistaken the T64 and the T72 for the same tank; a common enough error.

I am using an US Army editorial as my reference:
http://www.knox.army.mil/center/ocoa/ArmorMag/ja98/4sewell98.pdf

Oddly enough, that is the SAME ARTICLE that I am referencing - the one that makes it clear that you are talking out of your ass. So not only did you not notice that I cited the same article that you are supposedly referencing, you also didn't read the damn thing.

And I said "virtually the same", not the same.

Given that the two designs are radically different, they are hardly "virtually the same" - unless you consider a VW Bug and a Cadillac Eldorado "virtually the same" by virtue of both being cars.  ::)

If you intend on being an armchair scholar, you need to pay a lot more attention to detail.

Please bear in mind that Wikipedia should hardly be considered "authoritative." As noted at the site you quoted, the page was changed very recently:

Wikipedia should never be used as a single source, but it can be used as a starting point for further research - just like any encyclopedia. It also tracks editing history, so you can see what changes have been made and see if a tug of war is going on. See http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=T-72&action=history

DG
 
Armymatters said:
they all have virtually the same autoloader.

When you say virtually the same, in practical terms, it means the same.

inferno said:
I'm sorry, I was under the impression this was common knowledge...

Given the discussion that has ensued, and the holes being shot through Armymatters theories, I would say it's neither common, nor correct. Do yourself a favour, don't fall into the same useless style as Armymatters. Plagerizing other works to claim authorship and experience will soon land you in the dog house around here.
 
recceguy said:
When you say virtually the same, in practical terms, it means the same.

Given the discussion that has ensued, and the holes being shot through Armymatters theories, I would say it's neither common, nor correct. Do yourself a favour, don't fall into the same useless style as Armymatters. Plagerizing other works to claim authorship and experience will soon land you in the dog house around here.

I would like to see where you believe I "plagerized" the original post from. Being a university history major I take plagerization and making sure I don't do it very seriously. On the internet, not so much. But at the same time I know those were all my own original words, and the ideas have been floating around as long as the turrets have been popping off the tanks. I never at any point claimed authorship of any of the articles I cited. I never at any point claimed to be an expert, I was merely filling in on a digression to a thread that was begining to generate a sub-thread.

Please, before accusing me of plagerizing my original post in this thread reconsider, and if you insist, please post the article, or a link to the article from which you are claiming that I plagerized my original post.

Now that this thread has gone from aircraft, to armour, and onwards to you accusing me of plagerizing a paragraph on a topic that has been so completely covered that just about every book, and documentary film dealing with any aspect of Soviet tank design makes mention, I believe I am finished with it.

(And incase anyone didn't notice, I am definitely not arguing along side this "Armymatters", all I was originally saying is that the reason for the turret to pop off was because of the design of the ammunition storage areas.)
 
Being a university history major [ ... ... ] a topic that has been so completely covered that just about every book, and documentary film dealing with any aspect of Soviet tank design makes mention, I believe I am finished with it.

As a history major, you would do well to note that information often travels from source to source and can take on a life of its own, independent of the truth of it.

There is an article by Stephan J Gould, reprinted in Bully for Brontosaurus, that describes an incident like this. He picks up that most recent (at the time of writing) high school biology textbooks make the simile that Eohippus (an early horse) was about the size of a "fox terrier". Given that most American children couldn't tell the difference between a fox terrier and most other sorts of dogs, he finds the simile curious, and proceeds to delve into 70-odd years of textbook history, eventually turning up the single original reference that makes this comparison. It seems that this had been copied - consciously or not - from generation to generation of textbooks.

And along the way, he finds example after example of outright wrong information (some based on known hoaxes) that finds its way into the textbook stream and taking on a life of its own.

I would be careful - in your case, professionally careful - of trotting out "common knowledge" as fact. It is true that the T64, T72, and T80 keep their ammunition in the fighting compartment, but that has been true of all tanks up until recently, with (I think) the M1 being the first tank to store the ammo in a bustle bunker fitted with blowout panels.

I have seen an ammunition-loaded tank hit by an ATGM, and what resulted was more like a really intense fire (think of a "shower" firework going off, or a roadside safety flare, just scaled up really big) Not very healthy, but not a catastrophic explosion either. Most modern explosives require an actual detonation in proximity to the matrix in order to get them to detonate; in the absence of that, they don't explode, they burn.

The Sherman, which kept its ammo in the fighting compartment, was infamous for burning (they called it the Ronson, after the lighter) but I can't remember ever reading about a Sherman exploding its turret off.

That's not to say that T72 etc *don't* ever suffer catastrophic, turret-flinging explosions... but there is room for professional skepticism here. It might make an interesting paper to see how many turret-flingers there were in both Gulf Wars, to determine the frequency of this. And certainly, "ammo in the fighting compartment" is NOT unique to these tanks.

DG
 
inferno said:
I would like to see where you believe I "plagerized" the original post from. Being a university history major I take plagerization and making sure I don't do it very seriously. On the internet, not so much. But at the same time I know those were all my own original words, and the ideas have been floating around as long as the turrets have been popping off the tanks. I never at any point claimed authorship of any of the articles I cited. I never at any point claimed to be an expert, I was merely filling in on a digression to a thread that was begining to generate a sub-thread.

Please, before accusing me of plagerizing my original post in this thread reconsider, and if you insist, please post the article, or a link to the article from which you are claiming that I plagerized my original post.

Now that this thread has gone from aircraft, to armour, and onwards to you accusing me of plagerizing a paragraph on a topic that has been so completely covered that just about every book, and documentary film dealing with any aspect of Soviet tank design makes mention, I believe I am finished with it.

(And incase anyone didn't notice, I am definitely not arguing along side this "Armymatters", all I was originally saying is that the reason for the turret to pop off was because of the design of the ammunition storage areas.)

I accused you of no such thing. Go back and re-read the post. I was describing the style that Armymatters seems to prefer. Untwist your panties.
 
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