Main Battle Tanks of the Future

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I’ve been thinking about future tank/infantry fighting vehicle (IFV) design and I have some Q’s that y ‘all may be able to answer. How many inches of armor on the M1 at front hull/front turret/side turret/top turret? I have been digging for open source info on the Javelin’s penetration ability. It seems early on they were coming 100mm short of the expected result and redesigned a fix. So the weapon does at least 100mm but we all know it will do more than that. Anyone have info on the total penetrating power/distance against tanks with and without reactive armor?

So, it has occurred to me, now that the T90 is maybe going to have an unmanned turret why not do one better and ditch the turret all together? If you use a variant of the javelin that is vertically stowed and have two independent sights, like the M1 and M2’s now have, you should have the same command and control (C2) ability with the crew but keep them down in the hull and away from the ammo. Two masts (which can telescope?) with a gunner’s and commander’s integrated sight units (ISU) would be the only thing above the berm at any time. The weapons could even fire from their mini silo’s like a boomer sub (so no moving parts, [well other than the doors on top]) and could even be stowed one on top of the other and able to fire successively out of the same silo.

One imagines, you could lock on the target, key the grip to cool the javelin varient missile down and pull the trigger. I suspect that when one takes 2-3 seconds to cool the missile’s thermal eye down the M1 will fire faster on the first shot, (which is the only disadvantage I can think of compared to the great advantage of having a self guided missile that will defeat any MBT in the world [or even on the drawing board] while fully berm’ed up) but for multiple shot situations it would end up being faster, much faster, then the best M1 crew’s time getting a second shot away (2-5 sec. to acquire the next target, 4 sec to load the right round, 2-3 sec. to give the fire commands and send it). One could have a missile away with a command from the commander’s ISU just moments after the gunner has launched on target #1. The cool down time for the commander’s missile could even take place concurrently with the gunner doing his thing. Basicly, turn the new MBT into a F-14 (RIP) able to attack multiple targets in different areas in less time than it takes for the first shot to hit home. Remove the weight restriction for the manpad version of the Javelin and you will easily push the system’s max effective out to 9+ km.

In short, you get a lighter, more survivable, more maneuverable, more transportable, less man power and maintenance intensive (only 3 crew/no turret) tank system with a better kill ability than the already excellent M1.

That said, I don’t think it could fully replace the M1’s IN support role of moving pill box able to level permanent fighting positions in a single shot.

2

Knowing the number of inches of armor isn’t really very helpful in determining how effective armor is against a given threat. The most common site I’ve read for the M1A2 is 3-4 inches of hull on the front and sides, probably similar thickness on top with the rear being most vulnerable. I believe the current armor package incorporates a steel encased depleted uranium composite with additional add on protection available in bolt on reactive or slat armor protection, added in urban warfare environments.

As for redesigning the MBT, well… it’s a time honored pastime. The problems you’d have with ditching a gunnery system for a guided missile system are a more limited magazine and versatility with added cost per round. The current main armament of the Abrams is a 120mm smoothbore gun that can fire everything from depleted uranium penetrating rounds for use against other tanks to shaped charge rounds against other less harded targets and the new canister ammunition for use against massed infantry. That’s alot of versatility and the cost per round is considerably less than any guided missile and it can carry dozens of them. In addition, you basically said that your redesign would be unable to fill the main function of any battle tank, a movable pill box able to take and hold territory. I tend to agree that the days of the main battle tank as we know it are ending, but I would have to say I don’t believe your solution is any more effective.

3

Well, let me start by saying that the tankers I work with HATE the ‘supporting the IN moving pillbox’ idea. ‘The tank is meant to kill other TANKS! Forget the crunchies.’ The current M1 with the TUSK (search wiki, I can’t get to it just now…) add-ons has a phone for the infantry but otherwise tankers consider the IN as a bug, if they consider them at all. They don’t like to think of themselves as in support of anyone.

As for the issue of armor thicknesses, if we assume that the armor is the best available (the worst for any opposing weapon) then thickness can matter. In the extreme, sheet metal couldn’t hold up reactive armor detonating. So yes the R. armor and ceramic layering etc. is very important but so is the steel etc. backing it up.

When it comes to ammo, well yes a javelin is overkill on a BMP etc but it sure works in the end! Besides, what about a different warhead for softer targets. It would sure drop the price per shot. When it comes to the canister round I sure have heard a lot. Only problem is I sure haven’t seen a one of them issued, or even heard of it, to anyone. Though I think this discussion of ammo misses the point a bit. The canister round is an after thought that was adapted to the task. It was NEVER the purpose of the M1.

In mentioning the limited magazine are you refering to less selection in round type or in quantity? It seems to me that with a javelin being just bigger than the ave. M1 round you should end up with much more quatitiy after you got done filling all the space where the turret used to be…

4

It’s a pity the tankers hate supporting the infantry, given that it’s their job, but then it’s not the most romantic thing in the world. It is however, vital. This is why we have Abrams deployed to places like Iraq right now, even though they will never fire at another tank. You win wars by taking and holding territory and forcing your will on the enemy, everything else supports this mission including killing other tanks. The tank hasn’t been the most dangerous weapon on the battlefield to other tanks for a long while now… that continues to be aircraft and THAT began in WWII. The primary role for tanks on the battlefield today is heavy ground support in urban combat, look at the Merkava for example. What the M1 was INTENDED to do is irrelevant, it was INTENDED to face soviet tank formations in the Fulda gap… that never happened… it continues to be valuable because it IS versatile. The F-14, since you mentioned it previously, was INTENDED to be an interceptor and take out soviet bombers at long range from carrier groups. It was successful because it was able to adapt and take on a number of different roles including air superiority and ground attack.

I honestly don’t know what you mean about assuming the ‘best’ armor available. Best at what? Slat and reactive is really good against shaped charges, not so much at kinetic penetrators. DU is good at absorbing kinetic but shaped charges cause some problems. Thickness is less important than careful design and deployment. If you want some kind of all things being equal scenario, penetration against X amount of rolled mild steel … I don’t know that those statistics are available or how useful they would be.

Ammo is a HUGE concern. Missile weapons are ALWAYS more expensive and less reliable than a gunnery system. In a large scale deployment where you will be called upon to perform a variety of missions (ie, Modern Warfare), the best weapon is the one with the most versatility and logistical depth. In the configuration you provided, you would need armored silo hatches of at least 3-4 inches thick… with limited ability to add on non integral armor. I would think that at most you would be able to fit two dozen silos and only in a single stack configuration, I am not aware of any missile system that utilizes a double stack due to concerns about backblast though I could well be wrong. With that system you’re not only paying for two dozen warheads, you’re paying for two dozen propulsions systems built to exceedingly fine tolerances, two dozen guidance systems plus all missiles have a limited reliable lifespan that is shorter than tank ammunition. Compare this to a gun system where you have twice the amount of ammunition onboard with a variety of choices… with a proven system for containing ammunition explosions. I just don’t see any advantage to your proposed tank over the existing ones, for a pure tankbuster I’d take an A-10, Apache or Predator unmanned drone with Hellfire missiles any day.

5

I mean, why not eliminate the humans and run tanks by remote control? that way, your tank can be made cheaper and use less armor. You don’t have to worry about losing 4 highly-trained human lives if the enmy score a direct hit on a tank. my concept is for 4-10 tanks (robotic0 to operate under the control of a commander in a remote bunker. he has 3-d TV images from each tank, and can select targets with the help of a computer driven display. This would also allow you to drive the tanks at speeds that would injure a humasn crew. Think of the battle of Kursk-fought by robot tanks! :confused:

6

Hardly suprising, since experience shows that if you park it in one spot playing pillbox, then eventually the enemy can just sneak up to it and blow it up, or collapse a building on it, or drop a shell on it, or get into position to fire an RPG onto the turret hatch, or whatever. Stop moving to support the infantry for any length of time, you then need to rely on the infantry to protect the tank, and that’s a much more nerve-wraacking propostion than just driving off at 20mph shooting the crap out of whatever catches your eye. A tank in motion is almost invulnerable, but sitting in one place it’s a bit of a sitting duck (albeit still a very tough one).

But what the OP is talking about is a ‘tank destroyer’ rather than an actual tank - they’re not a new idea by any means, it’s just that in the past they have generally proved to be disappointingly limited in tactical flexibility compared to real tanks and/or AT helicopters.

7

The future for urban warfare might belong to the Strykers. Stealthy, manueverable, flexible.

Basic overviews.

8

I spent time on self-propelled artillery (M109’s and M110’s) and had a few rides in M1’s. I’m sure a tanker will come a long with some other suggestions but I see three other key problems with the “guided missile tank”.

First every armor-killing rocket I can think of is fired from an open ended launcher. These things have a lot of back blast. What are you going to do with the expanding rocket gases? These gases also tend to be very corrosive and they need to be vented. Vents are nothing more than holes in your armor. Turreted missile magazines being the obvious solution defeat your design plan.

Second maintenance. Missile systems and their fire control systems are much more maintenance intensive than a cannon. This becomes especially true of the design you are proposing. Glossing over the multi roll arguments with tanks, in a tank battle mobility is life. M1’s move fast, very fast. Over broken terrain this means a good deal of bumps. If you’ve ever hit a speed bump in a pickup doing say 40 mph you’ll get a good idea. The equipment needs to be solid or meticulously maintained which is often an issue. This leads into my third issue.

Reliability. The main gun of the M1A2 is very simple to aim and fire. If hydraulics fail I believe the gun can still be rotated and elevated by hand crank. Laser sights have optical back up. And shells are shells. The technology is damn near perfected. Misfire rates are very very low. Missiles are shall we say twitchy. Misfires, resulting in rounds that needed to be extracted in the artillery were damn near unheard of. I don’t know about tank rounds but I assume it to be similar. Misfires on the MRLS (rocket artillery) were more common but since each tube fired it’s own missile you could skip the misfired rocket and move on in the firing order. The last thing I would want, as a tank commander, is a missile hung up in my main gun, which needs to be cleared. It either reduces or kills my rate of fire.

9

Well… Here is a link to the Army’s FCS that was shown to me this morning that includes many of the concepts I was thinking of. The crew is reduced to 2-3. The turrett is unmanned. Every new tank, IFV, and Howitzer has its own stinger/Javelin system, as well as an interchangeable 25mm/.50 cal machine gun. It seems these are already being road tested and prep’d for deployment in ~5 yrs (so say the guys we sent as user reps. on a system test they had in the last few months).

AS for the above comments, the Javelin is ejected from the launcher with compressed air, so there goes the venting and heat problems. I have Javelins as an IN guy and they are just about no maintenance. Sure they require some, but we went 1 yr with no probs while in Iraq. Besides, the advantage that the Javelin can (and has) destroy MBTs that are fully berm’d up is great. A sabot can not do it. The misfire rate on a javelin is proven less than 8% by the book and less in talks I have had with combat users. I would think that my original idea would at most be fielded 1-2 per platoon as they are better at killing tanks, or are they? The point was brought up that we and the Russkies have developed laser/maser systems to radiate the missle at ~5m out and cause the warhead to explode harmlessly away from the vehicle, this is built into the new FCS I am told. But of course we will counter their countermeasure eventually I’m sure, but it will take time…

I know from experience that tanks can move well over broken ground, however, many of them also end up broken. The Army recruiting pic of an Abrams going airborne off a jump was not a success for the road arms/wheels. We had M1’s down for track and road arm prob’s all the time.

10

If you want a tank that’ll make your enemies poop their pants, you clearly need one of these.

11

Notice, please, I said moving pillbox, the IN is not sitting around either, they are moving ASAP to hit the next thing…

12

During Desert Storm M1s took out T-72s through berms with sabot rounds.

I’m sure that jump wasn’t too fun for the crew either.

13

Please. :rolleyes: All you need is a lasso.

14

cite? I’ve heard this one and I place it firmly in the ‘urban legend’ category.

15

That would be the incident during the battle of 73 easting, Desert Storm, when:

From here citing Dunnigan, James F. and Austin Bay, From Shield to Storm: High-Tech Weapons, Military Strategy, and Coalition Warfare in the Persian Gulf, William Morrow & Company, 1992, p. 294-295.
Also descibed here here citing Orlansky and Thorpe, 73 Easting, p. I-54; Peter Tsouras and Elmo C. Wright, Jr., “The Ground War,” in Bruce W. Watson, ed., Military Lessons of the Gulf War (Novato, Calif.: Presidio Press, 1991), pp. 81-120; Operation Desert Shield/Desert Storm, p. 115. and saying

Google for “battle 73 easting berm” and there’s plenty more out there…

16

<…snip…>

You sound like the French high command pre-World War II.

I’d almost guarantee you that if you look at the US, British, Russian/Soviet, French, German or anyone else’s tank doctrines, that the primary role of tanks is as a highly mobile force with high firepower whose role is to force breakthroughs in enemy lines, and to exploit those breakthroughs by destroying rear echelon units and supplies.

At the moment, we’re fighting an insurgency. There aren’t battle lines, and therefore, tanks are useful for infantry support because there isn’t much that can kill them effectively when there is supporting friendly infantry around.
If you take the position that tanks are for infantry support, you won’t need high speed, but you will need a fairly small size and a gun capable of firing HE, canister, smoke, etc…, but that won’t really need serious AP capability. A long barrel will probably also be a disadvantage as well. You’ll want lots of machine guns as well.
Taking the more classical view, if you look at modern technology, it seems apparent to me that the pendulum is again swinging away from armor and instead to mobility and protection. I speculate that tanks of the future will be faster, carry bigger guns, and have less armor than today’s tanks. They’ll also probably have stealthy characteristics built in- lower IR signatures via insulation, coatings, design, etc…, better camouflage (active?), and smaller radar signatures. The idea will become one of not getting hit, instead of being able to sustain hits.

17

And you sound like a cold war holdover. Who’s tanks in great battle lines are we going to be facing? When exactly was the last time any army who was capable of force projection used tanks or gound forces of any kind to destroy rear positions or supplies? The role’s you’re describing for the tank no longer exist and any doctrine that assumes they do is deeply flawed. At the moment we’re fighting an insurgency… let me be clear on this, we’ve been and are going to continue to be fighting asymmetrical wars almost exclusively. In fact, I’m actually confused as to what precisely you’re getting at with your posts. You declare that the MBT can be improved upon by eliminating the gun and replacing it with guided missiles. You then concede that doing that would prevent it from filling it’s infantry support role. You’ve then gone on to say the tank is evolving away from the kind of weapon used to defeat opposition armor into a pure infantry support role and endorse using MORE guns in that role and at no point have you defended your idea about the guided missile tank destroyer concept in regards to it’s relative strengths over other proven tank killers such as aircraft. What, exactly, are you saying?

18

I’m confused too, do you know who is posting what? As to your Q’s…
I am thinking of the tank of the future in the context of the Army’s focus on lighter, more transportable, expeditionary capable vehicles. For the role of killing tanks, the number one thing we have used tanks for in the last 3-4 yrs, the M1 may not be as capable as a Javelin missile etc. The only other thing I have seen M1s used for is as mine clearers ie role the tank at the front of the column to soak up any IEDs. My thought was simply that by eliminating the turret, consolidating the human operators and their protective armor, one could decrease the weight, improve transportability all while getting a missile platform that is already able to defeat the MBTs that have been fielded, or on the drawing board. In a fast response world, can we take the 2-3 mo. it took to move M1 units to Saudi in '91? No.

I agree our fight is an assymmetric insurgency. However, my thought is that we could do without the M1s almost entirely. I would always want a few tanks hanging around just in case you need them to soak up IEDs or take RPG hits, but the Brad and other IFVs can role through 99% of the buildings, shoots a HE round that can provide MUCH closer support to the infantry and will still kill ANYTHING they have, all while being more maneuvorable in UO and able to depress and raise their maingun MUCH more than the M1. (the new M2A3 has basically every command and control/guidance system improvement the M1 has.) The last time we really ever used the tank in classic, sustained IN support was Vietnam/Korea, and that was before the advent of the IFVs we have today. They have taken over (almost completely) the role the tank had in IN support and they do it better.

So let’s have 1 Javelin platform, 2 M1s w/120mm, and 1 M1 with a 30mm Vulcan Cannon per platoon. The Vulcan idea was proposed by the Honeywell rep that was at work the other day for some of my M1 maintenance. He was a fount of M1 knowledge…

As for the fact that aircraft are the best tank killers… They may be the best, but they can’t be everywhere at once and they don’t have great on station time, nor quantitiy of weapons. Using the previously cited battle of 73 Easting, they fought for how many hours, against how many BATTALIONS, and got exactly 0 CAS. The friendly artillery wasn’t even a huge battlefield multiplier in that fight.

Now on the the DU AP round through a berm tangent, I asked around and educated guesses were that the silver bullet super sabot is able to go ~15m into a berm. They (guys with a total of ~30 yrs of M1 experience) thought it would be possible on a thin berm, but not probable as the cite said the T72 was not at all visible, yet last seen moving. Not likely it was done, and I still think its a urban legend. Although I met HR McMaster at a Cav. social function in my town here, I didn’t know enough of 73 Easting to ask him for the first hand account.

19

I was told this at Armor Officer Basic, Ft Knox. One of my instructors was a gunner during 73 Easting. It was also mentioned during the class on ammo and armor. Take it with a grain of salt if you wish.