Posted on 06/01/2017 6:18:38 AM PDT by sukhoi-30mki
A Russian innovation in armoured warfare has pushed Norway to replace many of its current anti-tank systems.
Active protection systems (APS) are being built into Russia's new Armata T-14 tank, posing a problem for a whole generation of anti-armour weapons, not least the US-supplied Javelin guided missile, used by the Norwegian Army.
The warning comes from Brig Ben Barry of the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) in London. He says this is a problem that most Nato countries have barely begun to grapple with.
APS threatens to make existing anti-tank weapons far less effective, and there is little real discussion of this among many Western militaries, he says.
Some countries are conducting research and trials to equip their own tanks with APS. "But they seem to miss the uncomfortable implications for their own anti-armour capabilities," he says.
Norway is one of the first Nato countries to grasp this nettle. Its latest defence procurement plan envisages spending 200-350m kroner (£18.5-32.5m; $24-42m) on replacing its Javelin missiles, "to maintain the capacity to fight against heavy armoured vehicles".
"There is a need for [an] anti-tank missile," it says, "that can penetrate APS systems".
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.com ...
I don’t know I would state it so succinctly. “The next big thing” is the real advantage. For instance, the battleship/aircraft carrier. It seems to me that the same may be said of tanks we just don’t know what the “Next Big Thing” that replaces it is. Let us hope the “smart people” who DO have an idea are working on it...
Seems to me that the side that gets it and gets it right has a big advantage.
One suggested response to it that I’ve seen is a multi-axis saturation attack - hit it with multiple simultaneous attacks from many different directions, so many that the APS and countermeasure systems simply get overwhelmed. A single ripple-fire missile attack from one direction won’t do it, but multiple simultaneous attacks probably could.
Pretty similar to the tactics required to overwhelm a US warship carrying CIWS systems.
Cameras are small and very cheap these days. Costs little more to install multiple backups.
Thanks for the info. I won’t ask how you know...
It’s publicly available information and is discussed openly on the Internet. Unfortunately, it’s something the Palestinians and their buddies have been using as a response to Israeli tanks carrying Israeli APS, so it’s not exactly a closely held strategy. There’ve been some publicly released white papers from military folks and contractors too.
Nothing that travels at significant fractions of C is going to get used within the atmosphere of the planet. The energies and area effects of a major engagement would rival a nuclear exchange, and that’s considering that it would actually be possible to accelerate significant masses within the atmospheric envelope.
No. Such a penetrator would be destroyed by atmospheric friction within about 100 meters. The energy requirements for this speed are enormous more than a power plant can generate.
I apologize profusely and throw myself on my sword.
Technology will never advance to the level needed for those kinds of weapons. We will never have anything that destructive and nobody would ever use them for fear of causing that kind of damage.
But the videos of the current tests sure look like somebody is marching that way.
30000 miles a second? No way!
5% of C is 9300 miles per SECOND. What are you smoking?
Things that can accelerate projectiles to fractions of C are going to be used to pound planets and secure footholds in solar systems...
The actual Luddites attacked textile machinery, for fear it was rendering their jobs obsolete. So, as the story goes, they had disdain for new technology. But...it was actual, functioning, not pie in the sky but really working, technology.
Stating that something that has never been demonstrated, such as a man portable rail gun capable of launching projectiles tens of thousands of feet per second, does not make one a Luddite. Using that logic, if you don't believe I can make my decade old Hyundai win at the drag strip, using a special racing chip, you're a Luddite.
That is how the Javelin works, but the article speculates that it is no longer enough. Don’t know if the article is true though. Laymen journalists often end up believing Russian groundless bragging.
I remember stories being told of automatic loaders in the 70s and 80s reaching over and grabbing the leg/thigh of the gunner and trying to feed him into the breech of the main gun ... also speaking to the rumors of where the Red Army Chorus got its high tenors.
So now you've got an automatic loader in a compartment with no human involved. When it misfeeds and comes up missing the ammunition being presented, you've got a main gun with nothing in it in a face-off with another tank which doesn't have the same problem.
Sorry, but I just don't believe that the Russians .. or anybody for that matter .. could come up with an automatic feed mechanism that could be trusted to function in combat.
I do have a question about that. It would seem to me that it would take a missile far longer to clear a long-barreled smoothbore cannon than it would a shell that was fired. You have the tank on the move, bouncing over battle-torn fields and forests; it would seem to me that a missile would be bounced around inside the barrel of the cannon long before it was able to exit. What would be the accuracy of a missile, still under boosted power, being shaken down the barrel like a pea in a straw. When it finally exited, goodness knows what direction it would be facing, still under boost-power.
And if you're back to the situation where you have to come to a stop to fire, you're dead meat on a battlefield anyway, especially if these are wire-guided missiles and you have to remain stationary for guidance. If they're fire-and-forget, they're roman-candles. If they're laser guided, bouncing around the designator as you tool cross-country is not going to make for very good accuracy either.
Something about this just brings to mind a device that sounds good, but won't work.
Gun stabilizers have been around since WW2.
Go look at video of an M1 or Leopard 2 or Challenger in action, firing on the move. The stabilized gun sits rock steady bearing on the target while the rest of the tank bounces around.
If you have to overwhelm the active defenses then you have raised the cost of killing the tank potentially higher than irregulars can afford.
If they have to launch a half dozen simultaneous attacks, they are going to have problems killing it with RPGs.
That is a big step.
Known to those in the tanker business as a bad day at the office...
On the way!
Exterminate! Exterminate!
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