Well, the Russians have a new tank. And, for all its failings, the US Army is poking General Dynamics Land Systems for some Abrams upgrades to keep pace. Let’s see what they look like.

A brief aside: A separate program, and therefore not included in the SEP v3 upgrade package is a new anti-armor round. It’s the M829E4 round. It’s an APFSDS-T round, and it uses depleted uranium. It’s awesome, but very classified. Interestingly, I saw this a couple weeks after the T-14 was unveiled in a parade, which I find to be interesting timing. Connect two facts…

Anyway, SEP v3!
GDLS has added an under-armor auxiliary power unit (the UAAPU). It’s in the rear left quarter, replacing part of a fuel tank there. This should help with the inefficiency of the big AGT 1500 when it’s idling. Judging by the exhaust the UAAPU probably uses a very small gas turbine. It’s a good application for one, since turbines are small for their power and reasonably efficient under load. It should also help with providing all of the power needed for today’s fancy electrical systems. The UAAPU should provide enough power to run the turret (and everything in it) with the engine off. About time.

The SEP v3 also brings out the armor upgrades. The turret face and the front hull are better than they were before. How much better? Classified. Hooray for a new composite armor array though. I’m not sure if either section has gotten thicker, since I don’t have time up close with the SEP v3 and older v2 units. But the front armor is better now.

The Abrams has gotten some changes to its roof-mounted remote weapons stations. Tank crews in the field complained that the existing units tended to block their view a lot when the buttoned up. Also, they’re quite large, which makes going under bridges and things annoying. So there are new remote weapons stations that are lower profile and placed better to not obstruct the view as much. Happily, there are two RWSes as standard: one with an M2 for the tank commander and one with an M240 for the loader. I always approved of the number of machine guns on the Abrams. It takes advantage of that fourth man to operate another machine gun if he’s not slinging shells for the main gun. This is a big plus in urban areas.

The Abrams finally sees an upgrade to the M256 that lets it interface with guided rounds. There’s a new breechblock that can now perform this task. So integrating gun-launched missiles (such as the Israeli LAHAT) or airburst rounds can actually proceed. About damn time. The Israelis and the Germans have been able to do this on their 120 mm guns for years now. There are also plans to integrate a new airburst round to replace some other antipersonnel and demolition rounds that are currently in the inventory.

The thermal sights on the SEP v3 have been improved to be ‘third generation’ units. So they can see in both long-wave and mid-wave infrared. This allows for better images on the screens as well as better ability to see through obscurants like smoke or fog. Obvious capability win.

Finally, let’s talk about what’s not included: a new gun. It is not clear to me that the Abrams needs one, given the new round and the changes to the M256 to enable linking with smart rounds. They could deploy the XM360E1. They could also field a new 120mm/L55 gun, though this would require some upgrades to the stabilization system.¹ If they’re going that far, they might wait to see/opt for the Rheinmetall 130 mm gun. We shall see. For the foreseeable future, I don’t think this is a huge concern.

No side armor changes have been announced. This is unsurprising to me. It is not feasible to provide protection from MBT main gun rounds on the sides. The concern you can do something about is RPG-type attacks, and the Abrams already has an excellent armor kit for the hull skirts and turret sides from the Tank Urban Survival Kit program.² These systems are tough and combat proven. No more is needed. The TUSK program also added some optional belly armor to counter the IED threat. Again, more isn’t likely needed in the immediate future.

The SEP v3 still lacks active protection systems. Several are under evaluation, and may show up in a follow-on program. The US Army is particularly keen on Trophy, but there are also some promising systems from Raytheon.

Overall, this is a really good set of upgrade features, and there are more follow-ons coming. There are at least two engineering change proposals floating around out there. For once, this is a reasonably well managed program, introducing phased upgrades to keep an older platform competitive. Way cheaper than designing a new one, but it keeps the factories busy (and therefore open). Also, not trying to do everything at once keeps budgets under control and reduces the chance of the dreaded budget kill.

I would love to compare this to the German Leopard 2 improvements (2A8 anyone?), but nothing concrete has been announced. The US Army is doing a really good job of keeping on top of upgrades right now. These new upgrades should help make sure that the Abrams is a match for any tank out there. I’m also pretty happy about the lack of gold plating so far. Better knock on wood there.

1.) This drove the cost up too much back in the 90s when this was last considered. Back when there was no Russian threat to speak of. The US Army has been happy with their depleted uranium alloy rounds. Which tend to perform about as well as a similar-vintage tungsten-based-alloy round from the L55 gun, so maybe Big Army bet right on this.
2.) Specifically the XM-19 ARAT-1 and XM-32 ARAT-2 reactive armor packages.I’ll have a write-up as soon as I can get more information. There’s not much out there on these, especially on the newer XM-32s.

France has a long history of building excellent, if quirky, reconnaissance vehicles. Reconnaissance vehicles tend to be small and lightly armed. But the French have always sought to use them as the heirs to the light cavalry tradition, and have armed their recon vehicles appropriately. In some cases, the result is basically a light tank. We’ll look at those later. Today, we’re looking at something quite a bit smaller but still well armed. Today, we look at the petite Panhard CRAB.

The Panhard Crab weighs eight to ten tons, depending on protection level. It is a 4×4 vehicle with some particularly interesting suspension and drivetrain capabilities. It has a crew of three, and a turret that can be fitted with a bunch of armament options.

The turret is designed to be modular. Display models have tended to have turrets equipped with the M242 25 mm autocannon and about 150 rounds. Also available is a turret mounting the M230LF 30 mm autocannon. Note that this is a variant of the M230 chain gun used in the AH-64 Apache. It is chambered in 30×113 mm, not 30×173 mm. Both autocannons are fully stabilized. Another available option is a missile turret. This turret can be configured with four launch tubes for the new French MMP ATGM or the Mistral MANPADS missile. Other missiles could probably be integrated with some extra funds and work. This is where the Crab might suffer a little. It would be nice if it could use the Spike or Javelin missiles. In any case, all turrets have a 7.62 mm machine gun (coaxially mounted for the autocannon turrets) and are unmanned.

The Crab has a few different protection levels available. The heaviest (STANAG level IV) is good against 14.5 mm AP rounds and 155 mm fragments at least 30 m away from the burst. This is a light, easily deployed vehicle. This protection level is pretty typical for a lot of small utility and reconnaissance vehicles. We’ll find a way to deal.

Most interesting is the drivetrain of the Crab. It has an active pneumatic suspension, so it can be lifted for extra ground clearance. Tire pressure is centrally regulated, which helps deal with soft or hard ground. Both axles are independently steerable, which makes the turning radius very small–the Crab can make a u-turn with a 5 meter radius. It has a 320 hp engine, giving a top speed of 68 miles an hour. Finally, it can actually drive sideways by turning both axles to the same side. This is as close to go-anywhere as you can get in a wheeled vehicle. The light weight will also help with ground pressure.

The Crab can accommodate 3 men. It has a battle management system, and comes equipped with all of the networking gear and radios to transmit information to other units. It also has 360 degree camera coverage, to help with information gathering or movement in any direction. Mast mounted sensor systems are also available. Optics or a short-range radar system can be mounted on a telescoping mast.

So what do we think? It’s light for Borgundy, but so are most things that have ‘telescoping sensor mast’ as a factory option. It is well armed, networked, and extremely agile. We’ll take the superlative agility and armament, since it’s as good as it’s going to get in the light reconnaissance vehicle role. Bonus that it resembles Halo’s Warthog vehicle, if that was designed for humans who don’t wear fancy power armor.

It’s time for another head to head. Let’s look at two extremely popular light(ish) antitank weapons.¹ In the blue corner, fighting out of Sweeden, is the Carl Gustav Recoilless Rifle. And in the red corner, fighting out of Russia, is the RPG-7. Let’s dig a little deeper into these two weapons and see what we think of them.

The Carl Gustav was designed just after the Second World War. It’s a recoilless rifle, which means it’s got a rifled barrel and it vents propellant gasses backward to counteract the recoil of the round. This recoilless principle allows for a relatively high projectile velocity of 230-290 m/s. This is twice as fast as an RPG-7 rocket, and allows the Carl Gustav to have a longer effective range against fixed targets. Available rounds include: HE, HEDP, HEAT, tandem-HEAT, illumination, smoke, programmable airburst, and flechette. Variants are available (currently for HEAT rounds) with rocket assist for a little more range, or backblast-reduction to allow use in confined spaces, like from within a building. HEAT rounds are rated for penetration of 400 mm of ERA; the Tandem-HEAT version is rated for 500 mm (plus neutralization of some ERA). This is not going to scare a modern tank unless you hit it from the side. It’s more than adequate for older tanks, or for lighter armored vehicles.² The Carl Gustav has a caliber of 84mm, and of course, all weapons fired must fit in the tube. Since a reasonable first-order approximation of the effectiveness of a shaped charge is its diameter,³ this puts a pretty strong limitation on how much armor you can punch through.⁴ The standard version of the Carl Gustav is known to the US DoD as the M3 Carl Gustav, which weighs about 19 lbs empty. There’s also a shorter, lighter version, the M4 Carl Gustav, which weighs about 15 lbs empty.

The RPG-7 is somewhat newer, dating back to 1961. Interestingly, the tube is only 40mm, because it holds only the rocket motor. The warhead is fatter than the tube in most cases. This looks kinda goofy, and contributes to the weapon’s relatively poor accuracy at range, since the round is less stable. On the other hand, it means we remove a significant constraint on our warhead design. So while it will turn into the wind, which isn’t what you’d expect, we can fit some really big things onto the RPG-7 without issue. These include the tandem-HEAT PG-7VR rocket, which is rated for up to 750mm of RHA penetration. That’s actually starting to get dangerous for modern MBTs, though it’s still generally considered inadequate for the latest types⁵. This is a 9.9 lb. rocket, because you can’t cheat physics. Oh well–it means your light antitank weapon still has some bite in it if you happen upon things with treads. Lighter, older, HEAT rockets are also available, as is a fragmetation warhead rocket and a thermobaric warhead rocket. Finally, there’s an interesting bunker-clearing warhead that combines an explosively-formed penetrator with a follow up fragmentation warhead. Weight of the RPG-7 in basic form matches the lightened M4 Carl Gustav at 15 lbs or so. There’s also a Chinese copy, the Type 69, which cuts weight to 12.3 kg. And, if you actually want to apply modern materials to the design, there’s a US company, Airtronic, that’s made a clone called the Mk 777, which weighs only 7.77 lbs, or 3.5 kg.

So let’s break it down. The Carl Gustav has much better range. The RPG-7 (and it’s clones) are much lighter. The Carl Gustav has available Airburst rounds. The RPG-7 has available thermobaric rounds, which could be made for the Carl Gustav, but are unlikely because someone’s likely squeamish. The RPG-7 also has a tandem HEAT warhead that’s still decently formidable, and that’s not likely a capability to come to the Carl Gustav anytime soon. The Carl Gustav has rounds designed to accommodate confined-space operation, but the RPG-7 does not.

What’s our pick? This may shock you, but we prefer the RPG-7. We like theromobarics. We like having a light AT weapon that still has some AT punch left in it. And we like the lighter weight, especially if you’re going to take it on a long patrol. The Carl Gustav isn’t a bad choice by any means, but it’s a little outclassed by it’s Soviet competitor. Now, if range became a bigger issue, like in Afghanistan, then the Carl Gustav becomes worth its weight. But I think Afghanistan is an outlier.

For mechanized troops, for whom the weight is less of an issue, we still really, really like the Panzerfaust 3, since that has a proper antitank warhead on it.

1.) I’m looking at things that can be operated by a single person, and aren’t guided. Interestingly, guided weapon shootouts are a lot less fun to write, because the winner is much more obvious.
2.) This is actually true for the vast majority of light antitank weapons. There are a few (that really stretch the definition of ‘light’), including the Panzerfaust 3 which I wrote about here.
3.) At least, for similar generation designs. Also, I said ‘first order’ so some roughness is implied.
4.) You’ll notice modern weapons that actually are rated to defeat modern armor are significantly bigger in diameter than 84mm.
5.) This was about the armor penetration rating of the standard Panzerfaust 3 rocket. It has since been replaced by an improved model with a more powerful warhead for the antitank role.

By popular demand, I am reviewing Russia’s latest Tank Of Doom, the T-14 Armata. While I usually wargame with the Russians as the opposition, as per Cold War tradition, we have more in common than you might think. We both love realpolitik, nuclear weapons, and tanks. Lots of love for tanks. We both adore tanks, expect and demand that they be the heavy hitters in combat, and scoff at the idiots who think their time is through. So let us look at the latest design from a fellow tank lover.

In many ways, the T-14 Armata is a recognition that something has to give. The Russians saw in the first Gulf War what happens when their T-72s got overmatched and had their armor penetrated: the reserve ammo cooked off, immolating the crew and sending the turret flying into the air like a jack-in-the-box. No problem, they said. This was a mere “monkey model”¹ T-72. They had big, scary T-72BU,² with the high-end Kontakt 5 ERA, that was effective at reducing the penetrating ability of APFSDS rounds and could also stop HEAT rounds without a dramatic increase in weight. Keeping the tanks relatively light was very important to the Russians, because the bridge infrastructure in Russia and the former Soviet Union was not very good, and just can’t take the weight of a fully kitted out Leopard 2A7. Plus it’s a lot easier to move bridging equipment when it has less weight to support.

But then came Chechnya, where veterans knew to shoot multiple rockets at the ERA modules, since they don’t do multihit capability. And then the West developed rounds that could get through Kontakt 5 without issue. Better modules and more base armor was needed. The cycle was to begin again, but those bridges weren’t going to get stronger on their own. Faced with strict weight requirements, the Russians decided to take the crew out of the turret. Putting them all in the hull meant less frontal armored area, which meant less armor weight. This was something confronting Western designers too–designs for the next tank made in the late 80s in the US and West Germany had a similar layout. But the Russians hit the wall first. Plus, the Russians have always been willing to try new things in their tanks.

In many ways the Armata is a profoundly Western-style tank, though it still is very light at under 50 tonnes. It has a properly strong front hull armor of what appears to be composites and steel, and it’s rated for protection right up there with its Western rivals. It is, however, not considerably better than them as far as frontal armor estimates go. There’s an all new 125mm gun, the long-barrel 2A82-1M, which has a 32 round autoloader, an all-new APFSDS round with a longer penetrator, and an all-new gun launched ATGM round. There’s a 1,500 hp diesel, though it’s in a goofy and questionable X-configuration. And there’s modern looking thermal sights for the commander and the gunner. Of the seven sets road wheels, the first two pairs and the last pair have adjustable suspension. And, straight from the factory, it has a missile approach warning radar, and hard and soft kill active protection systems³. The sides of the hull appear to have ERA skirts, though they might just be composite modules. The roof is well armored, but I’m uncertain if this contains ERA or not.

That said, the tank is brand new, so many questions remain. How good are the Russian thermal viewers: are they second-generation or third-generation? How good is the fire control computer? Can it do automatic target tracking? IFF? Can the radar be used for finding ground targets? How reliable is the new engine/transmission⁴ setup? How much armor is on the turret? The outer shell is clearly not tough, but there must be armor behind it or else it would be super easy to achieve a mission-kill. But you don’t need much of an armor profile internally to protect the gun, so maybe the outer shell is just for the radar and APS. And how well will the unmanned turret design work in war (or at least in exercises)? They’re gambling heavily that technology can overcome the loss of situational awareness, though to be fair, so are the Germans with the Puma IFV. Of course, there are some classified things I’d love to know too, like just how good is the main gun compared to a Rheinmetall 120mm L55, and just how good is that armor.

There is one other thing that bothers me presently, and that is how many will the Russians actually buy? They have an awful lot of new weapons programs, and while labor costs are certainly cheaper in Russia, this is a lot of new technology. It won’t be substantially cheaper than a Western tank program of similar vintage with good management, e.g. K2 Black Panther.⁵

But let’s get to business, and the three million ruble⁶ question. Would we buy one? On the one hand, politics and NATO might intervene. On the other hand, Russia will sell to anyone, and deferring to politics would be the ultimate cop out. So, let’s set that aside. Would we buy?!

In terms of raw capability, it is similar to Leopard 2A7. A worthy competitor, but not massively better than either, at least on paper and without knowing classified information all around. In terms of cost, it is similar to Leopard 2A7, high but manageable. But ammo is stored entirely separate from the crew, so it is more survivable than either. And hard kill APS are built right in. Electrics should be good, and if not, there’s a long history of adding French and/or Israeli electronics to Russian stuff. The only question might be production, but maybe we could make like India and become a partner in production with a big order to see that it actually gets done.

So would we buy one? Сделка?!

Oh yeah. We’d be all over it.

Uralvagonzavod? Сделка.

1.) i.e. a watered-down export version. The crap you sell to dodgy “friends” like Saddam Hussein, not the good stuff you keep for yourself.
2.) Better known as the T-90.
3.) So, automatically triggered visual/infrared screening smoke to hide the tank, and some kind of mini grenade to destroy missiles.
4.) It’s a twelve-speed transmission, which seems needlessly complicated to me. Also, the previous Russian diesels are all descended from the same V-12 engine family.
5.) While a simple currency conversion of the quoted price doesn’t bear this out, the ruble has lost a lot of value against the dollar recently. If we convert to an intermediate, fixed value commodity in both places (e.g. gold or big macs) as an intermediate step, we get a price that is near as makes no difference to that of the K2 Black Panther.
6.) The top prize on Сделка?!, the Russian Deal or No Deal game show.