Post by M KfivethousandGuess half a tank is not better than one.....Glad USA could help Ukraine with antitank systems.
mk5000
GONNA GET YA
GONNA GET YA
GONNA JUMP UP THE SUB-COMMITTEE AND GET YA!
THE FBI
GONNA GET YOUR NUMBER--"Dickie's Such An Asshole (The San Clemente Magnetic Deviation)" lyrics
Frank Zappa
Translated from Russian
The technological lag of the Russian military-industrial complex not only from the leading Western countries, but even from China, is becoming more and more obvious. This is evidenced, for example, by the history of the adoption of new types of equipment.
The first and most obvious example is the story of the T-14 tank based on the Armata universal tracked platform. This promising model, developed by Uralvagonzavod, has been regularly skated in parades in honor of the next anniversary of victory since 2015.
Year after year, most of the officials involved in one way or another with the defense industry argued that the tank was about to be put into mass production and the state was ready to buy it in the thousands. At first, it was about 2300 tanks, but then the number was reduced to 100, and then they started talking about buying an experimental batch of 20 tanks.
And on December 7, the head of the Rostec state corporation, Sergei Chemezov,announced that "serial deliveries of the T-14 tank on the Armata platform will begin in 2021." At the same time, a specific number of tanks was not named, just as Chemezov did not say and how many years (tens of years?) His forecast that "this machine will be the new main tank of the Russian army" is being realized.
It was also announced that the tank was being promoted to the international arms market. But one should hardly expect a queue of Arab sheikhs until the tank is adopted by the Russian army.
Such a long sad history of the T-14 under seemingly ideal conditions - after all, Moscow has a full cycle of development and production of main battle tanks - is associated with Russia's lag in the field of electronics. When developing the "Armata", Russian designers did not reinvent the wheel, but took as a basis the Soviet project of the late 1980s "Boxer", the highlight of which was an uninhabited tower, controlled only by electro-optical means.
With this layout of the tank, there are two huge problems: low reliability of control of all turret systems - only using electrical signals - and the impossibility of implementing an optical channel for observation, aiming and firing from the tank. After all, a visual survey of the terrain is carried out through three viewing devices, and the tank commander (and the rest of the crew) can receive basic information only through television cameras and a sight located along the perimeter of the tank hull, which is also a surveillance device.
To implement such a rather daring technical solution, modern electronics are required. However, this is exactly what the Russians lack - after the collapse of the USSR, all electronic filling began to be purchased abroad, but after the introduction of sectoral sanctions for the annexation of Crimea in 2014, this opportunity was blocked.
And, apparently, they could not solve the problem of using only the television channel to drive the tank. Of course, there is no complete report in the open press, but judging by Western developments in this direction, the biggest problem is that because of the flat TV picture, the driver simply does not feel the track.
In the West, this decision was eventually abandoned. More or less, only Israeli developments in the form of the Iron Vision system, which are limitedly used on the Merkava tank, turned out to be working. In fact, this is a whole system of video cameras installed along the perimeter of the tank hull, which sends signals to a special computer. And he already creates a three-dimensional image, which is displayed on the operator's helmet-mounted display.
By the way, the development of a similar circular view system with elements of augmented reality exists in Ukraine - from Limpid Armor Inc. In 2019, a system called the Land Platform Modernization Kit was installed on the BTR-4E and was demonstrated to the military at the Yavoriv training ground. According to the developer, the basis of the complex is eight cameras with optical stabilization, located on the outer case, information from which is “glued” in streaming form by special software and sent to the monitor glasses of a special helmet. The glasses are civilian technology from Microsoft HoloLens.
Judging by the fact that the information about the transfer of the system for state tests (although plans were voiced to transfer five sets of "transparent armor" for testing on various types of armored vehicles in 2020), it did not fully satisfy the military, and the company is working on finalizing its brainchild.
But generally speaking, now that many armies are entering the era of electromagnetic weapons, this is simply a dead-end branch of development. Moreover, as the experience of recent local wars has shown, the vulnerability of optical systems is one of the huge problems of tanks (and armored vehicles in general).
Now many experts talk about duplicating optical lines, as is done in aviation technology, but this decision looks extremely ambiguous. After all, a tank is a battlefield vehicle, and any duplication will lead to both a general complication of the entire system and an increase in combat mass. Which is already rather big on modern tanks.
Mikhail Zhirokhov, "Business Capital"It