Main battle tanks of today.....

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Tanks will never be out dated. It is the same thing as the F4s being produced without a machinegun because missles had made traditional dog fights obsolete. Technology is always changing. The advantage is always changing between armour, firepower, mobility, and anti-tank weapons. Once the armour is improved, work is started designing better weapons to defeat it. Once the weapons are designed, new armour is developed to counter it. The new armour results in increased weight that leads to the design of new power plants. A never ending cycle.

The deployment and tatics of armour will change but they never will go away. Through out the history of armour, people have said that the tanks are no longer useful. At times, governments have gone with the smaller tanks to save money. No matter how the wheel get reinvented one fact remains, nothing can move and strike like an armour force. The best tank killer has always been the main battle tank. The small tanks cannot withstand the attack of the MBTs. Yes they are big, dirty and loud and so are it's crew. The engines drink as much fuel as the crew drinks beer. The MBT was not made for todays LIC (light intensity conflicts) but there are plans to modify the MBT for urban operations. The bee hive and HEP rounds are making a come back (bee hive 120mm flechette round, HEP high explosive plastic). The Ordance and Armour Corps has been developing counter measures since the 90s for laser guided missles. There is a projection system now being field tested to mask both the visual and thermal signature. An IFF system is in place and there is an IF supression system. How can a tank be safe on the battle field? How safe is anyone?

DBII
clank, clank, clank, clank
 
Seesul, nice picture. I am also an old tanker. I trained on the M60 series and M1 series. 7 minutes...you are lucky. Our Col always said that if we did not destory 7 MBT and were dead in 2 mins we were not doing our jobs...
Our yearly evaluations would reflect our poor skills....lol

DBII
clank, clank, clank
 
... wasn`t there a nasty 'blue on blue' incident in the Gulf War of 1991 when a Abrams (or was it another Challie?) platoon shot up a Challanger platoon badly, tanks going off one after the other, with the ones that fired at them cheered ignorantly of what they were doing, only to find out later to their horror...?

Thing to consider though, none of these tanks (thank God!) ever went head on with anything like equal... the Iraqi T-55s and T-72s with decade old, aged Soviet munitions and fire control systems (if any! The 72`s are/were basically cheapo export versions for satellite states.. many models don`t even have a range finder laser, or a FC system..). Hardly an even playing field.

There was a blue on Blue incident but only one Challanger was destroyed.

There is little doubt in my mind that the when you take the top three to five tanks they are all probably capable of destroying each other. They all have very powerful weapons and very sophisticated fire control systems.
Unlike WW2 ,I feel that the difference these days is how important are the other factors that come into play. Not is my gun able to destroy your tank, because they probably can.
 
2 minutes.......7 minutes.

IMO, and I may very well be wrong, that sounds like a waste of human, mechanical, and financial resources.
 
Armour moves at a fast past. If you snooze you die. That is modern HIC, high intensity warfare. The reason why armour will always be used: speed and firepower. One overwhelms the enemy with concentrated fire power. That is why I get so crazy about the middle east. I was train to go in destroy everything in sight and move on to the next objective leaving the enemy wondering what just happened. Think of Sheman's march through the southern states. War has always been a waste of resources and human life. That is why it has to be used only as a last resort.
 
After reading this post I wondered myself what tank in the list is my country's "glorious" army is using...to my surprise and horror I learned not only that we have around 300 useless junks but there are no intentions to modernize our tanks...bloody hell they are using modified T55 and a couple of T72....
 
See how long it takes before tanks get something to deffend themself against TOW missiles etc., much like aircraft firing countermeasures (flares) against air to ground missiles....
 
Ground effect hover tanks protected by electo-plasma force fields and armed with a particle beam and equipped with omni-directional targeting capability so no turret is necessary.

BTW..

Plasma force fields are not fiction. They are in their infancy.
using thicker / better armor to defeat AT rounds wont last forever.


,
 
The armor school was working on the Sci-fi version back in the 90s. They have to be getting close to completion. The MBTs are getting as complex as the aircraft. Audio detectors to locate firing positions. They are working on a system the project a digital image of the surrounding terrian on the sides of the tank. TOWs are opticaly guided and controled by wires. If the view of the BMT can be masked it will be harder to hit. Yes a stealth MBT. There is some sort of damping system to reduce the IR siggy. I have not figured out how that works. The noise level is still a problem. If helios can be made quite, I guess the MBT can be. I raid that the plasma, rail guns and lasers are being tested. My guess is that information released for the public is at lease 10 years old.

DBII
 
Seesul, nice picture. I am also an old tanker. I trained on the M60 series and M1 series. 7 minutes...you are lucky. Our Col always said that if we did not destory 7 MBT and were dead in 2 mins we were not doing our jobs...
Our yearly evaluations would reflect our poor skills....lol

DBII
clank, clank, clank

think you´re right with two minutes, it sounds better to me...
Anyway, never in my life I had better fun behind the wheel (or levels) than driving a tank...
 
Well, Ive read all ur posts fellas, and it still goes back to the same old story for me:

Which one has performed better in armored conflict???

Simple answer.... The Abrams... Its combat record alone makes it #1, whatever the opponent dead tank is....
 
...and what about Russian T2000 Black Eagle? Unfortunately there´s not too much infos about it on Internet...

BLACK EAGLE Main Battle Tank

Altough I know it never seen combat, it doesn´t look bad...
 

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Well, Ive read all ur posts fellas, and it still goes back to the same old story for me:

Which one has performed better in armored conflict???

Simple answer.... The Abrams... Its combat record alone makes it #1, whatever the opponent dead tank is....

yes, you´re right probably. In desert storm there were even some Abrams opponents to Abrams. Few Abrams destroyed by friendly fire...Don´t know if by Abrams or another gun. I don´t belive in wikipedia too much M1 Abrams - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 
yes, you´re right probably. In desert storm there were even some Abrams opponents to Abrams. Few Abrams destroyed by friendly fire...Don´t know if by Abrams or another gun. I don´t belive in wikipedia too much M1 Abrams - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

. . . . and I don't know how much to believe Tom Clancy, but in his book Armored Cavalry - A Guided Tour of an Armored Cavalry Regiment (1994) he mentions an Abrams that got stuck in mud and was not able to be recovered, even with two other Abrams tanks trying to pull it out. It was decided to destroy it with a thermite grenade, but the on-board fire suppression system put the fire out as soon as it started. Then it was deciced to destroy the tank with a couple of 120mm rounds from the other two Abrams, but none of the rounds fired from point-blank range penetrated the DU armor (supposedly). The tank was finally "destroyed" by an air strike (F-18's, I think), but the tank was later recovered and repaired.
 

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