Tanks are good at shrugging off non-specific light damage. That’s basically definitional. As I understand it, this design is supposed to make it much harder to target weak points (so specific damage).
According to Perun, Russian assualt sheds get softkilled by their own poor visibility more often than blown up, because they just drive into things. You can see they’ve tried to keep a degree of transparency in this Ukrainian version.
My point is optimizing for defending only against drones makes armor extremely vulnerable, massive targets for direct fire weapons and artillery (artillery vulnerability being from reduced mobility and situational awareness).
Yes, the Russian versions strand themselves pretty often, which is why they’ve tried to make this one pretty transparent. Since it’s only slightly larger than the tank already is, I doubt it makes a difference in terms of detection, though.
Time will tell if it’s a gamechanger or just a reasonable enough strategy both sides keep trying it.
It seems like a decent optimization for an environment where drones are the primary threat but these circumstances were artificially engineered in the Ukraine war from Ukraine being severely underequipped with artillery reserves and traditional AT such as javelins.
Hmm, are the Russians also having problems in that department? This is a Ukrainian tank per the title.
That said, it’s a reasonable general take. Every time there’s a new weapon this debate plays out. Sometimes it’s the atom bomb and lives up to the hype, but sometimes it’s the interwar bomber that doesn’t always get through.
Yes, Russia has had to heavily rely on North Korean artillery ammunition supply and that reserve stock has run out. It was poor quality to begin with as well.
The real problem for Russia though is they can’t protect their artillery from being hunted down by Ukraine so they can’t deploy it in as forward threatening positions on assault and thus for Ukraine fiber optic drones, glidebombs and mines are far more of a realistic threat to armor.
Russian artillery is magnificently imprecise. In order to hit a specific target using Soviet-style artillery, you need about 10 times as many rounds as with western artillery.
When the goal is to obliterate a town, that doesn’t matter. But when you’re trying to hit a single tank, it does.
It’s more doctrine than actual machine accuracy. They plan to hit a large area as their primary technique of inflicting damage, while a NATO force waits for some kind of known target or goal (like “make this route unusable”).
My very much armchair-general -level understanding is that they do work against simple detonation-on-impact -drones, as long as there’s only few. The tank armor can brush off the shrapnel from explosion (crew might need new boxers and/or pants) but once there’s a hole in that afro the second (or third or…) drone can use that hole and get to the meaty bits. Or a skilled FPV operator can find a existing gap and use that.
So that does more than nothing, but ideally tank should have infantry support to keep drones and individual enemies with a bazooka away from it.
how effective are these in general? The drone still explodes, but now it’s maybe 3 feet away kinda thing.
Does it still take damage and can it hurt them, but it reduces the risk a lot, or is the tank able to brush off a detonation a few feet away?
Tanks are good at shrugging off non-specific light damage. That’s basically definitional. As I understand it, this design is supposed to make it much harder to target weak points (so specific damage).
According to Perun, Russian assualt sheds get softkilled by their own poor visibility more often than blown up, because they just drive into things. You can see they’ve tried to keep a degree of transparency in this Ukrainian version.
I never would have even thought about that, but that’s pretty funny too.
That this war has generated a subgenre of funny war footage is itself, kind of funny.
Perfect target practice for one of these.
Sure. Except it itself is vulnerable to artillery fire, costs a lot, and would itself need drone-proofing.
This is just how armour fighting armour works.
My point is optimizing for defending only against drones makes armor extremely vulnerable, massive targets for direct fire weapons and artillery (artillery vulnerability being from reduced mobility and situational awareness).
Yes, the Russian versions strand themselves pretty often, which is why they’ve tried to make this one pretty transparent. Since it’s only slightly larger than the tank already is, I doubt it makes a difference in terms of detection, though.
Time will tell if it’s a gamechanger or just a reasonable enough strategy both sides keep trying it.
It seems like a decent optimization for an environment where drones are the primary threat but these circumstances were artificially engineered in the Ukraine war from Ukraine being severely underequipped with artillery reserves and traditional AT such as javelins.
Hmm, are the Russians also having problems in that department? This is a Ukrainian tank per the title.
That said, it’s a reasonable general take. Every time there’s a new weapon this debate plays out. Sometimes it’s the atom bomb and lives up to the hype, but sometimes it’s the interwar bomber that doesn’t always get through.
Yes, Russia has had to heavily rely on North Korean artillery ammunition supply and that reserve stock has run out. It was poor quality to begin with as well.
The real problem for Russia though is they can’t protect their artillery from being hunted down by Ukraine so they can’t deploy it in as forward threatening positions on assault and thus for Ukraine fiber optic drones, glidebombs and mines are far more of a realistic threat to armor.
@CanadaPlus @supersquirrel
Russian artillery is magnificently imprecise. In order to hit a specific target using Soviet-style artillery, you need about 10 times as many rounds as with western artillery.
When the goal is to obliterate a town, that doesn’t matter. But when you’re trying to hit a single tank, it does.
It’s more doctrine than actual machine accuracy. They plan to hit a large area as their primary technique of inflicting damage, while a NATO force waits for some kind of known target or goal (like “make this route unusable”).
My very much armchair-general -level understanding is that they do work against simple detonation-on-impact -drones, as long as there’s only few. The tank armor can brush off the shrapnel from explosion (crew might need new boxers and/or pants) but once there’s a hole in that afro the second (or third or…) drone can use that hole and get to the meaty bits. Or a skilled FPV operator can find a existing gap and use that.
So that does more than nothing, but ideally tank should have infantry support to keep drones and individual enemies with a bazooka away from it.