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From the Serious Gun Porn department!
The Russian Ground Forces are set to take delivery of the first production models of the T-14 Armata main battle tank starting in 2017. The Russian army has taken delivery of twenty pre-production version of the tank for operational testing—which is currently under way just outside Moscow at Kubinka. The first operational T-14 unit is likely to be stood up in Siberia with a unit that performed particularly well during the invasion of Crimea according to a source.
"Test of the Armata are going according to schedule without any problems," Alexei Zharich, deputy director of Uralvagonzavod told the Russian language daily Izvestia. "Serial deliveries could begin at any moment—as soon as the customer wants it."
However, Zharich seems to be addressing only the T-14 main battle tank variant. He didn't address the other combat vehicles that are part of the Armata family—it's not clear if those vehicles are also in production. The Armata Universal Combat Platform consists of the T-14 main battle tank, the T-15 heavy infantry fighting vehicle and the T-16 armored recovery vehicle, among a host of other vehicles. Another member of the Armata family includes an upgunned heavy assault armored vehicle, which has been dubbed "the Tank Killer" by Russian media. The "Tank Killer" variant seems to incorporate a derivative of the 2S35 Koalitsiya-SV's 152mm artillery piece into the Armata chassis in a direct fire mounting.
There are a number of articles about the T-14 Armata on the web - I chose to use this one for this submission. Also at sputniknews.com.
takyon: Here's video of the T-14 in action. Russia is also building six new Project 636.3 Kilo-class attack submarines and is working on railguns, exoskeletons, "robot avatars", and smart bullets.
The U.S. Army will begin testing a truck-mounted 50 kW laser in 2017, and scale it to 100 kW in later tests. The Army will also be testing new 155mm, 50mm, and 35mm guns and artillery. The U.S. Navy will begin using shipping container sized Pulsed Power Container Systems from General Atomics as it tests its own railgun technology.
(Score: 5, Informative) by tibman on Monday September 19 2016, @08:39PM
The turret (main gun) and two smaller guns (swivel on the the turret) are remote controlled by the crew. The 3 crew are in the forward hull section. Putting crew in the front is considered risky (for the crew) because a main-battle tank will in theory be fighting other tanks. Those other tanks will most likely be striking the front of the tank. Usually there is only a driver in the front. Some tanks even put the engine in the front and the crew behind that. Downside is the engine heat makes the tank more visible to enemy tanks. Trade-offs are fun.
The big reason why it is considered remote control is because the crew does not have direct control. They can't reach up and pull a trigger or manually swivel. The turret slews one direction while they are facing another. Aiming is entirely by screen, no "iron sights". They are external to the parts that are moving/firing. Most (maybe all?) main battle tanks have a turret that the majority of the crew sit inside of.
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(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Monday September 19 2016, @10:13PM
It looks like making the turret unmanned allowed them to make it noticeably smaller, which saves a chunk of weight. They probably armor the turret lighter too. As you point out they only need three crew, compared to the four in an Abrams, which lets the tank be more compact and require less armor too.
http://sg.uploads.ru/m6l2f.jpg [uploads.ru]
http://sg.uploads.ru/cWR4d.jpg [uploads.ru]
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 20 2016, @12:52AM
So in this case, "remote control" means something like "fly by wire" -- airplanes that connect the pilot controls to the flight surfaces through electronics. Most current cars have "throttle by wire", an engine control computer mediates between the driver's demand and the engine performance (while making subtle and not so subtle additions to meet emission standards).
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday September 20 2016, @12:06PM
Yes the American equivalent of what the Russians propose to field soon is the CROWS
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CROWS [wikipedia.org]
We're on the third revision (maybe fourth secretly). The Russians will soon have their first version.
Its more than just simple remote control and periscope. Back in the 80s it was cutting edge technology to use mechanical gyroscopes and old fashioned lasers and large computers and hydraulics to stabilize a main gun as the tank drove around. Took maybe a couple cubic feet and maybe a ton of weight. Now a days you can computer aim and stabilize little machine guns and 50 cals and other weapons for less than 200 pounds and its much smaller than a crewman.
Supposedly the CROWS at one revision or another interface with the modern digital maps. So when you send in a sighting report of "whatever" you can use the CROWS camera to attach pix. It seems logical although all I have is hearsay on that specific feature.
Much less hearsay is the third revision supposedly has full hemispherical camera coverage. As long as the CROWS operator is awake, its hard to sneak up on a tank.
The Soviet autoloaders used to be notorious for jamming. A tank that can't fire is an expensive paperweight. For decades we heard they're fixing that now. Human autoloaders are much more reliable.
The fourth crewman in a tank is a feature not a bug. Just improved the maintenance and guard duty workload by a significant fraction which will increase combat effectiveness quite a bit. You need to train apprentices somehow and sitting in a tank works better than sitting in a classroom (although tankers do sit in classrooms and simulators a bit). It helps with the cross training.
I can't get a straight answer from acquaintances about cross-model compatibility with CROWS. The organization of the army always operates about 10-20 years behind the technology and as near as I can tell in maybe 2030 there will only be one gunner MOS named CROWS gunner or something and the creme of the crop will get main battle tank gunner slots and lesser skilled CROWS operators will get the equivalent of stryker or bradley CROWS operator positions. I mean fundamentally there isn't much difference in UI between a CROWS that operates a SAW or a MBT main gun, just a different sized bang when you pull the trigger.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Tuesday September 20 2016, @04:36PM
The militaries around the world disagree with you and are investing lots of money to remove the fourth meatbag and all his required life support stuff. Many, and probably most, tanks are now designed with autoloaders. Mechanically, having a guy in the turret is a lot more complex proposition when protecting from NBC threats.
> A tank that can't fire is an expensive paperweight.
This is only true if actively fighting other tanks in a non-networked scenario.
The rest of the time, that giant armored bulldozer is a threat, a data-collection system, an infantry protection system, and worst case a decoy. Hardly useless.