How does Tank Armor and Ammunition work?

[Music] [Music] welcome back everyone it's your boy Natomas and thank you so much for being here today I really appreciate it even more so today because I have been joined by the Scottish Koala a fantastic youtuber primarily working on war thunder but also has a strong passion and fascination for other military hardware equipment tactics etc today we are both going to be talking about tank armor now please folks I would really appreciate you go check out the Scottish koalas YouTube channel he has a ton of really cool war Thunder content I've played a few matches with him before and I can guarantee there's gonna be plenty more to come in the future but yeah go check out his channel em he is a very avid military enthusiast and that works perfectly for me for this video I will not lie to everyone the Scottish koala pretty much put 99.9 percent of the effort into creating this video so credits to him totally but I love to showcase other youtubers who have the same passion enthusiasm towards mill to hardware and tactics etc as I do so as I mentioned go check him out but I guess without further ado over to you koala we have a real treat for you today something subscribers of my channel have been waiting for for a while lads we're gonna be talking tanks and modern main battle tanks and specifically how the armor on these highly complex vehicles actually works we'll talk about how and why it's made the way it is and how it protects the troops inside against incoming fire from hostile mbts to discuss this we of course need to also discuss that incoming fire itself how did the shells being fired from these tanks actually work how do they penetrate the armor and what causes them to fail to penetrate basically what makes a tank tick now as we have said we're going to be focusing on the armor and shells of modern main battle tanks such as spaced and composite armor explosive reactive armor armour-piercing fin-stabilised discarding Sabo shells or apfsds and chemical warheads such as heat FS or high-explosive anti-tank fin-stabilised along with anti-tank guided missiles and air-to-air ground missiles fired by helicopters or other such aircraft the armor protection and ammunition fire by order tanks such as the u.s. Sherman's or German Panzers of the Second World War is we a lot simpler by design and to run through quickly you have a layer of rolled homogeneous steel of varying thickness the effectiveness of which can be increased by angling the plate such as can be seen by the german panther or soviet t-34 this increases the distance Shell's would have to travel through that plate to penetrate the armor and encourages the incoming rounds to ricochet off the armor-piercing shells fired by these tanks usually consisted of simple slugs or ballistic camp shells these use kinetic force to punch a hole through the armor plating which means the longer the range the less velocity and therefore less penetrative capability they have and they utilize various effects such as explosive filling spalling and shrapnel to cause havoc throughout the interior of whatever they penetrate bringing death and destruction it add sorry for a full video on this topic come over to my channel with tanks fielding armor plating of steadily increasing thickness the guns on these tanks began to see armor which they could just not get through and so new types of shells are invented such as high-explosive anti-tank shells which make use of conical lining inside the shell which is pretty much a relatively soft metal like copper or explosive charge behind it which detonates on contact this process both super heats and inverts the copper lining which then explodes forwards with a substantial chemical energy melting through the armor it penetrates as these chemical warheads do not really rely on kinetic energy to penetrate the armor they don't lose penetration values at long ranges unlike armor-piercing projectiles chemical warheads contain all their furniture capabilities within the focus explosion that occurs after the shell connects with his target what was also invented to combat heavy armor was the first iterations of subcaliber objectives or a PDF shells a PDS or armor-piercing dystonic Sabo is a comparatively tiny shell with a larger body encasing it the Sabo while the saber fits snugly into the guns reach and the barrel of the tank firing it upon being fired the casing actually flies off in petals leaving only a small dense penetrator to sail through the air into the armor style tank thanks to the small size of the penetrator a high velocity is maintained at long ranges and this coupled with the penetrators density greatly increases the shells performance against armor these are the first examples of the type of rounds that are used on modern tanks like leopard 2 the challenge to the m1 Abrahms the t90 and so on and so forth which are still utilized today although of course there have been many upgrades the way they work over time adding stabilisation fins for better aerodynamics or changing the materials to name just a few there's also the Hesh or high explosive squash head or HCP shells which work slightly differently and many other ammunition types used throughout history but once again to learn more on them go check out koala's channel at least you got more powerful shells began to see regular use it was realized that for the armor plating of tanks to achieve a protection value high enough to prevent penetrations the rule homogeneous steel would have to be made so thick that the tank would barely even be able to move even with the most powerful engines available at the time it would therefore be impractical to build such a thickly armored tank as would not be able to maneuver itself through any sort of terrain to fulfill its duties as a combat vehicle tank designers therefore began looking at ways to improve the relative protection levels of their armor without needing to make that armor quite so thick and heavy except Germany who thought this was a good idea actually while we're on the subject one of the most well known early examples of this new type of armor does come from German variants of the panzer 4 on this tank and of course many other examples around history separated steel armor plates were erected spaced out from the main body of the tank creating what we know as spaced armor this armor was only used to defend against small arms fire on the Panzer 4 but the concept was then used on other vehicles like the t26 super Pershing to defend against incoming tank shells the design philosophy of this type of armor which really came into its own on some main battle tanks at the leopard 1 is simple incoming rounds begin to lose power upon penetrating the outermost level of armor but still have some distance to travel before actually contacting the main body of the tank once they do hit the tank itself much of their penetrating power is lost heap shells have already detonated and they're super heated metal cores are rapidly cooling down their capabilities petering out before contacting the inner layer of the spaced armor similarly the fuses of a PhD shield have been set off losing their armor-piercing potential this concept proved effective for time and had actually dated back to the first world war however as a main battle tanks like the Soviet t54 came into use with their power for 100 millimeter cannons and more advanced instead white shells the effectiveness of current armor like that of the US Army's Patton series could once again no longer compete even with space armor add-ons and so a new type of arnold was eventually created enter the first competent armored tanks the experimental u.s. t95 the t95 tanks used type of composite armor where the plates are fused silica glass are sandwiched in between steel plates this type of armor takes up more space than conventional rolled homogeneous Armour or RH a but offers similar levels of resistance for less weight this allows the mobility of the tank to be maintained and yes that's right guys I've said the glass is stronger than steel am i high well no in a purely thickness basis the stopping power of the silicate reinforced glass actually does exceed that of steel in some regards while the steel backing plates surrounding this material prevented from shattering the t95 never entered mass production and their composite armor was not used on the succeeding m60 Patton series of MBTs because reasons the first recorded use of composite armor on a production main battle tank is the combination K armor of the Soviet t60 for produced from you guessed it 1964 the stonk fielded a powerful 115 millimeter rifled cannon eventually replaced on the t-64a by the 125 millimeter smoothbore gun which all fans of soviet military technology and/or viewers of maximus channel will be very familiar with maximus azar maximus what do I see anyway the armor of the t-64 was heavily sloped as well as being possessed of composite materials made up of a glass reinforced plastic different to succeeding armors fielded on tanks such as the t-80 which used text-align while show them or Burlington armor used by the British challenges and American m1 Abrahms among others uses high hardness ceramic materials in their armor composition oh and by the way the depleted uranium armor inserts on modern evens variants are so effective because of the density of depleted uranium these new armors proved highly effective against the chemical warheads in heat fin-stabilized Shell's anti-tank missiles and air-to-ground missiles and so simultaneously the primary anti-tank shells fired in time combat became armour-piercing fin-stabilised discarding sable shells or apfsds Keith or high-explosive anti-tank rounds at this time were relegated to high explosive multi-purpose use and are now often called heat MP shells we're starting to get into the modern era now and we're also about to get very complicated paying attention I hope so see since the advent of NATO the main threat from hostile tanks has been the Soviet era main battle tank such as the t-55 and t-62 and their many different variants NATO nations obviously don't fight each other and if they did they may find themselves in some rather tricky situations now most NATO tanks have kept pace with others in their development even though you freedom Eagles may scream your Abrams love for the rooftops German weeaboos can't get enough of the leopard - and us tea-loving maniacs from the UK fell head over heels in love with the Challenger and I haven't stopped sucking on its koala what the hell have you been putting in my script no no it's nothing it's nothing challengers are great tanks if you needed a 7512 paper week I heard that seeing his natal tanks were only going to have to fight Soviet tanks and vice-versa the powers-that-be very intentionally designed to their tanks armor and firepower with this likelihood and mind all Russian tanks dating back from pre World War 2 right up to the t90 and its variants have been designed with a very similar external layout heavily sloped hull and compact rounded turret because if it ain't broke the t14 is just oh let's not go there the BM PT Terminator as well err weird we're not going to discuss them here obviously a hostile tanks such as abrams challenges or leopards are going to be aiming to hit their hole because who doesn't love seeing those turrets fly exposed ammunition racks russia great idea looking out to the most popular types of the western world however the m1 abrams in the letter to the primary target in coming fire is going to be the turret and the turrets of these two tanks are quite boxy at least compared to that of the halls of the russian equivalents of course the leopard 2a5 added the distinctive Arrowhead turret piece as of 1995 but underneath that the old boxy leopard doterra is still there the same is true for the type 90 of Japan Ground self-defense force and then LeClair as well although the squares of this one is not quite as obvious the late chief to mark 10 with it's still blue composite armor is all relatively flat on the frontal turret can I defend the Challenger yet hold on we're getting there something you need to understand is that even though the shells fired by Russian tanks German tanks and American tanks are all called apfsds that doesn't mean that they're made the same way different apfsds shows are not universal across the board this is something I've only learned recently and it's quite complicated to understand so allow me to give you lots of the rundown given that most NATO tanks have a somewhat boxy main structure the Soviets are lucky they designed their apfsds shells with the increased penetrative capabilities against flat armor they achieved this by using brittle high-density slug style penetrators housed within the sable protected by an armor-piercing ballistic cap examples of this type of shell include the 125 millimeter 3bm 15 shell seen here notice those pieces are discussed upon penetrating enemy armor the AP cap gives way allowing the much higher density slug behind it to continue through the armor basically you have a shell within a shell within the sable as if sub-caliber projectiles weren't convoluted enough on the flip side nato apfsds shells such as the 120 millimeter DM 33 shell fired by the leopard 2a4 or the m8 29 a one silver bullet fired by the m1a1 abrams in the Gulf Wars are designed with what is known as a monoblock long rod penetrator this kind of apfsds penetrator actually penetrative capability against highly angled pleats it actually has an easier job penetrating composite armor that is angled funny almost like they knew they'd have to fight the Soviets okay that's it I'm stepping in here the Challenger tanks use a heavily angled composit armored turret specifically for the reason that Soviet shells are superior against flat armor but liable to bounce off highly angled plates because of their ballistic caps if challenges were fighting fellow NATO tanks fielding monoblock long rods at themselves this angling would actually reduce the effectiveness of the armor but against Soviets the mo D really took advantage of the way Russia had designed their tanks to fight flat blocky turrets like those of the leopard 2 or the Abrams very few NATO tanks at the time had armor that was angled to this degree the Italian c1 air yet was only produced as of 1995 and outwardly looks somewhat similar to the challengers series of tanks and this same year leopard 2a5 s rolled onto the field with their angled Arrowhead turrets during the time of say the Gulf Wars however challenges were the only tank out there fielding angled armor which the Soviet shells optimized for flat over really district antenna trait by the later years when the fo mentioned c1 and leopard 2 a fiber in service Russia was already exporting their own monoblock long rod shells such as the 3 B M 32 van't and the multi cord 3 B M 42 mango a model block long rod penetrator runs the full length of the sable as you can see here and is made of a less dense and also less brittle alloy meaning that despite his greater length it will not break apart upon contacting enemy armor which the Soviet shells slugs would if they were made this long as the rod penetrates through the armor its material begins to erode away with a slightly less than 1 to 1 ratio relative to the velocity of the shell this means that against flat armor most monoblock long rod apfsds shows cannot penetrate more than their own length with some exceptions of course to keep you on your toes against angled armor however the force behind the longer rod means that the composite armors backing plate begins to rupture before the incoming round has actually reached it as there is a less total solid material reinforcing it this means that the shell doesn't actually have to get through the final steel plate of the armored composition in order to get into the fighting compartment of an enemy tank and start causing mayhem amongst the machinery increment inside long rods actually sacrifice flat penetration to gain angle pam and so comparing them to soviet shows at the same year the soviets do look quite superior but in practice they're often not the penetration rates of monoblock long rod shells can be found by using the lands automatic equation the calculation which uses information such as weight length muzzle velocity material and so on of a monoblock long rod shell to calculate its preparation' limit against armor of a given angle however certain other aspects may rise or lower the penetration of these shells such as the type of tip it has the British charm shells for example we use a form of notched tip which allows them to retain both flat and angled penetration with the shells acting those if they had either a flat tip conical tip depending on the angle of the armor that they're being fired at essentially they get the best of both worlds motor block long rod shells frequently have their penetration ratings overstated due to the value known as l OS penetration for example the American M 900 depleted uranium apfsds shell fired by the 105 millimeter equipped IP m1 Abrahms in the Gulf War as well as the m1 one to eight striker mobile gun system is frequently stated to have over six hundred and twenty millimeters penetration this however is literally impossible as the shell itself is only just 600 millimeters long and doesn't have the velocity to achieve even close to its full length in penetration using the lands automatic weijin it's flat penetration actually only comes out to around five ten to five twenty millimeters against flat armor that 600 millimeters plus value actually comes from the shells l OS penetration at an angle of 60 degrees l OS means line of sight this is to say how much armor is actually being perforated by the shell and does come out to around 600 millimeters at 100 meters range for the m 900 m OS penetration at sixty degrees will always be higher than flat penetration for a monoblock long rod penetrator which can make things confusing if a sorcerer doesn't tell whether it's given penetration reading for a shell is it's flat penetration or its maximum potential perforation aka its l OS penetration at around 62 I believe 68 degrees is the optimal range if a source gives you a lower penetration rating for 60 degrees it's because that source hasn't taken the l OS penetration into account I won't go too far into detail about the trigonometry here I barely understand it myself I'm just going by what some very knowledgeable lines have explained to me shadow to scoff more guy and Excel but given that the cosine of 60 degrees is 0.5 you have to double the shells given 60 degree pen to find its maximum perforation or its l OS penetration basically although the armor being penetrated might be say 800 millimeters thick of actual material that doesn't mean it has 800 millimeters effectiveness so how much effective armor is there effectively being penetrated something else worth mentioning I've tagged this bit on to the end of the video post editing is that different shells perform very differently against wrote homogenous steel armor than they do against different composite arrays this means that in modern main battle tanks giving a shells penetration or armors effectiveness in rolled homogeneous Armour equivalents or are hae is practically pointless as those values will be completely irrelevant in actual practice no one's driving around with 600 millimeter thick steel plates on the front of their vehicle a shell might have four hundred and fifty millimeters penetration in our hae but still penetrate armor stated to be good for 550 millimetres effectiveness in our hae how well because that shell becomes substantially better against composite arrays actually having up to around let's say 600 millimeters of penetration against that specific type of armor rather than the 450 millimeters stated against our H a this is all theoretical by the way I'm not going by actual shells here a perfect example of this comes when we compare the American M 829 a one silver bullet used in the Gulf Wars and the Soviet 3 B M 42 mangle multi-core apfsds shell the most heavily exported tank ammunition to date the solvability has around 560 millimeters penetration in rolled homogeneous Armour equivalent while mango has all around 450 this obviously makes the American shell seem vastly superior but against compositor ease the two end up performing extremely similar once again dependent on the type of array you were talking about and in some limited cases the Soviet ammunition can actually outperform ma 29 the best way I've had this described to me is that it's not so much of the shells penetration changing against different armors it's that the armor becomes more or less effective depending on the type of shell hitting it that's the simplified version at least this is all extremely complex however and some of the values were talking here are still classified so it's tough information to get a hold of and result in a lot of a misinformation being tossed around I bet I'm gonna have comments saying that ma 2981 has more like 700 millimetres penetration this is not no no it doesn't but the final thing we have to talk about in this video is a strange phenomenon which is spaced armor can actually become more effective than competent armor under certain circumstances that's right despite the complexity and highly classified nature of or your ceramics and textile arrays good old breathable air can actually be a little bit more effective protection beyond certain thicknesses see space armor technically is a form of composite armor it's still a combination of multiple layers of material just that and the middle layer is well air so when I say thickness I'm talking about the outer steel layer and the air in the middle and the inner steel layer when it comes to the monoblock long rod shells the length of the penetrating rod is everything longer drawers penetrate more armor in general at least but they can be vulnerable to skewing of course and losing penetration value if they have to penetrate multiple space layers of angled armor this happens when the space in between the inner and outer plates is longer than the penetrating rod in which case the rod wobbles a little bit in the air diverting it from its trajectory before hitting the inner plate one tank that makes clear use of this is the leopard 2a5 the older leopard 2 Tarte designs seen on the 2a 0 through the 2a for easy foxy affair made up of highly effective composite armor and the air ahead on the later variants of this tank is a simple steel structure which leaves a hollow space in between the Arrowhead and the outer steel layer of the boxy turrets composit armor basically if the composite armor array of the leopard two's box eater is steel ceramic steel then the arrowhead adds an extra layer of steel and then a significant thickness of air on top of that of the underlaying array this space in between the add-on piece and the boxy Terra is enough to cause many long rod shells to divert from that trajectory lose their penetrated power and then simply glance off the composite armor inside if that space were filled with composite material however the shell will be held on its course retaining its strong angle and boring deeper into the armor if the space in between the plates however is less than the length of the incoming rod then it's effectively counts for nothing and constant material at least eats away of the shells length even if its main design purpose is to defeat chemical threats of course we still haven't touched on er a or explosive reactive armor this is a type of additional armor that sits outside of the main armor and is made of an explosive liner sandwiched between steel plates this reduces the force of incoming projectiles by detonating when contacted defusing incoming chemical charges and reducing the velocity of kinetic munitions in some cases or causing the rods to break apart such as in the case of the heavy er a used by Russian tanks the m1 Abrams tank urban survival kit consists of er a it can be mounted to Bradley's challengers m60 s and almost every Soviet main battle tank since the t-55 er a is a single-use add-on however after it detonates it's gone non explosive reactive Armour also exists which is basically the same thing as composite armor and can be fitted externally to vehicles in the same way that explosive reactive armor is of course there's also the absolute witchcraft that some modern AFVs are beginning to dabble in which is active protection systems or ApS this is basically a way of hacking into oncoming guided missiles to screw off their tracking less however is really part of a tank's armor per se which is why we haven't touched on it here o we also haven't touched on high-explosive shells you're firing a bomb how complicated you expected to be anyway lads that is going to be it for this video I hope you have enjoyed found it informative so that you can now go on and show all your friends how much of a mega nerd you are by supporting useless facts about tanks at them yeah well we appreciate it I'm sure well everyone that is it from me and koala today as mentioned I would really appreciate you go check out koalas channel this entire video was pretty much organized and run by koala and all credits go to him 100% he's done a fantastic job with his research the way he's portrayed the actual content itself and overall I just love watching good warthunder gameplay which to be honest he's very good at I suck at I don't even have good tanks to play with so go check out his channel you have a great time hopefully you took away a little bit from this video and you learn a little bit about how tank Armour and how tank ammunition works if you wish to subscribe to my channel then be more than welcome to by hitting that a little bell button by the subscribe button which will also notify you of new upcoming videos if you would like to follow up my patreon site I would really appreciate that too in any donations you've been sending to me lately guys I can't thank you enough for that thank you so so much for those who've been supporting my patreon page and hopefully I will see you again in the future for either more war thunder gameplay or some more military related content all the best folks have a great day bye bye [Music] [Music] [Music]

Channel: Matsimus

Views: 1,096,420

Rating: 4.6859937 out of 5

Keywords: main battle tank, tank ammunition, tank gun, 120mm sabot, main gun rounds, tank rounds, sabot round, tank crewman, APFSDS, HEAT round, High explosive anti tank, anti tank, tank guns, 120mm smoothbore, 120mm rifled gun, main battle tank armor, armor, tank armor, tank explosive reactive armor, explosive reactive armor, armour, tank armour, tanks, tank, weapons, depleted uranium, tank ammo, armor penetration, armour penetration

Id: u0p_Rr6gUtM

Length: 26min 17sec (1577 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 18 2018