Radical or Ridiculous? | T-14 Armata | Tank Chats #171

this tank chat is going to be about the amata the T14 Russian tank what is it about the armata that's causes so much fuss and attention so much time and energy at this particular moment seems to be focused on it and also a lot of ridicule this video has been made possible by our supports on patreon our YouTube members and our super thanks donors please join them if you can't and support tank Museum and thanks for watching so what do we know about the T14 armata tank now for obvious reasons we don't have an armata here at the tank Museum so the information I'm going to be giving you is coal from many sources and some of those may just be propaganda one of the main reasons why the T14 and Martyr has drawn such attention is not just because it's the latest and along liner tanks from the major tank producing nation of all time but it's such a radical departure from a well-established previous design philosophy this is the first tank produced by Russia in the post-soviet era so it's worth looking at what that design philosophy the Soviets had from back in the second world war Soviet Tang design showed an evolutionary process during the war the more radical t-44 tank was built but a decision was made to upgrade the t-34 with a new turret and 85 millimeter gun rather than mass produced this brand new t-44 design one feature of Soviet post-war tank design is obvious to all who have an interest in tanks the amazing and very confusing continuity of shape and size the vast majority of post-war tanks up to the T14 were of a very similar profile and had a weight of around 35 to just over 40 tons in balancing the traditional triangle of design features Firepower protection and Mobility Soviet design opted for Firepower as a priority for many years Soviet tanks had guns in advance of NATO in caliber and range if not inciting and Fire Control Systems Soviet tanks had the first gun stabilized in two planes infrared sights and search fights the first smooth ball gun and they were the first to field armor-piercing fin stabilized discarding Sabo rounds they fitted an auto loader into the t-64 and into all their subsequent tanks in a number of these areas NATO was either following in the soviet's weight but when NATO did produce those items their technology seems to be Superior or an equivalent and to a built to a better standard Firepower on Soviet tanks rose from a hundred millimeter guns on the t-54 to 115 millimeter smoothbore on the t-62 the single piece rounds were about a meter long and heavy making them difficult to store a maneuver in the tank with the t-64 then the t-72 and subsequent tanks an autoloader solved this issue with an autoloader 20 to 25 rounds could be fired at about eight rounds a minute in comparison a manually loaded Centurion could get a dozen rounds off in a minute and an S tank with its fixed single piece ammunition 15 rounds in a minute two-part ammunition also took the crew much longer to restore with the t-64 a bigger 125 millimeter smooth ball gun was fitted and more front Lama for around the same mass in the 1980s that meant the Soviets had a hundred 115 and 125 millimeter guns all in service at the same time and that surely would be a real problem for the logistics system but actually the Soviet military they accept this they don't go for what NATO tended to do which was to upgrade older model tanks when a new gun comes along having a tank hard to see and Destroy was next on the Soviet list Soviet tanks remained of a low profile and were much smaller than their Western equivalents they had well-designed ballistic-shaped turrets and heavily protected front locks by transversely mounting the diesel engine across the back of the t-54 the hull length could be shortened so the Soviets aim to keep the volume of space that was going to be protected by the armor as small as possible and of course that in turn is going to affect the crew third on the Soviet design list was Mobility but Soviet tanks match Western tanks in the power to weight ratio in the early years of the Cold War development of the wartime V12 diesel engine continued from World War II vintage a supercharged version was put in the t-72 and that gave about 780 horsepower but it was considered underpowered one area of design in the Soviet era that can appear at odds with the presentation of a monolithic centrally controlled Soviet system is the apparent rivalry and political favoritism that led to the building of certain tank designs more Resolve the designer of the t-54 also designed the more expensive and complex t64 as a rival to the nishnita Gill Factory offering the t-62 tank despite looking like a continuation of Soviet tank design and shape and size the complexity and trouble operating history of the t-64 LED Factory staff having to follow tank units around to ensure the vehicles could be kept operational and despite more results protests ultimately the simpler and 40 cheaper t-72 tank designed by his Rivals was put into production the t-72 was initially only to be produced if needed in a wartime situation one area that Western analysts often criticized Soviet tank design was in ergonomics or the ability of the crew to be able to use that space the very small space given in which crew members had to operate may have been mitigated by an insistence Crews were around five foot one to five foot three inches high noise levels very high noise levels vibration stress and the physical effort required to drive these tanks meant it was exhausting for crew members over longer periods aggressive track wide with no rubber pads were fitted onto all Soviet tanks to cope with a Russian landscape and the dreaded rasputitsa when roads become muddy morasses on most tanks dozer blades were fitted to help tanks dig in in Open Country and they also made sure copious smoke production was allowable and fitted with smoke discharges on pretty much all vehicles as the second world war experience had taught the Soviets hiding your vehicles for as long as possible was important for River Crossings so the vehicles were expected to swim or snorkel snorkels were fitted on most tanks to allow them to cross rivers to a depth of about five meters and because of the use of a mass conscript Army containing many ethnic groups and languages this also had an influence on the need for Simplicity and operation training and maintenance of Soviet tanks the t80 tank was a development of the t-64 and it was the first production tank to have as its main engine a gas turbine the t80 was accepted into service in 1979 and produced at the OMS Factory in Russia but because of its shorter range an incredibly thirsty engine a diesel engine version was swiftly introduced the t80 continued to be developed in Ukraine after the breakup of the Soviet Union the next Soviet tank the t-90 had its origins in a program aimed at developing a single replacement for the earlier t-64 t-72 and t80 tanks the t-72 platform was selected as a basis for the new generation of Tanks owing to its cost-effectiveness and simplicity and Automotive qualities the T90 uses a gun and the sights from the t80u a new engine and importantly thermal size the T90 with its much more sophisticated kit went into low-level production in 1993 and it Sports an upgrade to pretty much all the systems on the t-72 including its main gun with the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 that brought many tank programs that were being developed in Russia to an end and the only Market that really kept some of those tank Industries going was through export the rise to power of Putin in the early 2000s saw him attempt to rearm the Russian army and give it again a sense of power and pride he placed more money into his military and defense Industries and in 2008 there was a major full-scale Russian military reform and that began to modernize the Russian armed forces in part of re-equipping the army Western weapons and Technology was bought this is included the ivico links vehicles and Britain was buying these just about the same time and calling them Panther but The Immortal Series of track vehicles in many ways part of this Redevelopment program the idea was to develop a family or Universal combat platform this family was to include a t-15 infantry Fighting Vehicle a combat engineer vehicle an armored recovery vehicle a heavy armored personnel carrier and several types of self-propelled gun along with some others built on the same chassis the concept of building a number of vehicle Types on a common chassis is certainly not new something both the Soviets and the NATO countries had done before with the obvious advantages in manufacturing training and Logistics the designation for this new series of vehicle was prospective family of heavy unified Battlefield platforms if you translate that from the Russian so off that family it's the T14 Armada tank that interests us here much of the T14 a martyr tank lies in a previously canceled t-95 project this tank was finally abandoned in 2010. although the T14 is looked at as new it actually relies on systems and ideas from some much earlier projects the first step in designing this new tank was to have a turret that was unmanned the Smooth Bore 2a82 1M 125 millimeter cannon is an upgrade from the weapon on the T90 Russian sources claim its muzzle energy is far greater compared to the rhyme until 120 millimeter gun there is no fume extractor as it's on an unmanned turret so toxic fumes are not an issue the fire rate of the 2a82 is allegedly to be from about 10 to 12 rounds per minute a range of ammunition types is carried the new vacuum one armor-piercing fin stabilized discarding Sabo round is fitted with a 90 centimeter Long Rod penetrator that's unusually long it is said to be capable of penetrating one meter of rolled homogeneous armor at about 2000 meter the gun also fires anti-hellicopter missiles the next radical point was the engine that long developed V12 diesel engine has finally been abandoned uvz the Russia's main tank manufacturer in a much tight action took an engine called the a85 3 there was a copy of a German x-shaped engine from the war years the trans diesel design Bureau had originally offered the engine as a unit for compressor oil and gas pumping stations the a853 was not however a reliable product and from all reports it seems to have had major issues it's almost twice the power of a t-72 engine it is attached to a 12-speed automatic gearbox and it's claimed it's capable of reaching 80 to 90 kilometers per hour or 50 to 56 miles an hour and it has a range of 500 kilometers the T14 has new 70 centimeter diameter road wheels and an electronically adjustable suspension system on at least the first two road wheels and possibly the last ones and it's got that's called an active suspension system but is fitted over a main torsion bar suspension it also has rubber blocked tracks and the next radical feature of the vehicle is the crew station the crew is inside a cocoon an air-conditioned capsule and they're seated in a row for better communication they have digital screens in front of them with the commander scanning with using remote cameras in his main site which includes an infrared mode the driver he sees his front Clark and also via cameras he can see around him and the Gunner can see his Target but he can also choose through those screens a relevant ammunition type the chassis and turret are equipped with a malachite dual explosive reactive armor system and on the front sides and the top there's stealth coatings the active protection system has a radar to detect and tract incoming anti-tang Munitions it states a maximum speed of incoming interceptable Target is 1700 meters a second or Mach 5. it protects a tank from all sides although the top of the vehicle is still vulnerable to top attack munitions Russian sources claimed it's effective against depleted uranium core apfsds rounds up to two kilometers away but Western analysts remain skeptical the five hardcore launcher tubes five on each side are sighted between the turrets front sides and the chassis the tanks has a new type of lightweight armor that was developed by the steel scientific research institute however on closer inspection a number of these Technologies and features are not fitted to some of the vehicles some you can see there's covers where the technology or that piece of equipment should be on others is fitted for but not with prototypes of the vehicles were shown at the Russian arms Expo in September 2013 and the first pre-production vehicles of each of the three branches are all the types of main types of vehicles that were going to be produced were shown to the public at the 2015 Moscow Victory Day Parade a Russian Lieutenant General declared that the T14 platform had used or reused many features from the abandoned t-95 tank prototypes so the new T14 tank is a radical departure in sense of its scale its layout its design features and Technology from that era of evolutionary soviet-designed Vehicles originally intended to replace all Russian army tanks the Russian military had planned to acquire about 2 300 t14s between 2015 and 2020 according to many press releases and Military sources but by 2018 delays were announced until at least 2025. subsequently announcements indicated the apparent cancellation of the main production run the deputy Minister of Defense said quote there is currently no need to mass produce the armata when it's older predecessors namely the latest variants of the t-72 remain effective against American German and French counterparts he went on why flood our military with the martyrs the t-72s are in great Demand on the markets so why is this the gradual tightening of sanctions and then with the Russian invasion of Ukraine the problem of sourcing the essential microelectronics has come to the fore Russian industry has been critically dependent on foreign microelectronics and Associated Technologies these are no longer available due to sanctions the sites from France and other components are no longer available no actual production line for the tank was established and with serious losses of tanks in the fighting Russian efforts have now gone into refurbishing or upgrading tanks that are already in service or storage other issues come into play that affect the wider Russian defense Industries one is the perennial Russian problem of corruption since 2011 a staggering 72 000 officials have appeared before the course on corruption charges the Mythic way many Russian military systems and products have been promoted and sold has met a crushing reality in Ukraine the public exposure and promise made for the T4 team means even though there may only be 20 test Vehicles available there is an expectation they will make appearance in the battle a British Ministry defense statement said and I quote any T14 deployment is likely to be a high-risk decision for Russia 11 years in development the program has been dogged with delays reduction in planned Fleet size and reports of manufacturing problems if Russia deploys a T14 it will likely primarily be for propaganda purposes production is probably only in the low tens while commanders are unlikely to trust the vehicle in combat false claims have already been made about the deployment of the vehicles but by the time this film is released it may well be that the tank is in actual combat perhaps any tank a to the beleaguered and hard-push Russian army will be used whatever the risks involved looking at the wider picture T14 was a radical attempt to change the evolutionary process there was a tendency of Soviet and then later Russian tank design don't forget here we are talking of the biggest tank manufacturing nation of all time so will all the effort for the t-14 tank be a dead end or will those Technologies be morphed into other projects or with a new version of T14 be made for the export Market one thing we know for certain at the moment is for the Russian military just getting any tank onto the battlefield is problematic [Music]

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Keywords: Bovington, Dorset, Tanks, Tankfest, tanks, tiger, chieftain, tank museum, second world war, world war two, top five tanks, tank chats, british army, tiger 131, royal armoured corps, tank regiment, RAC, tank museum bovington, tanklife, bovingtontank museum, military history, ww2, ww1, armoured car, tankchats, army, world war 1, world war ii, war history, royal navy, ww2 history, wwii museum, wwi, ww2 tanks, ww2 weapons, T-14 Armata, Armata, David Willey, Russian Tanks, russian tank

Id: MfCG0bNxVL4

Length: 20min 0sec (1200 seconds)

Published: Fri May 26 2023