T-90 vs Abrams

[Panther Al]

The money shot mentioned was right in front of the NBC system, between the turret and the upper hull. Left one hell of a scorch mark - and set the NBC system on fire (Not that it takes much to make that happen, those things are always burning up on the least excuse).


To be fair: We wonder if the warhead actually went off, as a hit from another RPG that nailed the left turret cheek actually did a little more damage than that.

The pics of RPG hits are not too surprising though: The M1 is armored to the front at a higher cost to the side and rear than most tanks out there, running around doing MOUT isn't a good idea. The skirts past the halfway point are really nothing more than a splinter shield, they have no thickness worth mentioning, and the side armor on the lower hull is little better than the belly or rear past the midway point as well. Then again, so is most tanks. All the high tech high test stuff is in the frontal arc anyways, so the rest is just generic steel.

[95th Rifleman]

Until there,c,"s a war involving the T-90, it,c,"s going to be hard to say much about the reality of the T-90 versus expectations. The M1 has the advantage of having been put through its paces under certain circumstances. While I,c,"m inclined to think that we Americans need to be very wary of hubris (instead of congratulating ourselves on having such wonderful equipment), the M1 has done pretty well so far. How well the M1 might perform against a numerous foe with up-to-date equipment and under conditions of enemy air superiority (thus exposing the Achilles heel of fuel consumption) is another matter entirely. We may never find out. Similarly, we may never find out what the real capabilities of the T-90 are.

It's very hard for Americans to admit that they are losing their edge. Every conflict America has fought since WW2 was against an inferior enemy with export-grade technology. Both Iraq wars led American thinkers to hubris and to see Russian gear as obsolete and inferior.

However in today's world the realities are different, the gaps between east and west are not as clear cut as they once where.

Take the SU50, a modernised, stealth capable aircrat that is the equal to the F22 Raptor. For years Russian vehicles have modern, effective anti-missle systems while American desighners have no real progress in this direction. A deadly hubris considering that missles are the best offense against a modern AFV (top-attack systems mean that the front arour of a tank is a meaningles statistic as they blow their way through the top of the turret).

We assume our crews to have more experience, our tanks to be better because we have learned lessons from warzones. Yet we ignore the fact tat Russia has had the same experience in Checnya that our crews have had in iraq and they have learned the same lessons.

[ArmySGT.]

Shenanigans

[Raellus]

As to the T-90 vs. M1 debate...

Obviously, not everything in the Russian infomercial should be taken at face value; I'm sure that they're overstating many of its capabilities. The range advantage of the tank-launched ATGMs, for example- engagement ranges that would give it an edge are few and far between in Central/Western Europe. Maybe on the steppes of the Ukraine, but in the Hochwald gap? Not really.

That said, I've been a big Red Army apologist here on this board and I think that some of the late Cold War Soviet-designed tanks (from the T-64 through the T-90, domestic use versions) are more than a little bit underrated by a lot of Westerners.

Someone once said that "quantity has a quality all of its own" and I think he had a point. The Soviet ability to put 5-10 MBTs on the line for every NATO one can't be sneezed at. To assume that every M1, Leopard, Challenger, etc. is going to take out 5-10 Soviet MBTs before being taken out themselves is pretty hopeful, if not downright naive. I really think that the lessons of GW 1 & 2 are misleading when one attempts to apply them to a WWIII scenario in Europe.

[ShadoWarrior]

Take the SU50, a modernised, stealth capable aircrat that is the equal to the F22 Raptor.

That assertion begs for proof.

[Panther Al]

While the bit about the SU50 being the equal of the F22 (Saying F/A is nothing more than Air Farce sandbagging for budgetary reasons) is a little absurd, there is something to be said about a lot of the "Soviet Stuff is Crap" talk is perhaps a bit much. After all, how many of those uber-russian aircraft are there? None of the latest and greatest has been built in anything approaching noticeable quantities.

The last 25 years have been a total game changer for Aircraft. The MiG29/Su27 combo vs. the F16A/F15A match up is a *lot* closer than I think anyone would like to admit, especially with some of the tricks the MiG had in its hat. But with the latest high tech tricks that have come out - tricks that the russians just can not match - the gap between Western and Eastern Aircraft have been bigger than at any point in history. High Tech Pays when it comes to planes.


Now tanks on the other hand, not so much. A huge plus to be sure, but not as major of an issue. The only place it really comes to play is fire control - nothing to be sneezed at granted. But for tanks it always boils down to the triad: Firepower, Protection, and Mobility. The M1 beats the T90 in the first two - the last is more a toss up. The T90 only has 2/3's the HP that the M1 has, but then, its 2/3's the weight. And add in the fact that the suspension on the M1 leaves something to be desired when it comes to rough terrain, I'll give the T90 the edge here. To say that the T90's tungsten long rod AP round is equal to the M1's DU round, fired at a much higher velocity, is something of a laugh. The missile is a valid point, but as mentioned, only good on wide open areas. Not to mention the Autoloader in russian tanks are considered jokes for a reason....

But then again, you can afford a lot more T90's than M1's for the same amount of cash. Depends on if you can afford the bills for the addition training, pay, and so forth that you'll need for all those extra people.

Also recall, M1's are built to be maintained. Russian tank designs are designed to be used and discarded when wore out: so maintenance on russian designs are actually a lot more expensive when parts, and labour, is added up. There is a reason when people upgrade soviet era designs, the first things they do are replace the engine, the electronics, and then the gun.

Russian guns have historically suffered from the fact that the Russian munitions industry have never been able to equal western munitions: it boils down to powder. In WW2, the Russian 76mm was only the equal to the 50mm KwK, and it took the 85mm gun to equal the Germans 75mm KwK L/48. The L70 required the use of the 122mm gun. It improved post war, but even today the 125mm gun isn't *quite* the equal to the German 120 that about everyone else uses. Even the Chinese admit this as they copied the design and are using it instead of the 125 on a number of the newest designs that they are beginning to field.

[Webstral]

Technological advantages matter most in simple environments. Relative to ground environments, the air dimension is simple. One of the reasons the Hail Mary attack by VII US Corps in Operation Desert Storm succeeded so well is that the desert environment is almost theoretical in its simplicity. The ground isn,c,"t perfectly level and featureless, but the terrain of south central Iraq and northwestern Kuwait is far more like a chess board than the AO in which VII US Corps would have fought in southern Germany in the event of a war with the Warsaw Pact. Despite the fact that Coalition EW was wrecking havoc with Iraqi radio communications, the Republican Guard was not taken by surprise (operationally speaking) by the Hail Mary maneuver. By the time VII US Corps reached the Republican Guard, the defending Iraqis had reoriented themselves along a north-south axis facing west. However, while lines of sight were superb, visibility was poor. The Republican Guard did most things correctly, although units that sat in one location for more than 12 hours without taking proper defensive measures deserve what they got. However, all along the line American forces ran into Iraqi units in hasty defensive positions. The Iraqis were ready to fight. They just couldn,c,"t see. The M1 had the technological advantage and the right circumstances under which to exploit that advantage. Without excellent lines of sight, poor visibility, and a main gun capable of reaching out to 4000 meters the M1 wouldn,c,"t have fared so well.

Again, all this goes back to where the fight is taking place and what each side brings to the fight. The long ranges of the T-90,c,"s ATGM aren,c,"t going to be worth much if the M1s have two-tiered fighting positions or a reverse slope defense. On the other hand, if the M1s are advancing across open terrain the ATGM has a much more favorable situation. I don,c,"t know what kind of reactive armor the T-90 sports, but I do know that reactive armor is specialized for defeating solid penetrators or HEAT. Against a mid-level anti-tank weapon, reactive armor specialized for defeating solid penetrators might perform adequately against a HEAT round, and vice versa. Against a top shelf anti-tank weapon, specialized reactive armor might not do the job against the other kind of round.

All the comments about how flanking shots by RPG and other unsophisticated weapons against MBT in urban environments have exposed a dangerous weakness in the Abrams both underscore and miss the point about the hazards of urban operations. Tanks don,c,"t belong in urban combat, except for the fact that it,c,"s difficult to carry offensive operations without them if one doesn,c,"t have very capable light infantry (which the US does not, by and large). For reasons that have already been given, tanks are optimized for certain jobs. The armor can,c,"t be impenetrable everywhere. The US Army insists on using tanks in urban environments partly because our own leadership has drunk the Kool-Aid and partly because an MBT has a powerful psychological effect on enemy and friendly forces. We can,c,"t expect to frighten everybody away with an MBT,c,,"just many of the enemy,c,"s people. Some of the enemy will fight, and some MBT will be lost as a result. The urban environment is a horribly complex environment in which the advantages of technology are very badly circumscribed. An enemy who understands that the armor of an MBT can,c,"t be as strong as the frontal armor on every facing of the tank is going to exploit that knowledge.

[ShadoWarrior]

Again, all this goes back to where the fight is taking place and what each side brings to the fight. The long ranges of the T-90,c,"s ATGM aren,c,"t going to be worth much if the M1s have two-tiered fighting positions or a reverse slope defense. On the other hand, if the M1s are advancing across open terrain the ATGM has a much more favorable situation.

"What each side brings to the fight" also applies to the offense. The ATGM won't be much of an issue, even in open terrain, because US doctrine calls for Apaches to lead the tanks. Those T-90s would be Hellfire'd long before the M1s would be in danger. The modern battlefield is three-dimensional, and includes close air support.

[raketenjagdpanzer]

Apropos of nothing, let me say this:

There is a saying amongst car enthusiasts that goes: Win on Sunday, sell on Monday.

Basically, the company who wins at the Daytona 500 is going to see a jump in sales over the course of the next week.

The same thing holds true for Military hardware. After Vietnam, nations lined up to buy Soviet stuff. SA2s, T55s, T62s, etc. Now, granted, the Soviet model was a lot different from the western: their "client" states were just that, and got single-sourced from Mother Russia whether they liked it or not (shut up, Romania). But it held that they bought from the big winners.

Fast forward to ODS, and now suddenly you have a _lot_ of M1 buyers, and a lot more Apache and F16 customers. Even after OIF, orders for western equipment are still pretty high. "Quantity has a quality all its own" and "Perfect is the enemy of good enough" don't matter that much any more. It's not going to be 50000 AFVs pouring through the Fulda (it never was; if we'd held on all fronts, the Soviets would have nuked us, and if they'd started to win big, we'd have nuked them, period), it's going to be armored brigades breaking up hard concentrations but long before then it's going to be JDAMs from 32000 feet - most likely dropped by 60 year old B52s.

Who wants to buy 10000 tanks - even shitty, $650,000 "upgraded" T62s and T72s - when the large majority of them are going to be smashed into scrap-metal from the air? Recent Libyan events prove this out.

But the point of my original thesis stands: we won on Sunday, we're selling on Monday. If we did (god forbid) wind up in another protracted war where lots of armor was involved, whomever won would see the bigger sales of equipment.

[copeab]

Who wants to buy 10000 tanks - even shitty, $650,000 "upgraded" T62s and T72s - when the large majority of them are going to be smashed into scrap-metal from the air?

Someone whose enemy doesn't have much of an air force?

[Raellus]

It's not going to be 50000 AFVs pouring through the Fulda (it never was; if we'd held on all fronts, the Soviets would have nuked us, and if they'd started to win big, we'd have nuked them, period), it's going to be armored brigades breaking up hard concentrations but long before then it's going to be JDAMs from 32000 feet - most likely dropped by 60 year old B52s.

Who wants to buy 10000 tanks - even shitty, $650,000 "upgraded" T62s and T72s - when the large majority of them are going to be smashed into scrap-metal from the air? Recent Libyan events prove this out.

If you are referring to current/recent conflicts, both actual and/or potential, then I agree almost entirely. If you are referring to what could have been (i.e. a conventional WWIII scenario in central Europe), then I could not disagree more. The above assertion assumes air superiority. I think this is overly optimistic, to say the least. The aerial battle space would be incredibly deadly for everyone involved. NATO air forces have indeed dismantled third-world powers, even relatively potent ones, but, once again, this is drawing the wrong lessons from very flawed comparisons. Defeating the combined air defenses of the U.S.S.R. and WTO would have been a much different proposition than destroying the Iraqi, Serbian, and/or Libyan air defense networks.

I guess the point is moot. It's difficult, if not impossible, to debate the possible/probable results of an event that never happened. There are some that believe NATO would have treated the USSR and WTO like they did the Iraqis, and there are those who think it would have been a much, much tougher, possibly unwinnable, fight.

[Webstral]

"What each side brings to the fight" also applies to the offense. The ATGM won't be much of an issue, even in open terrain, because US doctrine calls for Apaches to lead the tanks.

We can't assume a priori that the Apaches will be free to operate the way we'd like them to. Nor can we assume that fixed-wing CAS will be available when and where we'd like it.

[Grimace]

I fall into the camp of the people who think a war against the Soviet Union/Warsaw Pact would have been completely different than it was against the Iraqis.

I think we got a glimpse of some things that could be expected when NATO was supposedly bombing the Serbian army in Kosovo. There were an awful lot of Serbian tanks and military vehicles rolling out of Kosovo when the Serbs gave up (because NATO was bombing Serb civilian infrastructure and power rather than military infrastructure).

Blasting something in relatively flat, open ground in the desert (even with waddis and draws to "hide" in) is completey different than taking out tanks and equipment in mountains passes and in the forests of Europe. Add in that everything I've ever heard/read indicated that the Soviets were superior in number and arguably mildly superior in aircraft technology, the only thing on NATO's side is training. I'm not sure if training is going to work against a foe the size of the Soviet armed forces.

Likewise, in tank to tank combat, I'd give the edge to the M1 Abrams, but that doesn't mean I think it's a guaranteed win in every battle for the U.S. Sure an M1 might be able to take out 8 T-72s in 2 minutes or some ridiculous number, but when you're working against 15 to 1 odds, you're going to NEED to take out that many otherwise you're toast and the enemy rolls on through.

Look at history of superior defense tanks like the German King Tiger as an example of what superior weapons and defense, but inferior numbers can do in ensuring victory. The American tanks of the Sherman was laughable compared to German high-end tanks, but we still took them out because we had more of them. That situation would be reversed with Soviet tanks against American/NATO tanks...even though the M1 is better than the T-72 would ever dream to be. The T-90 might be an upgrade, and might allow a bit more survivability, or it might be able to kill at farther range, but it's likely still an inferior tank to the M1. The M1 crews might be miles more well trained than the T-90 crews. The problem is, there's going to be a LOT more T-90s than there are M1s, so it'll be a toss up on who gets the edge.

It is, by no means, a foregone conclusion.

[Legbreaker]

Or to put it another way, give me a litre of water and I drink. Give me a hundred litres and I drown.

The Soviets had a massive advantage in manpower AND they didn't need to haul it all across the Atlantic to get it into battle. Take out a few transport and you've got a radically different battlefield which a few M1s and M2s aren't going to be a huge amount of help on.

The British have a similar problem but shorter distance. A handful of diesel subs can wreak havoc on reinforcements.

[Webstral]

In fairness, the difficulties of trans-Atlantic or cross-Channel movement were not new to NATO. The Soviets would have needed massive advantages in numbers because in an invasion of the FRG they would have been attacking a force using tanks with superior gunnery ranges and a superior ability to depress the guns. Keeping massive numbers of AFV moving forward requires massive amounts of fuel. Interdiction be damned--the roads can only take so much traffic before breaking up. Mines (including FASCAM), EW, and chemicals all conspire to slow the tempo on the battlefield and generally work against the attacker more than they work against the defender. While I may have chastened ShadoWarrior about assuming anything about the Apache on every battlefield, in the FRG the Apache would have had happy hunting. Tanks can't stay hidden in the trees forever.

I agree that the beating Iraq took does not mean we'd have handled the Pact the same way. However, given that the Pact would have been on the offensive, the burden of coming out into the open would have been on them. The Soviets might have been able to develop local superiorities of 15-to-1 here and there, but there are drawbacks to this. I'll go back to FASCAM and the nature of the terrain in southern Germany as an indicator. Large numbers of AFV bunched up behind engineers trying to clear lanes through fields of FASCAM would have been superb targets for ICM and attack aircraft.

Anyway, I think the efficacy of Western systems rather took us by surprise. Granted, the mass of Iraqi units suffered from low morale. However, I wonder if the average Soviet, Polish, and Czech draftees would have any particular enthusiasm for an offensive war in the FRG.