What are the ways to penerate Tank amour nowadays?

What is a 'SABAT' round anyway? Just curious as I know little in this area.

Dallas

Originally posted by Dallas

What is a 'SABAT' round anyway? Just curious as I know little in this area.

Dallas

Its a arrow/bolt like projectile.

Usually the head of the round is made out of dense materials like DU or tunsgen

Technically the sabot is the bit that doesn't go toward the target, but allows a subcalibre round to be fired (eg a 20mm penetrator out of a 120mm barrel). This is important because the greater force that can be exerted over the smaller area the better.

Come to think of it, wouldn't placing mini rocket thrusters at the backs of the penerator help with boostering the speed?

ch--:>

Robot tank army sound cool, but the threat of them getting hack too is very real.

Raideur,

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Missiles, ATGWs and all other guided, rocket based systems had one serious weakness, naming, they can be jammed, spoofed, or "killed" during their flight.
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I never said otherwise. However; few nations can invest in CCM (counter counter measures= jam defeat) like we do and indeed almost none are doing things like JCM (Joint Common Missile) which fuses both IIR, MMW and SALH aimpoints.

More to the point, if I fire from 8-10 clicks out with a lofted round like a STAFF or ERGM and he _doesn't keep moving_; he will run out of countermeasures long before I run out of shells and he will _never get to firing range_ with his LOS maintube.

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The one weapon that remains virtually impossible to intercept before it hit your 20 ton IFV is a 125mm HEAT round, that will turn even light tanks into a blazing fire. The good old tank shell, just a giant bullet, remains incredibly lethal on the battlefield.
>>

This is actually not true at all. First, because sabot rounds are often down to about 800-1,100fps or less by the time they hit a 2,000m target (you lose about 60-70% of base muzzle velocity, around a nautical mile per second, within a 1/4 second of flight time.) Say 3-5 seconds of flight in the outer arena.

This is within the capabilities of Arena and Drozhd IF they cue in time (loft the round and set the explosive delay actuation).

Systems like Boeing's SLID are even better because they are direct intercept devices.

If you bring the fight down to about 400-600m then yes, things get very nasty indeed but by this point; no armor on the planet is going to save you from the 50mj or so of delivered impact. So you might as well not bother closing. At least not with a manned system as your "Here they are!!" tripwire.

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Robotics like autoloaders have not yet reached human effeciency, but even if they do, a robot, or a person controlling a robotic tank will not have the situational awareness and overall effectiveness of a live crew.
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Not in large caliber weapons perhaps but they are de rigeur (to the point of automated round-switching between HE and APDS-T as well as for rate) on 35-45mm systems which are more than sufficient to kill most 'war on terror' threats without overpenetrating 3-4 houses down the block. Something which DID happen when M1 Abrahms went to war in 2003, sabot-heavy.

It should also be noted that killing tanks is, as someone else has mentioned, about putting a subcaliber round on the smallest point of impact to maximize delivered energy. A 35mm round using some of the ATG (1980's Advanced Technology Gun systems including liquid propellant or electro-thermal ignition of 'special' powdered solids) can get you up to around 6,000-7,000fps with less pressure and chemical erosion on the inside of the barrel. And without the mechanical complexities of a sabot (French for 'shoe' by the way, the little collars that look like a thread bobbin wrapped around the penetrator dart) and with nearly as much capability (through bursting) to gain at least a function (sights and radios and tracks) kills as a heavy round achieves. Indeed, if you compensate the barrel lay and 'sleeve' the whole recoil process separate from the sighting, it is entirely possible to put rounds _down the tube_ of a big bore tank rifle.

None of which is necessary if you are the only one out there with OTH weapons systems that take you beyond the ability of a threat to fire back. Let me make this clear dear: when you kill, you kill, like they were rabid animals with the LEAST POSSIBLE exposure and effort. So that you can turn around and do it again to the next bunch, quickly and with greatest efficiency possible.

This having two beneficial effects: Shock and loss of (veteran) Morale for them. Plus the likelihood that you will come home with your shield rather than upon it.

It serves as a point of some irony for me that soldiers seem to have wrapped themselves up in honor's flag on point in backwardsville while it is the civillians who are butchered like cattle in an abatoir chute at home.

Sun Tzu was wrong for war is not an art. At it's basic form it is pure butchery of a statistical nature. The sooner, more decisively done with, the better.


KPl.

Humster,

>>
Come to think of it, wouldn't placing mini rocket thrusters at the backs of the penerator help with boostering the speed?
>>

Yes, provided you are willing to increase round mass, length and diameter as a function of complexity for purposes of stabilization and guidance. Rockets tend to fire unevenly and so, without steering, often contribute to nearly random inaccuracy. You don't want to spin a penetrator (or really, even HEAT) if you can avoid it due to target mechanical effects on impact. And while basebleed and RAP can help with artillery fire on area targets (upping ranges by almost 100% from around 20-22,000yds to about 30-40,000 in the 155 and 210mm classes) they too are not really suited to point/mobile target attack because integrating a seeker with a 30,000G launch acceleration is quite hard and target motion can easily take it outside the terminal search footprint.

At shorter distances, much of this goes away, but you are still better (lofted parabolic arc) to use explosives on the top armor as STAFF and it's followons do. The key then being to put a tether on the round so that it can make a midcourse correction if needed (based on a UAV or masted sensor target tracking update in the 8-10 seconds of round flight).

All of which costs big bucks and adds to the complexity of the engagement loop.

Alternatively, you can go with systems like CKEM and LOSAT and basically accept that each round will be on the order of half to two thirds the length of the main gun tube (and roughly similar diameter). These weapons will maintain 5,000fps+ all the way out to the target and when they hit, it is with an altogether MUCH higher aggregate mass of kineticism.

Again, when Shalekshvelli (sp.) wanted to go to wheeled for the interim/objective medium brigades; he threated to publically show footage of a LOSAT going in the front of an Abrahms and coming out the back at similar (2-3,000m) ranges as that which they M1's had been achieving in Iraq. This is basically what muzzled and leashed the Army to the incredibly bad idea that is Stryker.

What truly characterizes the HVM (Hyper Velocity Missile) classes is this. You can fire anywhere from 2 to 4 rounds nearly simultaneously, guide them all to post-boost updated impacts and get 90-100% SSPK from your initial salvo. Then do it again.

Before you spend the next 5-15 minutes reloading as the boxes are somewhat like an MLRS pack.

In many instances, where the total engagement numbers are really small, this would let a numerically smaller force win in the first couple of exchanges, even if the shooters are based on HMMWV or M113 type light vehicles. In battles where you are looking more at 40-60 odd combatants such as 73 Easting's 'over the roll in terrain, we stumbled upon an Iraqi Brigade encampent!'; you had better (again) see them before you get too close. Or you will never live to run.

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Robot tank army sound cool, but the threat of them getting hack too is very real.
>>

The problem with that argument is that it's not going to get any 'less real' as the years go on. Yet the presence of automated + tethered systems will both drive further technical development, encourage commanders to begin the process of reducing the manning footprint within the combat units. And give the incentive that "Even if we are jammed, we aren't dead!" because each track will have basic survival modes whose baseline AI will only get better and better.

I should also add that we have been using lasers as direct-LOS comms between things like joint airlift missions precision dropping foodstuffs for YEARS now. There are even cases where such systems are fitted to testbeds /shining out a cockpit window/ to enable a system which supplies it's own power and processing to be commanded without having to go in and rewire the airframe (on those without databuses).

Again, nothing is perfect but at most tactical (wedge or echelon spacings of say half a mile across in battle formation) separations, you can typically secure a net _in open country_ very well.

Autodrivers (as a takeoff on autopilots) also have incredible reflexes and will never lose pace or miss a unit engagement turn. Or forget to fire the smoke grenades. Or downshift and then come up again on power going through a mudwash. Or, or, or.

All things which most novice tank drivers do dozens of times before they get the hang of things.

None of which need be 'communicated' to them, because basic navigation is handled via a set of staring IR apertures much like that on a cadillac night vision display. And so the vehicle can recognize shape and size as well as line of sight rates (averaged angular motion between several sensors) to passive-stereoscope it's positioning relative to multiple other vehicles in 'simple activities' like avoiding collision.

Again, all of which happens at millisecond 'reflex' intervals in a system which will never get tired staring into a glaring nightdriving periscope for hours at a time.

Given that this type of equipment is _absolutely necessary_ to warn of approaching missiles or point-fire sources /anyway/. There is no excuse not to provide a start on Bolofying a AFV.

We have, as Oscar Goldman once said, THE TECHNOLOGY.

The question is whether we have THE WILL to override commanders whose doctrinal conservatism is centered around a power base of ordering humans around. Rather than securing the Nation's safety as it should be.


KPl.

Most current MBTs with smoothbore cannons can fire ATGWs out the main gun with ranges from 1000m to 6000m. However, they can be blinded by dazzler defenses and regardless of the final impact speed, a large HEAT round will decimate a small, lighty armored vehicle. They simply do not have the armor to protect themselves from this devastating round and modern MBTs with composite are fairly resistant to it, thus requiring the sabots, but even a single sabot wont disable a tank, because if it just hits a nonvital area, it will go directly through, HEAT rounds do huge amounts of damage to the inside of the tank, and usually result in the death of the crew, especially in lightly armed IFVs. I'd also like to mention that most of the missles mounted on IFVs are not mounted on tanks because the main gun is superior, being able to fire their own missles out the tube or just using converntional tank rounds.

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Most current MBTs with smoothbore cannons can fire ATGWs out the main gun with ranges from 1000m to 6000m.
>>

The one 'miracle hit' by a Challenger not withstanding (5km HESH), most Sabots lack the penetrating power to guarantee a kill at 6,000m. Even on a desultory engagement of a tank running away.

6,000m, even in a desert is also atypical for LOS conditions (the slightest roll in the terrain can put HUGE blind zones) and in the midday heat, even current 2nd and 3rd generation I2R systems on vehicles like the M1A2 also cannot reliably discriminate out that far (lay and lase).

It should further be noted that our one, tubelaunched, ATGW; the Shillelagh, was put out of service almost as soon as it entered because the _light_ tank (Sheridan) and the M60A2 variant that it was secondary armament for both could not sustain reasonable first hit accuraceis due to the tremendous recoil effects on the guidance package.

For each vehicle antipersonnel (bee hive) and heavy demolition rounds were found to be more appropriate to their respective roles and thankfully, we never had to duke it out someplace where Pattons or Abrahms couldn't be brought in 'eventually'.

The reason _RUSSIAN_ tanks use Kobra and Songster etc. missile based gun systems is because their tubes are so shoddy that they cannot generate enough bore pressure to keep a sabot going over range.

Even as their stabilization and sighting is in fact worse than even the M60A3 for the most part.

The only semi-guided 120mm round we have now is a multipurpose HEAT round with a smart fuze for attacking defiladed choppers and infantry/bunkers. All the guided antiarmor rounds will come online (if they ever do) as a function of later generation tanks with smaller caliber guns whose crews _deliberately choose_ not to engage on a line of sight basis.

Either because (as airdelivered vehicles) they lack the armor to duke it out. Or because their muzzle horse cannot go through the front slope. Something we would be honest enough to admit, did it ever happen.

Again, if you are taking _MBT kills_ from RPG fired into high flank or RQ conditioned turret hits, it hardly makes sense to put a 900-1,200mm RHA equivalent on the front turretslope. Because THAT is not where they are shooting you.

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However, they can be blinded by dazzler defenses and regardless of the final impact speed, a large HEAT round will decimate a small, lighty armored vehicle.
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Again, if the round is moving slow enough (and the primary reason we would use HEAT on armor is because of partial masking or extreme range that made the graze on Sabot tricky) anything that uses an active explosive capability will be able to knock it down or predet it.

DO NOT ASSUME that just because it's moving at /2/3rds of a mile per second/ at the muzzle that it is going to keep doing so more than about 1,000m downrange. HEAT is a full caliber projectile, it is heavy, it comes out the muzzle slower. It will arrive (on long range targets) with probably no more than the Mach 1.14 of a Hellfire or 1.5 of a Maverick. And those missiles, though difficult, are fully engageably by Arena.

HEAT/HEP/HESH's big problem is and always will be however, not merely a 'hail mary' lobshot profile but the fact that point-detonation limits the 2/3rds length for diameter standoff ratio needed to get a good shape charge going, even before you add reactives to turn or collapse the jet.

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They simply do not have the armor to protect themselves from this devastating round and modern MBTs with composite are fairly resistant to it, thus requiring the sabots, but even a single sabot wont disable a tank, because if it just hits a nonvital area, it will go directly through, HEAT rounds do huge amounts of damage to the inside of the tank, and usually result in the death of the crew, especially in lightly armed IFVs.
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Yes and no. A good flak jacket or even full body suit (PBA was originally a tanker idea) will stop a fair amount of the smaller fragments zipping around a crew compartment. So will antispall and ballistic curtains/mats installed in theater. Somebody is going to die where the main point of breach occurs. But surprisingly few others, if they are properly kitted out and obeying mission area security rules.

Some of which may be darn hard to stick to in a desert.

The real problem is that rapid fire extinguishers and 'millionth of a second' triggering systems CONTINUE to fail as reliable methods to keep the interior of a tank from cooking or poisoning or asphyxiating the crew in the HUGE change of local pressure as the round enters.

And these factors will kill men who would otherwise have survived the initial fragment shower.

Nor should it be ignored that Sabot (both Tungsten and DU) /burns/ with terrible pyrophoric heat, upon initiation of impact energy transfer. If this contacts _anything_ flammable inside, you will have secondary fires. If it hits fuel, that vehicle is dead.

The fact that at least /export/ models of Russian tanks continue to use more or less unsecured, open, stowage of main tube rounds is what makes them different from U.S. because if you light off a clutch of main gun rounds inside the hull, not just the function but the vehicle itself, along with everybody inside is dead.

Brewer's Remorse be hanged.

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I'd also like to mention that most of the missles mounted on IFVs are not mounted on tanks because the main gun is superior, being able to fire their own missles out the tube or just using converntional tank rounds.
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No. Longbarrels tell you about poor metallurgy. Because long barrels flex and bounce and lose boresight quicker than a horny virgin at a Porn Convention. Where rifling is not a consideration and you have a minimum caliber length in which to achieve proper expansion of the breach gasses, every Russian tank out there SHOULD have barrel no longer than that on the Abrahms (about 40 calibers?) or at most Leo2A6 (50?).

Again, it is these long tubes and an ever 'bigger gun' spiraling quest for higher caliber that are the dead giveaway that the Russians systems at least are NOT capturing the same brake horsepower at the muzzle. And the same terminal energy (manufacturing DU is quite difficult) at impact.

Which leads to a belief in HEAT.

It being the /slowness/ of these latter rounds to get to target (outside of about 1,800m, you can actually 'dodge' if you are moving and see the muzzle index angle at time of firing) and their inferior sighting lay that requires correction, post launch.

Only an idiot fires a LOS round when he can lobshot from behind both artificial or natural horizon line AND air, at much greater distances. When/if our intelligent rounds come onboard, the difference will be that they will have to be able to acquire targets not visible at time of launch and which may indeed have gone a considerable distance down/across range in the time of flight to eyes open on the seeker.

War and the preparation of a War Fighting Doctrine is about half physical preparation and training of the 'people end'.

And half creating the /system of systems/ approach by which it is harder for your enemy to master the range of design, fabrication, manufacture and integration/testing methodologies by which a given weapons system is made 'better' (a lasting edge) than that which your potential opponent can manage.

There are many great secrets in their building but few in their physics. The Russians are simply embarrassed by the obvious flaws that those physics point out in their weapons engineering process.

And we are polite enough not to laugh. Too loudly. In public.


KPl.

Originally posted by COWlan
LOSAT is great, however it is HUGE compared to other ATGMs and can't be deployed with a normal two/one man squad. A ATGM that might interest you is the Chinese HJ-9 ATGM. It promises to be one of the world's most deadly and cost effective system with a penetration of >1200mm RHAE to targets fitted with ERA. It can be mounted on practically any vehicle or a 4x4 specially designed APC fitted specially for this missile with 4 ready to be launched at any time and another 8 stored inside the APC. The fire control system of the HJ-9 is all digital electronic technology. The missile guidance is semi-automatic. The launcher of the HJ-9 includes optical sight, thermal sight, TV goniometry, laser command transmission, and missile launch mechanism. The operator only needs to keep the sight's cross-hair on the target, and the system automatically transmits the laser command to the missile until it hits the target. It can be mounted on a tripod as well. It has been said to be extremely cost effective and extremely deadly for tactics such as people's war, city war and attack of tanks without armoured support. HJ-9 has a range of 5 Km, can also be heli launched and an extended range version will surface in the next few years for APC mounted and heli mounted versions.

Are you saying even the M1 Abrams, Challenger 2 & Leopard 2 Tanks would be vulnerable to this Missile?

Originally posted by Flyboy211

Originally posted by COWlan
LOSAT is great, however it is HUGE compared to other ATGMs and can't be deployed with a normal two/one man squad. A ATGM that might interest you is the Chinese HJ-9 ATGM. It promises to be one of the world's most deadly and cost effective system with a penetration of >1200mm RHAE to targets fitted with ERA. It can be mounted on practically any vehicle or a 4x4 specially designed APC fitted specially for this missile with 4 ready to be launched at any time and another 8 stored inside the APC. The fire control system of the HJ-9 is all digital electronic technology. The missile guidance is semi-automatic. The launcher of the HJ-9 includes optical sight, thermal sight, TV goniometry, laser command transmission, and missile launch mechanism. The operator only needs to keep the sight's cross-hair on the target, and the system automatically transmits the laser command to the missile until it hits the target. It can be mounted on a tripod as well. It has been said to be extremely cost effective and extremely deadly for tactics such as people's war, city war and attack of tanks without armoured support. HJ-9 has a range of 5 Km, can also be heli launched and an extended range version will surface in the next few years for APC mounted and heli mounted versions.

Are you saying even the M1 Abrams, Challenger 2 & Leopard 2 Tanks would be vulnerable to this Missile?

Ya, most likely. Thats why this thread is here. To let us better know the ways modern tank can be penerated.

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Are you saying even the M1 Abrams, Challenger 2 & Leopard 2 Tanks would be vulnerable to this Missile?
>>

Only if it has a top attack profile (in which case it likely becomes vulnerable to RFCM on the altimeter/fuze).

It is just too easy to layer on ERA and disrupt the HEAT jet 'just enough' so that the Burlington/DU layer underneath is hardly even scratched. And what many people don't 'get' is that Chobham/Burlington with a DU (HA) applique collar comes up to something like _2-3X_ the equivalent Rolled Homogenous Armor rating that is commercially used, 'unadjusted'. We're talking on the order of 1700-2400mm across the frontal arc.

i.e. you take a 5km head shot on a U.S. tank platoon on the move and you will probably bounce. You try for some kind of flanking attack and your firing post sensor will eat white smoke about 10 seconds before the refused turrets splatter your tankkiller team's guts all over the landscape.

Nor should you be all that impressed with the Chitech as a 'new development'.

For in fact, all the HJ-9 is is the Israeli MAPATS TOW which replaces the SACLOS reel with a laser command guidance receiver for extended range. Despite this removal of the wire spooling deployment (and the lack of spin stabilization required) limit on the weapon, it STILL is not supersonic and it STILL takes upwards of 30 seconds to get to 5km.

Which means that you are once again sitting there like a schmuck with your head and shoulders exposed, thinking you are going to beat the MP-HEAT coming the other way.

This is why I hate the Israeli's. For 'Despite Congressional Encouragement to the Contrary' no U.S. arms company wants to play with them on the basis of having their stuff copied, new subcomponents inserted where necessary to beat reexport restrictions and then found on the world market where it undercuts the original 'sans licensing fee'.

In this case, I can only hope that even the Israeli's are getting screwed by the Chinese who themselves have a noted reputation for reverse engineering on such wonderful systems as the SA-565 series helo as well as other 'Israeli Donated' systems like the Pythons and Patriot tech.

What this leads to is proliferation and escalation for it's own commercial gain sake, countering the weapons which we fail to produce (FOTT is MAPATS with LCG backed up by an I2R seeker) with 'more development programs' for those which are too expensive to buy (Javelin/AAWS-M is actually more effective on more targets, even though you have to engage from shorter range).

In any case, the only time this kind of 'seated' tank killing crap is useful is when you are in constrained LOS environment and afraid to deploy screening infantry because you may have to didimau on out of there. i.e. FIBUA.

For all other conditions; most commanders will simply refuse the chokelanes and killsacs which allow armor to be engaged by such slow systems. And so you are better off deploying remote operated mines or heavy, vehicle mount heavy systems that can shoot and scoot or attack without direct exposure to the operator themselves.

10 JCM or LOCAAS in a VLS cell on the back of a truck could be a real killer. Not least because they could fly _16km_ OVER THE HORIZON and lockup the enemy after launch.

Something which, so far, (thank heavens) no other nation has managed to develop into a serious capability.

As long as potential threat nations idiots insist on 'following our lead' (thinking they are /so clever/ stealing technology which is plateau'd out) rather than conceptualizing their own solutions; I suppose we ought to be happy.


KPl.

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Penetrate a tank's armor, easily done, just make a bigger gun. In case you forgot in WWI we were using 20mm. WWII it was 88's, 75's, 76's, etc.120 and 125 are today's standard. In the 90's the US made a 140mm prototype for the M1A1, and Russia's next gen tank is using a 152mm.

It's an arms race, it has been that way since the tank was invented.

I can guarantee both SCO and NATO are confident that their current guns are capable of defeating each others armor, or we would have had the 152's and 140's in service a decade ago.

Jeezz where are your imaginations anyway?
Sneak up onto the rear of the tank .be careful of any over watch and put a thermite grenade on the rear part of the turret.
My leaders feared me.



Scouts out.

For an asymmetrically equipped force looking to defeat tanks, I would suggest, for the most part, mobility kills. Ditches and obstacles to hinder/channel their movement.
Weapons that might not have much of a chance of getting through the armored hull might destroy or degrade the tread.
.50 cal sniper rifles might be able to shoot out sighting optics or turret mounted machine guns.
Use armor-piercing rounds of any caliber to make nasty holes in the main gun tube.

My current tank of desire is, by the sounds of it, pretty impenetrable...

Images of the P'okp'ung-ho finally surfaced in 2010, which showed the tank appeared to be based on Chonma-ho or Type 85 more so than the T-72 tanks as previously believed.

North Korean sources claims that the P'okp'ung-ho is comparable or superior to the Russian T-90, which was developed in the 1990s.[citation needed] Although the design and size of the P'okp'ung-ho closely resembles the T-80 or T-90, its capabilities are said to be more or less comparable to export variants of the T-72 or other 2.5th generation tanks. Although the P'okp'ung-ho tanks may be superior to the M48A5K, K1 and somewhat comparable to K1 PIP, or at most K1A1, it is unlikely to have any advantage over the K2 Black Panther. In any case however, the P'ok'pung-ho has better mobility, survivability and firepower than the Ch'onma-ho.[3]

ArmamentThe P'okp'ung-ho's primary armament is likely the 115 mm 2A20; though, the 2A26/2A46 125 mm smoothbore gun is a possibility,[3] which fires Armor Piercing shells produced in North Korea. The tank also has a heavy anti-aircraft machine gun and a coaxial machine gun, as well as four smoke grenade launchers on the left side of the turret.

Hull/ArmorThe hull of the Pokpung-ho is a heavily modified T-62 with a greater length and an additional pair of roadwheels. The engine compartment and the layout show some resemblance to a T-72 hull. The glacis plate of the Pokpung-ho is protected by appliqué armor, while the turret is reinforced with wedge-shaped armor modules.

en.wikipedia.org...

...at short range anyway. With most of the layered amor vehicles they are not really designed for battle formations, but for just getting 'in there'. The only way to stop them is to drop heavy artillerty on them, long range. Amor technology moves a-pace with amor penetrating weaponry...tanks are designed for the urban environment because that is where most of the fighting takes place these days.

reply to post by KilgoreTrout


Designed for urban combat? No, the only "tank" I can think of designed for urban combat is the BMPT.

Currently there are no tanks built from the ground up for urban warfare fielded by anyone, tanks are designed for open field 5-8km battles in massive formations. Perhaps you mean IFVs?

Originally posted by ZIVONIC
reply to post by KilgoreTrout

 

Designed for urban combat? No, the only "tank" I can think of designed for urban combat is the BMPT.

Currently there are no tanks built from the ground up for urban warfare fielded by anyone, tanks are designed for open field 5-8km battles in massive formations. Perhaps you mean IFVs?

You are of course entirely correct, but, how many tanks have been designed from the ground up in recent years? In fact since about 1934? From the ground up?

What I should have said is that tanks are equipped for urban warfare.

My apologies.

reply to post by KilgoreTrout


When I say from the ground up I'm referring to hull/turret layout, 360 degree armor vs front. The Merkava IV is clearly an urban-centric design and the BMPT is a vast urban-centric modification of the T-72.

Besides those two tanks (if anyone knows anymore, please feel free to correct me), everything else is a stopgap measure. Rooftop AT will always be superior to armor, at least until Arena/Quick-Kill/Trophy are fielded, and urban infantry tactics are changed.

It was funny to see the pt76 in person,an M60 machine gun at close range penetrated the hull several times.