US future tank-what can replace abrams??

Do you know anything about tank which can replace abrams??Russians are developing their t-95 and how can look US answer?I found some materials about it but there are only ideas,nothing more

www.lidiotduvillage.com...

www.nationaldefensemagazine.org...

The U.S. is looking towards a light 20 ton anti-tank vehicle armed with a electro-thermal gun. Personally, I don't like the idea, it's too risky.

I currently work on that program

My building designs and builds the EFV or Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle, formerly known as the AAAV (Advanced Amphibious Assualt Vehicle)

What about the new armor plating that's being tested (in UK I believe)? It's been discussed on the Discovery channel a few times. This new plating is supposed to make the tank vastly lighter and armor repairs can be done in the field.

There's electric armor that uses a powerful magnetic field to disrupt the copper plasma jet that RPG and other HEAT rounds use.

Current tanks 3.5 generations are M1A2 Abrams SEP, Leopard 2A5,T-80UM, Challenger and Leclerc etc.
The future tanks (4. generation) are already in development. I will now talk about western tanks. The 4. gen tanks will be smaller, lighter (around 56 tons). They will problably have 3 man crew located in hull and unmanned (and smaller) turret with autoloader. The conceptional drawing :

As you can see it is slightly smaller with low-siluete unmaned turret. Another concept is "semi turret tank" whre the turret is just the canon. The amunition is auto-loaded from the hull. This is "expeditional Hawk tank" form GM/Cadillac

There was also no-turret-tank in consideration but it was rejected (the only one no-turret-tank is Swedish STRV-103).
The FMBT (future main battle tank) must be very agile. The speed must be at least 100 km/h on road, or 80km/h (terrain). It will probably have diesel-engine. Gas turbine was modern in 80ites but the current diesels (like EUROPACK) are equally powerful but they need only half amunt of fuel when comparing to gas turbine. The engine will be located in front hull (like by Merkava).

The armor will contain only small amount of steel, mostly only lighter materials like titanium,aluminium or composites. The British want to create no metal armour, they want use termohardened polymeres witch should increase the resistance by 300%. The ERA (explosive-reaction armor) will be aalso used. Another defensive systems witch will be used are active defense systems like current russian Shtora (ATGM jamming) and ARENA ( small rocket projectiles combined with small radar used to destroy incoming ATGM misiles - interesting but also very dangerous for infantry-I think this is the reason why ARENA type devices are not in western considered for western FMBTs- at least for now).
ARENA pictures (those red things):





Cannon - yet it is not clear what gun will the FMBT use. There are 2 main opinions :
1. larger (140mm) caliber = very powerfull, but you can carry fewer rounds
2. more powerfull smaller caliber (120 or even back to 105mm!) canons = electrothermalchemical gun - diskused on other WEPONRY thread, or liquid propellant. Both have their pros an cons - liquid propellant need complicated loading system and ETC cannon creates high temperatures.

So this was 4th gen. and 5th generations projects are laready also running. This tank should apear around 2020.






As you can see tank is smaller and lower. Crew is only two man and tank can be also controled by radio signals. AET (all-electrical tank) should have electo-engine power should be produced by solar panels or recieved from satelites. The composite armor is rienforced by a EM field witch should deformate incoming rounds or misiles. The turret carries 6 barrel EM gun (3 barrels for 38mm anti infantry explosive rounds, and 3 25mm armour piercing rounds). In the rear hull is place for vertical launched ATGMs or 3 soldiers. The problem witch need to be solved before this sci-fi thing comes into production are how to concentrate the required energy for EM field and EM gun in such small space.

I also saw something recently showed the US looking into wheeled tanks. Not Abrams replacements, but as another avenue in the area of AFWs.

As well as some electric armored vehicles..... the ones I saw were experimental and a long way off.

The Future Combat System was replaced by the Future Combat System(s).

Originally posted by longbow

this is not arena, this is drozd,

armor.kiev.ua... info on arena

the bottom line is....our tanks suck. we need something with more armor yet it's still light. if it can't stop an rpg, it's not worth driving. also, we would want something like turret gun on top of it so that soldiers dont have to stick their heads out to fire. we should also use depleted uranium in the cannons to give it a little more boom. depleted uranium will have tons of kinetic energy and it can also be miniaturized so that it can also be used in regular guns. finally, making the tanks remote control would be the best. no human lives are in danger so more can be sent out into high risk areas. this could probably be done with a camera covering 360 degrees of the tank. it should also be equiped with night vision and infared stuff so that the enemy's body heat can be detected easily. plus a vertical anti-aircraft missile port....like the one in the pic.

Thermoplastic armors don't offer 3 times the resistance they offer about the same resistance as steel at 1/3 the mass.Its called mass efficency [ME] and a ME of 3 is offsett by the density of around 1.5 g/cc resulting in an effectiveness of 60% of steel by thickness. That means to get the same effective resistance of steel you'd need the armor to be almost twice as thick. Modern tanks have a mass of 40-60cm steel so the thickness of this armor would have to be about 1.0m thick. Whats worse is that the resistance to shaped charges is not that much better than against KE projectiles thus it may offer

60cm KE and 100cm HEAT resistance.If made with this armor a tank with a volume similar to a Leopard 1 tank would mean a 45 ton tank. If the volume was the same as a russian tank the mass would be around 35 tons.



[Edited on 6-5-2004 by psteel]

[Edited on 6-5-2004 by psteel]

Originally posted by silQ
also, we would want something like turret gun on top of it so that soldiers dont have to stick their heads out to fire.

We already have that. The .50 cal on an Abrams can be aimed and fired from inside the tank without risk to the commander.

All modern tanks have that. You sight and fire from inside the tank.

this is not arena, this is drozd,

armor.kiev.ua... info on arena

Yes you are true sorry about that. But they both work on similar principles.

Originally posted by silQ
the bottom line is....our tanks suck. we need something with more armor yet it's still light. if it can't stop an rpg, it's not worth driving. also, we would want something like turret gun on top of it so that soldiers dont have to stick their heads out to fire. we should also use depleted uranium in the cannons to give it a little more boom. depleted uranium will have tons of kinetic energy and it can also be miniaturized so that it can also be used in regular guns. finally, making the tanks remote control would be the best. no human lives are in danger so more can be sent out into high risk areas. this could probably be done with a camera covering 360 degrees of the tank. it should also be equiped with night vision and infared stuff so that the enemy's body heat can be detected easily. plus a vertical anti-aircraft missile port....like the one in the pic.

Our tanks suck...ha.

thanks longbow,great pics

I'm sure that after iraq anybody understand that heavy armor will be nedeed on the battlefield for a long time.

[Edited on 8-5-2004 by gattaca]

I found something interesting about that )


www.fas.org...

Originally posted by gattaca
thanks longbow,great pics

I'm sure that after iraq anybody understand that heavy armor will be nedeed on the battlefield for a long time.

[Edited on 8-5-2004 by gattaca]

If only that was really true. FCS program is a 20 ton tank that will equipp 3/4 of all USA army/NG units.Only the Legacy corps will be left as M-1/M-2 until 2020 when they will be replaced with a heavier verison of FCS [30 tons?].