Military Equipment Sperging Thread - The Tiger II is a better tank than the M1 Abrams edition

[Sleazy Car Salesman]

Is that even a HEAT round? That looks like some sort of screw in PD fuse.
View attachment 8942781View attachment 8942810

It's probably an RPG-7 warhead.

 

[The Grognard]

And there are still people in the world who will sincerely insist that the Merkava is the greatest tank in the world.

The only people who did this are IDF simps and those bribed to be ones. It has some very good ideas like putting the engine forward and having a rear door for extra crew survivability but it's still a tank only really shines in defensive warfare.

 

[Sleazy Car Salesman]

It has some very good ideas like putting the engine forward and having a rear door for extra crew survivability

Both of those things are retarded though.

 

[The Grognard]

Both of those things are retarded though.

You have to think of the way it's used. The point of it is to be the most survivable tank in a hull-down defensive position against hostile armored forces. Having the engine forward increases the survivability of the crew in case of front armor hits and the rear door allows for pretty quick rearmaments and to be used as an improvised transport. Just because it's different, doesn't mean it's stupid.

 

[VF-1J Armored Valkyrie]

You have to think of the way it's used. The point of it is to be the most survivable tank in a hull-down defensive position against hostile armored forces.

They haven't actually been used that way since the Yom Kippur war, more than 20 years before the Mk.4 design was finalized. In the meantime, engine forward with the rear door has made itself into both a major security risk when that ramp is down, and forced ammo storeage in the hull making the entire tank more dangerous in any case. It is only a matter of time before a Hezb FPV or bomber drone scores a hit through an open rear door, which will probably produce a disproportionate amount of casualties based on how the IDF uses that rear compartment.

 

[The Grognard]

They haven't actually been used that way since the Yom Kippur war, more than 20 years before the Mk.4 design was finalized. In the meantime, engine forward with the rear door has made itself into both a major security risk when that ramp is down, and forced ammo storeage in the hull making the entire tank more dangerous in any case. It is only a matter of time before a Hezb FPV or bomber drone scores a hit through an open rear door, which will probably produce a disproportionate amount of casualties based on how the IDF uses that rear compartment.

Correct use of supporting infantry, AA and EW tools would mitigate this risk more than changing the overall design that so far, has worked out for their military over the past 40+ years. Every tank has faced issues with dealing with the FPV drone problem and so far, the most effective one has been to turn your tank into a giant hedgehog with poles and nets serving to entangle or detonate the drone away from the vehicle itself.

Now if there's something that actually is worth critiquing about it than just being different as to fit the specific use-case of the IDF, it's that it's still a very heavy and slow vehicle so it is not as fit for mobile warfare as say, Leopard 2, T-90, or Abrams. At least they bothered to also ensure that they go with a regular turbo-diesel engine so it's less of a pain for conscripts to maintain.

 

[Sleazy Car Salesman]

They haven't actually been used that way since the Yom Kippur war, more than 20 years before the Mk.4 design was finalized. In the meantime, engine forward with the rear door has made itself into both a major security risk when that ramp is down, and forced ammo storeage in the hull making the entire tank more dangerous in any case. It is only a matter of time before a Hezb FPV or bomber drone scores a hit through an open rear door, which will probably produce a disproportionate amount of casualties based on how the IDF uses that rear compartment.

You have to think of the way it's used. The point of it is to be the most survivable tank in a hull-down defensive position against hostile armored forces. Having the engine forward increases the survivability of the crew in case of front armor hits and the rear door allows for pretty quick rearmaments and to be used as an improvised transport. Just because it's different, doesn't mean it's stupid.

You see those boxes on either side of the rear door? That's where your ammo goes. And while yes, the turret is well armored the hull is relatively soft and is taller than any contemporary tank's hull due to the need for the crew door in the rear and because of the frontal engine. Furthermore while a front mounted engine theoretically increases crew survival rates it does nothing for the tank since any frontal penetration is now a mission kill and now your guys are bailing out anyways, which isn't any safer in the Merkava than in any other tank.

The Merkava's hull is a serious liability due in large part to the frontal engine and fuel tanks. The UFP is sloped at about nine degrees but it's only about 50mm thick. The lower section is thicker but has less slope. This is not enough to stop modern APFSDS.


The Engine placement on the Merkava 4 is the same as on the Merkava 3, and the distance from the engine to the turret is the same from the Merkava 1 all the way to the 4, and the fuel tanks are in the same place. There is no way to meaningfully increase the thickness of the frontal armor plate on the Merkava without relocating or removing those fuel tanks. The Merkava's hull is also longer than even the Leopard's hull, which is really something.

You also have to keep in mind that the Merkava is jewish and so anything said about it or its performance by its primary operators (kikes) or its primary opponents (durka durks) should be taken with a massive heaping of salt.

 

[VF-1J Armored Valkyrie]

Now if there's something that actually is worth critiquing about it than just being different as to fit the specific use-case of the IDF

Forcing ammo storeage in the hull is not 'just being different as to fit the specific use case of the IDF'. It's an objectively inferior layout that throws every other provision for crew safety directly out the window the moment anything hits the tank anywhere besides the one side of the front angle that has the engine sitting behind it. Yes, every tank is having the same issues with drones and is being retrofitted in a similar manner, but most of these tanks have objectively better prospects for post-penetration effects. Yes, it is too late to design their way out of this without designing a new tank from the ground up.

has worked out for their military over the past 40+ years

Yeah, that's nice. How well is it working out now in that cook-off though? Not very.

 

[Sleazy Car Salesman]

Forcing ammo storeage in the hull is not 'just being different as to fit the specific use case of the IDF'. It's an objectively inferior layout that throws every other provision for crew safety directly out the window the moment anything hits the tank anywhere besides the one side of the front angle that has the engine sitting behind it.

Not just the crew but all their infantry friends and any civilians (remember that this is Israel) near the tank as well since you now have, in the worst case, the world's largest and most expensive pipe bomb, and in the best case, a gigantic Dublin Doodlebug, on your hands.

 

[VF-1J Armored Valkyrie]

Not just the crew but all their infantry friends and any civilians (remember that this is Israel) near the tank as well since you now have, in the worst case, the world's largest and most expensive pipe bomb, and in the best case, a gigantic Dublin Doodlebug, on your hands.

It's practically inevitable. There will be a Merkava hit by a drone while loading/unloading, or while doing double duty as an ambulance, or any of the other very silly things that they use the Merk rear compartment for, and it's gonna produce at least half a dozen casualties.

 

[Sleazy Car Salesman]

It's practically inevitable. There will be a Merkava hit by a drone while loading/unloading, or while doing double duty as an ambulance, or any of the other very silly things that they use the Merk rear compartment for, and it's gonna produce at least half a dozen casualties.

I think it also cannot be understated how much of a slow fat fuck the Merk IV is either. It's got a longer and taller hull than a Leopard 2, is almost as tall as a Challenger II, while having less armor than either. Its mobility is subpar at best compared to any modern tank, and while the turret is well armored and low profile it pays for that with a lack of gun depression (-7 degrees) which kind of defeats the purpose of the whole "Hull down defensive fire" thing it was ostensibly designed for. The only really amazing thing about it for the longest time was the Trophy system but that's more or less been exposed as all hype lately.

Frontal engines in general are just a bad idea tbh.

 

[VF-1J Armored Valkyrie]

The only really amazing thing about it for the longest time was the Trophy system but that's more or less been exposed as all hype lately.

Trophy still works very well against conventional rockets and ATGMs in most cases. It can be oversaturated and needs major updates to handle drones, but it is miles better than not having them and being vulnerable to literally anything with a shaped charge. But even beyond that, it isn't exclusive to the IDF anymore. The US has hundreds of APS sets for Abrams, is buying more for Bradleys and Strykers IIRC, and has been doing so since the end of the 2010s. Other nations are also still working on their own APS situations. It hasn't been a uniquely Israeli thing to have APS in widespread service for half a decade at least.

 

[Sleazy Car Salesman]

Trophy still works very well against conventional rockets and ATGMs in most cases. It can be oversaturated and needs major updates to handle drones, but it is miles better than not having them and being vulnerable to literally anything with a shaped charge. But even beyond that, it isn't exclusive to the IDF anymore. The US has hundreds of APS sets for Abrams, is buying more for Bradleys and Strykers IIRC, and has been doing so since the end of the 2020s. Other nations are also still working on their own APS situations. It hasn't been a uniquely Israeli thing to have APS in widespread service for half a decade at least.

True on all counts but I would like to point out that APS on Israeli Merkavas was a necessity due to the poor armor on the Merkava's hull which was routinely penetrated by Fagot and Koronet missiles frontally in multiple battles.

 

[The Grognard]

Trophy still works very well against conventional rockets and ATGMs in most cases. It can be oversaturated and needs major updates to handle drones, but it is miles better than not having them and being vulnerable to literally anything with a shaped charge. But even beyond that, it isn't exclusive to the IDF anymore. The US has hundreds of APS sets for Abrams, is buying more for Bradleys and Strykers IIRC, and has been doing so since the end of the 2020s. Other nations are also still working on their own APS situations. It hasn't been a uniquely Israeli thing to have APS in widespread service for half a decade at least.

The idea of an active protection system isn't even new, considering that the Soviets were already using theirs in Afganistan. The Drozd was effective even if had issues but those came more from having to rethink how infantry covers tanks as it would make the normally close relation between the rifleman and the tanker more hazardous than it normally was. Arena was a major improvement but it came out only after the Union fell so it's roll-out was hampered by there being roughly 9000000 more acute issues in the Russia and very few export customers being interested in it at the time.

 

[VF-1J Armored Valkyrie]

The idea of an active protection system isn't even new, considering that the Soviets were already using theirs in Afganistan. The Drozd was effective even if had issues but those came more from having to rethink how infantry covers tanks as it would make the normally close relation between the rifleman and the tanker more hazardous than it normally was. Arena was a major improvement but it came out only after the Union fell so it's roll-out was hampered by there being roughly 9000000 more acute issues in the Russia and very few export customers being interested in it at the time.

Drozd was the first, but it was extremely limited and prospects for further development were not good. Current APS still have issues with dismounts and collateral damage, but with Drozd those issues were much worse, because the interceptor used was much more powerful than anything used now. This was needed because of the low fidelity of the radars and the fixed launchers. Even then, the system was going to have huge issues with APFSDS, top-attack ATGMs, and anything else that wasn't traveling between 70 and 700m/s at the 60-degree arc directly in front of the turret.

I doubt that it would have ever actually seen widespread service, even if the USSR hadn't been doomed to collapse. Especially not the proposed 360-degree version, which never even got sent in small numbers to a niche unit for more realistic testing like Drozd-1 did.

I would be interested in any kind of independently verifiable evidence that Arena works at all under real battlefield conditions, let alone as advertized.

 

[Falcos_Commisar]

And there are still people in the world who will sincerely insist that the Merkava is the greatest tank in the world.

IDF myth making in action. It's..... Interesting and has a good gun and sights and an interesting layout.

The only people who did this are IDF simps and those bribed to be ones. It has some very good ideas like putting the engine forward and having a rear door for extra crew survivability but it's still a tank only really shines in defensive warfare.

Ehh the Mk3 and Mk4 can get up and go and hit ~40mph. Not great, not terrible. The Mk1 and 2 were ~35mph and were essentially equivalent to a Centurion in terms of mobility.

You have to think of the way it's used. The point of it is to be the most survivable tank in a hull-down defensive position against hostile armored forces. Having the engine forward increases the survivability of the crew in case of front armor hits and the rear door allows for pretty quick rearmaments and to be used as an improvised transport. Just because it's different, doesn't mean it's stupid.

Correct although even then the engine isn't armor it's just.... There because they wanted easy and fast access to ammo storage/reloads as the tank would be in a revet with JUST the turret peeking over the earth.

They haven't actually been used that way since the Yom Kippur war, more than 20 years before the Mk.4 design was finalized. In the meantime, engine forward with the rear door has made itself into both a major security risk when that ramp is down, and forced ammo storeage in the hull making the entire tank more dangerous in any case. It is only a matter of time before a Hezb FPV or bomber drone scores a hit through an open rear door, which will probably produce a disproportionate amount of casualties based on how the IDF uses that rear compartment.

The Merkava design layout has been.... Identical since the Mk1. See the semi naked Mk4 turret.



Under all of the blocky composite is a very plain steel hull. IIRC is is armor steel but the base hull are turret as re just there to have composite armor mounted to them.

Now if there's something that actually is worth critiquing about it than just being different as to fit the specific use-case of the IDF, it's that it's still a very heavy and slow vehicle so it is not as fit for mobile warfare as say, Leopard 2, T-90, or Abrams. At least they bothered to also ensure that they go with a regular turbo-diesel engine so it's less of a pain for conscripts to maintain

The Mk3 and 4 are a lot quicker than the 1 and 2 (which were about as zippy as a Centurion).

The entire Merkava family came about due to VERY niche circumstances during the 1973 Yom Kippur war that the IDF literally thought would be the same for every single war since.... Whoops.

The Merkava's hull is a serious liability due in large part to the frontal engine and fuel tanks. The UFP is sloped at about nine degrees but it's only about 50mm thick. The lower section is thicker but has less slope. This is not enough to stop modern APFSDS.


The Engine placement on the Merkava 4 is the same as on the Merkava 3, and the distance from the engine to the turret is the same from the Merkava 1 all the way to the 4, and the fuel tanks are in the same place. There is no way to meaningfully increase the thickness of the frontal armor plate on the Merkava without relocating or removing those fuel tanks. The Merkava's hull is also longer than even the Leopard's hull, which is really something.

https://below-the-turret-ring.blogspot.com/2016/04/merkava-4-damaged-during-training.html?m=1

This shows how the armor worked in relation to a big HE shell.

Note that the naked Mk.4 image is dead... Sadly.

Wait I found another:



The Mk4 and Mk3 hulls have large removable composite arrays on a steel hull.

The Merkava Mk4 is almost certainly the last one they'll make as the next Gen tank has been under development since 2017 (the initial design was going to have a 2 man crew lol)

Forcing ammo storeage in the hull is not 'just being different as to fit the specific use case of the IDF'. It's an objectively inferior layout that throws every other provision for crew safety directly out the window the moment anything hits the tank anywhere besides the one side of the front angle that has the engine sitting behind it. Yes, every tank is having the same issues with drones and is being retrofitted in a similar manner, but most of these tanks have objectively better prospects for post-penetration effects. Yes, it is too late to design their way out of this without designing a new tank from the ground up.


Yeah, that's nice. How well is it working out now in that cook-off though? Not very.

The Leopard 2 and Challenger ALSO have hull ammo storage and the cook off /explode on the regular.

The Merkava is essentially a mid 1970s design made for VERY specific Israeli conditions. A low profile turret (head on) with essentially ZERO shells in said turret and the rest of the tank safely under ground in a revet blasting away at advancing T-62s and T-72s.

The Caramel will definitely have ammo separated from the crew in a turret and may have an unmanned turret entirely.

doing double duty as an ambulance, or any of the other very silly things that they use the Merk rear compartment for

The compartment is just for ammo.

It's NOT an APC, it's not an ambulance, it's to MAYBE stuff another tank's crew in there and get them away or to reload easily as the tank sits in a revet as hundreds of Syrian and Egyptian tanks trundle towards it in a single file line.

Oh and that blog has a great write-up on autocanon sizes being a MAJOR constraint on ammunition

https://below-the-turret-ring.blogspot.com/2016/04/bigger-guns-are-not-always-better.html?m=1

Fwiw the new US Army XM30 will have the same ammo capacity as the 35mm Bushmaster so... 70 rounds ready to go 🫩 what a fucking joke.

 

[VF-1J Armored Valkyrie]

The compartment is just for ammo.

It's NOT an APC, it's not an ambulance, it's to MAYBE stuff another tank's crew in there

The compartment is supposed to be just for ammo, and doesn't make it an APC or ambulance. But in practice it is used in an ad hoc way for things like emergency CASEVAC, or as an APC when the 10 rounds in the turret are deemed sufficient and/or resupply is deemed safe and easy. It has been done, the crews know it can be done, but with the new threats flying around I think it is a Bad Idea.

This is also at the core of the issue; the IDF has this mythology within itself where individuals like Zvika Greengold take the initiative and use whatever is at hand to solve a crisis without waiting for proper orders or equipment. It's a great piece of military culture in some ways but also leads to dumb-dumb stuff.

The Leopard 2 and Challenger ALSO have hull ammo storage and the cook off /explode on the regular.

Yeah I got a little heated at the idea, hull ammo storage for a defensive tank designed for fighting retreats and hull-down fighting positions is a choice. The Challenger has it's separate wet storage system and the Leopard's hull ammo racks are up front behind the hull armor. It's the door of the Merkava, combined with the hull ammo storage right at that door, combined with the way that IDF troops have and will use things that work but aren't really kosher, combined with the new drone warfare, that makes me legitimately scared of an avoidable mass casualty event.

 

[Falcos_Commisar]

https://www.twz.com/land/m1e3-next-gen-abrams-tank-production-could-begin-next-year

Massive info dump on the M1E3. No torsion bars means more hull space.

Notional crew setup





US Army type classification of the Iron Fist APS system. Look at the projectile it fires.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=yxQVea6VNz0

 

[The Grognard]

I would be interested in any kind of independently verifiable evidence that Arena works at all under real battlefield conditions, let alone as advertized.

IIRC the real problem with it was Russia being broke in the 90's and not being considered a priority expense in the 2000's. It does apparently work but because it's a significant extra expense compared to just using more ERA bricks, it was not installed in significant numbers. I also wouldn't be surprised if Elbit got some of the engineers that worked on Arena in the 90's to become employed in Israel. The most interesting thing about it's history is that it apparently did get pitched around as an exportable item in the early 2000's, as something to be licensed to General Dynamics and the South Koreans apparently experimented with it on the K2 tank before using the experience to develop their own active protection systems.

Perhaps the big thing they realized afterwards is that they likely have to redevelop a large part of it as to prepare for top-attack missiles and drones which weren't an issue when the program originally started as a way to deal with Chechens using RPGs from all directions.

 

[Falcos_Commisar]

the Leopard's hull ammo racks are up front behind the hull armor

The sides are very thin.....

https://syria.liveuamap.com/en/2018/3-february-destroyed-by-atgm-of-ypg-today#

https://youtu.be/YafzmkvVRiI?si=4xcDs2GzoqcRZIix

This incident almost made the German reddit tank autist murkskopf kill himself as he is one who cannot stop jerking off over the Leopard 2