@Our Pakistani friends,
Indeed the Arjun tank has got several design flaws which are still present in the MkII prototype.Lets examin them,
1.Partially protected side turret-only the frontal 1/3 portion is protected with composite armor with estimated LOS thickness of 40-45 cm,rest is only 10cm RHA plate with storage boxes.
2.Rifled gun-though powerfull as hell but wears down too rapidly and needs more chamber pressure to attain comparable mussel velocity as their smooth barrel counter parts.
3.Gunner's main sight situated in a window cut into the forward turret armor-makes the sight vulnerable to enemy fire and also reduces the LOS thickness at that place.
4.Bigger gun mantlet-thinner armor than rest of the frontal turret.
These are some of the primary weak points of Arjun tank.
Now lets talk about its strong points.
1.Extremely thick forward hull and turret armor.You guys should contact Kunal Biswas,he has some great pictures of cut away Arjun front turret with scale showing the LOS thickness to be more than 100 cm at 0 degree from turret center line.
2.Can fire very long rod single piece FSAPDS ammo,resulting in greater armor penetration.
3.Ammunition is completely isolated from crew into the turret bustle and armored hull ammo chamber sealed by electrically sliding blast door.
4.It is standard practice that during war time the storage boxes on the side turret can be either filled with compressed rubber-ceramic combo or altogether replaced with add on armor modules,securing the turret side.
Ok,now lets talk about Al Khalid and there is nothing to be too much pleased of either because it shares some drawbacks of Arjun along with others.
1.Complete lack of side turret composite armor-turret side is protected with just 80 mm or so RHA plate.
2.Inability to carry modern long rod ammo-the carousel can't hold them.Even the Russian T 90A with redesigned autoloader can't hold penetrators longer than 680mm.
3.Though the gun mantlet is smaller,but it doesn't have armor mask,typical to Soviet/Chinese designes.
4.Thinner frontal turret armor-you can ertimate the LOS thickness of armor cavity from the weld lines visible from the top view of turret.
5.But the biggest drawback is that ammo is not separated from crew-here,the rounds in the autoloader is patially isolated from crew but there is no blow out panels,so in case of carousell breach,slowly but surely the ammo will be cooked off.
Besides,in some weird belief God knows why,Russians,Chinese,Ukranians store ammo in any free space available in the hull and turret.So let me tell you guys two perfect places to hit to destroy an AK-
1.The forward hull roof.
2.Side turret.
Both places are covered with thin RHA plates only and our FSAPDS rounds should have no difficulty in piercing them.And once either of these two places is pierced,the rnund will hit the unprotected ammo reserves-one can only think about the horrible situation of the crew.
Sadly this is the case for our T 90S and T 72M1s also.But that's a different story.
Now coming to the advantages.Well,
1AK is cheaper,can be mass produced in more numbers and is quite a bang for the buch.
2.Greater range and mobility and power to weight ratio.
3.Lesser weak spots in the turret front,GMS is situated on the turret roof and safer from enemy fire.
4.Smooth barrel gun ensures better longivity and interoperability with Ukranian/Chinese/Russian rounds which increases operational flexibility.
So,as we can see,neither of these two is world beater and there is a lot of room left to be improved.However,after saying so,I would like to say that Arjun excells in protection and fiqepower where as AK is ahead in mobility and operational flexiblity.
I know that after this comparison,I will be termed as biased towards Arjun but I can't do much about that.Because I have tried to be as much technical as possible.
And to both Pakistani and Indian members,PLEASE don't jump imto arguement winning competitions and don't believe in every thing told by reporters or developers blindly.Instead do the research in hard way,start reading some good books on armor development of various countries.There are some famouse authors like Steven Zaloga,Richard P. Hunicutt,Rolf Hilmes etc.I would have happily helped you to find and download these books from net at free of cost but singce the USA has banned megaupload,all those books are now lost.
![MuZammiL Dr. s[1]n](/data/avatars/m/32/32258.jpg?1370382459){kind=avatar}
