Rethinking the Tank - Al Khalid 2 & the Future

[MiG-35-BD]

Tanks have been around since WWI, and have increased in importance, peaking in their importance during WWII. They evolved over time, with different design choices. Russians chose a simple mass production philosophy, which created the T-34, one of the single most important weapons to win WW2.

The Germans, and later the West, went another way. They wanted heavy, sophisticated tanks. Past WW2, things began to change as technology evolved, particularly, lethality of guided missile systems. The RPG and ATGMs began to encroach upon the central importance of tanks.

In most recent years, we have seen even highly expensive and sophisticated tanks like the German Leopard tanks, being blown up in Syria, showing how a simple weapon could take out a 10 million dollar tank.

The problem is that guided munitions have changed the battlefield, and tanks never truly adapted. Tanks are still basically designed the way they always where - with mainly rolled steel armor designed to defeat other tank guns.

There is yet to be a tank to be designed from the ground up to be able to deal with ATGMs as their primary design point.

Everybody talks about straping on cage armor, slat armor, reactive armor, etc. But these are bandaid solutions. Designing a tank from the ground up to deal with modern ATGMs would be a more meaningful way to react to the main cause of tank death in the last 40 years - ATGMs and RPGs.

How would one go about building such a tank?

The main threat of an ATGM is a HEAT round, which, on impact, destroys a tank using primarily kinetic and secondarily thermal force. On impact, a shaped charge is triggered that causes the ATGM warhead to go hypersonic. The ways to deal with this are:

1. The further away the ATGM is triggered, the better, generally speaking.
2. Reactive armor counters this force by pushing away the projectile by an equivalent force.
3. Active protection systems

Problem is, MBTs today are not designed with #1 in mind. They are still living in an older era. Secondly, reactive armor presently is highly damaging to own infantry that would be working closely with the tank. They can also be triggered by small arms fire, like sniper fire, or 0.5 caliber weapons. Again, tanks are not designed today to deal with this reactive armor problem.

Active counter measures, while working great on paper and at test ranges, seldom work as advertised in real world conditions. As many projectiles are constantly flying and a sensitive trigger would start blowing up own forces, such as soldiers, working alongside the tanks.

So what is a possible solution?

The solution is to create a tank from the ground up, to incorporate changes that would solve the ATGM / RPG problem. A tank with layered armor, a kind of layering yet to be designed and incorporated. For instance, A lighter conventional layered armor, over which you would have:

1. Reactive armor with an extended trigger. Over which:
2. Lightly spaced armor with foam / absorbant material to slow down the hypersonic projectile. Over which:
3. Light armor, to keep out up til 12.7 calibre weapons.

With this solution, small arms fire / snipers / HMGs won't penetrate and impact the tank beyond the outer skin.

ATGMs would penetrate, get slowed down and then hit reactive armor, being neutralized. Since the reactive armor is boxed and layered inside absorbant and spaced section, and protected by a light outer armor, the reactive armor would not impact surrounding friendly forces.

Such solutions would give a "bloated" looking tank. But a tank that would be effective against ATGM fire and would be more meaningful in the modern battlefield.

Agree? Disagree?

 

[CriticalThought]

@WebMaster @The Eagle @Oscar @Dazzler can anyone plz givd positive rating to OP???

Some very pertinent thoughts here. A few points:

1. Are you including air launched missiles such as Hellfire under ATGM classification?

2. Before we can design the optimal solution, we need detailed info regarding impact parameters of various ammunition:

1. Expected impact force.
2. Temperature change.
3. Hardness, tensile strength of impacting warhead.

We could build some open source software to simulate such strikes against a surface. From there we would have to see what materials would be best suited.

The reality is, such a material may be either non-esistent, or too costly. And the fact is, that ammunition hasn't even reached its max destructive power.

Which is why, we need to consider solutions that deceive guidance systems of smart ammunition. And against dumb, ballistic ammunition, you need a counter projectile to intercept mid air. That would be a more productive endeavor than trying to create a chassis that can withstand ammunition today and in the future as well.

 

[MBT 3000]

whats the current status of Al khalid 2

 

[HRK]

Tanks have been around since WWI, and have increased in importance, peaking in their importance during WWII. They evolved over time, with different design choices. Russians chose a simple mass production philosophy, which created the T-34, one of the single most important weapons to win WW2.

The Germans, and later the West, went another way. They wanted heavy, sophisticated tanks. Past WW2, things began to change as technology evolved, particularly, lethality of guided missile systems. The RPG and ATGMs began to encroach upon the central importance of tanks.

In most recent years, we have seen even highly expensive and sophisticated tanks like the German Leopard tanks, being blown up in Syria, showing how a simple weapon could take out a 10 million dollar tank.

The problem is that guided munitions have changed the battlefield, and tanks never truly adapted. Tanks are still basically designed the way they always where - with mainly rolled steel armor designed to defeat other tank guns.

There is yet to be a tank to be designed from the ground up to be able to deal with ATGMs as their primary design point.

Everybody talks about straping on cage armor, slat armor, reactive armor, etc. But these are bandaid solutions. Designing a tank from the ground up to deal with modern ATGMs would be a more meaningful way to react to the main cause of tank death in the last 40 years - ATGMs and RPGs.

How would one go about building such a tank?

The main threat of an ATGM is a HEAT round, which, on impact, destroys a tank using primarily kinetic and secondarily thermal force. On impact, a shaped charge is triggered that causes the ATGM warhead to go hypersonic. The ways to deal with this are:

1. The further away the ATGM is triggered, the better, generally speaking.
2. Reactive armor counters this force by pushing away the projectile by an equivalent force.
3. Active protection systems

Problem is, MBTs today are not designed with #1 in mind. They are still living in an older era. Secondly, reactive armor presently is highly damaging to own infantry that would be working closely with the tank. They can also be triggered by small arms fire, like sniper fire, or 0.5 caliber weapons. Again, tanks are not designed today to deal with this reactive armor problem.

Active counter measures, while working great on paper and at test ranges, seldom work as advertised in real world conditions. As many projectiles are constantly flying and a sensitive trigger would start blowing up own forces, such as soldiers, working alongside the tanks.

So what is a possible solution?

The solution is to create a tank from the ground up, to incorporate changes that would solve the ATGM / RPG problem. A tank with layered armor, a kind of layering yet to be designed and incorporated. For instance, A lighter conventional layered armor, over which you would have:

1. Reactive armor with an extended trigger. Over which:
2. Lightly spaced armor with foam / absorbant material to slow down the hypersonic projectile. Over which:
3. Light armor, to keep out up til 12.7 calibre weapons.

With this solution, small arms fire / snipers / HMGs won't penetrate and impact the tank beyond the outer skin.

ATGMs would penetrate, get slowed down and then hit reactive armor, being neutralized. Since the reactive armor is boxed and layered inside absorbant and spaced section, and protected by a light outer armor, the reactive armor would not impact surrounding friendly forces.

Such solutions would give a "bloated" looking tank. But a tank that would be effective against ATGM fire and would be more meaningful in the modern battlefield.

Agree? Disagree?

Just a simple question
How much that newly designed tank would weight ...??
Secondary question
how the impact of increase weight on the mobility would be mitigated ??

 

[YeBeWarned]

Just a simple question
How much that newly designed tank would weight ...??
Secondary question
how the impact of increase weight on the mobility would be mitigated ??

as prescribed by OP to use Foam bloated reactive armor , i believe it will reduce the weight but with running fast it might make the tank unstable ..just a thought

 

[AZADPAKISTAN2009]

Modern Tanks needs to be Technically same level as F-35 is a technological masterpiece in air demonstrating , usage of Technology

Just putting a sheet of Metal / armor on vehicle is not enough

 

[MiG-35-BD]

@WebMaster @The Eagle @Oscar @Dazzler can anyone plz givd positive rating to OP???

Some very pertinent thoughts here. A few points:

1. Are you including air launched missiles such as Hellfire under ATGM classification?

A top down Hellfire would be very hard to overcome with armour, and even if you did, they could easily increase the power of the ATGM. But there are bottlenecks we can take advantage of - Infantry cannot use heavy ATGMs easily. The heavier the HEAT round gets the harder it is for infantry to use it. Thus, a tank designed to defeat ATGM HEAT rounds, would be effective in reducing the critical danger to tanks found today in the battlefield - infantry anti-tank.
[/QUOTE]
2. Before we can design the optimal solution, we need detailed info regarding impact parameters of various ammunition:

1. Expected impact force.
2. Temperature change.
3. Hardness, tensile strength of impacting warhead.

We could build some open source software to simulate such strikes against a surface. From there we would have to see what materials would be best suited.

The reality is, such a material may be either non-esistent, or too costly. And the fact is, that ammunition hasn't even reached its max destructive power.

Which is why, we need to consider solutions that deceive guidance systems of smart ammunition. And against dumb, ballistic ammunition, you need a counter projectile to intercept mid air. That would be a more productive endeavor than trying to create a chassis that can withstand ammunition today and in the future as well.[/QUOTE]

Here is the interesting bit - there is technology to defeat HEAT rounds (the vast majority of effective anti-tank RPGs and ATGMs use this to blow up tanks like you see in Syria, Iraq, etc).
Thing is, which is the point I am making, no MBT has been designed from the ground up to counter this. You have MRAPs to counter IEDs, designed from the ground up AFTER experience in Iraq and Afghanistan (reactive, not proactive change). But little to no full design change in tanks to face the ATGM game changer.

The basic problem with infantry mobile ATGMs is there is a limit to how heavy and big they can be, as infantry has to use them in small groups, in ambush mode. For instance, YPG terrorists or Indian sponsored "Taliban" need to lug a very heavy and cumbersome ATGM to some remote location, and hope to ambush a tank.

The second problem is that an ATGM does not have kinetic force in itself - it only has force from the HEAT warhead, which, on impact, shoots out molten metal at hypersonic speed. This gives the round immense range at a compact size, and is highly effective. However, the weakness of this is that, the molten shot, when turned hypersonic, will quickly lose force (due to trag, etc). So it cannot be too far from the main armor protecting the tank. The moment it is forced to impact at a distance, and barriers are introduced that reduce its speed, it loses its vitality.
Finally, when it does reach the hull, the ERA bounces it back.
Viola!

The technical and tactical aspect can surely be refined by modelling and engineering studies, but the basic concept is there to create a 21st century, mass production, cheap and effective tank.

Regarding active systems - would be a great supplement but such systems have never worked till now effectively in real combat. But we can keep trying... It may be better to make sure that the tank survives if a robust active countermeasure isn't developed in the next 10 years.

Just a simple question
How much that newly designed tank would weight ...??
Secondary question
how the impact of increase weight on the mobility would be mitigated ??

It can weigh as much as the engineers and user case studies want to make it weigh... what I am sharing is the basic concept of building a tank designed from the get-go to defeat ATGMs, RPGs, basically man-portable anti-tank HEAT based systems that have proliferated the battlefield.

 

[Basel]

Tanks have been around since WWI, and have increased in importance, peaking in their importance during WWII. They evolved over time, with different design choices. Russians chose a simple mass production philosophy, which created the T-34, one of the single most important weapons to win WW2.

The Germans, and later the West, went another way. They wanted heavy, sophisticated tanks. Past WW2, things began to change as technology evolved, particularly, lethality of guided missile systems. The RPG and ATGMs began to encroach upon the central importance of tanks.

In most recent years, we have seen even highly expensive and sophisticated tanks like the German Leopard tanks, being blown up in Syria, showing how a simple weapon could take out a 10 million dollar tank.

The problem is that guided munitions have changed the battlefield, and tanks never truly adapted. Tanks are still basically designed the way they always where - with mainly rolled steel armor designed to defeat other tank guns.

There is yet to be a tank to be designed from the ground up to be able to deal with ATGMs as their primary design point.

Everybody talks about straping on cage armor, slat armor, reactive armor, etc. But these are bandaid solutions. Designing a tank from the ground up to deal with modern ATGMs would be a more meaningful way to react to the main cause of tank death in the last 40 years - ATGMs and RPGs.

How would one go about building such a tank?

The main threat of an ATGM is a HEAT round, which, on impact, destroys a tank using primarily kinetic and secondarily thermal force. On impact, a shaped charge is triggered that causes the ATGM warhead to go hypersonic. The ways to deal with this are:

1. The further away the ATGM is triggered, the better, generally speaking.
2. Reactive armor counters this force by pushing away the projectile by an equivalent force.
3. Active protection systems

Problem is, MBTs today are not designed with #1 in mind. They are still living in an older era. Secondly, reactive armor presently is highly damaging to own infantry that would be working closely with the tank. They can also be triggered by small arms fire, like sniper fire, or 0.5 caliber weapons. Again, tanks are not designed today to deal with this reactive armor problem.

Active counter measures, while working great on paper and at test ranges, seldom work as advertised in real world conditions. As many projectiles are constantly flying and a sensitive trigger would start blowing up own forces, such as soldiers, working alongside the tanks.

So what is a possible solution?

The solution is to create a tank from the ground up, to incorporate changes that would solve the ATGM / RPG problem. A tank with layered armor, a kind of layering yet to be designed and incorporated. For instance, A lighter conventional layered armor, over which you would have:

1. Reactive armor with an extended trigger. Over which:
2. Lightly spaced armor with foam / absorbant material to slow down the hypersonic projectile. Over which:
3. Light armor, to keep out up til 12.7 calibre weapons.

With this solution, small arms fire / snipers / HMGs won't penetrate and impact the tank beyond the outer skin.

ATGMs would penetrate, get slowed down and then hit reactive armor, being neutralized. Since the reactive armor is boxed and layered inside absorbant and spaced section, and protected by a light outer armor, the reactive armor would not impact surrounding friendly forces.

Such solutions would give a "bloated" looking tank. But a tank that would be effective against ATGM fire and would be more meaningful in the modern battlefield.

Agree? Disagree?

The big problem which ATGM pose is top attack capability, which tanks are not good in handling.

 

[MiG-35-BD]

as prescribed by OP to use Foam bloated reactive armor , i believe it will reduce the weight but with running fast it might make the tank unstable ..just a thought

We don't have to bloat it up that much. The basic idea is to build a tank around defeating man portable anti-tank devices. This means a next level combined use of reactive armor, spaced armor and impact absorbing mechanisms already in use in a wide variety of anti-munitions protection technologies.

The big problem which ATGM pose is top attack capability, which tanks are not good in handling.

That is true, and we see that in every modern battlefield, some sandle-wearing RPG wielding fellow blows up 10 million dollar tanks and walks away like it was a walk in the park.

This is why tank armour has to re-orient itself to being defendable against ATGMs. Simply using rolled steal armor and layering them with ceramics, is great for defeating other tank guns, but is not the optimal solution for dealing with RPGs, ATGMs.

 

[Basel]

We don't have to bloat it up that much. The basic idea is to build a tank around defeating man portable anti-tank devices. This means a next level combined use of reactive armor, spaced armor and impact absorbing mechanisms already in use in a wide variety of anti-munitions protection technologies.



That is true, and we see that in every modern battlefield, some sandle-wearing RPG wielding fellow blows up 10 million dollar tanks and walks away like it was a walk in the park.

This is why tank armour has to re-orient itself to being defendable against ATGMs. Simply using rolled steal armor and layering them with ceramics, is great for defeating other tank guns, but is not the optimal solution for dealing with RPGs, ATGMs.

Israel is looking into solving the problems faced by tanks as they had faced many issued fighting in Lebanon. Their Trophy system looks good but not perfect.

 

[313ghazi]

Tanks have been around since WWI, and have increased in importance, peaking in their importance during WWII. They evolved over time, with different design choices. Russians chose a simple mass production philosophy, which created the T-34, one of the single most important weapons to win WW2.

The Germans, and later the West, went another way. They wanted heavy, sophisticated tanks. Past WW2, things began to change as technology evolved, particularly, lethality of guided missile systems. The RPG and ATGMs began to encroach upon the central importance of tanks.

In most recent years, we have seen even highly expensive and sophisticated tanks like the German Leopard tanks, being blown up in Syria, showing how a simple weapon could take out a 10 million dollar tank.

The problem is that guided munitions have changed the battlefield, and tanks never truly adapted. Tanks are still basically designed the way they always where - with mainly rolled steel armor designed to defeat other tank guns.

There is yet to be a tank to be designed from the ground up to be able to deal with ATGMs as their primary design point.

Everybody talks about straping on cage armor, slat armor, reactive armor, etc. But these are bandaid solutions. Designing a tank from the ground up to deal with modern ATGMs would be a more meaningful way to react to the main cause of tank death in the last 40 years - ATGMs and RPGs.

How would one go about building such a tank?

The main threat of an ATGM is a HEAT round, which, on impact, destroys a tank using primarily kinetic and secondarily thermal force. On impact, a shaped charge is triggered that causes the ATGM warhead to go hypersonic. The ways to deal with this are:

1. The further away the ATGM is triggered, the better, generally speaking.
2. Reactive armor counters this force by pushing away the projectile by an equivalent force.
3. Active protection systems

Problem is, MBTs today are not designed with #1 in mind. They are still living in an older era. Secondly, reactive armor presently is highly damaging to own infantry that would be working closely with the tank. They can also be triggered by small arms fire, like sniper fire, or 0.5 caliber weapons. Again, tanks are not designed today to deal with this reactive armor problem.

Active counter measures, while working great on paper and at test ranges, seldom work as advertised in real world conditions. As many projectiles are constantly flying and a sensitive trigger would start blowing up own forces, such as soldiers, working alongside the tanks.

So what is a possible solution?

The solution is to create a tank from the ground up, to incorporate changes that would solve the ATGM / RPG problem. A tank with layered armor, a kind of layering yet to be designed and incorporated. For instance, A lighter conventional layered armor, over which you would have:

1. Reactive armor with an extended trigger. Over which:
2. Lightly spaced armor with foam / absorbant material to slow down the hypersonic projectile. Over which:
3. Light armor, to keep out up til 12.7 calibre weapons.

With this solution, small arms fire / snipers / HMGs won't penetrate and impact the tank beyond the outer skin.

ATGMs would penetrate, get slowed down and then hit reactive armor, being neutralized. Since the reactive armor is boxed and layered inside absorbant and spaced section, and protected by a light outer armor, the reactive armor would not impact surrounding friendly forces.

Such solutions would give a "bloated" looking tank. But a tank that would be effective against ATGM fire and would be more meaningful in the modern battlefield.

Agree? Disagree?

Great post. Another thing to consider is armour made from super strong light weight material, like Graphene. We should consider research into the properties of similar materials.

http://www.scmp.com/news/china/soci...-new-super-strong-foam-could-form-lightweight

 

[CriticalThought]

A top down Hellfire would be very hard to overcome with armour, and even if you did, they could easily increase the power of the ATGM. But there are bottlenecks we can take advantage of - Infantry cannot use heavy ATGMs easily. The heavier the HEAT round gets the harder it is for infantry to use it. Thus, a tank designed to defeat ATGM HEAT rounds, would be effective in reducing the critical danger to tanks found today in the battlefield - infantry anti-tank.

2. Before we can design the optimal solution, we need detailed info regarding impact parameters of various ammunition:

1. Expected impact force.
2. Temperature change.
3. Hardness, tensile strength of impacting warhead.

We could build some open source software to simulate such strikes against a surface. From there we would have to see what materials would be best suited.

The reality is, such a material may be either non-esistent, or too costly. And the fact is, that ammunition hasn't even reached its max destructive power.

Which is why, we need to consider solutions that deceive guidance systems of smart ammunition. And against dumb, ballistic ammunition, you need a counter projectile to intercept mid air. That would be a more productive endeavor than trying to create a chassis that can withstand ammunition today and in the future as well.

Here is the interesting bit - there is technology to defeat HEAT rounds (the vast majority of effective anti-tank RPGs and ATGMs use this to blow up tanks like you see in Syria, Iraq, etc).
Thing is, which is the point I am making, no MBT has been designed from the ground up to counter this. You have MRAPs to counter IEDs, designed from the ground up AFTER experience in Iraq and Afghanistan (reactive, not proactive change). But little to no full design change in tanks to face the ATGM game changer.

The basic problem with infantry mobile ATGMs is there is a limit to how heavy and big they can be, as infantry has to use them in small groups, in ambush mode. For instance, YPG terrorists or Indian sponsored "Taliban" need to lug a very heavy and cumbersome ATGM to some remote location, and hope to ambush a tank.

The second problem is that an ATGM does not have kinetic force in itself - it only has force from the HEAT warhead, which, on impact, shoots out molten metal at hypersonic speed. This gives the round immense range at a compact size, and is highly effective. However, the weakness of this is that, the molten shot, when turned hypersonic, will quickly lose force (due to trag, etc). So it cannot be too far from the main armor protecting the tank. The moment it is forced to impact at a distance, and barriers are introduced that reduce its speed, it loses its vitality.
Finally, when it does reach the hull, the ERA bounces it back.
Viola!

The technical and tactical aspect can surely be refined by modelling and engineering studies, but the basic concept is there to create a 21st century, mass production, cheap and effective tank.

Regarding active systems - would be a great supplement but such systems have never worked till now effectively in real combat. But we can keep trying... It may be better to make sure that the tank survives if a robust active countermeasure isn't developed in the next 10 years.



It can weigh as much as the engineers and user case studies want to make it weigh... what I am sharing is the basic concept of building a tank designed from the get-go to defeat ATGMs, RPGs, basically man-portable anti-tank HEAT based systems that have proliferated the battlefield.

Tell HIT to contact me for remote triggering of war head. I just had a brainwave.

@Horus

 

[HRK]

It can weigh as much as the engineers and user case studies want to make it weigh... what I am sharing is the basic concept of building a tank designed from the get-go to defeat ATGMs, RPGs, basically man-portable anti-tank HEAT based systems that have proliferated the battlefield.

Sir if I am not getting your idea wrong your are suggesting the multi-layering of Armour and ERA this concept is not new and already in use by many armies of the world, one such example is US Abraham Tank

in this video you can see there is at least two layer of light armour with ERA blocks in between them is being installed on the main armour of the tank

 

[Kompromat]

• Convert all old tank chassis into IFVs, Pakistan could use a mixed fleet of up to 1500 wheeled & tracked IFVs made out of old Tanks which are otherwise obsolete. IFVs are like modern trojan horses, they not only bring ample firepower to the battlefield but also bring the vital infantry units where they are required.

• Al-Khalid should be built in large numbers, no need to turn it into an expensive machine. Make sure it has data link, early warning, night/fog fighting capability and some kind of active protection. Medium tech Al-Khalid in large numbers does us well. The Tanks won't survive in a shooting war for long, so large numbers might be a better approach.

• Use some old chassis to build a mobile long range NLOS ATGM carrier vehicle like the Chinese CM-501. It will be good for tank busting when the soldiers on the front line can call for a precision-guided ATGM from 15-20km away.

• Instead of wasting cash on a new high tech tank, in the short term we should rather invest in UCAVs like CH-5 or Wing Loon II. The capability to deny enemy an advantage in armor can't be achieved without the ability to kill enemy armour from the air. You can buy 4 UCAVs in the price of 1 AH-64D apache, those drones collectively carry 64 infrared guided ATGMs as opposed to 16 and they beat the Apache in loiter time by light years. They can fly longer, faster and don't carry any human life on board.

 

[Hassan Guy]

Can CIWS take out ATGMs?
So couldn't they be deployed on land where Tank formations are.

Or if the tanks themselves cam equipped with a much smaller CIWS...