Published on "VO" article "Armata" has no shortcomings "caused a heated discussion and a clash of different points of view on this tank. Of course, the author's statement that "Armata" has no flaws is rash, any technique always has certain flaws, and this is also the case in this project.
The author of the article cited a lot of unsubstantiated arguments about the fate of the Armata tank and came to the conclusion that this tank is not being put into production due to some interest of the leaders of the military-industrial complex. The author, apparently, is far from understanding how military equipment is created. When discussing this project, various concepts and requirements for military equipment are deliberately or involuntarily mixed, in this regard, for an objective assessment of the Armata tank, it is advisable to separately discuss the concept and layout of the tank, its technical characteristics, advantages and disadvantages and organizational and technical issues of tank production.
Concept and layout
When discussing the concept of this tank, diametrically opposed points of view collided: Is the Armata a new generation tank or an old one? For such an assessment, it is necessary to see how the "Armata" is fundamentally different from existing tanks. There are such differences, they are an uninhabited tower, an armored capsule for the crew and a digital information and control system that allows you to move to the creation of a "network-centric" tank not as an independent unit of armored vehicles, but as an element of a unified battle control system using modern advances in the development of military equipment. The introduction of these elements makes it possible to assert that the "Armata" is a new generation tank.
The layout of the tank was also fundamentally changed, an uninhabited tower appeared. Is it good or bad? On the one hand, the crew is removed from the tower, the most vulnerable part of the tank, and placed in an armored capsule in the tank hull, on the other hand, the reliability of the tank as a whole is sharply reduced, since the turret and armament are controlled by the crew only using electrical signals from the tank hull, and in case of violation the power supply system or the channel for transmitting information from the hull to the turret, the tank becomes completely unusable. This is one of the most controversial points in the concept of the Armata tank.
I have already written about these problems of "Armata". They have not disappeared anywhere and have a significant impact on the fate of this project. To understand these problems, it is worth recalling the history of the creation of the Armata tank. In the comments to the article under discussion, they refer to an interview with Colonel-General Mayev, in which he spoke about the predecessor of the "Armata", the T-95 tank, which was developed at UVZ in the 90s within the framework of the "Improvement-88" design and development work. Two prototypes of this tank were made, but in 2003 the work was curtailed and the development of the Armata tank began.
Speaking of the T-95 tank, one will have to recall its predecessor, the Boxer, the last promising Soviet tank developed by the KMDB named after Morozov in the 80s.
ROC "Improvement-88" in the 80s was carried out with the aim of modernizing the existing generation of T-72 and T-80 tanks, and work on the promising tank was carried out within the framework of the ROC "Boxer". The concept of the "Boxer" tank was based on a 152-mm semi-extended gun and a digital information and control system. The tank's crew was placed according to the classic layout, but the commander and gunner were housed in the tower below at the level of the tank hull. With the collapse of the Union, work on the "Boxer" tank was discontinued, the developers of the gun, sighting complex and tank control systems remained in Russia, and this reserve, of course, was used in the development of a promising tank, which began in the 90s within the framework of the "Improvement-88" development project T-95.
The concept of the Boxer tank was developed in the T-95 tank, it also contained a 152-mm semi-extended cannon, a digital information and control system, and an uninhabited tower and an armored capsule for the crew were added.
Recently I was sent a photo of a T-95 tank, at first I took it for a photo of a Boxer tank (object 477) and was surprised: where could it have come from? Tank "Boxer" was seriously classified and was never photographed. At first glance, I could not tell them apart, how much alike they were!
Tank T-95
Work on the T-95 tank was also discontinued, the reasons are unknown to me, but one of the elements of the concept of this tank (an uninhabited tower and an armored capsule) was transferred to the concept of the Armata tank.
The start of work on the concept of the Armata tank was announced in 2011, the layout with an uninhabited tower was not widely discussed, as far as we know, the military did not really approve of it. Then the then Deputy Prime Minister Rogozin, not a specialist in military technology, but a politician, announced the creation of the Armata tank, a small batch of these vehicles was somehow quickly manufactured, and since 2015 they have been regularly shown at parades.
This is how the Armata tank appeared, its concept with an uninhabited turret is revolutionary, but it has both pluses and minuses, and it is still too early to give an unambiguous answer that this is the future of tank building.
Technical characteristics and capabilities of the tank
The developers of the Armata tank out of the three main characteristics of the tank (firepower, mobility and security) focused on security at the expense of other qualities of the tank.
In terms of security, the Armata tank has a significant lead over existing tanks and is reliably protected from enemy weapons. This is provided by a combined multi-barrier and multilayer protection using active protection and an optical-electronic countermeasure system. The crew is well protected in a hull in an armored capsule.
It should be noted that the statements about the protection of the crew with the help of an armored capsule and during detonation of ammunition are unfounded, since it can only protect the crew from means of destruction when the armor of a tank is penetrated in adjacent zones. When the ammunition detonates, as real combat operations show, the tank turns into a heap of metal, and no armored capsules will save the crew.
In terms of the firepower of the main armament with a 125 mm gun caliber, the "Armata" will slightly surpass existing tanks due to more powerful ammunition and a more advanced sighting system. Missile armament is built on the same principles as on existing tanks. The installation of a 125 mm cannon excluded the possibility of creating missile armament of the "Krasnopol" type, focused on the 152 mm caliber.
In terms of mobility with the declared mass of the tank and the power of the engine, the "Armata" will only slightly surpass the existing tanks. All this suggests that the "Armata" in terms of firepower and mobility does not have a fundamental separation from the existing generation of tanks.
The Armata tank has one significant advantage over the existing generation of domestic and foreign tanks - it is a digital information and control system, which is the basis of a network-centric tank, which gives it a fundamentally new quality. Previously, tanks were created as independent units of armored equipment, and there was nothing for their interaction as part of a unit and other types of military equipment, except for a radio station.
The introduction of an information and control system allows for the automatic collection of information about the state of the tank and the environment for making decisions on motion control of search, detection and destruction of targets, takes over part of the crew's functions and simplifies its work.
The system allows automatic exchange of information with higher-ranking commanders attached to subunits and aviation, to carry out target designation and target distribution, to use UAVs for reconnaissance and assessment of the combat situation. While the UAV is connected to the tank by a "rope", but drones are developing rapidly, and the tank may be able to use UAVs with a "mortar start" from grenade launchers of the optical-electronic countermeasures system.
Of the technical problems of the tank, the following should be highlighted. The developers' statements about the possibility of installing a 152 mm cannon are hardly realizable, since this will inevitably lead to a significant increase in the mass of the tank, its rearrangement, problems with the development of an automatic loader with the same amount of ammunition and the inevitable deterioration in mobility characteristics.
As I said above, the use of an uninhabited turret leads to a sharp decrease in the reliability of the tank as a whole, and it is necessary to look for unconventional technical solutions that eliminate the disadvantages of using such a tank concept. One of them is the loss of control of the tower using electrical signals. In the channel of information transmission there is a "narrow throat" - a rotating contact device. Through it, communication is carried out between the hull and the turret of the tank. This element is located in the center on the bottom of the tank and is very vulnerable. There is no information about the use of new technical solutions in this element, and this problem will have to be solved early.
For example, in the United States, when upgrading the M1A2 SEP v.4 tank, they are trying to solve this problem by unconventional methods of transmitting signals through devices in pursuit of the tower, which make it possible to ensure reliable and anti-jamming signal transmission. So far nothing has been heard about this in the Armata tank.
The use of an uninhabited tower made it impossible to use optical devices for orientation on the ground, target search and firing. In this regard, the tank needs a perfect electronic system for transmitting a three-dimensional image of the terrain. Nothing has been heard about such a system either. A similar system is being created for the Israeli tank "Merkava" on the basis of the "Iron Vision" system, in which video signals are received from many video cameras located along the perimeter of the tank, a three-dimensional picture is created through a computer and displayed on the operator's helmet-mounted display.
Periodically, there is also information about problems with the X-shaped engine for the tank and difficulties with its production in Chelyabinsk. A number of other technical problems can be cited that need to be solved with such a tank concept.
Organizational and technical issues of tank production
When discussing the issue of serial production of the Armata tank, the author oversimplifiedly reduces everything to the "intrigues" of the military, unwillingness to take a ready-made supertank and some personal interest of the leaders of the military-industrial complex, without substantiating his arguments.
Everything is much simpler and more complicated. The creation of such complex military equipment as a tank requires the efforts of not only a tank design bureau and a factory, dozens of specialized organizations and enterprises are engaged in the development and production of units and systems of a tank, there is a complex cooperation, without which it is impossible to create a modern tank. I had to organize such cooperation, and I can imagine how difficult it is, and it is enough not to get some element, and there will be no tank. For example, during the development of the "Boxer" tank, the developer of the sighting system, which is developing the sighting system for the "Armata" tank, did not deliver this system on time, and this was one of the reasons for the disruption of work on the tank for several years.
The Armata tank is full of ultra-modern components and systems, such as an X-shaped engine, a new cannon, the most sophisticated optoelectronic and radar devices, an active protection system and optoelectronic countermeasures, a sophisticated onboard computer complex, and jam-resistant information exchange channels. All this is provided by enterprises and organizations of various ministries and departments. For the serial production of the tank at all these enterprises, it is necessary to organize the serial production of components for the tank, before that to carry out a cycle of their autonomous tests. Then, all types of tests as part of the tank, ensure the completion of the tank and its systems according to the test results, and only then begin mass production.
Since the presentation of the Armata tank was carried out in an accelerated mode, from the announcement of the creation of this vehicle to the demonstration at the parade in 2015, it is doubtful that all this has been done. Such a complex complex of works requires time and serious organization. I suppose that not all of the declared tank systems passed the necessary stages of development and testing and confirmed the declared characteristics. In this case, it makes no sense to start serial production.
In such complex systems, there are always problems that take time to solve. Apparently, such problems also appeared for the Armata tank, and the vehicles shown at the parade were just mock-ups that could move and shoot, but whether they provide the declared characteristics is a question.
In this case, there can be no question of any serial production, these systems must still be developed, tested, and only then a decision should be made about equipping a tank with them.
One thing is clear that there are questions about this project and, apparently, justified, and the point here is not in the personal interests of the responsible persons, but in the objective state of the development of this tank. We need to understand these issues and look for ways to solve them.
