The campaign to promote the promising Russian Armata tank into the troops has recently taken an unexpected turn. The statement of Deputy Prime Minister Yuri Borisov at the end of July ("… why flood all the armed forces with Armata, our T-72 are in great demand on the market, everyone takes it …") about the inexpediency of purchasing an Armata tank for the army in connection with its high cost was unexpected for many.
After victorious statements at the highest level about the creation of a promising tank, it suddenly became clear that the army did not really need it. Earlier it was announced about the planned purchase of 2,300 tanks, then this number was reduced to 100 tanks; now they are talking about the purchase of an experimental batch of 20 tanks. In addition, according to the Ministry of Defense, in 2018-2019 it is planned to purchase only modernized T-80 and T-90 tanks.
A natural question arises: what happened and why did the plans for this tank change so dramatically?
I can assume that the matter here is not only in the cost of the tank, apparently, there are organizational and technical problems. The whole epic with the Armata tank - from the rejection of this project by the military at the beginning of development to the rapid production of an experimental batch - raises many questions.
It is still unclear whether the full cycle of factory and state tests envisaged by the standards was carried out, whether the tank was accepted by an interdepartmental commission and the most important question: whether this tank was adopted by the Russian army, or not.
Without these events, talking about creating a tank is not serious, and for some reason there is no reliable information on these issues. It is only known that such a tank has been developed, underwent some kind of tests, a small batch of tanks has been shown since 2015 at parades on Red Square, and various officials verbally declare that it is going to be launched into mass production. Also, little is known about the technical characteristics of the tank, the information is mostly sketchy and often contradictory.
It should be recalled that the active promotion of this tank was carried out by former Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin, who was replaced in April of this year by General Yuri Borisov. It is possible that the new deputy prime minister decided to carry out the actions provided for by the regulatory documents for the full cycle of testing the tank and then make the final decision on its fate.
If the entire test cycle was carried out, and the specified characteristics of the tank were confirmed, then before the start of mass production, as was the case before, it may have been decided to conduct comprehensive military tests. The car is checked in real conditions of operation in the army, driven through different climatic zones and are convinced how much it meets the specified requirements.
The history of the development of this tank was not so simple. The start of work was announced in 2011, although this concept of the tank was discussed earlier. There were many questions about this concept, and as far as I remember, the military did not approve of it. Then a batch of such vehicles was somehow quickly manufactured, and everyone was announced about the creation of a fundamentally new tank. In such a short time, it is difficult to go through all the stages of development and testing, especially since several dozen different organizations had to deal with this.
The events taking place around the "Armata" indicate that a fundamentally new machine is not born so easily, there are too many new components and systems in it that require appropriate refinement and testing. Everything is new on the tank: the power plant, the cannon, the sighting systems, the protection system, the TIUS, ammunition, the control system of the tank unit. All this is being developed by different organizations, and if the work on some node or system fails, there will be no tank as a whole.
Of course, a promising tank is necessary for the army; after the T-64, a new generation tank never appeared. An attempt to create such a tank within the framework of the Boxer project was not completed due to the collapse of the Soviet Union, and other proposals were limited only to the modernization of the existing generation of tanks and were not developed.
The Armata project is really a new generation tank project. Yes, there is a significant disadvantage in the concept of this tank, but we need to look for ways to eliminate it and obtain a new quality. This tank implements too many new ideas developed in previous years on the systems and components of the tank, and they should not die.
There are many different opinions on the concept of the Armata tank, and at the very beginning of its development I had to debate on the Internet about this with Murakhovsky, an ardent supporter of everything that Uralvagonzavod developed. Our opinions differed. When evaluating any technical solution, at least one should strive for objectivity, regardless of the likes or dislikes of the structures proposing it, which is not always the case.
The "Armata" has one fundamental technical solution that casts doubt on the entire concept of the tank. This is an uninhabited tower, controlled only by electro-optical means. With this layout of the tank, two problems arise: low reliability of control of all turret systems using only electrical signals and the impossibility of implementing an optical channel for observation, aiming and firing from the tank.
Controlling all turret systems using electrical signals alone dramatically reduces the reliability of the entire tank as a whole. If the power supply system or its individual elements fail, it becomes completely incapacitated.
A tank is the battlefield's combat vehicle, and there are more than enough opportunities to lose power. In addition, there is a weak link in the power supply system: a rotating contact device, located on the bottom in the center of the tank, through which all the power supply to the tower is provided.
All the talk that the same was done on airplanes does not stand up to scrutiny. The plane is not a tank, and its operating conditions are extremely harsh. In addition, providing 3- and 4-fold redundancy is too expensive for a tank, and it is almost impossible to do it.
The problem of the ICU in the tank is a rather serious issue. For example, when modernizing the American 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 allow for reliable and anti-jamming signal transmission to the tower.
In the adopted layout, the image from the observation and aiming devices can be transmitted to the crew members only by an electronic television, heat, and radar video signal. Most experts are inclined to the impossibility of providing modern electro-optical systems with the same level of visibility as traditional optical channels.
Electronic means of transmission of video signal and volumetric image have not yet reached the level of resolution of the optical channel. Therefore, an aiming system without such a channel will have certain disadvantages. In this regard, on the "Boxer" tank, with a complete duplication of the actions of the gunner and the commander, we additionally installed the simplest double sight on the gun for firing in case of failure of all tank systems.
Experiments on using only a television channel to drive a tank have shown that it is almost impossible to drive a tank because of a flat TV picture. The driver did not feel the track, the slightest obstacle, even in the form of a puddle, baffled him and did not give him the opportunity to assess the terrain.
This problem of constructing a circular volumetric image has not been resolved. They came closest to solving it on the Israeli tank "Merkava". In the Iron Vision system developed for the tank, which receives signals from many video cameras located around the perimeter of the tank, a three-dimensional image is created through a computer and displayed on the operator's helmet-mounted display.
Nothing was heard about the work on the creation of a three-dimensional television image and unconventional methods of transmitting electrical signals to the tower as part of the development of the Armata tank. This disadvantage of "Armata" remained. He is very serious and can question the whole project. To eliminate these shortcomings, it is necessary to conduct a cycle of development, research and testing, which will make it possible to evaluate all the pros and cons of such a tank concept.
In this tank, they are trying to implement many promising developments in science and industry, obtained in previous years. Interesting solutions for integrated protection can be noted, when the system for setting smoke-metal curtains of the "Shtora" type works against the ATGM, and active protection takes over the removal of armor-piercing shells with a turret turn, but how much this is realizable with a colossal difference in the speeds of the BPS and the turret drive still needs to be checked …
The tank implements elements of the tank information management system, the concept of which I developed and put into the Boxer tank. Even after so many years, not everything can be realized. The main thing is that the tank unit control system has been implemented, which takes tanks to a completely different level, allowing them to interact during the battle and provide commanders of various levels with the possibility of effective target designation and target distribution.
In general, the "Armata" project continued the implementation of the network-centric tank, the concept of which was developed in the early 80s and put into the "Boxer" tank. With the collapse of the Union, the project could not be completed, many years later, much is being implemented in the Armata tank, and individual systems of this tank can be used to modernize the existing generation of tanks.
For all the problematic issues of the Armata tank, it contains a number of promising solutions that really make it a new generation tank. Instead of propaganda campaigns with the display of a tank at parades, it is necessary to work out the concept of a tank, eliminate the shortcomings and achieve the realization of all its advantages.
