From: "John W. Lewellen" Subject: Re: T-90 verus M1A2 Date: 1997/06/10 Message-ID: #1/1 Sender: military@ranger.daytonoh.ncr.com (Sci.military Login) References: Organization: ASD/APS, ANL Newsgroups: sci.military.moderated From "John W. Lewellen" Yevgeniy Chizhikov wrote: > > From Yevgeniy Chizhikov > > Robb McLeod wrote: > > > Since the combat weight of the real T-90 is 50 t, compared to 46.5 t for the > > T-90S, we have an extra 3.5 t there. Hypothetically say one tonne is for > > Arena, as they have it in service and we just don't know it. That's still > > 2.5 t of armor. > > Arena is not original equipment on the T-90, so it means that T-90 have > 3.5 t of extra weight. Arena will be sort of universal system that can > be mount on any tank that capoble to be outfit with reactive armor. In > general T-90 is look as a tough aponent. But now we have two tanks, T-90 > and M1A2, that can not penetrate each other front armor. Fight of those > two tanks will be interesting and on very close range, I guess. Unlist > both sides will call A-10 and Su-25 to take each other out, before the > fight. By the way what is the differents between T-90S and T-90SK? So then we send in an F-22 and an SU-27, and... :) Aw, the heck with it ... just implement a THOR system and have done. If you think the Desert Storm bunker-buster was impressive ... try having it drop from low earth orbit. Only practical defense at the moment is to not be there when it hits. Yeah, I know it's not practical ... but more and more everyone is starting to use a systems approach - instead of tank kills tank and plane kills plane, we now have aircraft taking out ground vehicles, which in turn can go after landing fields, while the Navy guys pop off cruise missiles and the odd 16-inch shell and try to avoid TOWs when they stray too close to shore. :) Not that this is a bad thing, it's using your strengths against your opponent's weaknesses. But it does point out that the days of one-upmanship in terms of armor and guns are a) not limited to battleships (interesting show on them on the Discovery Channel last night, btw), and b) will eventually lead us to Bolos, unless we go to other weapons systems entirely for the purpose of killing tanks. In that case we don't try to cram both extremely heavy armor and offensive weaponry capable of defeating similar armor into the same chassis, which more or less leaves us with an undergunned slug or a glass-jawed firebreather. Or an absolutely huge vehicle with a large degree of automation to handle fire control, active defenses, on-the-fly damage repair ... a Bolo, by any other name. Best regards, - John L. -- +--------------------------------------------------------------------+ | John Lewellen Advanced Photon Source, Argonne National Lab.| | Lewellen@aps.anl.gov Opinions expressed above are solely mine | +--------------------------------------------------------------------+