Hmmm! Lets see, 13th Redneck is probably to young to remember much about the era of the cold war first hand, but Pale Rider would just about be old enough to remember something of those days. I meant what I said, in America at the time the Soviet Union was routinely building submarines and bicycles out of Titanium, it's use in America was still highly restricted.

The reason you use Titaium for a submarine's hull is simple, the material has the remarkable ability to become stronger under compressive loads, allowing submarines to be built for operation at far greater depths than hulls fabricated from more conventional materials. This allowed Soviet submarines to operated routinely below the thermocline, rendering them vertually immune to detection by surface vessels and other submarines operating above the thermocline. And is, I think the reason America went to all the trouble and significant expense, to lay down it's sea-bottom, submarine detection network of sensors. Forgotten now what it is called. Given some of these Titanium hulled submarines reportedly had a routine operational depth of as deep as 1,000 metres and in the case of at least two classes, are also believed to have been fast enough to outrun American torpedoes. The advent of the Titanium boats was a major design shift in submarine technology.

Incidentally, the Soviet Union could only afford to build Titanium hulled submarines because it operated a closed economy. Like America, with it's now more open economy, Russia cannot now afford to build Titanium hulled submarines and to the best of my knowledge, none have been built post the Soviet era. Although Russia is still improving its submarine designs otherwise and continuing to build ever more advanced submarines. Delude yourself if you will, or simply ignore the facts, but in many areas, Soviet technology was a long way ahead of the American technology of the time. If you want or need other examples, let me know and I'll post you a few.

Fellas, please keep in mind, I'm not doing this for fun, I really believe that Russia is or will re-arm with weapons, that in many cases, will include this power plant type. They have nothing to lose in doing so. What do you think will happen to the world wide market for weapon systems, if they start exporting an uprated T-80UM1 BARS, T-90 or T-95 as part of an integrated system, that includes SPAs and wheeled vehicles, all with common and interchangable power plant parts. And in parallel with this, starts marketing AIP submarines with levels of performance previously only attributable to nuclear powered submarines. We all know how peacetime sales are prioritized, hell the reduced through life costs and logistics imperatives alone, would be adequate to ensure adoption of this equipment, let alone its combat effectivesness.

The hilarious part of all this is, having failed to adopt this technology or even really consider it years ago, America may find itself in the position of having to buy power plant upgrade kits from Russian manufacturers, just to keep it's own equipment competitive. Don't think I'm joking abot this, I'm not. At the very least, the name of the game is keeping up with the competition and if Russia starts marketing this equipment internationally, they will own the world's arms market and equipment of even developing countries, would be otherwise, superior to the American equivalent.
nero1234

Originally Posted by nero1234

Hmmm! Lets see, 13th Redneck is probably to young to remember much about the era of the cold war first hand, but Pale Rider would just about be old enough to remember something of those days. I meant what I said, in America at the time the Soviet Union was routinely building submarines and bicycles out of Titanium, it's use in America was still highly restricted.

The reason you use Titaium for a submarine's hull is simple, the material has the remarkable ability to become stronger under compressive loads, allowing submarines to be built for operation at far greater depths than hulls fabricated from more conventional materials. This allowed Soviet submarines to operated routinely below the thermocline, rendering them vertually immune to detection by surface vessels and other submarines operating above the thermocline. And is, I think the reason America went to all the trouble and significant expense, to lay down it's sea-bottom, submarine detection network of sensors. Forgotten now what it is called. Given some of these Titanium hulled submarines reportedly had a routine operational depth of as deep as 1,000 metres and in the case of at least two classes, are also believed to have been fast enough to outrun American torpedoes. The advent of the Titanium boats was a major design shift in submarine technology.

Incidentally, the Soviet Union could only afford to build Titanium hulled submarines because it operated a closed economy. Like America, with it's now more open economy, Russia cannot now afford to build Titanium hulled submarines and to the best of my knowledge, none have been built post the Soviet era. Although Russia is still improving its submarine designs otherwise and continuing to build ever more advanced submarines. Delude yourself if you will, or simply ignore the facts, but in many areas, Soviet technology was a long way ahead of the American technology of the time. If you want or need other examples, let me know and I'll post you a few.

Fellas, please keep in mind, I'm not doing this for fun, I really believe that Russia is or will re-arm with weapons, that in many cases, will include this power plant type. They have nothing to lose in doing so. What do you think will happen to the world wide market for weapon systems, if they start exporting an uprated T-80UM1 BARS, T-90 or T-95 as part of an integrated system, that includes SPAs and wheeled vehicles, all with common and interchangable power plant parts. And in parallel with this, starts marketing AIP submarines with levels of performance previously only attributable to nuclear powered submarines. We all know how peacetime sales are prioritized, hell the reduced through life costs and logistics imperatives alone, would be adequate to ensure adoption of this equipment, let alone its combat effectivesness.

The hilarious part of all this is, having failed to adopt this technology or even really consider it years ago, America may find itself in the position of having to buy power plant upgrade kits from Russian manufacturers, just to keep it's own equipment competitive. Don't think I'm joking abot this, I'm not. At the very least, the name of the game is keeping up with the competition and if Russia starts marketing this equipment internationally, they will own the world's arms market and equipment of even developing countries, would be otherwise, superior to the American equivalent.
nero1234

Again - I know nothing of Russian naval vessels, as far as Russia making weapons platforms that have interchangable components then okay, they are already far behind the power curb with this when it comes to the U.S. We have been researching this very thing that you have mentioned now for the last twenty years or so and are pretty close of fielding a some of these vehicles, and yes I am talking about our FCS program.

And yes I do remember the Cold War era and have spent much of my early military career learning and teaching how to fight the Russians.

Also - the T-80UM1 is a dead deal with no takers which is to bad for the Russians because that would fix one of their primary concerns when engaging the latest and upgraded western tanks.

Golf clubs, suspension parts, versus submarine hulls, common fellas, lets bring a little realism to the comparison.

Electric drives huh. Well I've always had a problem with this from the naval viewpoint. What would you rather be in, a flooding compartment with high voltage electrical motors and/or a generator, or a flooding compartment with equivalent power hydraulic motors?

I know where this little black duck would rather be standing.

Power Electrics in an MBT tank that is operational, apart from being no longer water tight due to loss of hull integrity or simply a damaged seal, sounds like a recipe for disaster if theres any water about.

Don't get me wrong, I love electronics, but if theres a robust alternative in a combatant platform, throw away those electronics and stick with the solid stough.
Nero1234

Originally Posted by nero1234

Golf clubs, suspension parts, versus submarine hulls, common fellas, lets bring a little realism to the comparison.

NERO:

I have already stated that I know nothing when it comes to naval type platforms, if you post in that section of the web site I will read any information that you post on Russian submarines.

Originally Posted by nero1234

Electric drives huh. Well I've always had a problem with this from the naval viewpoint. What would you rather be in, a flooding compartment with high voltage electrical motors and/or a generator, or a flooding compartment with equivalent power hydraulic motors?

I know where this little black duck would rather be standing.

Power Electrics in an MBT tank that is operational, apart from being no longer water tight due to loss of hull integrity or simply a damaged seal, sounds like a recipe for disaster if theres any water about.

Don't get me wrong, I love electronics, but if theres a robust alternative in a combatant platform, throw away those electronics and stick with the solid stough.
Nero1234

I am quite sure that moisture was taken into consideration when this concept started being evaluated. Anyways there is another Russian general shooting his mouth off and stating that a new Russian designed tank will start being produced for the Russian army in 2009, we have to waite and see.

Originally Posted by SHERMAN

i ask you guys, espcially tank crews, what technology you think is the most in need of research right now, as far as MBTs?

If You are asking about principles to implement in design of future MBT, then I see 2 directions there:

1) New principles of main gun, i.e. how projectile can be fired with greater muzzle speed or have more armor penetration capability. There are few possible ways:
a) The way which seems to be used by Russians in `Black Eagle` project - the increasing of the caliber of gun. One of the reasons Russia left the Treaty on Conventional Armament in Europe is chance to build and use tanks with guns, bigger than 125mm, which was the upper limit for tank guns of the Treaty. As I have heard/read, the `Black Eagl` possibly have 135 or 140mm gun. Also, in internet can be found information on other perspective Russian tank designs with even 152mm guns.
b) Other way is to change dramatically the very way of how projectile is fired - there are plans to fire projectiles with use of electromagnetic field around the barrel, however such technologies seems to be quite energy consuming and there will be need to make power plant on tank more powerful to supply energy. For now also dimensions of power plant/`gun` are to be too huge to install them normally on tank, so such technical solutions seems to be still for coming future.

2) Change of tank composition scheme. As it can be seen on BMPT, there is a tend to remove crew members from the turret and make the turret to be controlled remotely from the tank hull, near the driver. It makes turret less vulnerable, as there is decrease for internal space, needed for crew member, and increase of survivability of crew.

Like you say, guess we have to wait and see what comes out of all this, huh?

Good comments, but I know of at least two other forms of propellant yet to be used in either gun or missile rounds and both hold considerable potential. As to rail guns, who knows if we'll ever see these operable and deployable in mobile assets in our lifetimes.

Ultimately, the MBT will most likely take the form of a semi autonomous advanced combat robotic. It could be done even now and the returns from the commercial applications of the component systems and their core technologies would vastly exceed the cost of production of a few thousand advanced MBTs of this type. Likewise the elimination of the human component in a MBT considerably reduces it's complexity and thus its cost. Tankers would still get to drive and shoot 'em but you could just as easily do it from home base. In the case of American forces, the operators could be sitting back home at their base of origin, whilst the tanks and their maintenance and logistics crews were deployed overseas. Vastly improves combat crew survivability don't you think?

Its not a joke, the technology concept paths for both a discreet communications system and high speed/capacity data processing systems has been thought out decades ago and was lightly touched on with both MCTL and DARPA years ago.

There is little in science fiction that cannot be made into science fact.

Regards to all,
nero1234

Originally Posted by nero1234

Good comments, but I know of at least two other forms of propellant yet to be used in either gun or missile rounds and both hold considerable potential. As to rail guns, who knows if we'll ever see these operable and deployable in mobile assets in our lifetimes.

Missile rounds have some problems.
1) They can be shot at quite long distances, however it means time between `fire` and `hit` increases enough for target to take countermeasures.
2) Missile needs to be guided, otherwise it will not hit the target. Guidance process implies using some revealing technologies - lighting up target with laser pointer (manual method) or using radar principles for target acquire (automatic or semi-automatic). Both emits electromagnetic impulses, which can be detected by target.

I.e., missile guidance technology warns a target of danger and relatively low speed of missile lefts some time for target to use countermeasures (flash impulse in direction of ATGM operator or smoke screen to blind him, radar jam impulse or just anti-missile defense system on the tank) to avoid hit.

Ultimately, the MBT will most likely take the form of a semi autonomous advanced combat robotic. It could be done even now and the returns from the commercial applications of the component systems and their core technologies would vastly exceed the cost of production of a few thousand advanced MBTs of this type. Likewise the elimination of the human component in a MBT considerably reduces it's complexity and thus its cost. Tankers would still get to drive and shoot 'em but you could just as easily do it from home base. In the case of American forces, the operators could be sitting back home at their base of origin, whilst the tanks and their maintenance and logistics crews were deployed overseas. Vastly improves combat crew survivability don't you think?

Its not a joke, the technology concept paths for both a discreet communications system and high speed/capacity data processing systems has been thought out decades ago and was lightly touched on with both MCTL and DARPA years ago.

But there is another problem, which appears by removing human element: a channel of permanent communication between tank and command center is needed. In war against `Al Qaeda` type low-tech enemy if could work, but more technical enemy eventually will find the way to jam or block this channel, and that most likely leads to lost of the tank.
Remote controlled tank is too dependent of such communication channel.

Originally Posted by nero1234

Like you say, guess we have to wait and see what comes out of all this, huh?

Yes - we will have to wait and see what they roll out, if it is a unmanned turret then they will join the list of other countries that have tested this concept with some having fielded this type of vehicle, I highly doubt that it will be ground breaking technology that will have everyone scrambling back to the drawing boards. History has shown that Russia has over estimated their tank protection levels and capabilities, when the South Koreans tested the Black Eagle they were not impressed with its capabilities as the Saudis were not impressed with the T-90S, thus the reason they may purchase additional M1A2s with SEP upgrade.

Originally Posted by Pale Rider

I would have to give the technology factor to the research of counter measure systems, interchangable caliber gun tubes.

Dual Purpose and Sabot Rounds are easier to come by than Interchangable Caliber Tubes.

Originally Posted by SHERMAN

i ask you guys, espcially tank crews, what technology you think is the most in need of research right now, as far as MBTs?

As always, Crew Protection and Weapons Platform Battlefield Survivability.

And, I'd say increased range on the gun is more important, in my own opinion, than increased speed of the of the Platform.

Originally Posted by Gator

Dual Purpose and Sabot Rounds are easier to come by than Interchangable Caliber Tubes.




As always, Crew Protection and Weapons Platform Battlefield Survivability.

And, I'd say increased range on the gun is more important, in my own opinion, than increased speed of the of the Platform.

Are you basing that comment on the U.S still sitting with the mind set that we will only engage former Eastern block armor threats.