What's objectively the best MBT in current service?

Huh? Seems like a typical german walkaround. Why not raise the optic through the turret roof and keep the frontal armor intact?

I wouldn't know. Fun fact, though. The Indians used a similar turret in the Arjun, but in their infinite wisdom only used some plain old RHA behind the gunner optic.

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They did in the later versions. Why they didn't do so from the start is a question to the engineers. Maybe technical limitations of the FCS?

They also followed British tank specs from the Cold War because they’re too retarded to figure out what they want to begin with, which means the Arjuns main kinetic round is a short rod with 300mm of penetration at 1000m

T-72M2 the gun can penetrate M1A2 Abraham from the side and can be made in thousands. Faster and lighter with ERA and APS, tactically can always be at the side.

This, mutts will never know

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He said in service

It spilled all ot its spaghetti!

>using squiggles to stop ordinance
russians i swear

Really splurging on the marketing materials, I see

Armata has great armor on the hull, the crew is very well protected and all, but the turret is pretty fucking shitty, it can barely sustain fire from a 30 mm, which means the gun will get disabled easily, soo once the gun is disabled the tank becomes pretty good for target practice since it has no serious offensive capability anymore. T-14 is a good tank, but it's not the best in the world.

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Depends on your doctrine, your support capabilities, and what you want it to do and in what terrain.

What works perfectly for one nation might be complete garbage for the next one

people also forget that the big killer for tanks is artillery. Not crew-kills but mission-kills. You have a number of tanks moving towards you, bracket them with 155mm and the shrapnel will significantly degrade their combat effectiveness - detracting, broken sights, top-down penetrations etc.
>someone post the US Army study on the effects of arty on tanks from the 1980s

Problem with the armata is the lack of turret armor makes it significantly less effective in these circumstances.

They probably focused all their engineering on preserving the chassis in combat while making the turret easily switched out with a crane. They'll probably have different turrets too for the thing, like an AA turret, SP Art turret, etc.

There is a thicker armour "shelf" above the gunner's head with equal thickness to the void that was created by putting the optics there

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Its turret is literally the size of the gun mantlet on any other tanks - If you can reliably hit the gun mantlet then it would be a problem. The picture is also misleading since there's a Leo 2A7 style mantlet applique for the turret.

>Problem with the armata is the lack of turret armor makes it significantly less effective in these circumstances.
Name a tank that has no exposed sights, antennas, wirings or thin roofs. The answer for artillery barrages is institutional; counter-battery radars and drones and aircraft and MLRS on speed-dial. Additional turret armour would not improve system survivability by the slightest.

It probably isn't that modular. That being said it probably has the best firefighting system around, since no meatbags in the turret.

Oh well thats interesting. Thank you guys, I carried this question with me for too many years.

Yeah, honestly it would make more sense to just throw the optics elsewhere.

>Maybe technical limitations of the FCS?
If I had to guess I'd say they did it because they wanted to make sure that a target thats visible is also in a clear LOS of the gun barrel.
If the optic were on the turret roof like a periscope it would be possible to see enemies while your gun is behind cover. This may be much better for stealthy "turret down" situations but since the Leo2 was developed for an all out tank battle in Germany, I think they went this way to avoid situations where the sheer mass of attackers became so confusing the crew may forgot that their barrel was behind a rock or something.
tl;dr with this confoguration "what you see" means "what you can directly fire at" because optics and barrel are on the same horizotal level already
I might be wrong but this sounds logical to me

I think Chieftain gave a pretty good answer to this question:

>"My M1 in Iraq it had a German gun, British armor, American Engines and radios, Belgian Machine guns, Italian sidearms for the crew etc."
Western countries at least are communicating about tank designs, cooperating, developing together. Basically most standard MBT's of this day are about equal in terms of firepower/armor/mobility, sure there are some small details like autoloader vs. manual loader, some are a bit smaller, but overall the Leo/Chally/M1/Leclerc/Pizzatrack are interchangeable. Most of the performance will be coming down to the crew, battlefield situation and tactics. Sure, a Leo2A1 will match poorly against an M1A2, but if we take the most recent variants of the main MBT's I think you can't really call any one of them the best.

see

Is it even a good move to invest in new tank technology?

Three way tie between:
>M1A2C
>Leopard 2A7+
>K2 Black Panther

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Updated technology YES
Brand new Tanks (e.g. Leo 3 or Abrams 2 or something) NO

There aint no near-peer war in sight, at least not for us in the West. Every thread can be dealt with by the stuff we already have. And even if the need arose, Abrams could be upgraded with an L/55 within a few months, Leos could receive ERA etc. etc.

Unless the main enemy of the future - CHINA - develops something really groundbreaking (inb4 quantum tonks) there aint no real need for completely new tanks. Unlike in earlier tank generations these were made with gigantiv upgrade-ability in mind

Based

>Brand new Tanks (e.g. Leo 3 or Abrams 2 or something) NO
Both the US and EU are in the process of making new MBTs.
>Abrams could be upgraded with an L/55 within a few months
It cannot. They tried in the 1990's, and found that they'd need a new FCS and new stabilization system.

T14 Armata of course

>armata turret is not only protected against 30mm
Its worse than the standard

>Additional turret armour would not improve system survivability by the slightest.
Reduction in the number of things on the battlefield that can penetrate the turret would most certainly improve survivability

>Unless the main enemy of the future - CHINA - develops something really groundbreaking (inb4 quantum tonks) there aint no real need for completely new tanks
At this point are there any theoretically viable avenues to make that 'really groundbreaking' tank? I'm not an engineer or anything, but it looks like there isn't much that could be improved without full on comic book tier nonsense suddenly becoming real.

T-90

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>Its worse than the standard
Counting the applique its thicker than the mantlet protection on M1A2C.

>Reduction in the number of things on the battlefield that can penetrate the turret would most certainly improve survivability
Except you cant protect the cameras, antennas, APS effectors, and other external equipment with additional armor. The tank still suffers a system casualty despite lack of penetration of the turret.

>but it looks like there isn't much that could be improved without full on comic book tier nonsense suddenly becoming real.

Thats true, at least somewhat. But just outta my ass there are quite a few things that could be realistic:
- A groundbreaking improvement in gunpowder or materials for armor-defeating ammo which would render contemporary passive armor useless or reduce its effectivity massively. This was the case for many years when there was no real defense against HPFSDS.
- The development of a new alloy/ceramics/whatever which could make a given thickness of armor incredibly lighter.

But thats just about it. Since the fucking battle of Flers 1916 every tank was, is and will be about Mobility, Protection and Firepower.

And at this point Mobility is virtually perfect. Without the speed governor (which actually aint a real governor but some adjustment of the hydraulic pump and the electronics) Abrams is able to hit at least 65 Miles, perhaps 70. Same goes for cross country mobility. Perhaps its safe to say that Mobility-wise the tank has generally reached the end of its development potential. There is no need for even more speed. We already have reached the human limits. It may be no problem for a modern tank to rush with 55 miles cross country but the crew will definetly suffer.

So whats left is the old game between armor and gun.

>Both the US and EU are in the process of making new MBTs.
These are only "new" MBTs for political (fiscal) reasons. Not "new" as "Abrams compared to M60 new"
>It cannot. They tried in the 1990's, and found that they'd need a new FCS and new stabilization system.
You want to say the US of A wouldnt be able to develop a new stabilization system and a FCS within a few months under pressure of an all out war? Lol, ok

>These are only "new" MBTs for political (fiscal) reasons
What?
>Not "new" as "Abrams compared to M60 new
The "new" stuff on the original M-1 was the Turbine and the Composite armor.
>You want to say the US of A wouldnt be able to develop a new stabilization system and a FCS within a few months under pressure of an all out war?
No, probably not. A modern war would probably only last a few months.

There’s just something about tanks that I love, it’s a shame they arnt very useful in the modern day.

>tank is sharting

Yes.

The A5 onwards fixed the hole. But it is indeed a big weakspot on the earlier models.

Some may say "But muh composite behind it" as though "composite" is a magic word that makes 1mm impenetrable or something. The thickness behind it is very thin on the older models. Definitely not enough to stop APFSDS rounds.

Of course, the likelihood of being hit there is also moderately low, it's not like video games where people aim for weakspots.

You're missing his point
The "new" tanks are either continuing upgrade programs like CLIP and Black Knight for the Chally 2 or simple excuses for research programs with no plans to reach procurement.

For your point on the M1, yes
The Turbine and Composite where the new ideas, with a new hull to make them viable
There are no impending new techs that need a new hull design

No, see Are you really retarded enough to thing something like that is actually a hole with no precautions?

This is how literally all of these threads go.

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The Type 10 MBT of Japan is the fastest and strongest of all MBTs.

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