re: #42 Targetpractice

Even if it was all that and a bag of chips, I’d still be hesitant to deploy them when only a handful exist. Given Russia’s approach to armoured warfare to date, all it’s going to take is one of these getting popped by a Javelin and the entire mystique immediately comes to an end. Hard to sell a product to foreign buyers when its combat debut saw it reduced to a mobile camp fire by missiles whose development stretches all the way back to the Reagan years.

The T-14 itself sort of stretches back to the Reagan years.

Or at least the general concept of developing an MBT with an unmanned turret with autoloader while the entire crew is in a highly protected capsule in the hull*. It was seen as a potential development in the 1980s.**

The keys to what the T-14 is capable of is really tied to three things I think:
1. Sights/optics/computers - Does it have a suite that allows it to collect and use information on the battlefield to make it effective.

2. APS system - Does it have an Active Protective System that might help protect it from missiles and other threats? Does said system work.***

3. Improved crew survivability over current Russian tanks and their popping turrets. Something western tanks have paid greater attention to since they are professional (and not conscript) armies and thus their tank crews are considered valuable assets worth preserving if possible. Thus the blow-out panels and other things which will mission-kill a tank, but potentially allow the crew to survive.

* - Which some consider a liability since everyone is lower down and can’t see the surroundings as well as being higher up in a turret. One reason the sensor suite will be so important with the vehicle.

** - An old (1985) RPG game called “Twilight: 2000” about a 2000-ish global war includes a Russian/Soviet “T-90” with an unmanned turret, etc. etc. just like a T-14. There is also an M1 Abrams variant nicknamed “Giraffe” that is similar in concept.

*** - The T-14 with a full-blown working APS in Arma 3 is a sort of Death Star. The APS pretty much stops any missile, including Javelins like it has some sort of deflector shield. Not effective against a 120mm APFSDS dart however.