NATO 120mm rounds against Russian Tanks

  • 3 years ago
With the appearance of new soviet tanks like T-80B, having much advanced ceramic armor in the early 1980s, and many older soviet like t72s were also being upgraded to t72b model 1985 and 1988 equipped with kontakt-1 and followed by kontakt-5 explosive reactive armor, with much better resistance are impenetrable to anti-tank missiles and the APFSDS of that time, as a result NATO tanks needs the advance gun to counter the soviets tanks and defeat their armor. As a counter Rhienmetall developed the L55 120 mm gun which has the same geometry as the L/44 but it is 1.3 m longer, which increased the muzzle velocity of the projectile and result is better penetration than round fired from L44. The plus point is that L/55 uses the same ammunition as of its previous and the longer L/55 has been retrofitted in the leopard 2a6 and other succeeded versions. The US develop their own kinetic energy rounds in the form of APFSDS using depleted uranium alloy rod designated as m829. It is the fin stabilized discarding sabot round which was developed in the mid-1980s for the 120 mm gun having length of 934mm and the muzzle velocity of 1679 m/sec. Penetration of M829 is 481 mm of RHA at a distance of 2000m. But this round is no longer in production and has been succeeded by M829a1, a2, a3 and M829a4 rounds.
STAFF is the 120 mm smart ammunition that destroys enemy tanks from top .as tanks have weak armor on the top. Being a top-attack smart munition, STAFF destroys enemy armor by flying over it and firing a highly lethal explosively formed penetrator down into its lightly armored top. No enemy armor is safe from STAFF -- whether it's moving, at long range, or in a defensive position. Although STAFF is primarily designed as an anti-armor round, it complements the M830A1 tank round by being highly lethal against helicopters. The M1 Abrams also uses the M1028 canister round, which is an anti-personnel munition, packed with over 1,000 tungsten balls. It is a kind of close-in defense of tanks against massed assaulting infantry attack to break up infantry concentrations, between a ranges of 200-500 meters, by discharging large numbers of tungsten balls.
Currently, all NATO 120mm gun rounds are arguably capable of defeating Russian tanks. The real challenge is T-14 Armata which is a complete innovation in term of design and protection, the armor capsule for crew and Malachite dual explosive reactive armor are of significant importance. Another threat is an Afghanit Active protection system capable of intercepting high-velocity APFSDS rounds. As a response Rheinmetall introduced a larger 130 mm L51 tank gun at Eurosatory 2016. Compared to the 1190 kg 120 mm barrel, the 130 mm has a 1,400 kg barrel. The 130 mm is designed to equip the Main Ground Combat System developed by joint venture between Germany and France as successor to Leopard and Leclerc tanks. In conclusion, the training and morale of the crews can be of greater worth than the technical superiority of the MBT

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