Russia has managed to create an armor-piercing feathered projectile with a detachable pallet capable of threatening Western tanks from a distance, writes TNI. Claims that the 2A82 cannon can be installed on numerous T-90 and T-72 tanks have not yet been confirmed.
Sebastien Roblin
During the Cold War, the huge tank armada of the Soviet Union formed the basis of its military power. However, the Gulf War in 1991 led to doubts about its superiority. On February 26, 1991, a reconnaissance company consisting of nine M1 Abrams tanks and 12 Bradley combat vehicles came across an Iraqi T-72 tank brigade from the elite division of the Republican Guard. In 23 minutes of fierce combat, the reconnaissance company destroyed 37 Soviet-built T-72 tanks without losing a single vehicle.
This outcome was not the result of higher-quality combat training of the Americans alone, since Iraqi tankers repeatedly hit the Abrams, but their shells could not penetrate the frontal armor of the M1. During the entire war, not a single tank was destroyed by enemy fire.
Fans of Russian tanks in response to this immediately declare that the Soviet Union did not supply more modern 125 mm armor-piercing shells to Iraq, in which durable tungsten or depleted uranium is sometimes used to increase penetration. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russian engineers continued to create improved ammunition. But the effective thickness of the frontal armor of Western tanks has also increased by about 50%.
Today, the T-72 remains Russia's main battle tank, which is complemented by the T-80 with a gas turbine engine and 400 more modern T-90s. All these tanks are equipped with a 125 mm smoothbore 2A46 gun, which has a "carousel" type automatic loader instead of a loader from the crew.
Various ammunition is used in tanks, including high-explosive fragmentation shells for hitting personnel and light vehicles and anti-tank shaped projectiles, whose combat shaped charge, when in contact with a target, burns a hole in it and hits the crew inside with its jet. Since the action of a cumulative projectile is not based on kinetic energy, it does not lose its penetrating power with distance. Russian tanks can also launch guided missiles through the barrel of their weapons. These missiles also have cumulative warheads. The missile flies slower than the projectile, but it hits targets more accurately at a great distance.
But modern main battle tanks have a variety of composite and/or reactive armor, which is sometimes combined with an active protection complex. Such a complex is especially effective against cumulative projectiles. Thus, the preferred ammunition in the fight against tanks remains an armor-piercing feathered projectile with a detachable pallet (BOPS), which uses kinetic energy.
The BOPS consists of a swept core made of durable and high-density material and placed inside an aluminum "pallet" with a tail. This pallet flies out of the barrel of the gun like a flower petal. The kinetic core loses its energy in flight, but nothing can resist it except bulky and thick armor.
Penetration can be increased by increasing the velocity of the projectile (usually by lengthening the barrel of the gun), increasing mass by increasing the diameter of the ammunition (although this is difficult because the weight increases significantly), lengthening the penetrating core or increasing the density of the metal.
Today, the Abrams, Leopard 2 and Challenger 2 tanks have frontal armor approximately equivalent to 800 millimeters of homogeneous rolled armor. The best Russian armor-piercing shells suitable for the 2A46M cannon are 3BM59 "Lead-1" and 3BM60 "Lead-2", made of tungsten and depleted uranium, respectively. They are estimated to penetrate 650-750 mm of armor at an angle of 60 degrees at an average distance of two kilometers.
It is quite obvious that these Russian shells are weak against Western armor, although not completely hopeless. They can still penetrate it at shorter distances or by hitting the weaker side or rear armor of any main battle tank. The stubborn ones will still say that a better-trained (or more successful) tank crew can still win, but Russian tankers face serious challenges, especially since Western tanks have better sights and fire control systems.
The readiness of "Lead" for production was announced approximately in 2002-2005, but evidence of the mass production of these munitions appeared only in 2016. One of the problems was that the cores of these ammunition had a length of 740 mm, and a projectile no longer than 640 mm was placed in the automatic loader on the T-72 and T-80. In this regard, new 2A46M-5 guns and M-4 automatic loaders had to be installed on the upgraded tanks.
Meanwhile, Russian engineers began designing a huge new 2A83 152 mm cannon, intending to equip it with a new generation T-14 Armata tank, which was at the design stage at the time, as well as an improved 125 mm 2A82 cannon, which was planned to be installed on the T-72 and T-90.
In 2003, three prototypes of the 2A82 were manufactured and passed fire tests. More than 1,2 thousand shots were fired from them. This gun created 20% more pressure on projectiles flying out of the barrel than the 120-millimeter cannon of the German Leopard-2 tanks, which resulted in an increase in the initial velocity of the projectile, its penetration ability and accuracy.
The 2A82 gun can fire new BOPS 3BM69 "Vacuum-1" and 3BM70 "Vacuum-2" (made of tungsten and depleted uranium), the length of which is 900 mm. According to available information, their speed is two kilometers per second, and at this distance the projectile can penetrate armor 900-1,000 mm thick, with an energy of 15 megajoules. If this is the case, it means that a Russian medium-range tank shell will hit Western tanks with a high degree of reliability.
By 2010, Russian engineers came to the conclusion that the 2A83 cannon was too big, and decided to put the 2A82 cannon on the Armata, although this officially became known only a few years later. Moscow also boasted that it would purchase 2.1 thousand Armata tanks by 2020. But later it turned out that by this time Russia would have acquired only a hundred and a little T-14.
According to Russian blogger Alexey Khlopotov, who deals with military topics, the order for 2A82 guns demonstrates how few Armata tanks are in operation in the troops. At first, 13 2A82-M1 guns were purchased to equip the pre-production T-14s. Another 24 were purchased in December 2017, which made it possible to create one T-14 battalion in the amount of 36 vehicles.
The slow pace of purchases of the T-14 indicates that two thousand Russian T-72 and 800 T-80 still have a long life and service in the Russian army. In 2017, Russian military media reported that Moscow plans to modernize the T-90 tank by equipping it with Armata equipment, including the 2A82 cannon.
In 2019, tests began on the upgraded T-90M vehicle, which has a Kalina fire control system capable of automatically tracking a target, upgraded dynamic protection, and possibly a new active protection complex. But the 2A82 cannon, capable of using "Vacuum" projectiles, is not there.
In another article, Khlopotov shed light on the essence of the problem. Russian engineers simply failed to find an economical way to install a Vacuum loader for almost meter-long projectiles in the cramped turrets of old Russian tanks.
In the early 2000s, the Omsk plant studied the possibility of creating a double-feed automatic loader in which longer shells with pallets were stored horizontally in a separate mechanism. But to install this new system, it was necessary to extend the tank chassis and add a seventh roller. Because of this, it was impossible to ensure savings, and this was the main goal of modernization. For this reason, the upgraded tower was abandoned in 2009.
But engineers came up with another, more successful way: to remove 80 millimeters of armor from each side of the T-72 and T-80 towers in order to place a wider automatic loader in it. The designers intended to compensate for these cutouts by thickening the armor from the outside. The mechanism has shown that it is capable of loading a cannon with projectiles.
This modification is used in the unique T-72 and T-90 test tanks, which are equipped with the 2A82 cannon. However, Khlopotov notes: "The 2A82 will not be installed even on the T-90M main battle tank being created by the Russian army. It just turned out that the Russian industry is not able to produce this tool." Khlotov sees the reason for this in the mismanagement of the Russian metallurgical industry.
Thus, the following results are obtained. Russia has managed to create an armor-piercing feathered projectile with a detachable pallet capable of threatening Western tanks from a distance, but only a few new T-14 tanks can use it. Optimists' claims that the 2A82 cannon can be installed on numerous old T-90 and T-72 tanks have not yet been confirmed.
This article was published in The National Interest on April 6, 2019.
