Comments by "" (@tomk3732) on "Abrams, Leopard and Challenger 2 vs. T-72: How Western Tanks Compare to Russia’s Armor | WSJ" video.

  1.  @davetdowell  not sure which tank would be better than, they both can take a beating and both can be destroyed. Also contemporary leopard 1 would be seen as junk?
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  2.  @davetdowell  So wait , T-62 better, right?
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  3. And here Russia has 6x the advantage.
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  4. Russian tanks are quite resistant to HEAT and M1 will not survive front hit from Russian APFSDS round so you are better off firing your own APFSDS or you end up scrapped.
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  5.  @steeltalon2317  M1 armor is about 100mm RHA inferior to T-72A on the front turret cheeks. M1A1 armor is superior to T-72A (or else why would they bother) - and lets say its similar to T-72B without ERA. I assure you T-72B was penetrated by inferior rounds in this war already - so clearly with better rounds it will not be a big deal to deal with M1A1 especially with much better round. Sure, we could do a test - as it is not simple to translate armor to RHA that is made of composites - i.e. rounds has to be designed to defeat certain composite or its penetration will be weaker. However, here we are dealing with a wide margin of error - thus it is quite safe to say that vacuum 2 will have no issues with M1A1. We are talking here about direct hit, not a glancing hit - by same account you could do a glancing hit on T-55 and also just damage it - direct hit, onto turret cheek where there is a warm human behind it - not more armor. Russian tanks do not have main gun ammunition surrounding the crew in most instances - the ammo is in the carousel in the floor of the tank. Some extra ammo can be stored in blow out panel compartment - this is for T-90 / Leopard 2 style tanks. For many T-72s - as in the case of M1, some extra ammo is usually not carried. Thus in the case of penetration it is very rare to have any major explosion right away - if crew survives the initial penetration it leaves to fight another day. Tank is on fire and eventually ammo cooks of in the turret and makes it go boom. Sure it is better to have blow out panels vs. not, but their importance is way over rated. Also depleted uranium armor in M1 - same as with its main gun using depleted uranium is not some kind of super technology - its mostly a crouch used by the US. The main gun is obsolete - it cannot produce maximum penetration at high speeds required of tungsten - so it uses uranium - b/c uranium does not need such high speeds. The uranium turret plates were added when it was found out that M1 armor plainly sucked - I mean brand new tank and it was already inferior to your enemy's tank somewhat dated armor. So US again had to "fix" the issue and did so with some uranium plates. If both these uranium solutions were do great everyone would be using them - Russia does have DU rounds for their T-72s - they could be used when needed for older tanks.
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  6.  @steeltalon2317  Be patient. Russia is winning the war, it will be settled as you say on the battlefield. Ukrainian infantry will start pouring for sure - lots of new body bags will need to be imported by Russia to remove them. Like the training US given to the Iraqis I hope - you know - where US trained Iraqi army was totally overrun during battle of Mosul - that training? Or do you mean how well US trained Afghan army over the 20 years US was there - that training? Or maybe the Georgian army? Do let me know when was last time US trained army actually did well. Vietnam, nope - oh and US provided air-force to South Vietnam. US lost so much equipment in Vietnam their police and special forces still use M-16 and even make parts for them - 113, upgraded, is their main battlefield taxi. They just recently retired last US tanks captured from that war. Maybe you should not throw stones in glass house.
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  7.  @steeltalon2317  Which army is loosing massive amounts of troops and which army has problems with number of troops as everyone run away? Well? Yes, I want to go that road - as I can clearly see that the training for the Saudi did not go well. Also US did not train neither Canadian or Polish army. Certainly not German - maybe the other way around.
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  8.  @steeltalon2317  I do not see any indications there are any "failures". Where do you see failures? I have seen this video months ago and I do not see any failures. Maybe you want to see his video of "what is wrong with M1" to see that he talks about all tanks in a fair manner. I been to the military - I am not sure about you - maybe a very junior role.
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  9.  @steeltalon2317  I make it even simpler for you, if US army is so good, why they lost in Afghanistan and why did the loose in Vietnam - these were two clear cases of loosing, so why? Why they have not made it to Kiev? Maybe they do not feel the current need to get there - or maybe they will get there next month. They are winning the war and pushing the enemy back. That is all they need right now. Sure they could mobilize 1 million men and overrun Ukraine - but why - there is no need for such major escalation yet. We see what Chinese say in the coming weeks.
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  10. Most western tanks do not have blow out panels - only latest tanks (both sides) have these panles.
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  11.  @blackdification  Negative. Leopard 2 does not have them for all ammo. T-90 does not have it for all ammo as well. Only designs after about 1980 start to have it - such as M1, Leclerc, K2 and T-14.
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  12.  @blackdification  M1 has blowout panels in the floor for the ammo stored there - usually no ammo is there - but panels are still provided. T-14 has unmanned turret so there are no issues there - crew is totally protected & has no interactions with any ammo.
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  13. M1 armor was so weak that it was inferior (by a wide margin) to T-72A. So US quickly added the uranium plates to make it a better protected tank.
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  14.  @jacobbaumgardner3406  The main reason US was leading is b/c at that time Soviet Union collapsed and nothing was made for at least a decade. T-90 fixed many issues but could not fix the underlying old design & is a stop gap measure. Sure it now has welded turret & quite decent armor BUT its main draw back is that even after modifications it cannot use super long rod ammo (among other issues). This is why Russians around year 2000 started experimenting with a new tank. At first it was a tank similar to T series of old but simply larger - than in 2010 they decided on a far more ambitious project with T-14. After a decade of work first T-14s started to roll out & are still having issues ironed out. They probably would have been adopted into service right now if not for the war. The main problem with T-14 (as is for Su-57) is their high price point. They cost 2x as much as T-90M. T-90M does the job well for current war. I guess Russians should invest more in active protection - but than again most kills are by artillery - so maybe its not such a huge priority. Incidentally you would think Russians would have a decent active protection system by now since they were the ones whom invented the dam thing like many decades ago - first systems were added to T-55 (!)
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  15. Interesting point is that Russia also has depleted uranium rounds to be used in case of war. Not sure they deploy these. They would be used on older tanks.
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  16. T-72 also uses composite armor ;) Who created this BS? Most tanks are wasted by artillery - here its thin metal plate vs. artillery rounds - it does not matter you are in M1 or T-72 or Leopard 2 or T-90 or pretty much anything else. Also notice the supposed tank numbers for both sides --- they are in 1000s. What sending 100 more tanks will do? Nothing.
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  17. 100s have been destroyed. I.e. not economical to recover. 100s. Iraq lost 60 of them in the battle of Mosul to ISIS.
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  18. In few years yes, over 200. In few years.
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  19. Overall 100s were lost. Maybe up to a 1000.
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  20. And remember it was not b/c Patton tank sucked that T-55 made a burning wreck of it in Indo-Pakistani war.
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  21.  @davetdowell  Challenger 2 is one of the worst tanks of NATO - worst newish tank as Ariette from Italy is quite bad. But otherwise it is a terrible tank. We will see most or all 14 Challenger 2 tanks destroyed in Ukraine very soon. This tank is so bad, there are multi series videos devoted to explain why you should not make such tank like object - you cannot fit it all in one video ;) It is British version of India Arjun ;) The tank of shame. Go get some Leopards and see what a tank should be. Heck even T-72 - T-90 lineup is a step up.
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  22.  @BlatentlyFakeName  T-62 had... better armor package than Centurion, at about 1/3 more thickness, better mobility at 14.5 vs. 13.5, better gun at 115mm smoothbore vs. L7 105mm rifled and potentially better sensors. Clearly T-62 was a much better tank - Centurion was a 1946 design, dated in 1970s. As for Israeli victories I always remind everyone that Iraqis managed to loose 60 M1A1 Abrams tanks in just few days to pickups driven by ISIS.... So I doubt Iraqi performance with T-62 / T-72 etc. was fault of the tank - they simply sucked in anything given. Similar can be said of other Arab nations.
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  23.  @augusto8821  Maybe, as long as they continue what they are doing - they are going to be fine. Better is always better but not needed for victory.
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