Satellites, tanks and AI. tanks
Cities
Most of the world's population lives in cities. Well, how he lives, exists between payments for a communal apartment and a mortgage. There are entire agglomerations of cities, and in our country too. And the experience of the current operation shows that no one is going to go out into the open field and honestly fight to the last drop of blood, and not hide behind civilian buildings and people. In an open field without cover, ours can only start up a column.
I am aware and more than sure that many have not understood this until now, they live with ancient ideas about military operations. And it will take a long time before this simple truth reaches them. It is sad that many good people will perish to the forefathers, while someone will live according to the old tablets. Cities are pretty good strongholds that can be held for quite a long time. There is no comparison with a clean, blown, viewed and shot through field.
A modern large city is not just Khrushchev, babushitniks, new buildings, ghettos, gas chambers made of human shelters, traffic jams, pharmacies with pubs through the door, microloans on every corner and administration in the center. Often these are logistics centers around which an extensive network of transport roads, industrial or scientific centers are built. Sometimes inside the cities there are military units and complexes of buildings of power units. Therefore, cities can be of great value and more difficult to capture.
How does the liberation of cities usually take place?
Slowly, sadly and with great losses. UAVs to work inside buildings, Israel has, we do not really have to work outside buildings. And those misunderstandings that are currently in service are presented in a meager assortment and a vanishingly small amount. There is infantry to carry out sweeps and something armored to cover the work of soldiers. Our armored personnel carriers, infantry fighting vehicles, infantry fighting vehicles, armored personnel carriers, due to the inferiority of their armor, the uselessness of the enemy detection and fire control system, as well as weak weapons for some concrete boxes, are not suitable for this business. In addition to the impression, and sad, they really do not provide anything.
Tanks
The tank remains. Our industry does not produce anything else, given the vast resource and energy potential of the country.
At the moment, the tank is the only type of ground military equipment that has serious protection and the ability to fire powerful weapons on the move. High mobility, good protection, serious armament turns the tank into a dangerous universal weapon. This technique needs to be developed.
But the tank was designed and is being designed mainly as a combat vehicle for aggressive fighting in open areas, and not for careful fighting in urban conditions of cramped streets. Not only is he not small himself, but with his long gun you can’t stick your head in everywhere and you won’t get through to any floors.
His armament is represented by high-explosive fragmentation, cumulative and sub-caliber shells. The last two indicate the orientation of the fight against heavily armored objects. That is, with tanks. For most lightly armored vehicles, sometimes a high-explosive fragmentation hit is enough. If the shock wave does not help, it will cut with fragments. A cumulative projectile is not suitable for smoking out enemies from the trenches, and it is difficult for a sub-caliber projectile to suppress a machine-gun crew that has settled in a house. With a certain desire and skills, you can try. But is it worth it?
Quite often there are statements about the need to increase the caliber of a tank gun to 152 mm. The argument is a more powerful charge, which is guaranteed to deal with a planted enemy in a building or fortified position. The message is clear, and what caused it is also clear. The tank is entrusted with the task inherent in artillery. Sometimes he is the only gun mount for lack of another. Artillerymen, the stubborn desire to see a 152 mm caliber on a tank is not from a good life, this is a stone in your garden.
On the other hand, against the backdrop of significant progress in the production of ATGMs, tanks are becoming an endangered type of weapon. A mountain of armor, which still breaks through the calculation of anti-tank systems, whether it be Javelin, Kornet, Bassoon. But at the same time, it is necessary to deal with ATGM crews, snipers and machine gunners who have settled in the fortifications, somehow cover the infantry in urban battles, and fight the enemy’s armored vehicles. Domestic armored personnel carriers with infantry fighting vehicles and others with the letter B are of little use for these purposes, they themselves must be protected.
It is very difficult for infantry without serious cover. Ten minutes granted to the enemy, while the native artillery is born, is an unbearably long time. Recent events show that the promised ten minutes can stretch into hours. Such is the terribly complex mathematics of combat operations.
What do we have from the modern and relevant in the tank field?
1. The last breath of T-72 called T-90. If you believe the announcers of the central channels, the most modern tank model, but, apparently, for the late nineties.
2. "Armata" Schrödinger. It seems to be there, but it is not there at the same time. The parquet version of the tank, which materializes in the area of solemn parades, after which it annihilates along with the budget spent on the creation of this quantum mechanical product.
3. Biathlon.
weaponry
Let's look at the weapons on the tank, what it consists of.
PKT, for all its reliability and unpretentiousness, is not considered as a formidable tank weapon, this is not the level of powerful weapons for a modern tank. The commander's large-caliber machine gun is good and completely replaces the PKT with its capabilities. But is it enough in modern combat conditions? There is a large long powerful smoothbore gun paired with a PKT. For the sake of and around which the entire tank is built.
All this weapons are incredibly arranged in the tower, along with ammunition mixed with tankers. The tower with all its contents is the most difficult and overloaded with a variety of equipment place near the tank. Because of this, it is so heavy, and not only. It is very difficult to arrange a cannon, an automatic loader, a storage of shells and a couple of living people in one place. Especially when it is required that they perform complex combat missions. Often responsible and associated with a risk to life. Therefore, an uninhabited tower is not just a tribute to a fashion trend, but a vital necessity. Putting the crew inside the carousel of shells, the automatic loader and making it so that it does not detonate when it hits the hull is a difficult engineering task. Too many mutually exclusive factors. It is easier, safer, more reliable to spread people and shells in space so that they do not intersect at inopportune moments of time.
Fans of the wonderful TV series “Four Tankmen and a Dog” out of habit will consider such an approach impossible and unnecessary such an arrangement when people are separate, shells are separate, flies are separate. That this breaks the established traditional way of things in the tank, and no one does this, and all sorts of naval AK-130s and AK-195s do not count, although such weapons must be reckoned with. Fans of the film will rightly note that we have already passed this on the "Armata", and it is known how it ended. Namely, nothing. Along with the disappearance of the crew, the tank disappeared from the turret. Apart from occasional appearances in the parade area and photographs in magazines, no one saw him again.
Our submarines are developed and launched faster than it is the case with tanks. Despite the fact that a simple diesel submarine is many times larger than a tank and just as difficult. The density of the arrangement of nodes can be much greater. We do not pay as much attention to the secrecy and stealth of a tank than to submarines, although the latter are many times larger than tanks in terms of their size and power of the power plant. This is probably because the autonomy of the simplest submarine is much longer than the generally accepted lifetime than that of a tank on the battlefield. Even in the submarines there are heaped and rather secret communication systems and means of ensuring the survivability of the submarine. Tanks don't have anything like that. And it won't. They are still rolling into the XNUMXth century along with their design bureaus.
And yet we need a counterargument to the fair remark of the fans of the series. Especially with their weighty argument in the form of the Armata tank made using mirage technology. At the moment, the army has weapons in the form of a BMPT, which has a twin 30 mm automatic cannon with dual power, which, in its capabilities, makes it easy to deal with lightly armored vehicles, infantry, ATGM crews and even air targets. Really creepy double-barreled unit.
In general, BMPT is a wonderful and interesting solution. Stop thinking that the tankers will shoot from the PKT on the move at moving targets, and the commander will also take it into his head to shoot back from his Kord at drones and helicopters on the move - this decision is very expensive. Because shooting while standing still is now an unaffordable luxury. As well as thinking that the crew will look out for someone, aim and shoot with bursts of PKT. Be sure to zasandalyat from the main caliber. And they will do it right. A video is circulating on the Web, as tankers from a distance of 30 meters with direct fire smashed into atoms an “independent” RPG fighter who had lost all fear and reason.
Again, an interesting observation to compare the state of affairs in aviation and ground technology, in order to understand how the views and way of thinking of the developers differ. Here is a good, unpretentious, rapid-fire PKT. No doubt, everyone is good. It would seem that you can take it and put it on a helicopter or plane, load thousands of ammo shots and water it in bursts, sparing no equipment. You can put a pair on each side for symmetry and increase the striking ability. The PCT itself does not take up much space, and the BC is quite compact. But for some reason, the designers put threshing machines four times larger in caliber. Why?
Let's return from heaven back to the BMPT. An uninhabited turret, a twin large-caliber automatic cannon with double ammunition, which is well versed with lightly armored vehicles and hiding in buildings and trenches, with relatively good protection, make the BMPT a rather dangerous and versatile weapon. True, a couple of course AGS are neither to the village nor to the city, and only four shaitan carts are extremely few. The last one is the saddest.
There are rumors of varying degrees of falsehood that in the next incarnation of the BMPT, a 57-mm cannon may appear. It may very well be paired, which will be quite handy. There is a familiar song here in the form of compensation for accuracy by increasing the caliber. Remind me how things are with the accuracy of hitting the 2A42 at distances from 800 m? And when driving on terrain with difficult terrain? After all, villains with anti-tank systems can lie further. And course grenade launchers will not help much.
It is not known how it will be decided with the guns, another point is interesting. If they leave the poor fellows with course grenade launchers, will they add stabilization at least in one plane? Or is it the old fashioned way again? They stopped, took aim, fired, dumped if they didn’t get it back. Or will the grenade launcher operator perform manual stabilization in all available planes on the move? A similar algorithm of work, it seems, is in the work of "Ataki-T".
Modern trends in cannon artillery
Now let's look at the current trends in barreled artillery.
At the moment, cannon and howitzer shells become more and more complex as they develop. Some become actively reactive, an active guidance and remote detonation system is added. These innovations entail an increase in the complexity and cost of manufacturing a projectile. Flight trajectory control and remote detonation equipment take up space, but the size of the projectile is very limited. A modern projectile is a product strictly calibrated in terms of mass, dimensions and balance, so you have to sacrifice the place of the combat charge to accommodate power sources and the electronics itself.
By design, shells are becoming more and more like rockets. Many have a tail, on some samples it is controllable. Accuracy and even the peculiarity of the projectile arrival trajectory are increasingly coming to the fore. Often it is very necessary that the projectile does not fly in a straight or flat trajectory, but as high as possible. To land vertically on violent heads and thereby calm them down. Or in the case of hostilities in the forests and mountains. There you see the beloved, but you cannot shoot through the trees with direct fire. With such requirements, shells are increasingly approaching ordinary rockets.
In addition, the desire was repeatedly expressed to add the possibility of transmitting a fiery greeting to those who dug in or sat down in concrete structures in the form of a thermobaric charge. "Tosochka" is an amazing thing in this regard. Journalists call it the most terrible weapon after the nuclear one, but you can’t always use it in street battles or in an open field. The inaccuracy of the hit is compensated by the power of the charge, which is probably why journalists compare it with a nuclear one. The flight range of 5–6 km is so completely non-nuclear that the ancient Grad looks incredibly long-range. And on the move, she can not work yet.
Have you noticed a trend at all? Reactive systems in motion can only work in aviation and on navy. Probably, for a flying aircraft, the return is less. Or because it has an aluminum case. Don't know. It seems that ground technology is just entering the twentieth century, and tankers will soon have an anatomically correct chair and an ergonomic control panel.
It seems like since the development of the "Object 775" many general secretaries have passed and several presidents have changed, the Mir station was launched, several resources were exhausted and flooded safely. During this time, they should have dealt with the complexity and low reliability of the missile guidance system. In my opinion, more than fifty years have passed. During this time, computer technology has overcome a colossal breakthrough in terms of microminiaturization, increasing the reliability of work and the accuracy of calculations. True, in my opinion, not with us. And when they say that the "Object 775" is ahead of its time, this does not mean at all that you have to wait a whole hundred years and then try to portray something.
If you think that everything is with guns, then you are greatly mistaken. worn drones, the use of which is gaining momentum, there are all sorts of fighters hung with electronics. What is surprising, even with us. Drones cannot always be shot down by direct fire or shrapnel. There are options for portable systems that jam at the UAV control and navigation frequencies. Of course, in the case of a tank, this is not our method. When there is a powerful on-board battery with constant recharging by a generator from a powerful engine, it makes no sense to waste time on trifles.
You can throw trouble not only to drones. Now even sniper scopes are crammed with electronics. And before you shoot at that nineteen over there, you can arrange a small electromagnetic roasting in the microwave or EHF range in parallel with it. With the current development of high-frequency electronics, squeezing out several thousand megawatt pulses from the tank's on-board network is not a problem. The only problem is that we do not manufacture such electronics. I looked at reference books on microwave transistors, with this we have as usual. Even microwave magnetrons are not local. Masers for plasma heating in nuclear laboratories will probably be the size of a small tank.
What is the connection between satellites and tanks?
An attentive and competent reader will ask: why is the topic of tanks inserted after satellite, what is the connection between satellites and tanks? Unfortunately we don't have any. Maybe somewhere the GLONASS module was wormed its way through an oversight, but this is not certain. This is where any connection with the cosmos ends.
Before that, I touched a little on the topic of satellite phones. About the fact that they have long been small in size and catch where Makar did not drive calves. Friends used them successfully in the highlands. We checked the quality and stability of work at altitudes of three and four thousand meters with a long stay at these heights. Where water boils at seventy degrees and below, there is more cosmic radiation, and weather conditions are worse, sometimes much. The devices did not take up much space, they coped with the main task of providing communication, and the tracks of the routes traveled were sent. It was over ten years ago. New models may not have very fast Internet.
Modern trucks of the NATO countries, in addition to self-diagnostic systems, satellite navigation and reservations, have a communication system, and many have a satellite one, allowing drivers to be in touch anywhere in the world. I am more than sure that if such a truck were on our territory, it would have a working connection, unlike our tanks. I don’t take domestic supposedly military trucks into consideration, there is no place at all for any radio station at all. Well, since we can't use trucks, maybe it will work on tanks? Install a navigation and satellite communications system. Neither one nor the other takes up much space and will not affect the mass of the tank much, but they can affect the combat capabilities quite strongly. A tank left without communication can be considered lost. A similar rule applies to combat units.
At the same time, the tank can be used not only to cover the infantry in its difficult affairs. Having a satellite communication channel to a standard VHF, it can act as a repeater for infantry units and other military branches. Because an ordinary army portable VHF radio station can operate within line of sight in an open field or no further than a few houses in a dense urban area. Well, they don’t like to go around obstacles of VHF radio waves and buildings are absorbed well.
You can dream up even more and throw off images from satellites to the tankers. A top view of the area will definitely not be superfluous for adjusting fire and searching for targets. It's one thing when you get data from one plane, it's another thing when a top view is added to this. Definitely, operational awareness is increased and the scope of actions of the crew expands accordingly. But I perfectly understand all the excessive fantasticness of this idea, with all its temptation and beauty. We have drones for reconnaissance and adjustment by the whole world, but space satellites are not yet sold on Ali. Therefore, you will have to wait for some time.
The new version of the propulsion system of the Abrams prototype looks very interesting. The hybrid layout looks beautiful and allows you to use the full potential of the electric power plant. The need for a flywheel, clutch, gearbox and clutches is completely eliminated. No need to burn fuel at idle to provide power to electronics and electric drives. Modern military equipment is increasingly overgrown with electronic devices, which are quite voracious.
At the same time, the generator does not have to be turned from a diesel engine, it can be very easily rotated from a gas turbine engine in a comfortable operating mode for that under a constant load close to maximum and get the same profit in the efficiency of a gas turbine engine compared to diesel engines. In this version, one can benefit from the compactness, omnivorousness and efficiency of the gas turbine engine, when it is not necessary to drive it between transient modes, when full power is not needed from it, and even more so to expect efficient idling from it. This circuit can be used to power all sorts of transportable computer centers and combat lasers, if we can still get to that.
And a lot but..
Only for our native conditions there are many buts. As we usually do. The hybrid electrical installation of the tank implies the presence of fairly powerful power electronics to switch from the engine to the batteries, evenly charge the batteries, convert the batteries' direct current into alternating current for the operation of electric motors. As one would expect, we don't even have a good theoretical base about energy-intensive batteries that can operate in a wide range of temperatures, especially in severe frosts. In our frosty climate, it seems that only Kamatsu equipment guarantees a launch at a temperature of -50 without a fire show with torches and blowtorches.
The situation is similar with powerful semiconductor switches, powerful compact electric generators and electric motors. If we have any notions, they are classified, which is similar to oblivion. Details can be seen in any power electrical engineering. Even electric locomotives have imported power components in their power circuits, and not only in power circuits. Almost all locomotive control automation is based on imported components.
A modern and even more promising tank is not just a big tractor with a big and long gun with a turret in the middle. Where the crew, with the help of simple optical instruments, looks out for trouble for themselves or someone. This is a combat unit that can receive and transmit real-time data from the line of contact. And the better, more stable, more reliable the connection of the tank with other tanks and participants in the battle, the greater the danger it poses.
At the moment, the main data transmission is carried out through the audio channel. The audio channel is not only slow, it is sequential and may have different interpretations, in contrast to the image that the brain processes in parallel and much faster, often more accurately. Only sometimes there is no stable voice transmission over the radio. Poorly catch compact portable radio stations under armor, especially thick. Radio stations with "Ali" often operate on other frequencies than the legendary R-123.
Then you understand that I’m rolling the barrel onto tank A (yeah, “Abrams”). We know a lot about armor, fancy sights and an uninhabited tower, all sorts of radars. How effective is all this formidable and beautiful goodness when a combat unit is deprived of real-time interaction with the rest of the combat participants? Cases when the commander yells at the infantry through open hatches or the infantry tries to shout to those who have settled in the tank are not considered such interaction. If a person starts to break down, yell, it means that he loses control over himself and, as a result, control over the situation. There are plenty of tense moments without this, but you can do different things with a psycho. It’s good if he just breaks firewood or piles bricks, only in the heat of the moment you can do such things that you will have to wash or transfuse a lot of blood.
No matter how the creators of a promising tank dream under the covers, the infantry will also prance on the armor, regardless of what generation the tank is under it, because domestic lightly armored vehicles have a level of protection similar to the level of modern NATO trucks. And the chances of surviving on the armor are much greater than behind the armor. It doesn't look like this point was thought about when designing the tank.
No matter how cool a tank is in terms of booking and detecting all sorts of guidance beams, sometimes a tank can’t go far without support and interaction with infantry. Will all sorts of radars and laser light detection systems work normally when half a squad of fighters hung with iron sits on the armor?
Interacting with aircraft sounds tempting, as does tracking the location of guns from passing shells. Only how to explain to the pilot of the aircraft which house to process? He also appears over the area at high speed, and from above for him the houses look different than from the ground. He needs the coordinates of the target much in advance with his flight speed.
Well, and, probably, the most important thing - how relevant is such a terribly fancy and expensive device that it can only be used in parades, and it is very undesirable to use it in combat?
Another point regarding its aerospace cost, according to all sorts of open sources. It seems that it is assembled on the Moon due to the peculiarities of the conditions there, which are extremely suitable for the assembly of this tank, and from there it is lowered by a space elevator. Or tank developers and assembly line workers are all from the list of the world's rich, according to Forbes magazine. It is hard to believe that in a country where there is a surplus from ore to energy sources, and everything is local, there are such high development and production costs, as well as delays from development to implementation.
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