Seriously

We're letting the others win, right guys? I just hope so.

washingtonpost.com/news/checkpoint/wp/2016/05/16/in-nato-tank-competition-u-s-comes-up-short-against-germany/

m.youtube.com/watch?v=wvLpQiaKIYw


>NATO six nation tank competition
>Germany took top spot
>U.S. Came in 4th
>Last summer Russia beat 16 countries in their own version of the competition

Granted, America only had two tanks in the competition, but still that's no excuse.

The latest Leopard II isn't considered the best tank in the world for nothing

Does anyone know if the A3 iteration has been released yet? I would ask /k/, but that'd involve making a thread and getting shit hurled at me.

Relax, mate, this circus doesn't mean shit. In a real war US would easily obliterate all other NATO countries combined. Which is the reason why they are in NATO in the first place.

GERMAN TANKS STRONK !

GERMAN MILITARISM IS ON THE RISE

I was under the impression tanks dont win wars like they used too.

Only huge bombs dropped from planes do.

Where's the russian competition?

Why do the German tanks have their barrel pop up after firing?

Have you been around any army bases, user? Its mostly 'minorities' in those tanks...

Do you think something is better just because it is American? Reality have another opinion.

The Abrams is 36 years old, and is currently the oldest MBT used by NATO forces.

>France is part of Nato
>France doesn't take part
Why is the french government so anti-fun?

Whole concept of those tank competitions is a propaganda.

Russian tanks will win. They're far more versatile, they have reactive armour, tube launched ATGMs with extremely long ranges, auto loaders that won't get tired like a human loader, equal or better quality munitions, ect. It's always been this way, since Soviet doctrine relied heavily on tanks across the North German plain and Fulda. German tanks are decent, but they're not nearly as good as the new Russian stuff or some late upgraded T-90s

It is elevated so the shell is unloaded properly.
standard configuration of the Leopard/Strv 121/122 tanks

What does it matter? you can out thousands of tanks anywhere on the globe they can barely put one.

>The challenge featured seven tank platoons in total. Denmark, Germany, Italy, Slovenia and Poland all competed with one platoon, while the United States sent two. Each platoon included four tanks manned by four men. Germany took the gold in its Leopard 2A6 tanks, while the U.S. Army in the M1A2 Abrams didn’t place.
we had the most platoons.

This seems to be the case. The only way American tanks have done so well in combat is because we can throw tons of money to make the problems go away.

>The Russian competitions feature a ballet-like spectacle of armored vehicles and are well-attended by civilians.

why can't we have cool events like that.

Russian tech is cheap and can be mass produced easily in case of war, plus spare parts can be produced locally. On the paper, the raw numbers make it look less good than the western ones but I think they can just shit enough of them to get victory. This is a thing we can't do with, say, the Leclerc.

Armour officer here, you Guys are cute.

Pic related, my boat

>Germany took top honors in the competition, followed by Denmark and Poland in second place and third place respectively.
>Poland better than USA

Polan stronk, russia we war you!

>build a nice big tank
>draw a fucking leaf on it

>Russian tech is cheap and can be mass produced easily
this isnt the 1970s mate

y'all look like faggots

Canadian cammo.

the a3 is still being worked on.

Russian tanks will continue to be death traps. The US doesn't use auto loaders because if it's damaged or fails the tank becomes useless as they can no longer use the main gun. With a person loading you can just have another person take over if they get tired or killed.

Loaders get tired? Maybe if you're a faggot. There was no greater fun I had as an armor crewman than to empty the rack during a mad minute as the loader. The advantages of the human loader includes being lighter, having a less complex breech/loading mechanism, gaining the ability to swap out a chambered round, the gun tube isn't raised in the air like a flag signaling your tank is reloading, separation of ammo from the rest of the turret compartment, and speed. I could sustain a 4 second average between BOOM and "up" for the loader's side of the bustle rack and I wasn't the fastest in the battalion.

you guys sure look combat ready

>tanks
>relevant in ww3

You also have someone sitting in the same compartment as the ammo. If it goes off the chances of survival are nonexistent.

And don't forget an extra man for all intents and purpose
> an extra man to fight worse case scenario
>an extra man helps with maintenance
>moral
The Abrams is an outdated tank made specifically for European defense during the cold war. They aren't meant for defense while the t90 is an offensive tank but with throwing money at the Abrams, they are mass produced and less likely to get overran.

Good picture.

Oh shit, so that's what I heard a few days ago. I live about 50 klicks away and you can usually hear occasional tank fire, but this time it was pretty intense.

tanks are kinda dated now days. 1 soldier with a anti tank rocket kills the tank and the people inside. reactive armor only works 1 time and can be cleared with 1 grenade

so the economics of war dictates that tanks are to costly for how cheaply you can destroy them

We take our military very seriously. It's unacceptable to not have the best tanks.

Your tank is good but old as fuck already, you need a new one

Plus they're absolutely useless if you don't have complete air superiority. Since you need to amass them for any serious offensive, you're entirely exposed to air strikes. The US has more planes than the rest of the world combined.

I wish they sent an israeli merkava4 crew so we could see where we stand

Land battleships are outdated.

The Merkava is an odd beast, but I would have loved to have seen one compete. Never really seen much of them in video footage.

And I'm not surprised the US didn't place well, as the Abrams is an older vehicle. It badly needs an update, which I have heard is coming, but I know nothing about. It's not a bad tank by any means, hell I love the thing, but it seems to me (an outsider with a minimal amount of knowledge) that it has gone from being a big scary beast to an aging lion.

At this point I'd like to see a new design, personally, but I have no idea where to start.

germany stronk as long as they stop getting ass raped

2016 fully equiped merkava4(with Trophy) is a ture scary beast
damn, I really wish Israel participated in this

>Germany takes first in a tank competition

That should be expected though m8

I like that there was a distinct emphasis on crew protection, especially with the placement of the engine up front.

Plus I'm a sucker for rear-mounted turrets, and they just look mean with the upgraded armor package.

Bring it, faggots.

The competitions mostly have to do with mobility. When it comes to protection, versatility, and lethality the Abrams trumps the Leopard 2. While the first point is fairly simple the latter two points may need some explaining to most people. The Abrams alongside the T-80 is probably the most versatile tank on earth due to its gas turbine engine. While the engine isn't fuel efficient and it has a massive thermal signature even relative to a normal diesel engine, its ability to run on pretty much anything is a major benefit in the event of a war. In effect the Abrams and T-80 were each designed to be the ultimate tanks in a conventional war and a large part of that is not needing to worry as much about logistics. As for firepower it is well known that the Abrams and Leopard 2 utilize the same gun, the Rheinmetal 120 mm. Since the German gun (55 vs 44 calibre) is longer logic would dictate that the German gun would be more capable, but there is a major edge the US has over Germany, ammunition. While both guns can share the same ammunition they each develop their own and the US has ammunition that can penetrate a good bit more out of a 44 calibre gun than the German ammo can out of the L/55. The reason for this is primarily due to the fact that the US ammunition has a much longer and heavier penetrator giving it more penetration than the German gun. In fact the Abrams being given an L/55 would actually be kind of a downgrade against Eastern tanks as the low velocity of the American ammunition makes Eastern style anti-KEP explosive reactive armour less effective since the penetrator will lose less length to the ERA.

What were they scored on? Who were the judges?

>The butthurt is real
Topkek

>Turbine

cool idea, shit in practice. we had to bring plenty of support vehicles during the Iraqi wars since the turbines were hard to maintain and didn't perform well in the dust.

I get what you're trying to say, but you've just gotta come to terms with the fact that your tank is outdated. Your fuel versatility advantage isn't anything to write home about when you're burning it up all the time. The German vehicle has better protection and better firing control systems. Granted, the German is super fast but shit at steering, so if mobility were all that mattered you'd have done better. In addition to that, there are many partially-suppressed reports that in your latest wars, your vehicles have been consistently BTFO by the new generation of Russian RPGs, but this is kept hush hush to keep your air of invulnerability.

It was a great design, but it's showing its age.

>Germany
>Relevant
Britain, France, Turkey, Poland, Italy, Spain, Russia, Switzerland, Ukraine, Belarus, Greece. All these countries have bigger armies than you and three of them have nuclear weapons. Even in Europe Germany is irrelevant.

Another major thing is the massive turrets on both tanks make for a huge target.

The Russians have the right idea with automating the turret on the Armata. Wish we had that idea first.

Germans are the best engineers. I'm not ashamed for my country to lose to them.

If there's one thing Americans do well, it's taking an existing idea and improving it. Should do the same with the Armata (as soon as actual data shows up, of course).

Who gives a shit if they complain?

>US would easily obliterate all other NATO countries combined
>Which is the reason why they are in NATO in the first place.
it doesn't make any sense.
i know russians are stupid but jesus christ m8 what are you talking about?what do you know about war?

>M-muh army
>Americuck getting that butthurt
You know what? You are paying for our welfare. Feels pretty good desu
That said, the refusal of our army and politicans to use depleted uranium ammunition comes at quite a big cost to performance.

>meme1a2
>better than THE LEOPARD
We should just buy leopards instead of trying to fix that shit tank.

WIR PANZERN JETZT!

>I get what you're trying to say, but you've just gotta come to terms with the fact that your tank is outdated.
The Leopard 2 is older than the Abrams.
>Your fuel versatility advantage isn't anything to write home about when you're burning it up all the time.
It is in a conventional war, which is what the Abrams was designed for.

>The German vehicle has better protection and better firing control systems.
It really isn't, and even if it was the fact that they store ammunition in the front hull makes them as bad at being death traps as Russian tanks. At least the Russians get an effective low profile autoloader for making their tanks death traps.

>your vehicles have been consistently BTFO by the new generation of Russian RPGs, but this is kept hush hush to keep your air of invulnerability.
Because the latest generation of RPGs are designed to kill the latest generation of tanks. The reason our tanks take higher casualties than German tanks is because we deploy far more forces to foreign countries than Germany and other Leopard users.

Besides it isn't like tanks matter anymore. An M60 Patton would be good enough for the modern US army, it isn't like we actually have to fight anyone with decent tanks. If the Cold War never ended odds are we would be using a completely different tank. Germany, the US, Switzerland, and Sweden all considered putting 140 mm guns either in completely new generations of tanks (what the Swedes planned) or putting them into existing tanks (which is what the other three planned). Look up the Abrams CATTB. If we were still in the cold war the Abrams would have been retired and almost nobody would be using Leopard 2s because Germany would still have a tank force numbering in the thousands.

Why are people surprised the U.S. tank did not win considering it was mainly a copy of a Brit and German tank almost nothing was original even the Armour

the Leophard is just a better platform
funny thing is that the Abrams and Leo where co developedfor a lardge part

US developed automated turret a couple decades ago as a prototype. Decided not to pursue at the time. There were some details and pictures floating around /k/ when the armata was being revealed.

Germany always has really good tanks
it's kinda their thing
to bad they won't use them to defend their soil from invaders
but then again that was kinda always our thing

>the refusal of our army and politicans to use depleted uranium ammunition comes at quite a big cost to performance.
Once again you are showing how little you know. The US superiority in ammunition isn't due to some magic material such as Depleted Uranium it is due to the fact that the US continues to dump money into ammunition development to fight phantom enemies. Tungsten alloys can surpass Depleted Uranium in penetration per mass efficiency at higher velocities even if the velocities are difficult to reach. Outside of extremely low velocities like 1600 m/s (which is around the muzzle velocity of US M829A3 penetrator). Put simply the US still has a cold war mindset which is why we still use a cold war tank and develop ammunition designed to counter modern Russian tanks. M829A1 is sufficient for our needs but we continue to develop more and more advanced ammunition to kill tanks we will never face.

How can one be so fucking salty that your tanks are shit?

You must be a true American.

They found that a man loading the cannon was a lot less likely to fail and in some cases such as ammo switch is faster than an autoloader

Literally none of that was claiming the superiority of American tanks you retard.

I would say the real reason for all that cash put into development is more to line someones pocket than to develop better ammo

Jordan was fielding a Challenger with an automated turret well before the Armata. Look up the Falcon turret.

God, americans are retard. At least learn to read your own fucking language.
Nowhere did I say that the difference in ammunition just boils down to the uranium thing. It`s just the it is the most obvious factor, as german defense experts have warned again and again that our current tungsten rounds could prove incable of penetrating the T-14 Armata at appropriate ranges, and adviced the ministery of defense to switch.

But of course an autist on a mongolian cartoon imageboard will know better.

Other than the lack of information about its performance, I'm baffled by the quality of the Armata program. Finished in 5 years, unified platform across serveral fighting vehicle types, fully automated turret, actual improvements over previous tanks...

This is not like US military programs that go over budget and dump billions of dollars into fancy features. This seems so uncharacteristic of the Russian style post-war corruption.

Partially think about it like this.
>Military likes having money
>Politicians like fearmongering to get elected
>Companies like getting money for making basic shit
So the politicians attempt to justify having a bloated military budget. The military wants to use the money without drawing much attention (look at the F-22 and F-35 fiasco) so instead of making a completely new tank they just have companies develop new ammunition. Pretty much we are fighting a cold war against a dead country and we don't really give a shit. Ultimately it is to benefit the elites but whatever it isn't like any of this matters, an air force of P-38s and an army riding in M60 Pattons and wielding M1 Garands is all we would really need to do our job.

Maybe it's because us military programs are a fucking nightmare due to politicians fucking around with them?

What politicians did to the F-35 and the bradley is unbearable. They should just say what they want and then leave it at that instead of the major scope creep.

This brings up something to me why are we still useing ammo like this when antitank missiles seam to be much more effective why not just have the cannon replaced buy a launch tube

WE WERE PANZERS AND SHEEEIIIT

>funny thing is that the Abrams and Leo where co developedfor a lardge part

The Americans dropped the FCS, even when they found it to be superior to their own when they had trails.
The usual "must be built in murrika", funny how it turned out to be more expensive and still inferior.

>It`s just the it is the most obvious factor
Except it isn't. As I stated the differences aren't actually big. The reason US ammunition outperforms yours is primarily due to an entirely different design philosophy, pretty much forsaking velocity entirely for the longest penetrator we can get. If you just took the current German ammunition and made it depleted uranium it wouldn't actually help much at all. Honestly I just hate tungsten ammunition because the ideas behind using it are retarded "hurr durr depleted uranium gives you cancer." As does tungsten, as long as your retarded kids aren't playing in the burned out hulls of tanks and you drink filtered water you are fine.
>as german defense experts have warned again and again that our current tungsten rounds could prove incable of penetrating the T-14 Armata at appropriate ranges, and adviced the ministery of defense to switch.
Who the fuck cares? By the time you are going to be fighting Armatas they would have been 30 years old by then. I was specifically chastising the US development plans of constantly developing new ammunition to defeat threats that we won't face for another 30 years. The M829A1 performed just fine in the first gulf war, there is literally no need to have developed the M829A2 let alone the A3 and A4.

>German tanks win
too bad those were the only working tanks in the whole country ;-)

I may be wrong, but I believe that the principles behind some of the ammo is the same stuff used in anti-tank missiles. Still, the T-14 can fire anti-aircraft missiles out its main cannon for fucks sake.

the budget cuts really took a toll on the forest camo

They aren't and the US and Germany considered the idea in the 70s when missiles really were much better than tank guns at killing tanks. Germany avoided the concept from the start pretty much saying "we will use the same tank but fuck your shitty gun launcher" eventually we realized how shitty the gun launcher tank was as a concept and the US and Germany both dropped the MBT 70 and developed their own tanks which would become the Leopard 2 and Abrams. Honestly despite its flaws the MBT 70 was an interesting concept in several ways but like many of these cold war projects it was too far ahead of its time.

You've given no evidence or argument besides muh salt. This dude knows his shit, definitely more than you

>This brings up something to me why are we still useing ammo like this when antitank missiles seam to be much more effective why not just have the cannon replaced buy a launch tube

because a shell travels at 1600-1800m/s, the fastest anti tank missiles are 600m/s and they have a length of 3m.

they don't

usage of tanks in conventional warfare is completely out of the picture

What can tanks do against an airstrike?

>>Last summer Russia beat 16 countries in their own version of the competition

because russia never cheats amirite?

Our rifles don`t work. And our helicopters. And we can`t fly the drones we bought because muh laws. But our tanks run as good as swiss clocks

Could just be a case of them wanting to fill their pockets with all the money the would get from replacing the ammunition then.
We have bigger issues anyway, getting a working rifle for our infantry for example.

The Abrams' ammo compartment is separate from the crew compartment, it has a hydrolic blast door for the loader to retrieve a round and then close it. The ammo compartment is also strongest near the front-end (towards the crew compartment) and weaker towards the rear and sides. This ensures that if the is an ammo storage detonation that the explosive force is diverted away from the crew compartment.

The additional advantage of having a crewman load as opposed to an autoloading mechanism is that said crewman can fill other roles if other crewmen are injured; a loading mechanism cannot fire a gun or drive.

and how many T-14s can Russia build without breaking the bank? Here's a hint: less than 1

In a war games situation of let say 50 american tanks vs 50 tanks of anyone else in the world, US would win every time. There is more to tank combat than the abilities of a single tank. In real a real combat situation no one can beat the US.

We are the only military that uses the organized chaos doctrine effectively. Our NCOs are the backbone of our military while little college officer faggots attempt to lead other militarys.

Plus only the USA, Russia and, maybe China could even supply enough munitions for an actual tank battle.


>Europe ran out of bombs in less than 2 weeks of limited bombing of Libya

Top kek.

lel this. China won the last Biathlon but you cant trust Ruskie judges

>Who the fuck cares? By the time you are going to be fighting Armatas they would have been 30 years old by then.
This is the wrong kind of thinking that will sink us. Russia is looking to export thier tank. The winning strategy is to be always ready, not bet on being able to catch up.

It really did produce something that, assuming it lives up to their claims, is of considerably higher quality than one could possibly expect in such a short time frame (and without such high levels of corruption, as you said).

It's all slightly disconcerting, if I'm honest. It almost seems like people put aside the usual military-industrial complex shenanigans to put out a good product. Dunno if I'm too jaded to believe such a thing is possible, but it certainly seems that way.

>And we can`t fly the drones we bought because muh laws.

don't forget the MAK werte hans, the air in your troop transporters have to be as clean as in a hospital, doesn't matter that the prices increases to astronomical heights.

This should be televised sport.

>Europe

France is not europe

Здpaвcтвyйтe, my name is Ken-Ivaninovich.

I’m a 27 year old American Vatnik (Putin fan for you duraks). I write cyrillic on my tablet, and spend my days perfecting my art and posting superior Russian military equipment threads on /k/. (PAK FA, S-400, Armata series)

I train with my AK-47 every day, this superior weapon can shoot covered in dirt reliably because it is made with russian stamped metal, and is vastly superior to any other weapon on earth. I bought my first WASR 2 years ago, and I have been getting better every day.

I speak Russian fluently, both Northern Russian and the Ukrainian dialect, and I write fluently as well. I know everything about Russian history and Orthodox traditions, which I follow 100%

When I get my Russian visa, I am moving to Moscow to join the prestigious VDV to learn more about their magnificent culture. I hope I can become a spec ops for Putin or a tank designer!

I own several track suits, which I wear around town. I want to get used to wearing them before I move to Russia, so I can fit in easier. I squat everywhere and speak Russian as often as I can, but rarely does anyone manage to respond.

Wish me luck in Russia!

Honestly if Russians export their new tanks than we can start working on countermeasures. At the very least we could actually use up our fucking stores of old ammunition before taking new ammunition. Isn't the whole point of the marine corps to use shit the Army no longer wants?

Germans make good tanks mate that's a known fact and they use them very effectivly.