Well the last couple of days with
Marius has proven fruitful, however, as far as the Romanian OOB is concerned, it's settled now that we can
DELETE/UNIT 017/TR-85M2//. I think some would find the below email interesting. If you read it very carefully he talks about how to make a better tank on an older chassis but, as important the engineering limitations of such upgrades. In discussing the variations of the
ABRAMS leading to the "
SEP V Series" I talked about the
RESET(ing) of those tanks. The big difference here is the
ABRAMS is quite the larger tank (
2. below of Marius's email points to this, how we've been able to improve upon the ABRAMS armor.) already compared to the
T-55. Simply we've got a lot more time and space to work with where, as Marius points out below with the exception of the
Ukraine, he believes with some possible additional minor improvements, that the Romanians pretty much feel for the
T-55 the pinnacle of practical design has been reached with the
TR-85M1.
I'll later this morning in my reply back for the below ask him to verify the
current status of the following...
TR-580, T-72M, TR-125 and TR-2000. Also status of any
TI/GSR and estimated day/night ranges and are we missing any MBT's or any that are in still in active service but we show as retired.
Now I understand we're probably talking for next year, however, I just want to "strike while the coals are hot" concerning the data.
From Wed, morning 1041am EST...
I don't see how an M3 variant of TR-85 would have been already ordered by the Army.
Back in 2014, the Land Forces were already aware that TR-85 M1 has reached its limitations of improvement, seeing a derivative of TR-125/
TR-2000 (Mine) as a more suitable future replacement.
Already, there is no TR-85 M2 variant (only an improvement intention, but it had yet to be implemented and tested).
In order to receive a bigger gun, better engine and extra armor, some tons had to be stripped away somewhere else, because the ground pressure was already high on M1, at its limits and I'm not sure if the tracks can still be widened at a low cost.
1.) The hull of the TR-85 was by design narrower than that of a T-72, so less space to add a better and wider engine - so complicated and only a few options, such as compact MTU 871 Ka-501/Iveco-Fiat MTCA 1200CP engines, and not very cheap.
2.) Already the frontal armor of the TR-85M1, I don't think it exceeds equivalent of
650-700mm RHA (Mine), so in order to exceed 1000mm RHA, add-on armour is not an option: frontal plate and turret plates would need to be removed and replaced with better modern composite armour with mostly the same weight, if we don't want to double the mass of the armour as the weight is restricted.
3.) For a bigger gun, the frontal part of the turret has to be completely reshaped (see also the are of the optical sights on the side of the gun mantlet) -
the only example of success of mounting a 125mm gun on a T-55 turret is the Ukrainian Typhoon/AGM package, but I still have doubts as they probably used T-72 autoloader and parts of a T-72 turret, technology that Romanians used only on TR-125. So in order to be sure such upgrade is possible, the real options are Falcon low mass&profile turret or GIAT simplified T-21 turret. Both are not cheap and must also be compatible with the turret ring footprint and turret mass (less than 15 tons) on TR-85. Also, the new gun must be as light as possible, so if 120mm, only L-44 or other light versions with low recoil would be acceptable, so not a lot of punch against new generation tanks and armour.
4.) Under belly explosion protection kit + active protection (as passive armor protection cannot be top of the class) would add other few hundreds kilos on the vehicle's weight.
In the end, we would need to replace almost everything on TR-85 for such upgrade for a high cost and the result will be probably a bit better than mediocre. Just keep in mind that TR-85M1 upgrade costed back in 2002-2004 around 2,3 mil. $/ unit, due also to small numbers (56 machines), but the engine was only improved, the FCS was upgraded, and some add-on armour was installed and received small turret-bustle by cutting the back of the turret. So most of the TR-85 was unchanged.
The full list of challenges upgrading theTR-85 is here:
http://www.rumaniamilitary.ro/modern...i-este-viabila
With all those constraints, maybe only a limited upgrade would be advisable, by using TR-85 as second-line tank or changing its role to infantry support.
Other options would be to changed it in tank hunter (such as STRV-103) or heavy IFV (BMPT Terminator/Achzarit style ), getting rid of its turret:
http://www.rumaniamilitary.ro/strv-2020
http://www.rumaniamilitary.ro/mli-gr...a-pentru-acasa
That's was a nice simple explanation on the limits of tank design using an existing chassis.
I need to hit the rack!!
Regards,
Pat
