New Cold War 2020 mod release! (RC 0.4)

[PlasmaKrab]

As far as my sources show, the BM-46 was still a couple of yards behind contemporary 120mm rounds, but let's not start this debate again. What I meant was that without even having taken the pains of developing and fielding a 135/152mm gun, the Russian engineers could work up the gap and match current western ammo or armor designs (whichever they think of as the target), e.g. by transitioning to bustle autoloader and one-piece ammo with long-rod penetrators. Like they look like doing on the Black Eagle concepts.
Such a solution would be leagues cheaper and could be more easily retrofitted on older tanks, e.g. T-84 Oplot, T-55AGM... There's plenty of life left in the 125mm design, so I don't see the transition as urgent.

And that reflection was regarding real-world only. As far as I'm concerned, I have transitioned the Soviet tanks to 135mm from the late 90s (T-95A) as a direct answer to the first western 140mm tanks (M1A3, Leo2A8...), which is a direct answer to the predicted armor levels of the T-95 generation. Also, this 135mm (chosen over the 152mm as an easier technical solution for transitional designs, as explained above) remains in 1st-class units only for about 10 years, while other theaters get new 125mm rounds able to deal with anything they'd encounter in Central Asia or on the Chinese border.

[Marcello]

"As far as my sources show, the BM-46 was still a couple of yards behind contemporary 120mm rounds, but let's not start this debate again."

I did not mean that the BM-46 was the bleeding edge of world APFSDS design. Merely that it shows that they are not hopelessy behind and do not have a massive amount of catch up to do. They may still have a few thing to learn but not everything.

"by transitioning to bustle autoloader and one-piece ammo with long-rod penetrators. Like they look like doing on the Black Eagle concepts."

A one piece ammo would be incompatible with the existing tanks, without what would amount to a substantially
expensive retrofitting. You might as well change caliber and be done with it. Then I am not sure about why long rod penetrator have anything to do with one piece ammo or separate charge.The british seem to have no issues with having separate charge and decent APFSDS. The limitation with the soviets tanks was the projectile lenght enabled by the autoloader design. There is a workaround which has been incorporated in the T-90/T-72BM.
I have not seen diagrams for the Black Eagle so I do not know what is supposed to be going inside it but there is a possibility that it was done just for flexibility (several weapon configurations were available for it).

[PlasmaKrab]

Why do we keep going on about this already?
I agree that transitioning to 152mm can be an option for future tank design, time will tell. I agree that the Russian isn't 40 years behind in APFSDS performance, maybe 10 or 15 though, and that rebuilding older tanks with a bustle autoloader is no mean task.
I still consider that full-length rounds allow for heavier rounds with decent L/D ratio. AFAIK the British don't field anything with penetration ratios on the level of an M829E3 or DM-53. Now if you tell me they do, I'm ready to take the evidence into account.

I was just trying to point out that it would be on the whole easier, shorter and cheaper to develop new 125mm ammo for the current tanks and upgrades thereof, than developing a brand new 152mm-gun tank, as things stand these days in the real world. Both options are not mutually exclusive and wouldn't serve exactly the same purpose, but I guess the Russian military would have to make a choice. That was just to support the "maybe not 152mm for real right now" argument.

Now as far as regards the Cold War 2020 mod, I have selected the 135mm in full agreement with myself, for various reasons ranging from compatibility with transitional tank designs to easier to model physics through ammo loadout.

[Marcello]

"and that rebuilding older tanks with a bustle autoloader is no mean task."

You still have to cut the turret though. The autoloader modification on the T-90 or the T-72BM upgrade is rather less dramatic. And even if the newest APFSDS cannot be carried in non refitted tanks, HE, HEAT and propelling charges are still compatible, which would not be the case with a new monobloc ammo. The british are going to drop their main gun for NATO standard 120mm,so there is no reason to develop a M829A3 lookalike, but that is more for standardization and rifled vs smoothbore issues than any limitation of the separate charge. I have never found the separate charge to be described as a substantial limiting factor for APFSDS performance.