Tanks and the first day of April
So over on the Radio War Nerd community facebook group the co-host Mark Ames asked me directly if I had seen these new plans from UralVagonZavod for an assault gun variant of the T-90. Ostensibly it was to allow for fixed anti-drone defences and to eliminate the kaboom properties of the ammunition carousel in the turreted T-90.
In my defence it was 6am on April second here in Australia and I’d just woken up as I typed out an enthusiastic reply:
“Thanks Mark Ames this looks like similar reasoning to Von Manstein inventing the Stug III (the most successful fighting vehicle of WW2) which lead to the Soviet SU series (pictured SU-152), all without turrets.
The cost benefit reward of turrets has been on the table since the first British tanks rumbled across the Somme (with no turrets)
The “bomb” in the middle of the tank bit is more complicated.
The specific Russian style of autoloaders that have been around since T-64 have not one but two huge problems in 2025 (which is a good 70 year run for a technology!).
1) They have to go anyway because the folding two part ammunition system halves the potential length of the lawn dart they spit out the muzzle (the penetrator in technical parlance). With current gun physics and armour physics longer is better, and the reason guns haven’t gotten bigger in decades is because they can’t get around the physical limits of the penetrators.
2) in terms of the ammo carousel exploding and popping the turret off it’s extremely significant that the German leopards also have vulnerable ammo storage (different but also vulnerable), they’re not exploding in Ukraine because they use insensitive chemistry which only goes boom in more controlled circumstances (ie, in the cannon breach after an ignition sequence). If the Russians had the chemistry they could stop the kabooms without changing design. (Strong caveat that all tanks still get knocked out but without launching their turrets into low orbit)
What we’re seeing here though is that by deleting the turret (bit cheeky to blame that on Kharkov) you can simplify the autoloader (not trying to draw ammo up through a spinning turret basket) while also getting longer penetrators.
Whether passive slatted armour is the best drone solution v. where the Germans appear to be going; with an AI driven 30mm autocannon spitting proximity fused high explosive schrapnel at anything moving in its airspace remains to be seen.
This design is also getting to the heart of what tanks are supposed to do. If they’re rumbling up in company with the infantry and blasting enemy strong points then an assault gun removes a lot of complications.
If your vision is the modern cavalry slashing across difficult terrain to cut through enemy lines (like a latter day fox hunting club) then a turret is still needed.
The problem with the cavalry romance is no one seems to ask how to fuel trucks are supposed to meet up with them.
Big Serge’s latest on the need to pinch the shoulders of attacks rather than blunt the thrust is excellent. If the enemy wants to fight their way into a trap don’t interrupt them.
The tanks the Russians took into Ukraine were mostly built for charging across the North German plain and pushing to the channel before the nukes could fly.
What they’ve found they’ve been using them for is the assault gun role, and this new design is an evolved assault gun.”
Fortunately Rob was alert to the perils of this time of year before we unthinkingly packaged it into the upcoming show (12 April). I double checked with Mark and it turned out that it was in fact an April Fools. (Oh and the Big Serge reference is to this article)
Behold I am a foolish fool
Which illustrates the perils of the ancient practice (possibly dating back to the 1300’s) of April Fools in an era of multiple time zones and online material that takes days, months, and years to disseminate.
Fortunately I am not alone in my foolishness. As luck would have it friend of the show Nicholas “The Chieftain” Moran has just released a video on the long afterlife as fact of his own effort to play the fool back in 2014.
Anyway, in terms of the dumbest things I’ve done being fooled on April 2 doesn’t even make the top 100.
On the bright side I didn’t fall for this one, unlike the 1,000 or so commenters and nearly a hundred folks who shared it.
And here at Totally Tanked we have indulged is such foolishness back in 2022, although I would argue we did it with more style and panache and less humiliation of our victims.
Stay safe.
John
