The Chap

Who are design guys kidding? Stealth is nothing more than fad to aquire funds; a trend more fickle than anything from Milan. The cost of any sort of sensing equipment will be an order of magnitude below that of developing an airframe/naval architecture that can attempt to evade or baffle exigent systems. Watching T.V. earlier I saw some deluded individual expousing the virtues of a stealth tank. I ask you! The idea that 50+ tons of armour has some kind of covert role! What's it 'sposed to do after sneaking up? Only myopia trades armour/aerodynamics etc. for an attempt to become obsolete within a dacade.

__________________
Where's the bloody gin? An army marches on its liver, not its ruddy stomach.

Hk40

Somewhat aggeible Chap...But one can't argue that Stealth applied properly can be very effective. One can only laugh with you about a stealth tank. Sure the sound is a give-away. The huge diesel engine heat signature and trailing plume is yet another hurdle. However as I stated earlier, applied properly as in aircraft and even sea going vessels (Storm Shadow) it can be very effective. Where seconds can mean survival.

__________________
~ Gary Mikami ~
Live 'N Let Live!

Praxus

For heat ceramic plates are terrible conductors of heat, even a thin armor application could reduce IR detection. Against radar it can have an "applique" armor system that has RAM and weird edges and curves to reduce radar cross section. For sound they could have a hybrid deisel/electric drive. In non-stealth mode it would run on both to maximize range. In stealth mode it would run on batteries only. This would both reduce the sound and the heat because no engine is running. Perhaps there could also be a means to rapidly cool the engine without causing damage to it.

Also the purpose of such a system would not be covert operations. It would be used to decrease the range where the enemy can see you and thus improve survivability and tacticle suprise.

So why is it rediculus?

Hk40

Very Impressive Praxus. As I was penning my reply to Chap I was thinking just the same thing - Could a practicle stealth tank be concieved? If so how would I do it? I gave it 30 seconds tops. I knew lower profile turret designs had been seriously talked over. I thought one of the engine primes was looking into electric drive ( I think it's General Dynamics). But I took the easy way out and gave up on the play....Nice job again Praxus!

Praxus

The future combat system is going to include deisel electric drive and gas turbine electric drive. To bad my calluses from tennis are thicker then it's armor

Hk40

Praxus - Thinning of armour to trade-off weight gains (Lol) and increase speed...I like the concept of a lightning fast nimble and agile armor squad that can pack a punch. Definitely on the right trac

derek_c

Thinning of armour only makes sense if you can make the result fast and nimble enough to avoid being hit.

Very unlikely in the case of a tank IMO!

In fact anything which can't take a hit from an RPG will only end up having added armour bolted on in the end.

I'd go the other way and remove the crew, filling the resulting space with more armour to protect the electronics :-)

The Chap

A lot of the power of an armoured group is to intimidate. More so in current conflicts. Make 'em bigger and uglier and noisier with ever more firepower and active defences ( stick a Phalanx on top ). A golden shot RPG took out an Abrahms in the gulf. Look down - shoot down is only going to get better at target discrimination (see my original post). Leave stealth to covert ops. Let tanks do what tanks do best.

Officer of Engineers

See first, kill first.

As an engr who was responsible for concealment and fall back positions for tanks, stealth is extremely important any tank force waiting in ambush. The Iraqis are a poor oppenant but not so the Russians and possibly the Chinese. For any tank sitting out in the sun, that tank is going to heat up and simple IR will see it better than a lit up Christmas tree (I wonder why the Iraqis never learned and have better concealment).

Such concealment can only happen in a deliberate defence. The best we can do in a hasty defence is earthworks which doesn't do much for IR. Engrs can do nothing for a meeting engagement.

Anything that can improve the odds, I'm for.

BTW, Kabala is more important as a military eval than the lucky BB.

__________________
Chimo

Hk40

I begg to differ with your openning, Chap. I'm thinking along the lines that power and speed are To sieze a tactical advantage (envelopement), not to intimidate.

Garry

actually stealth might be quite usefull for tanks if IR problem is resolved. I don't see a tradeoff in becoming stealthy for a tank. I mean somehting that a tank must sacrifice to become stealthy.....

even if the weight is an issue current tanks are so heavy that adding some weight has marginal effect?

a tank does not need to be aerodynamic so who cares about its curves?

Can anybody point me at some negative feature which a stealthy form would bring to a tank?

Se7eN

I applaud your cynicism as it's always nice to have a devil's advocate questioning the motives of our developments and point out where waste and uneccesary spenditures exist(especially from the UK!). A good case was made against producing more B-2's, not B-2's in general, though I don't think that it will have an impact personally.

In the case of armored vehicles, it is important to develop low-visibility designs.

Look at the capabilities of an F/A-18. This isn't even our best air-to-ground tracking/mapping aircraft system:

This technology isn't exactly hard to replicate compared to radar absorbant material and calculations for radar deflection angles. It's not far-fetched to assume that non-US militaries are equipped with similar abilities.

In such cases, low-visibility tanks are welcome. It wont make them impervious to scanning/mapping radar systems but it will help. Just in the same way the F-117's aren't completely stealthy, it's how you use the ability to lower detection and work your strategy around that.

Nobody said armored divisions were supposed to sneak into kill-boxes and snipe targets. They are concerened with air-to-ground attacks.

Stealth is far from a fad to aquire funds. We've been playing with this technology since the 1970's as far as public knowledge goes. You can trace its roots back to the Russian scientists mathmatical formula that started it to the 50's though if you want to push it.

The Chap

Good to see someone recognising that I'm not 100% serious! However, I think this is an issue worth addressing.

The ability to fire first and thereafter at one's whim without significant lethal retaliation is undisputed by me. This does involve more cost effective solutions than stealth:
Range firstly. A parrallel to stealth - you can hit them, but they cannot, see/hit you.
Effective Survival. By which I mean not just ensuring the crew survive the vehical being hit, but the crew and vehical continuing to be combat effective.
Deployment environment. Until optical stealth is perfected (other than smoke ) being in visual range or having local partisans reveal your position is still going to negate ( on the ground at least ) any stealth benefits vs active systems.
At sea, stealth should be left to subs. Here it is money well spent ( see? I'm not entirely anti )
In the air, I do see it's current advantages against a technologically inferior foe. On the downside, with more and more nations developing the capability to deploy orbital assets combined with ever increasing sensor suite capability, I doubt the advantage will prove viable for more than a decade.

Recent land deployments and followup (mop-up?!) have tended to be in environments where the extra expense of low observability across the EM spectrum has been negated by hostile proximity. Litoral waters may provide a home for stealth. Carrier groups never will. In the air whether or not the ability to remain undetected continues (incidentally why wouldn't a hostile force just pick up the IR burst from a munitions launch and tight beam scan the proximity, and unless the munition itself is stealthed the radar signiature will suddenly flip from a bumblebee to a seagull making the platform "visible"), the problem of unit cost remains. A B2 costs as much as a Boomer.

Hk40

One has to agree. What would limitations be? Weight. You're correct a non-issue. Noise or sound reduction. Again no loss and all good. Masking heat sig (if it can be done). Another good thing. Vissual. A lower-profile is a given and trend of MB Tank design over the last 20 years.
It's All Good!

Hk40

Sorry I Chap, I think on this you got it wrong. Current technology is moving away from Orbital assets that are 'specific' to tracking and ID of aircraft. The trend indicates that UCAVs/UAVs are better suited to this role and are more effective. SBIRS is having issues getting off the drawingboard and on to the launch pad, primarily due to the info that correlates with the trend stated above. As the role changes the design must too (different topic)...Stealth will enable air-superiority fighter's to do just that. Achieve air-superiority. First in theater (unseen), first to see, lock-on, shoot and kill! All unseen, without a trace. Ala F-22.