Altay MBT, Turkey's first ever home-grown tank

[bigross86]

Can it be deduced from the pics if the turret is real or a mock-up? I remember reading in a turkish site that some pics of altay were from a mobility test with fake turrets.

I don't know, you can see that there is a big difference between the turret in the picture in post #1 and in post #12

[Big K]

I don't know, you can see that there is a big difference between the turret in the picture in post #1 and in post #12

Altay (tank) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Electric engine

Otokar General Manager Serdar Görgüç has announced that the company is considering the development of an electric engine for the Altay. Görgüç stated that an electric engine would reduce the ability of the enemy to identify the tank with thermal cameras in the battle field. He added that “Vehicles with internal combustion can be caught on thermal cameras". Otokar developed an electric engine for its buses and is working on retrofitting its design to the Altay tank.[13]
[edit]First prototype

interesting, an Electric powerplant...what do you think of it BG?? can it be real?

On 29 April 2009, the head of the Turkish Undersecretariat for Defense Industries, Murad Bayar has confirmed at the 9th IDEX International, Defense Industry Fair in Abu Dhabi, that the Turkish tank will be manufactured using only Turkish resources. He added that the research started last week and that he expected to create an authentic tank model specially designed for the needs of the Turkish Armed Forces within 3 years.[9]
As of September 2010, with approval of the tank subsystems and software by Undersecretariat for Defense Industries, Conceptual Design Phase of the Altay project has been completed. Thus, the project advanced to Detailed Design Phase scheduled to last 30,5 months. The scope of the Detailed Design Phase is to design and integrate interfaces for the selected tank subsystems.[14]
On 15 October 2010, Otokar signed contract with MTU and Renk for the supply of power pack.[14]
On 15 December 2010, Defence Industry Executive Committee decided to start the development of national power pack.[15]
On 10 May 2011, Aselsan was contracted by the Undersecretariat for Defense Industries to design and develop two Battlefield Target Identification Device (BTID) prototypes.[16]
On 11 May 2011, the mock-up of Altay tank was introduced to the public in IDEF 2011.[17][18]
On 18 October 2012, The First Altay was put on trials although lacking side skirts and using a mock-up turret to stimulate a real turret. [1]
On 16 November 2012, 4 Altay Tank prototypes successfully passed initial acceptance tests, paving the way for serial production 2 years earlier than expected.[19][20]

[Mihais]

Altay (tank) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia



interesting, an Electric powerplant...what do you think of it BG?? can it be real?

An electric engine has a long way until it can offer the mobility and range of a conventional one.It will eventually,but this decade,not a chance.About the thermal image,I'd rather try this: http://www.baesystems.com/magazine/B...GVvy!791695071

[Big K]

An electric engine has a long way until it can offer the mobility and range of a conventional one.It will eventually,but this decade,not a chance.About the thermal image,I'd rather try this: http://www.baesystems.com/magazine/B...GVvy!791695071

more&more we are getting closer to what was once called sci-fi, right?

what about a hybrid engine?

[bigross86]

You need to balance your needs.

On the one hand: Logistics. A hybrid will definitely make it easier on your logistics train, meaning you will need to carry X gallons of fuel less than you would have to if it was a regular engine. This is a big advantage in anyone's book.

"Amateurs talk about tactics, but professionals study logistics." - Gen. Robert H. Barrow, USMC (Commandant of the Marine Corps) noted in 1980

"You will not find it difficult to prove that battles, campaigns, and even wars have been won or lost primarily because of logistics" - General Dwight D. Eisenhower

On the flip side: Most soldiers are devout believers in KISS - Keep It Simple, Stupid! Army bureaucracy notwithstanding, most soldiers would rather buy one tool than three, and would much rather the thing that needs less parts to clean and that will break down. A hybrid engine is not the rugged piece of material a tank engine is, at least not yet. I doubt there even exists an engine capable of providing enough power to move a 60+ ton tank anywhere, let alone at high speeds over incredibly rough terrain. There are plenty of engines out there that have been proven to be powerful enough for tanks, jet and diesel engines that can get up to 1,500HP and probably higher than that, as well. I don't see the switch over to a hybrid just yet, it just isn't in the cards.

So yes, a hybrid would be an advantage in shortening the supply and logistics chain, but (at the moment) would probably make the tank more prone to breakdowns and harder to fix and upkeep in the field, if such an engine even existed.

[omon]

german mouse had electric motors (aka electric transmission), you still need desel engine to run genset, it will have advatage of running constant rpm, most of the time. all desel locomotives have such transmission.
however i have never seen it in tanks that are not experemental. there has to be a good reason for that.
as for logistic, i doubt it will be any easyer, you will not see day and night difference in fuel consumption, but maintanace will have to have more parts on hand. and new skills will have to be gained.

[Big K]

german mouse had electric motors (aka electric transmission), you still need desel engine to run genset, it will have advatage of running constant rpm, most of the time. all desel locomotives have such transmission.
however i have never seen it in tanks that are not experemental. there has to be a good reason for that.
as for logistic, i doubt it will be any easyer, you will not see day and night difference in fuel consumption, but maintanace will have to have more parts on hand. and new skills will have to be gained.

like Fisker Karma,

i think lack of transmission & differentials and other stuff can be a positiv???? batteries & wires will replace them?...

[omon]

like Fisker Karma,

i think lack of transmission & differentials and other stuff can be a positiv???? batteries & wires will replace them?...

not really.

battaries are very delicate thing, not to mention to have enough power\lifespan to move tank as long and as quick as desel\turbine, you'd need to tow a trailer behind full of batteries.
they are very sensetive to temp, ouside, and internal. not to mention you can't stop war around you to recharge. so i doubt batteries alone will be driving tanks any time soon.

so this is why you need desel\gen. to make power and to feed electric motor straight, we have busses like that in nyc, they have bateries on the roof, it takes half of the roof, and that is just assist baterys, not main driving, they just put out current at acceleration, when demand is high, after it took off, it drives by generator, generator can't supply enough current to move the buss off the line, buttery helps. if we had to drive the bus as long at it can go on full tank of fuel, amount of batts needed would pbly stock up to be larger than buss itself, and we takining about 40k lb bus, tanks weigh a lot more.

[Big K]

i see.

btw, what is a shot trap?

[omon]

shot trap??? idk, did i say it? might be typo, if i wrote it, i can't find it in context.

about hybrid cars, i had hyundai sonata hybrid for a year, in my normal driving i did not see any saving in gas, may be if i drove hundreds of miles a day on highway i would, but not in everday city\highway, short trip driving. i filled it up, just as often and as much as i did on my previos 2009 accord.
also i had problems everytime i was stock in traffic for 10 min or more, having ac on (it was too electric), the car would discharge to the point it was not able to take off without ice kicking in (my car was made to take off with el motor 100% of times), and when it did, it compencated for lack of low rpm torgue by revving up, the car would jerk so bad i was afraid to loose a trany. all becouse it was depleating the battery faster than my generator could charge it. (on normal, no traffic driving, it didn't happen) if i shot ac off it would take longer to happen, most of the time traffic jam would disolve before it got to that point.

i got lucky , superstorm sandy totaled it, so i got 2013 accord, none hybrid, and not afraid to get in traffic jam with ac on. don't miss a thing about the hybrid.

[Genosaurer]

btw, what is a shot trap?

As I understand the term, it's an arrangement of armor such that a ricochet is likely to be deflected into another part of the vehicle, potentially one that's less well protected, rather than away. It was a big deal with armored vehicle design up through WWII, but modern tank rounds don't really ricochet.

[TopHatter]

shot trap??? idk, did i say it? might be typo, if i wrote it, i can't find it in context.

You didn't, USS Wisconsin did earlier :)

[bigross86]

Well, it depends on the round, HEAT Vs APFSDS, but yeah, most modern tank rounds don't really ricochet. There are three main methods of defeating incoming tank rounds, which are usually too fast for APS to efficiently neutralize.

The first is using Reactive Armor, usually Explosive Reactive Armor. In it's simplest terms, ERA is hit by an incoming shell and explodes outwards, draining the incoming shell of most of its forward energy and robbing it of the capability to penetrate the tank.

The second layer is the tank's armor itself, usually made up of Composite Armor and in some cases of Rolled Homogeneous Armor as well. This works extremely simply. Putting something extremely hard in between the delicate things inside the tank (systems, ammo, crew members) and the incoming shell.

The third method is to not get hit.

Sometimes APFSDS can penetrate, sometimes it can't. Usually it can, but it depends on angle, range, penetration spot, etc...

APS, ERA and the armor are more efficient against ATGMs. Most of the earlier generation AT missiles and ATGMs can be defeated by ERA. Later generation ATGMs now carry tandem warheads, the first warhead to allow it to get past the ERA and the second to get it past the Composite Armor. To combat that, tanks have started carrying systems like the IDF's Trophy Advanced Protection System, which actively intercepts and shoots down missiles aimed at the tank, preventing them from even hitting the ERA and creating another layer of protection around the tank.

It would seem that at the moment, the advantage lays with the armor and not the ATGM, but it won't be long before someone comes up with a way to get past the APS, and then it will be the tank's turn to come up with something new, ad infinitum.

By the way, this is all open source, available on Wikipedia. There are no OPSEC concerns here, everything I wrote can be found in a Tom Clancy novel.

[USSWisconsin]

i see.

btw, what is a shot trap?

What I'm thinking of is a place where an incoming projectile wouldn't be deflected away from the armor - in this case, below the centerline of the gun - between the turret and the hull.
If our tank experts don't believe there is one there - I will accept their analysis.

[bigross86]

Again, it's not so much that there isn't one there, it's that shot traps are less relevant nowadays when few shells can actually be deflected. That's why MBT's now have several layers of defense: Composite armor, ERA, and now MBT's are also installing APS. Even then, kinetic energy APFSDS can usually penetrate. They don't call them "silver bullets" for nothing.