US and Russia both worry about tank survivability

Russia reports that a Russian T-72B3 tank has destroyed an Abrams tank “on the first shot.” The clash took place near Avdiivka.

The type of round fired by the Russian tank was not disclosed in the Russian report. Most probably it was an APFSDS-T projectile. APFSDS-T translates as an armor-piercing fin-stabilized discarding sabot plus tracer. This type of anti-tank projectile features a long penetrating rod that is superheated when the weapon strikes an object.

A possible candidate is the 3BM48 “Svinets” which features a high-elongation uranium monoblock penetrator. There is also an updated model (3BM59 “Svinets-1″​) that has been designed to work with the tank’s autoloader. Russian tank guns are 125mm smooth bore. The Abrams has a 120mm smooth bore gun. We don’t know if the Abrams got off a shot at the Russian tank before it was hit.

To the right is a US M829 120mm APFSDS round designed for the Abrams M1AI and M1A2 120mm gun.

So far there has been no comment from the US Defense Department. The Abrams tank likely had early-edition reactive armor, so the Russian projectile went through the reactive armor and the tank’s layered “Chobham” armor, if the video and other reports are trustworthy.

While the Abrams tanks supplied do not have the latest armor system, the tanks supplied to Ukraine were designed expressly to stop APFSDS threats.

The US Army recently decided to scrap upgrading its Abrams tanks and is now seeking to build an entirely new tank. What this means is that the US Army is no longer confident in the survivability of the Abrams on the modern battlefield. There is no timetable for an Abrams replacement, but a complete redesign and full testing could take longer than a decade.

The same concern is evidenced in