125 replies to this topic

[Shirou]

Something like the MSTA-S of above would work very well because the two turrets are above eachother, thus there is no movement to left nor right when shooting one. However a dual barreled assault vehicle wit barrels horizontally next to eachother will have this problem. The one turret also gets disaligned with the other when the other fires, as the whole thing may turn in the direction of the backlash. Firing them both at the same time would create said shock to the turret. The tank would have to be considerably more heavy to handle this, possibly twice as heavy than a normal MBT.

Something lik the Overlord is like so impossible, the cannons are giant but on the sides of the turret. They'd be blown off with one shot, really.

A dual barreled tank like the scrapped Scarab tank from Deathstrike would be the most plausible.

[Eddy01741]

tskasa1, on 6 Aug 2008, 16:00, said:

actually, if you had a way of magnetizing the ground, you could very easily float over it, I have a theory on how to do that but that's different.

Okay, so you first magnetize the ground, and then use huge electromagnets to float over it? Do you have any idea how much power that would use? Magnetizing handheld magnets already takes a lot of power and a LOT of time.

So you want to magnetize the ground and use electromagnets to ride over it? What about when your on asphalt, this tank can't go in urban areas then. Plus, if we leave teh middleeast theater for like europe (like the old days) those big fields of grass wont' be so easily magnetized.

[Zero]

my friend suggested this: take a magnetized metal plate and add it to the bottom, attach it to the tank in some way and using the maglev sys. on the underside of the tank to lift it up. It'd work on solid ground, but I don't know about sand/water. I wonder if it'd work (he's no good at science).

[Dauth]

This friend fails at logic, what is the plate mounted on? If you have to plate the battlefield then it fails.

How has this thread survived? Seriously everyone has said this is ludicrous.

[Eddy01741]

So basically, your going to attach a plate underneat the tank and then somehow using magnets it will just hover? Um.... okay...


To use maglev system, you need a constantly switching elecgtromagnet, and permanent magnets everywhere, just using magnetized plates under the tnak won't work.

[CommanderJB]

General Kirkov, on 7 Aug 2008, 0:49, said:

Dr. Strangelove, on 24 May 2008, 20:16, said:

CommanderJB, on 24 May 2008, 8:28, said:

You mean like this?
http://img216.images...84/152x2ft0.jpg

That actually might be practical because it would deliver increased firepower, without the need for a larger barrel and therefore larger shell, and hence making the artillery piece incompatible with ammunition types that may be more standardized.

Thats an artillery vehicle in service in the Russian armed forces.

Yeah, I know - it was basically just to show that a double barrel concept is possible, and works best when stacked rather than side-by-side. (Although I think this is experimental rather than actually in service, isn't it?)

Also...

tskasa1, on 7 Aug 2008, 7:53, said:

my friend suggested this: take a magnetized metal plate and add it to the bottom, attach it to the tank in some way and using the maglev sys. on the underside of the tank to lift it up. It'd work on solid ground, but I don't know about sand/water. I wonder if it'd work (he's no good at science).

But... but... if you attach a magnetised plate to the bottom of the tank and then put magnets above it, sure you'll get a downward force from the magnets, but you'll get an equal force acting upwards from the plate! Newton's Third Law of Motion, plain and simple. End result - your tank goes nowhere.

Edited by CommanderJB, 07 August 2008 - 00:30.

[Eddy01741]

Oh, now i get what he was saying. Lol, well that means that all that's gonna happen is that the magnets are gonna force that "metal plate" down into the ground. I didn't know what he was even talking about.

[Shirou]

Would you cut it about the damn magnetizing ground stuff, that's not what this topic is about, is it?

Another dual barreled MSTA-S

[CommanderJB]

I had thought we'd put this one safely to rest by now... Although I have to say that the MSTA-S modification is a rather intriguing prototype, I'll give it that. It's not exactly the sort of thing I expect to see on the front lines any time soon though.

Edited by CommanderJB, 09 August 2008 - 10:05.

[Ilves]

Quote

Another dual barreled MSTA-S

The real name of "double-barreled Msta" is Coalitizia-SV.


And closer to the buiseness... I want to note, that we developed multi-barreled tanks during WW2 and some even reached prototypal stage and were ready for production:


KV-7


KV-7-II

You may wonder, why this monsters weren't crushing Germans? Why it all ended in protypal stage? And why ALL multi-barreled tanks are doomed? Josef Stalin answered the question of this topic with a singe phrase "Why three barrels? Better put one, but big".
I guess he explained all the matters

[Ilves]

(sorry guys for multiposting, but in this case it's thematically-needed).
However, multi-barrels are used when you need nothing but high rate of fire - on line ships, AA artillery, some kinds of howitzers and even machineguns.
Selecting more turrets than one is a selection from firepower of single barrel for higher rate of fire.
Strangely, but sometimes hight rate of fire is useful for tanks also:


M50 Ontos
(was meant to cover enemy from heads to toes with metal storm and then retreat)


Hunter double-barreled tank
(a true mammoth tank! Rate of fire also very impressive - 120 shells per minute o_OOO Do you remember that M1's ROF is 4-5 per minute?)


"Russian Hetzer"
(WW2 project)

If you wanna a tank with lots of barrels - then sacrifice firepower, armour or mobility. Also militarymen are very conservative folk and prefer to use proved thing than to risk developing exotic "dunno-what" with not see-able advantages.
However, I think multi-barreled tanks may be again in fashion then, when there will be developed 76-mm cannons with firepower of 120-mm (AAI RDF is very close to that with the weight of some 6 tons).

Edited by AL_Hassan, 10 August 2008 - 21:37.

[Eddy01741]

The Ontos is a purely anti-tank platform, and its recoiless guns had to be manually reloaded, the army figured out that they'd rather have 6 infantry men transporting recoiless rifles by themselves than have one huge machine mount 6 of them, it was a failure in almost all aspects.

As for the second one, those things don'treally look like tank guns, they look more like large caliber autocannon.

[CommanderJB]

Personally I think the only use for multiple large-calibre barrels on an armoured vehicle would be an armoured mobile weapons platform housing something similar to and AK-130 naval gun system - for those of you who haven't heard of it, the AK-130 is probably the most lethal gun turret ever developed; fitted on Kirov-class Battlecruisers and some other large Russian destroyers, it houses two 130mm cannon and can fire each one once every four seconds or better, for a total rate of fire of up to 45 rounds per minute, with fully automatic target tracking, reloading, aiming and firing. This is it:

A battery of these adapted for land use would be truly devastating artillery or land weapons IMO. They're even good enough to act as basically the biggest CIWS system around - with proximity-fused projectiles they're perfectly capable of bringing down aircraft or cruise missiles if connected to good enough automatic radar targeting and gun-laying systems, and in fact this is their primary function aboard the Kirov battlecruisers. Though I don't suspect we'll ever see anything quite like this on land, the only situation I can think of where you need rapid volumes of high-calibre fire from a single unit would be an artillery bombardment, hence the 'Coalitiza-SV' (that you for providing me with the actual project name), and this is something of an evolution.

[Eddy01741]

Damn, that thing is nice... but the turret is also friggin huge, and i could never see that thing on an armored, tracked hull...

ANd yeah, i see the possibility of more rapid fire artillery, but not rapid fire tank guns.

[The Wandering Jew]

Eddy01741, on 7 Aug 2008, 2:31, said:

...
Overall, it'd porbably be more like 66-100% more weight for a dual barreled tank. Also not to mention that you could have two single barreled tanks of equal protection for half the price, which are also faster an d guzzle less gas, see where i'm going here? Also, if you have a small quanity of very heavily armored, super powerful tanks, it is still just as vulnerable to aircraft, so just less targets for them to kill. So therefore, with each missile/bomb they use, they are chewing up twice the money, and more crew members as well, a big waste in general.

Huge size is a huge disadvantage in field battles, that's why "mammoth tanks" will not do, not unless, of course, Tiberium infestation reached 60% of the earth's crust (and not only the GDI's Mammoth Tank but the MARV as well.) :stickattack2:

[Zeke]

So lemme get this straight tsakasa...

first you go on and ask a question of why mammoth tanks weren't considered by any military so far

the reply to that was that a tank that size would be too bulky and heavy, and gennerally a bad idea in the modern battlefield.

then you say that in the old days WWI a mammoth tank would be a practical weapon as back then size was the main thing.

the reply was almost the same, with added mobility issues as back in WWI tank propulsion systems weren't really that advanced.

then you say in the future that mammoth tanks would probably be levitated with magnets and have railguns to eliminate recoil.

which brings as back too " a tank that size would be too bulky and heavy, and gennerally a bad idea in the modern battlefield."

conclusion: FAIL

[Sharpnessism]

Plus in the modern world, aircraft>tanks.

[̀̀̀̀█]

Ok, so nearish future conditions this is feasible. As in actually practical... How?

1) Recoiless systems. We currently have a launcher that can fire the equivalent of a 105mm howitzer shell... For infantry.
2) Future use of nuclear power will abate all needs for power.
3) Why two turrets? FEAR. It is true that it would be rather useless compared to other tanks, but in the future tanks are going to be crossing the lines of artillery anyway...
4) Constant fire support. It would not be a front line tank. It would use advanced networking systems to pick a target that another tank is having difficulty destroying, and let loose a small salvo of rounds, basically guaranteeing destruction.
5) Linked to the power, mobility will not be an issue with the power output of a reactor in the back.
6) This is NOT a front line tank, once again. It is a support platform.
As for the actual mammoth tank concept? With railguns it would work fine, if you can get them working right. Railguns have that nice little property of being almost completely recoiless. With the long cool down of a railgun, having two turrets makes more than enough sense. Heavier armor could be used as the railguns are lighter as well, and the power issue is all taken care of, per the above. They would still be able to move about fine, as you could just keep the armor as is, not much addition would be needed. Railguns change the story completely. So with conventional weapons systems? No, that would lead to the rantings outlined already. With railguns, they disappear.

[CommanderJB]

Oh, dear. Just when we think this topic has been peacefully put to sleep, someone comes along and starts it up again... I'm afraid I can't really find your arguments that persuasive, '̀̀̀̀█'. Let me detail why:

̀̀̀̀█, on 19 Aug 2008, 17:15, said:

1) Recoiless systems. We currently have a launcher that can fire the equivalent of a 105mm howitzer shell... For infantry.

Otherwise known as an RPO-A 'Shmel' thermobaric rocket launcher, right? Which are worse than useless against tanks. They'll get rid of any soft structure in your way, but against armour plate in the open air, the blast goes backwards and all they'll do is tick off whoever you fired it at. Nothing more and nothing less than a heavy-calibre gun has the power to propel the most modern anti-tank projectile, an APFSDS round, to the velocities needed for it to be effective. So for the foreseeable future all tanks will use traditional guns.

̀̀̀̀█, on 19 Aug 2008, 17:15, said:

2) Future use of nuclear power will abate all needs for power.

Are you serious? I mean, leaving aside the fact that you'll have to double the tank's initial weight in shielding in order to stop the radiation from killing the crew, what on Earth are you going to use to cool the reactor? And how do you propose to generate power from the radioactive core? Steam turbines? I think not.

̀̀̀̀█, on 19 Aug 2008, 17:15, said:

3) Why two turrets? FEAR. It is true that it would be rather useless compared to other tanks, but in the future tanks are going to be crossing the lines of artillery anyway...

Umm... yeah, concealed infantry, helicopter gunships and strike aircraft are going to look at this lumbering monster and think, 'ooh, I'm terrified!'. Shortly before painting it with half a dozen ATGMs and watching it separate violently into small red-hot pieces, that is. Remember that 7:1 ratio of missiles to tanks? Making tanks bigger isn't going to make them harder to kill - just bigger targets.

̀̀̀̀█, on 19 Aug 2008, 17:15, said:

4) Constant fire support. It would not be a front line tank. It would use advanced networking systems to pick a target that another tank is having difficulty destroying, and let loose a small salvo of rounds, basically guaranteeing destruction.

If it's not a front line tank, how is it destroying enemy tanks in battle? It's not like armoured doctrine uses tanks as follow-up units that can be dispatched from afar; they're the spearhead of combat formations, and unless it's turned into a dedicated artillery unit there's no way it can outrange them by any significant margin.

̀̀̀̀█, on 19 Aug 2008, 17:15, said:

5) Linked to the power, mobility will not be an issue with the power output of a reactor in the back.

...And the shielding. And a core. And moderator rods. And a generator. And control systems. And the rest of the tank - armour, guns, ammunition, crew, crew accommodation, engine, defensive systems, sighting equipment, transmission, chassis, turret, turret traverse systems, electrical systems, communication systems, road wheels, tracks, and god only knows what else - on top of that. This thing isn't just going to have mobility problems, it's not going to be able to move.

̀̀̀̀█, on 19 Aug 2008, 17:15, said:

6) This is NOT a front line tank, once again. It is a support platform.

Yeah... answered that.

̀̀̀̀█, on 19 Aug 2008, 17:15, said:

As for the actual mammoth tank concept? With railguns it would work fine, if you can get them working right. Railguns have that nice little property of being almost completely recoiless. With the long cool down of a railgun, having two turrets makes more than enough sense. Heavier armor could be used as the railguns are lighter as well, and the power issue is all taken care of, per the above. They would still be able to move about fine, as you could just keep the armor as is, not much addition would be needed. Railguns change the story completely. So with conventional weapons systems? No, that would lead to the rantings outlined already. With railguns, they disappear.

Railguns don't take up less space than conventional guns, they take more thanks to all the magnets, and have the added problem of requiring ridiculous amounts of power, which is going to be provided by what? Nuclear reactors? No thanks. And even if you don't have to brace the gun as strongly, you're still going to need to put loading equipment behind it, traverse gear under that, sights and probably crew, and tanks don't exactly have that sort of room to spare. You'd need to more than double the dimensions of a normal tank in order to put two turrets with cumulatively double the firepower on it, and double the vulnerability on top of that.
Sorry. But you're just not going to sell me on this one. There's a reason the concept was abandoned in the 1930s.

Edited by CommanderJB, 19 August 2008 - 09:24.

[Eddy01741]

Three words people: LET THIS DIE

Anyhow, I guess I must reply in a similar fashion to CommanderJB and mostly agree with him too.

1. Any recoiless rifles the size and caliber of a tank gun are uttery rediculous to put into any turret. The old recoilless rifleswhich used to be used as common anti-tank guns had a danger zone up to 100 yards back, inffantry within 15-35 yards had to be dug in, and with 15 yards is serious danger (deafness, death, etc.). A tank turret is a little smaller than 15 yards lol, and it's also a closed space, all those blast forces have to go somewhere (newton's third law). If your saying that a hand held gun could do it because it has low recoil, not really, it's also low velocity. For example, the AT4 (M136) uses a recoiless system similar to that in the Carl-Gustav, it is also very low velocity (285 meters per second muzzle velocity compared to the 1600+ meters per second of a modern tank gun) and therefore depends on a heat round to penetrate armor. Recoiless rifles have a huge backblast, unless you have an open turret like the ontos, it won't work, and even with an open turret, not a great idea. To give you an idea, the AT4's backblast:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/comm...et_launcher.jpg

2. Nuclear power? Where do you store the reactor? You'l need a friggin concrete dome around it, and extensive cooling, this won't work, period.

3. As CommanderJB said, properly equipped militaries wouldn't be afraid of a slow, huge tank, one of the keys to the tanks effectiveness is its mobility.

4. So your suggesting it basically be a tank sniper? Why make a dual barreled tank that will snipe tanks? Just get a tank destroyer platform (gun in hull most likely) with a very high muzzle velocity gun which can snipe instead, since you won't be needing the loads of extra armor anyways.

5. Look at #2.

6. Look at #4.

7. Railguns would take a massive amount of power, so would even a gauss gun. A conventional engine could never support such high power output.

Dauth edit: Removed image tags, I have a widescreen and it's even huge on that.

Edited by Dauth, 19 August 2008 - 13:33.

[Zero]

haven't read in a while but as for the plate: you can use metal cables (although it would have to be a metal that's not magnetic). The plate would give the tank lift, making it relatively weightless and after that we can usesome sort of propulsion system to get it to work. Also, for the power source, don't make fun, we have come up with more than impressive power sources- efficient ones too. Also, nuclear might work, it's a technological problem but then again, look at the jet, that took almost 15 years to get a rough prototype, so if we concentrated on it we could do this.

[IPS]

dual barreld tank?
just like that:





?

[CommanderJB]

tskasa1, on 20 Aug 2008, 4:35, said:

haven't read in a while but as for the plate: you can use metal cables (although it would have to be a metal that's not magnetic). The plate would give the tank lift, making it relatively weightless and after that we can usesome sort of propulsion system to get it to work. Also, for the power source, don't make fun, we have come up with more than impressive power sources- efficient ones too. Also, nuclear might work, it's a technological problem but then again, look at the jet, that took almost 15 years to get a rough prototype, so if we concentrated on it we could do this.

I really hope you don't find this insulting, because that's not my aim, and I know that you're really rather intelligent from the stuff you post in the science forum, but do you actually understand Newton's Third Law of Motion? "For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction", yes? So for the magnetic force from the plate to push the tank up, there must be an equal and opposite force - the magnetic repulsion of the bottom of the tank - pushing the plate down. So if the plate is connected to the bottom of the tank, then the force down on the plate will pull down on the tank and counteract the force up, and the net force equals zero, meaning you have no acceleration, meaning you go nowhere. The reason maglev works is that the magnets repel the train from the fixed rail - and the rail is pushed down with the same force the train is pushed up, it just doesn't move because it's huge and heavy and concrete and reinforced. And even if you can somehow counteract the weight of the tank, you still have to propel it, now without direct ground contact (unless you want to introduce drag and nullify your advantage) - and what are you going to use? Propellers? Jet engines? You just can't have a hovertank without an antigravity device, and even then its doubtful.
About the nuclear reactor, it's not a question of technology, it's a question of nuclear physics. Enriched uranium outputs ridculous amounts of gamma radiation, and you just can't stop gamma radiation without mass. The mass is required for the neutrons and gamma particles produced by the reaction to crash into - you can't use magnets, force fields or anything else because gamma rays travel at the speed of light and are not effected by electromagnetic fields, they have to physically hit something in order to lose their energy. You must have mass to shield from the particles, and it must be extremely dense - gamma rays will pass through c. 10cm of lead without any large difference to the count rate as measured by a Geiger-Muller tube.
Leaving aside shielding, you now have to cool the reactor. If the reactor does not have supercooled liquid circulating through its core, it will melt down. So what do you use for cooling? Nuclear power stations are either situated on the coast or use entire rivers, or failing that huge networks of compressed sodium or carbon dioxide manifolds which must keep the coolant compressed so much it turns into a liquid and cold at the same time. This must be continually circulated and given enough time to cool on the loop as well, and usually runs through facilities half a city block wide in a power station in order to do so. Air won't do, it's not really dense enough to absorb the required heat, and even if it was you'd be spewing highly radioactive air out of the back of the tank, not good for anyone.
If not nuclear, what? Solar panels? A wind turbine? Thermocouples? Or, like current tanks use, a diesel engine a gas turbine that can be bled for heat? The first ones won't work, the latter ones use up fuel, bringing us right back to the old problem about logistics, fuel storage, engine size and required power output.
Edit - @IPS - what is that thing? Some sort of tank destroyer invented before autoloaders and APFSDS rounds?

Edited by CommanderJB, 20 August 2008 - 03:24.

[Zeke]

IPS, on 20 Aug 2008, 3:04, said:

dual barreld tank?
just like that:





?

dual barreld tanks are possible, it's mammoth tanks that aren't

IPS, on 20 Aug 2008, 3:04, said:

dual barreld tank?
just like that:





?

dual barreled tanks are possible, it's mammoth tanks that aren't

Mammoth tanks are impractical. I mean if you want more firepower at the cost of 1.5 an mbt, you could just upgrade an existing mbt with better armor and autoloaders

[AZZKIKR]

what tank is that?