The grognard in me wants to know! Armor penetration tables?

Lately while playing Flaming Cliffs, I realized that I have been suspending my disbelief about something that is very near and dear to my heart: armor penetration tables!

I've observed that this is something flight sims seem to gloss over. Perhaps rightly so since the emphasis is on flight and not ground combat. However, since we're going to be spending a lot more time close the the ground attacking tanks and such, I figured it was a good time to bring this up.

When Chobham armor was developed, what impressed people wasn't so much its ability to shatter kinetic projectiles. It was the fact that it proved the naysayers wrong; tanks were NOT obsolete due to the advent of ATGMs. This armor provided excellent protection against the ATGMs launched from helos, planes, and infantry at the time.

I decided to fire up my copy of TacOps 4.0 (great game by the way, can't recommend it enough!) and take a look at some of the units and weapon systems found in TacOps. Here's an example of what I found:

M1A1 Abrams protection vs. Chemical Energy Weapons (expressed as Rolled Homogeneous Armor):

Front - 1170mm

Side - 800mm

Rear - 115mm

T-80U:

Front - 1050mm

Side - 185mm

Rear - 100mm

Now for the weapons we'll be using:

Hellfire:

Armor Penetration - 1500mm (this value doesn't change with range since the penetrator is chemical, not kinetic)

Vikhr:

Armor Penetration - 1050mm

These figures are probably based on what public information Major Holdridge could find. This game is a training tool used by the US Army, so I would hope that the values are somewhat accurate.

The point of all this is to illustrate that in TacOps, the Vikhr cannot penetrate the M1A1's armor from the front from any range. Whether this is accurate or not, it shows that ATGMs launched at tanks and vehicles are not automatic kills. It depends on the type and quality of the armor and penetrator. Based on my observations, I don't think Flaming Cliffs does this. Will Black Shark do this or is this a goal for future DCS sims?

Realize that even though these are the max penetration values, any angling will reduce the penetration value - these are the 'ideal' penetration values, 90deg hit right on the armor. Most missiles fly with AoA, esp. the Vikhr, so the impact might not be close enough to 90deg to produce maximum penetration.

Now, all that said and done, the missile COULD hit a soft spot, or it could damage sensitive equipment onboard the tank (bend the gun, destroy the alignment sensors, the primary sight, etc) and/or cause other problems. In addition a hit against the glacis or turret ring might end up quite unpleasant.

All that said and done, to answer your question, Black Shark is no Steel Beasts - I don't think the concept of armor and armor penetration is quite as well modeled as in other games which model armor, but I'm not the best person to give you details on this.

The point of all this is to illustrate that in TacOps, the Vikhr cannot penetrate the M1A1's armor from the front from any range. Whether this is accurate or not, it shows that ATGMs launched at tanks and vehicles are not automatic kills. It depends on the type and quality of the armor and penetrator. Based on my observations, I don't think Flaming Cliffs does this. Will Black Shark do this or is this a goal for future DCS sims?

Having regard to Flaming Cliffs, The M1, T-80 and Leopard Tanks require 2 Direct Hits from Vikhrs to get the Kill.

Now - Question is:

With due regard to the above info of RedTiger re Armor Penetration Tables, would a Vikhr realistically be able to get a kill in real life as in the Simulation?

Probably.

As GG said, those values are for 90 degree test simulations. Also, there's a lack of information there. It says "side", which side? Turret side, hull side or the tracks side? Those parts make huge differences. Turrets are the most armored component of the tanks, and the rest is rather lightly armored and should pose no problem for a Vikhr.

Also, considering Vikhr flight path, it'll most probably hit the tank's top(Which is the weakest part of a tank, for example you can take out most of the tanks with an RPG on top of the turret) and hull armor. Should one fail, second will have a much higher chance to take out the tank, or disable it.

My question is are these figures accurate? One has to consider that 95% of sources either identify the Vikhr as the 9M120, state it is semi-active laser homing or an unguided rocket.

The manuals this data is from may be using cold war era information...

Just a quick question... is Steel Beasts a good sim?

col (hope i don't start trouble)

Yes, it is a good sim, but it's not really a game.

What I am trying to say by this is that SBPRO is not really gamer-friendly - there's no campaign, there's only a few missions, and in fact they should be called scenarios.

While it is complex and simulated armored warfare quite well (as that is its purpose), it relies on players to create good scenarios - and good players to play those scenarios as intended.

In other words, it is intended to help teach and evaluate armored maneuvers of about a company's worth of a force (you can do more, but you may want to do it with friends).

I don't mean to scare you off of it - I have it and I enjoy it, and I think it was well worth my money; I don't play it terribly often but every time I do, especially in MP, I think it's one awesome piece of kit.

Thanks for taking the time to respond to this guys. I'm glad you all take this stuff seriously! Multiple responses inbound!

@GGTharos & 192nd_Erdem

You are both quite right. Armor slope has a great effect on effectiveness. I can remember people going wild about frontal penetrations against Tiger Is in Combat Mission not realizing that while the armor is thick, it has hardly any slope! And 192nd, you are right to question the "sides". These are an abstraction, which is often times very necessary in war games. TacOps simulates combat all the way up to the regimental level. The sides are an abstraction to make armor penetration easier to model. If a Ka-50 shoots at my M1A1, and its side is facing the Ka-50, the game will score a kill.

@Avimimus

Honestly, I have no idea how accurate these figures are. The man who makes TacOps is a retired USMC Major. Its used as a training tool for the US Army. New Zealand and Canada have also purchases it and as such, the latest versions have their equipment modeled too. The data could be old, new, made up, I don't know. You could head over there and email MajorH and ask him! :)

http://www.battlefront.com/products/tacops4/tacops4.html

Hell, I might do the same since I'm interested too.

The real idea here was to show that ATGMs hitting a tank aren't automatically going to score a kill. There are a LOT of other factors.

@colubridae

I played the original Steel Beasts demo several years ago. Never played any version since then. People who play SB Pro PE swear by it. It costs about $125, but I've never really seen anyone say it isn't worth it. I'm considering buying it myself since that was my original area of interest and since we're going to be getting all this ground pounding stuff from ED.

Probably.

 

As GG said, those values are for 90 degree test simulations. Also, there's a lack of information there. It says "side", which side? Turret side, hull side or the tracks side? Those parts make huge differences. Turrets are the most armored component of the tanks, and the rest is rather lightly armored and should pose no problem for a Vikhr.

Just another thought regarding this. In theory, chemical penetrators or shaped charges are not very hard to defeat. The skirts you see on many tanks are there to provide protection to the weak hull side. This has been around for years. Look further down on this page and you can see a PzKpfw IV with skirts like this on the turret and sides:

http://www.achtungpanzer.com/pz3.htm

Another one I've always thought was interesting was the balls and chains you see on Israeli Merkavas on the back and under the turret bussel:

http://www.fprado.com/armorsite/Mekava.htm

These basic ideas is that a skirt, chains, cage, etc fouls up the penetrator and will cause the shaped charge to be expended before it makes contact with the armored surface. Reactive armor does the same thing, but there are warheads in existence have a 2 charges - one to set off the reactive armor and the other shaped charge to penetrate. Not to mention those that "pop-up" to attack the weak hull or turret top and avoid the armor entirely

Anyways, the on-going battle between armor and projectile is fascinating stuff. It'd be worth putting more thought into as the DCS line matures.

I would have to check FC and BS beta to see if impact zones are calculated for ATGMs, although I believe they are in a very rudimentary form. What I can say for sure is that given the new dynamic projectile modeling in DCS, vehicle aspect definitely counts when using the cannon. Generally, armored vehicles are much harder to kill from the front, because the sloped armor causes much more ricochet. Range is also critical. In fact, if you watch the ricochet demo here, you can see how the third vehicle is killed much faster and with less ricochet than the second one. This is due to both the decreased range and side aspect.

A HEAT warhead has to hit the right angle, and explote at the right distance from the target armor to achieve maximum penetration. Make it explode too early or at an angle, or both, and you instantly reduce penetration to 'I can handle this' level. This, by the way, is how the SLAT armor works against RPGs as well.

It is antirely possible that you could pound a tank's front armor with HEAT weapons and it would keep on going. Things like that /have/ happened before.

Someone mentioned the Vikhr would attack the top ... not much a chance. The vikhr is a beam-rider, and as such, will hit whatever is presented to it, which is usually -not- the top. The hellfire, which flies a lofted flight path is more than likely to attack the top.

Now, regarding the modeling of armor ... modeling armor too well would take away time from modeling aircraft. It would be nice if it were modeled a bit better than it is right now, certainly but at this point it is 'good enough', like EB mentions. There are other things missing as well, such as the AI deploying smoke, and deploying into some sort of combat formation and picking BPs.

It takes a -lot- to make a battlefield feel truly alive. Just like SBPRO's helis aren't exactly all that realistic in their behavior combat to armor, rather 'good enough', Black Shark's armor isn't quite so well modeled as its helicopter AI.

Now, if you could bridge the two. ;D

Bottom line, there's always room, but usually no time available, for improvement.

Just a quick question... is Steel Beasts a good sim?

 

 

col (hope i don't start trouble)

You can try Combat Mission Shock Force. Demo

Here's a part of preview from Tom's Hardware.

If you want your wargame realistic enough to tell the difference between a PaK 40 75mm anti-tank gun hitting a Sherman's upper-left armour at an angle of 22 degrees from a range of 800 meters, versus say 45 degrees at 1,600 meters, then CM delivers. This extreme attention to detail, combined with a 3D battlefield and the innovative "WeGo" system of turn-based gameplay, has made CM the dynasty to beat in the wargaming genre.

U.S. Soldier

Stryker

M240

IED

Thats Combat Mission: Shock Force. Unless colubridae is just really, really confused (;)), I'm pretty sure he's referring to this:

http://www.steelbeasts.com/

@EvilBivol-1

I'll have to check that out again when I have a moment or two. Its cool to see that the cannon will be affected by aspect, range, etc.

Realize that even though these are the max penetration values, any angling will reduce the penetration value - these are the 'ideal' penetration values, 90deg hit right on the armor.

also, "Front - 1170mm" doesn't means any place of "front", usually average-to-strongest places, like 30% of projection.

Armour penetration for vehicles is really complex process, and you can't modell it realistically accoding to few numbers only, such as: Front, Side, Rear and Armor Penetration.

That's why tanks in LO still has a "hitpoints".

Oh forget armor penetration for a second and check this out.

Facial Expression That's right... :D Imagine the blank stare on your virtual pilot face as he takes in the maze of clickable button in the Ka-50 for the first time... :D

I think we are on the same page Dmut, just saying things differently!

not really. These are horizontal values, based on angle 0. and with other angles and hit places you will get lower and higher values.

also, "Front - 1170mm" doesn't means any place of "front", usually average-to-strongest places, like 30% of projection.

Armour penetration for vehicles is really complex process, and you can't modell it realistically accoding to few numbers only, such as: Front, Side, Rear and Armor Penetration.

That's why tanks in LO still has a "hitpoints".

I bolded this since I think this is an important distinction between war games and true simulations. Front/side/rear works fine if your simulating something on a large scale - companies, battalions, regiments and up. These abstractions allow the player and the CPU to focus on the big picture. Once you scale it down and you enter the "simulation" realm, it becomes much more important because you can actually see individual tanks in great detail. Incidentally, this is what made me question all this. I was launching Vikhrs at tanks in FC and started to wonder where those missiles were actually striking the tanks.

@Redtiger

I guess that even if we contacted the major he might be able to give us the official references but there would still be plenty of room for misinformation or disinformation. This discussion has got me thinking.

This is the view I propose:

- Technology is designed to do things, but in the field it often does unexpected things

- Weapon effectiveness is tied to factors involving training, deployment, avionics which is often just as or more important (thus true generations in terms of obsolescence may be hard to distinguish).

- As a result we must use a mixture of humility and realise that system effectiveness is both unpredictable and never complete.

A key example is the fact that official statements about armour and durability do not match up. For instance many combat helicopters are heavily armoured but can be damaged or even downed with small arms if the shots are lucky enough (eg. the tail of the Mi-24, the Ah-64 etc.)

By the same token a tank can withstand multiple impacts or received disabling or even decommissioning damage by a lucky hit from an inadequate penetrator (how melted must a radiator grill be before the engine overheats?).

Thus firing two missiles may actually lead to a significant increase in PK as there is a higher probability of finding a weak spot or doing secondary damage (shattering optics etc.)

Btw. In terms of modeling one solution could be to use hemispheres and randomisation. In other words, attacking from the top, side or rear would increase PK but the hit points would have a random element.

Btw. In terms of modeling one solution could be to use hemispheres and randomisation. In other words, attacking from the top, side or rear would increase PK but the hit points would have a random element.

The original Combat Mission engine did this type of thing, and did it well. I can't remember the specifics of it, its been so many years since all that stuff was discussed. I just remember that it was similar to what board games like ASL did. Hemispheres, hull position (as in hull-down with the only the turret exposed), range, penetrator type, shape, armor/penetrator quality all played a part but there was also "fuzzy math" involved. It made for some interesting situations. You'd get penetrations that didn't destroy the tank, or a lucky penetration against the turret front of a Panther because you hit a weak point.

Btw. In terms of modeling one solution could be to use hemispheres and randomisation. In other words, attacking from the top, side or rear would increase PK but the hit points would have a random element.

Right, we have selected this method of armour penetration modell. it takes much less developer's and designers time, consume less CPU, and has results very close to real life experience.

Most military training software use the same methods - randomisation plus few factors like average vehicle armour value, angle of hit and place of hit on hemisphere.

Sounds like a good choice, I look forward to seeing more of the model in action!