Why the Russians Like Stryker (07/10/2005 entry)
The US military, of course, isn’t the only one trying to learn lessons from the experiences in Iraq:
One of the most impressive, to the Russians, hardware innovations there has been the slat armor used to protect Stryker vehicles from RPGs. The Russians liked the Stryker as well, but feel that is is too expensive for their tastes. The Russians don’t really buy into all that money spent on computers and fancy communications.
And they’re looking at building a specialized urban warfare vehicle:
Basically a tank with less frontal armor, and more protection on the sides and rear, the Russian design uses twin 30mm cannon and four ATGM (anti-tank guided missile) launchers. This design has been modified after examining what the Americans have come up against in Iraq. So the Russians are thinking of changing their main guns to a pair of 40mm, or larger, auto-cannon, firing shells designed to do maximum damage against urban targets. The launchers for the missiles should be armored to keep out heavy machine-gun (12.7mm) bullets. The ATGM missiles should be modified to produce “urban warfare” missiles, with shorter range and warheads designed to blast through building walls, not tank armor.
No Responses to “Rooskies watching the Stryker”
MO, I always enjoy reading StrategyPage, although I’m not sure where they are getting the ‘fact’ that slat armor is an innovation. The Russians have had slat equipped vehicles since at least Grozny in 1995: http://www.rand.org/publications/MR/MR1289/MR1289.ch2.pdf (page 25) To better protect vulnerable APCs, soldiers created barricades out of sandbags, the hulks of destroyed armored vehicles, and other debris to shield the vehicles when not in motion. They attached cages of wire mesh 25-30 centimeters from armor hulls to help defeat shaped charges fired against exposed vehicles. Here’s a picture of BTR-80 with slat armor. http://www.defense-update.com/features/du-1-04/rpg-threat.htm The concept of defeating shape charges with a pre-detonation screen dates back to at least Vietnam, as I have read several accounts of M113s emplacing chainlink fence in front of their vehicles when stationary to prevent RPG damage. I know that the IDF also have used/is using slat armor on several vehicles: http://www.israeli-weapons.com/weapons/vehicles/engineer_vehicles/puma/Puma.html http://www.israeli-weapons.com/weapons/vehicles/tanks/merkava/MerkavaMk4.html