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I agree with Peregrine. The LRBT spits in the face of modern tank design. It has little armor sloping, it is way too tall, it has a comically tiny turret, it has an unarmored engine, little practical suspension, almost no ground clearance, huge slab sides just begging to be punched through, bad track design, outdated concepts like sponsons, unguarded tracks, no reactive armor at all, horrible accuracy, speeds laughable by modern standards and a comically oversized gun.

My fan-theory as to why the LRBT does so well is because the other tanks of 40k are just as badly designed or even worse. Except for the Eldar Fire Prism. Disregarding it's cartoonishly big gun it is not a bad design all things considered. It has nice rounded features, as long as it hugs the ground it isn't too tall, active camo will ensure that it stays hidden and it is fast.

The LRBT spits in the face of modern tank design

Well no sh!t, The Mark IV also spits in the face of modern tank design, so does the Tiger tank. If half the basic theme for IG is inspired by WW1 and partially WW2, what do you expect?

 Peregrine wrote:

 Swastakowey wrote:
If magic missiles can blow up artillery in less than 30 seconds... then why can't magic AAA blow up aircraft hours before they get near the target?

Because hitting a 700mph target flying at treetop level that can make high-g turns to evade an incoming missile or a bomber at 50,000' is much more difficult than tracking a high-arc ballistic projectile back to its source and firing a similar shot back to that location.

If it's so easy, why don't you calculate it for us as an example? If it's indeed so easy, how comes SAM where introduced in 1950's and yet Mortar hunting radars (that )only could find mortars and eventuall howitzers) where available 1960, with tracking radars for missiles flat firing long range guns only beeing available no sooner then 1970 ? U-2 was shot down 1960 at 70k feets. Heigth doesnt protect you or makes it so much harder to reach. You just need a bigger missile the higher it gets. The tech stays the same.
We definitely know IoM has SAM's, i've never heard of counter artillery radar however.

The Mark IV was designed to cross some trenches and withstand machine gun fire. It was not designed for the combat conditions the LRBT has to go through. And the Tiger isnt too bad of a design. It has a reasonable profile, good armor, a good gun and for its time it was surprisingly quick. Most importantly, the Tiger has a functional suspension system. A Tiger shaped LR would be a vast upgrade over the current design.

 TheCustomLime wrote:
The Mark IV was designed to cross some trenches and withstand machine gun fire. It was not designed for the combat conditions the LRBT has to go through.

When LRBT was designed, the most likely opponents were hordes of backwards and stupid Orks. In current times the main opponents are somewhat smarter Orks. Ork tanks are still worse than Leman Russ.

The suspension seems to be a sculptor's/artist's fault, not something planned as a part of the fluff. By the way how do you recognize lack of suspension visually?

 Aszubaruzah Surn wrote:
When LRBT was designed, the most likely opponents were hordes of backwards and stupid Orks. In current times the main opponents are somewhat smarter Orks. Ork tanks are still worse than Leman Russ.

Fighting against even weaker enemies doesn't mean the LRBT isn't a stupid design. It's just a stupid design that doesn't cost the Imperium as many wars as it might if their enemies were more competent.

The suspension seems to be a sculptor's/artist's fault, not something planned as a part of the fluff.

Who cares why the creators made that decision? It's still the fluff.

By the way how do you recognize lack of suspension visually?

By applying your understanding of how suspensions work, noticing that the LRBT has maybe an inch of ground clearance at most, and realizing what this means for a suspension's ability to work properly.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Keep wrote:
Well no sh!t, The Mark IV also spits in the face of modern tank design, so does the Tiger tank. If half the basic theme for IG is inspired by WW1 and partially WW2, what do you expect?

A tank that is at least as well designed as real tanks from WWII, instead of one that every WWII tank designer would laugh at?

Also, nobody is disputing GW's inspiration for the LRBT. The point is that it's a bad design from a functional point of view. A terrible design can still be just fine from an aesthetic point of view, if it's appropriate for the setting.

If it's so easy, why don't you calculate it for us as an example?

Ok, give us some position data for an artillery shell.

If it's indeed so easy, how comes SAM where introduced in 1950's and yet Mortar hunting radars (that )only could find mortars and eventuall howitzers) where available 1960, with tracking radars for missiles flat firing long range guns only beeing available no sooner then 1970 ?

Because they're two separate technologies with different limiting factors? Early SAMs used command guidance and large (preferably nuclear) warheads to overcome the limits of computer technology, and even Vietnam-era air to air missiles were incredibly unreliable. The main limiting factor is the guidance system, with radar and heat-seeking systems each having their own weaknesses (having to "paint" the target until impact and seeker cooling, respectively) to deal with. Counter-batter radar, on the other hand, is mostly limited by CPU power and the ability to process radar data very quickly then automatically aim the counter-attack. And then on top of that you have to consider historical factors like which system the military considered a higher priority and dedicated more funding to, etc.

U-2 was shot down 1960 at 70k feets. Heigth doesnt protect you or makes it so much harder to reach. You just need a bigger missile the higher it gets. The tech stays the same.

Sure, but making a bigger missile is not a trivial problem to overcome (as demonstrated by the fact that no SAM was ever capable of doing more than making SR-71 pilots laugh at the waste of ammunition). Size goes up, cost goes up, etc. Which just goes back to the original point: shooting down a 500mph bomber at 50,000' is much more difficult than counter-battery fire against WWI-era fixed guns. Now instead of artillery batteries trading fire for days/weeks/months at a time you have a battle for air superiority (almost certainly too short for trench warfare to develop) followed by the winning side gaining the ability to bomb unopposed.

We definitely know IoM has SAM's, i've never heard of counter artillery radar however.

Sure, which just goes back to the original point that the LRBT succeeds because everything around it is incompetent. The IG should have radar-aimed counter-battery fire, because the required technology should be trivially easy if you're able to build plasma guns/FTL starships/etc.

 Aszubaruzah Surn wrote:

 TheCustomLime wrote:
The Mark IV was designed to cross some trenches and withstand machine gun fire. It was not designed for the combat conditions the LRBT has to go through.

When LRBT was designed, the most likely opponents were hordes of backwards and stupid Orks. In current times the main opponents are somewhat smarter Orks. Ork tanks are still worse than Leman Russ.

The suspension seems to be a sculptor's/artist's fault, not something planned as a part of the fluff. By the way how do you recognize lack of suspension visually?

Do you actually know anything at all about 40K, or is your only source of information that godawful wikia that should be mailed a cease and desist for how much it misinforms its readers? Orks were STRONGER back during the Great Crusade, when one WHAAAAGH in particular was led by the biggest and baddest Ork Warboss in history, commanding a horde of super Ork Meganobs that put their current counterparts to utter shame.

FFS, Orks are neither stupid nor primitive. They simply choose to look like such, but otherwise are just as modernized as the Imperial Guard- even better than some regiments.

To be fair to the Leman Russ, GW in general is terrible at designing AFVs. The only really good ones I can think of are the Rhino, Falcon Chassis Variants and arguably the Baneblade and some of its variants. The rest suffer from a varying combination of being too tall, comically oversized guns, a derpy track design, oddly undergunned for vehicles of their type and serving no real practical use to any competent military.

 Wyzilla wrote:
Do you actually know anything at all about 40K, or is your only source of information that godawful wikia that should be mailed a cease and desist for how much it misinforms its readers? Orks were STRONGER back during the Great Crusade, when one WHAAAAGH in particular was led by the biggest and baddest Ork Warboss in history, commanding a horde of super Ork Meganobs that put their current counterparts to utter shame.

FFS, Orks are neither stupid nor primitive. They simply choose to look like such, but otherwise are just as modernized as the Imperial Guard- even better than some regiments.

Leman Russ is a STC vehicle which means it was designed during the Dark Age of Technology, not during Great Crusade. Fluff for Predator says that Predators with their heavier armour and greater firepower (greater than Rhino) allowed colonists to easily slaughter Orks and destroy their vehicles because Orks were close-quarters-combat oriented and had few weapons that could harm it.

The number of non-tankers here talking like they know about tanks makes my head hurt. If another person takes the line of thinking that "sloped armor automatically = better" I am going to slap them.

weaponsofwwii wrote:
Slope Effect
One of the most mis-understood aspects of armour design is sloped armour. The common argument is that sloped armour offers better protection than vertical armour, simply because the sloped armour offers a thicker horizontal protection for the same plate thickness. If this argument was true, sloped armour would not only fail to offer a better protection for an armour plate of a given weight, but would in fact in some cases decrease the protection of the armour plate.
Net Weight Reduction (Trigonomic Approach)
Consider two armour plates: one is vertical, and one has an inclination of 30 degrees from vertical. The armour plates must both offer a protection equivilant to 100 mm thickness. Obviously, the vertical plate must be 100 mm thick. If using pure trigonometry to calculate the required thickness of the other plate, we would get 100 mm × cos (30) ≈ 87 mm. While this result would seem to indicate a weight saving of 13 percent, it does not take into account that the armour plate would have to be longer to cover the same area.
If the armour plate would have to be 1000 mm tall, the height of the vertical armour plate would naturally be 1000 mm. The length of the sloped armour plate, however, would have to be longer, since sloping the armour would reduce the height covered by a plate 1000 mm long. The exact length is easily calculated as 1000 mm ÷ cos(30) ≈ 1155 mm. Since 100 mm × 1000 mm ≈ 87 mm × 1155 mm, it is demonstrated that the weight will be identical of two plates that has the same horizontal thickness and covers the same area, regardless of slope. Formally, this can be presented as cos(x) ÷ cos(x) = 1.
Potential Protection Reduction
Since it would appear that the calculation above does not favour neither vertical nor sloped armour (aside from a slightly more cumbersome interior layout for the sloped armour), if the purely trigonomic advantage in horizontal thickness was the only advantage, the thinner, sloped armour plate would in fact be at a disadvantage. Although thinner armour plates will usually have a higher Brinell hardness, the thinner plate is more likely to be overmatched.
If a plug is formed when a shot hits a sloped armour plate, the plug will offer less resistance than the surrounding armour plate. As a result, the shot will turn towards the armour plate, decreasing the effective angle and negating much of the increased horizontal thickness. (WAL 710/492)

Sloped armor is generally used when you can't cast a thick enough vertical plate for the amount of effective thickness that you want. There is the benefit of increased chances of deflection, but modern shells strike at such high velocities that if they fail to penetrate the armor; they just outright shatter rather than deflect so that hasn't been a realistic consideration since the T-64 first rolled out with a smoothbore APDS gun.

The Leman Russ is very much an interwar design of the same breed as the ToG II, and the stats given to it by Forgeworld are patently ridiculous in many places, but please stop pretending to be experts on tanks when you aren't. If flat armor were so terrible; then every modern main battle tank would be at fault for having more or less completely flat sides.

High profile is also not a universal disadvantage like many think it is. High profile offers greater visibility, increased crew comfort and ammunition storage, and also generally means that your tank can have more gun depression than a lower profile counterpart would. Building a tank really low means you need to find short people to pilot it and also tends to kill your tank's gun depression which is not the greatest thing in the world when you have to fight over ridges and hills or in urban terrain.

Also, nobody is disputing GW's inspiration for the LRBT. The point is that it's a bad design from a functional point of view.

When it is inspired by WW1 for the entire exterior, how do you expect it to be better then WW2 or even later designs?
It is essentially an indiana jones tank, compressed in length and scaled to "heroic proportions" like everything in 40k is.

 Peregrine wrote:

We definitely know IoM has SAM's, i've never heard of counter artillery radar however.

Sure, which just goes back to the original point that the LRBT succeeds because everything around it is incompetent. The IG should have radar-aimed counter-battery fire, because the required technology should be trivially easy if you're able to build plasma guns/FTL starships/etc.

No, it's not trivially easy, if they don't have the specific technology. They just assemble things according to their STC instructions / the machines do it for them. It's like claiming that if you can read the instructions to build an Ikea drawer that you are able to come up with a production and assembly plan for a pocket calculator. Reading instructions != understanding the technology, and technology != other technology.

Sure, but making a bigger missile is not a trivial problem to overcome (as demonstrated by the fact that no SAM was ever capable of doing more than making SR-71 pilots laugh at the waste of ammunition). Size goes up, cost goes up, etc. Which just goes back to the original point: shooting down a 500mph bomber at 50,000' is much more difficult than counter-battery fire against WWI-era fixed guns. Now instead of artillery batteries trading fire for days/weeks/months at a time you have a battle for air superiority (almost certainly too short for trench warfare to develop) followed by the winning side gaining the ability to bomb unopposed.

That's because the SAM's in the period where built to defend against bombers and regular fighter jets, not jets with mach 3 at extreme altitude. They simply ran out of fuel before they could reach up to the distance/altitude. The Missile will nontheless be less cheaper then the aircraft.

nd even Vietnam-era air to air missiles were incredibly unreliable

No they where not. They where very effective, to the point where US aviation was forced below the altitude envelope of the SA-2 where they are not effective, but instead AAA is more effective. And that despite all the jamming and suppression effords.

Let me quote for you with your B-52 fetish:

The highest per type loss rate during Linebacker II was incurred by the B-52 fleet, exclusively to S-75/SA-2 SAM shots, despite the heavy use of onboard EW, support jamming aircraft, defence suppression aircraft, chaff bombers and fighter escorts. Had SAMs been absent from the theatre, it is unlikely any B-52s would have been lost.
The statistical loss rate of 15 x B-52D/G across 729 flown sorties is around 2 percent, the limit for sustainable losses in an attrition strategy campaign, despite the concerted defence suppression effort directed against the PAVN SAM force. Importantly, once the PAVN expended most of its warstock of S-75/SA-2 SAM rounds, no further B-52s were lost.

And that is against an inferior bush army against a world military power.

Ok, give us some position data for an artillery shell.

ill be back shortly

 Keep wrote:

Let me quote for you with your B-52 fetish:

The highest per type loss rate during Linebacker II was incurred by the B-52 fleet, exclusively to S-75/SA-2 SAM shots, despite the heavy use of onboard EW, support jamming aircraft, defence suppression aircraft, chaff bombers and fighter escorts. Had SAMs been absent from the theatre, it is unlikely any B-52s would have been lost.
The statistical loss rate of 15 x B-52D/G across 729 flown sorties is around 2 percent, the limit for sustainable losses in an attrition strategy campaign, despite the concerted defence suppression effort directed against the PAVN SAM force. Importantly, once the PAVN expended most of its warstock of S-75/SA-2 SAM rounds, no further B-52s were lost.

And that is against an inferior bush army against a world military power.

It should be kept in mind that the North Vietnamese army of that time was equiped with,at that time modern, soviet weaponry. To characterize them as bush army is therefore misleading.
Regardless, the Leman Russ is a bad design but it ultimately works on the same kind of "rule of cool" logic that makes stupid things like knights, titans and cathedral shaped spaceships viable.

at that time modern, soviet weaponry

Yes they where equipped with modern weapons, but they had to carry everything across the jungle basically. And they never had equal numbers as far as airforce is concerned / enough AA capabilities to deal with the overwhelming number of airvehicles sent against them. The point is - they just where not more successfull because of numbers and extreme efford to jam/counter SAM's (they had nothing else to fear after all).

 Kain wrote:
The number of non-tankers here talking like they know about tanks makes my head hurt. If another person takes the line of thinking that "sloped armor automatically = better" I am going to slap them.

weaponsofwwii wrote:
Slope Effect
One of the most mis-understood aspects of armour design is sloped armour. The common argument is that sloped armour offers better protection than vertical armour, simply because the sloped armour offers a thicker horizontal protection for the same plate thickness. If this argument was true, sloped armour would not only fail to offer a better protection for an armour plate of a given weight, but would in fact in some cases decrease the protection of the armour plate.
Net Weight Reduction (Trigonomic Approach)
Consider two armour plates: one is vertical, and one has an inclination of 30 degrees from vertical. The armour plates must both offer a protection equivilant to 100 mm thickness. Obviously, the vertical plate must be 100 mm thick. If using pure trigonometry to calculate the required thickness of the other plate, we would get 100 mm × cos (30) ≈ 87 mm. While this result would seem to indicate a weight saving of 13 percent, it does not take into account that the armour plate would have to be longer to cover the same area.
If the armour plate would have to be 1000 mm tall, the height of the vertical armour plate would naturally be 1000 mm. The length of the sloped armour plate, however, would have to be longer, since sloping the armour would reduce the height covered by a plate 1000 mm long. The exact length is easily calculated as 1000 mm ÷ cos(30) ≈ 1155 mm. Since 100 mm × 1000 mm ≈ 87 mm × 1155 mm, it is demonstrated that the weight will be identical of two plates that has the same horizontal thickness and covers the same area, regardless of slope. Formally, this can be presented as cos(x) ÷ cos(x) = 1.
Potential Protection Reduction
Since it would appear that the calculation above does not favour neither vertical nor sloped armour (aside from a slightly more cumbersome interior layout for the sloped armour), if the purely trigonomic advantage in horizontal thickness was the only advantage, the thinner, sloped armour plate would in fact be at a disadvantage. Although thinner armour plates will usually have a higher Brinell hardness, the thinner plate is more likely to be overmatched.
If a plug is formed when a shot hits a sloped armour plate, the plug will offer less resistance than the surrounding armour plate. As a result, the shot will turn towards the armour plate, decreasing the effective angle and negating much of the increased horizontal thickness. (WAL 710/492)

Sloped armor is generally used when you can't cast a thick enough vertical plate for the amount of effective thickness that you want. There is the benefit of increased chances of deflection, but modern shells strike at such high velocities that if they fail to penetrate the armor; they just outright shatter rather than deflect so that hasn't been a realistic consideration since the T-64 first rolled out with a smoothbore APDS gun.

The Leman Russ is very much an interwar design of the same breed as the ToG II, and the stats given to it by Forgeworld are patently ridiculous in many places, but please stop pretending to be experts on tanks when you aren't. If flat armor were so terrible; then every modern main battle tank would be at fault for having more or less completely flat sides.

High profile is also not a universal disadvantage like many think it is. High profile offers greater visibility, increased crew comfort and ammunition storage, and also generally means that your tank can have more gun depression than a lower profile counterpart would. Building a tank really low means you need to find short people to pilot it and also tends to kill your tank's gun depression which is not the greatest thing in the world when you have to fight over ridges and hills or in urban terrain.

Fair enough about the flat armor argument. Sloped armor wouldn't offer much protection against energy weapons either. However, I disagree with you about the high profile argument in relation to the Leman Russ. The Leman Russ tank's gun cannot depress beyond pointing straight ahead. This is primarily an issue with the turret design as the gun is stopped from going lower by the bottom plate. On the Stygies and Ryza patterns this problem seems to be corrected but I am unsure as how common those patterns are.

In addition, while having a tall profile in of itself isn't a bad thing but the Leman Russ is excessively tall. Taller than any modern tank in service. It is going to stick out like a sore thumb as others have noted. (It is 14.5 ft tall or 4.4m. In comparison, the M1 Abrams is 8 feet tall. The WW1 British heavy tanks, the ones they are based off of is also 8 feet tall. The Monstrous Jagdtiger is 9 feet tall as was the Sherman).

KingDeath wrote:

 Keep wrote:

Let me quote for you with your B-52 fetish:

The highest per type loss rate during Linebacker II was incurred by the B-52 fleet, exclusively to S-75/SA-2 SAM shots, despite the heavy use of onboard EW, support jamming aircraft, defence suppression aircraft, chaff bombers and fighter escorts. Had SAMs been absent from the theatre, it is unlikely any B-52s would have been lost.
The statistical loss rate of 15 x B-52D/G across 729 flown sorties is around 2 percent, the limit for sustainable losses in an attrition strategy campaign, despite the concerted defence suppression effort directed against the PAVN SAM force. Importantly, once the PAVN expended most of its warstock of S-75/SA-2 SAM rounds, no further B-52s were lost.

And that is against an inferior bush army against a world military power.

It should be kept in mind that the North Vietnamese army of that time was equiped with,at that time modern, soviet weaponry. To characterize them as bush army is therefore misleading.
Regardless, the Leman Russ is a bad design but it ultimately works on the same kind of "rule of cool" logic that makes stupid things like knights, titans and cathedral shaped spaceships viable.

Having a modern missile does not make one a modern army. The NVA was numerically and technologically greatly inferior to the US. Not to mention they did not have any infrastructure to speak of. And by waging a guerilla war in the jungle, they definitely were a 'bush army'.
That the Leman Russ is not a great design is undeniable, but it still is superior to WW2 and even modern tanks by virtue of having far superior technology.

The WW1 British heavy tanks, the ones they are based off of is also 8 feet tall.

Because it didn't have a turret, add a turret and it will be quite a bit taller... Besides, those measurements where stated out of thin air, without actually checking what would be actually required/enough in terms of size to do the things it is supposed to do. My experiment shows that you only need to scale up the plastic model by a factor of 50.7, which is about 90% smaller then what is stated. Besides, the dimensions that are repeated over and over again dont even really match the model, in the sense that the proportions are off

I like this thread.

I am devouring both sides arguments, and learning lots about tanks.

Thanks guys!

 Peregrine wrote:

Also, nobody is disputing GW's inspiration for the LRBT. The point is that it's a bad design from a functional point of view. A terrible design can still be just fine from an aesthetic point of view, if it's appropriate for the setting.

If it's so easy, why don't you calculate it for us as an example?

Ok, give us some position data for an artillery shell.

There you go Artillery Radar Data. Have fun.

 Iron_Captain wrote:
Having a modern missile does not make one a modern army. The NVA was numerically and technologically greatly inferior to the US. Not to mention they did not have any infrastructure to speak of. And by waging a guerilla war in the jungle, they definitely were a 'bush army'.

The example is from the bombing missions over Hanoi, not guerrilla war in the jungle.

That the Leman Russ is not a great design is undeniable, but it still is superior to WW2 and even modern tanks by virtue of having far superior technology.

Except it really isn't. Superior technology doesn't matter if your tanks are all immobilized 50 miles from the battlefield because they have no ability to drive over any terrain more difficult than a high-quality paved road. I mean, we're talking about a tank that could potentially be stopped by the average parking lot speed bump. At least the WWII tank is going to reach the battle and contribute.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Keep wrote:
There you go Artillery Radar Data. Have fun.

Before I screw around with processing this* could you tell me where you got it from, and what assumptions were made in generating it (especially the assumptions made to calculate drag on the shell)? Is this taken from a game? Third-party calculator? Your own math?

*The trivially easy part is the computer calculating the target location once you have counter-battery software. Unfortunately I don't right now.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Keep wrote:
No, it's not trivially easy, if they don't have the specific technology. They just assemble things according to their STC instructions / the machines do it for them. It's like claiming that if you can read the instructions to build an Ikea drawer that you are able to come up with a production and assembly plan for a pocket calculator. Reading instructions != understanding the technology, and technology != other technology.

Ok, so you're conceding that the only reason they don't have it is incompetence, exactly like I said.

That's because the SAM's in the period where built to defend against bombers and regular fighter jets, not jets with mach 3 at extreme altitude. They simply ran out of fuel before they could reach up to the distance/altitude. The Missile will nontheless be less cheaper then the aircraft.

Well yes, that was exactly my point. Designing air defenses is not as simple as just saying "make the SAMs bigger" and auto-killing anything that dares to come into your airspace. And keep in mind that the Marauder and Thunderbolt are capable of operating from orbiting starships, which implies much higher top speeds and altitudes than the SR-71.

They where very effective, to the point where US aviation was forced below the altitude envelope of the SA-2 where they are not effective, but instead AAA is more effective. And that despite all the jamming and suppression effords.

I said air to air missiles, not SAMs. The F-4 was originally designed without a gun because, like you, everyone assumed that missiles were an auto-kill weapon. Unfortunately it turned out that Vietnam-era air to air missiles sucked and they had to start bolting external gun pods to the planes to give them a chance.

The statistical loss rate of 15 x B-52D/G across 729 flown sorties is around 2 percent

Oh no, a 2% loss rate. You do realize that this is the Imperium we're talking about, where sacrificing whole regiments of guardsmen to defend an irrelevant patch of territory is standard practice, right? The Imperium doesn't have mourning families back home or political concerns to deal with. If it takes 100% losses to win the war then they aren't going to hesitate for a moment to do it. Life is cheap, and the only calculation that matters is the value of aircraft vs. the value of targets they destroy added to the value of the objectives they accomplish.

my own simulation model with drag dependence on cd-mach-relation ship curves like this http://zak-smith.org/~zak/DigiCam/McCoy/small/156_5700_img.jpg

*The trivially easy part is the computer calculating the target location once you have counter-battery software.

Well no gak. You said hitting a moving aircraft (that means, if target is left, steer left) is harder then tracking a projectile...

Ok, so you're conceding that the only reason they don't have it is incompetence, exactly like I said.

Then let us know how competent you are in developing a projectile path reverse engineering algorithm

 Keep wrote:
my own simulation model with drag dependence on cd-mach-relation ship curves like this ]http://zak-smith.org/~zak/DigiCam/McCoy/small/156_5700_img.jpg

Ok, so that's the exact curve you used?

Well no gak. You said hitting a moving aircraft (that means, if target is left, steer left) is harder then tracking a projectile...

Yes, and it should be pretty obvious why. Counter-battery fire requires accurate tracking of a target, and then a return shot on a fixed point. Hitting aircraft requires accurate tracking of a much faster and more maneuverable target for a much longer time, filtering out the target's countermeasures (flares, etc), and having enough energy to pursue the target despite its evasion attempts.

Then let us know how competent you are in developing a projectile path reverse engineering algorithm

Which is an interesting question, but not one that's very relevant here. Whether or not I personally feel like investing enough time to do it doesn't change the fact that it's not a very difficult task for the computer once you have the software. The flight path of a ballistic projectile can be completely derived from just a few data points because the equations governing its movement are very well understood. Once you have enough CPU power to do the required calculations fast enough (and radar capable of tracking the shell accurately) all that's left is testing your software to make sure it works correctly.

 TheCustomLime wrote:

 Kain wrote:
The number of non-tankers here talking like they know about tanks makes my head hurt. If another person takes the line of thinking that "sloped armor automatically = better" I am going to slap them.

weaponsofwwii wrote:
Slope Effect
One of the most mis-understood aspects of armour design is sloped armour. The common argument is that sloped armour offers better protection than vertical armour, simply because the sloped armour offers a thicker horizontal protection for the same plate thickness. If this argument was true, sloped armour would not only fail to offer a better protection for an armour plate of a given weight, but would in fact in some cases decrease the protection of the armour plate.
Net Weight Reduction (Trigonomic Approach)
Consider two armour plates: one is vertical, and one has an inclination of 30 degrees from vertical. The armour plates must both offer a protection equivilant to 100 mm thickness. Obviously, the vertical plate must be 100 mm thick. If using pure trigonometry to calculate the required thickness of the other plate, we would get 100 mm × cos (30) ≈ 87 mm. While this result would seem to indicate a weight saving of 13 percent, it does not take into account that the armour plate would have to be longer to cover the same area.
If the armour plate would have to be 1000 mm tall, the height of the vertical armour plate would naturally be 1000 mm. The length of the sloped armour plate, however, would have to be longer, since sloping the armour would reduce the height covered by a plate 1000 mm long. The exact length is easily calculated as 1000 mm ÷ cos(30) ≈ 1155 mm. Since 100 mm × 1000 mm ≈ 87 mm × 1155 mm, it is demonstrated that the weight will be identical of two plates that has the same horizontal thickness and covers the same area, regardless of slope. Formally, this can be presented as cos(x) ÷ cos(x) = 1.
Potential Protection Reduction
Since it would appear that the calculation above does not favour neither vertical nor sloped armour (aside from a slightly more cumbersome interior layout for the sloped armour), if the purely trigonomic advantage in horizontal thickness was the only advantage, the thinner, sloped armour plate would in fact be at a disadvantage. Although thinner armour plates will usually have a higher Brinell hardness, the thinner plate is more likely to be overmatched.
If a plug is formed when a shot hits a sloped armour plate, the plug will offer less resistance than the surrounding armour plate. As a result, the shot will turn towards the armour plate, decreasing the effective angle and negating much of the increased horizontal thickness. (WAL 710/492)

Sloped armor is generally used when you can't cast a thick enough vertical plate for the amount of effective thickness that you want. There is the benefit of increased chances of deflection, but modern shells strike at such high velocities that if they fail to penetrate the armor; they just outright shatter rather than deflect so that hasn't been a realistic consideration since the T-64 first rolled out with a smoothbore APDS gun.

The Leman Russ is very much an interwar design of the same breed as the ToG II, and the stats given to it by Forgeworld are patently ridiculous in many places, but please stop pretending to be experts on tanks when you aren't. If flat armor were so terrible; then every modern main battle tank would be at fault for having more or less completely flat sides.

High profile is also not a universal disadvantage like many think it is. High profile offers greater visibility, increased crew comfort and ammunition storage, and also generally means that your tank can have more gun depression than a lower profile counterpart would. Building a tank really low means you need to find short people to pilot it and also tends to kill your tank's gun depression which is not the greatest thing in the world when you have to fight over ridges and hills or in urban terrain.

Fair enough about the flat armor argument. Sloped armor wouldn't offer much protection against energy weapons either. However, I disagree with you about the high profile argument in relation to the Leman Russ. The Leman Russ tank's gun cannot depress beyond pointing straight ahead. This is primarily an issue with the turret design as the gun is stopped from going lower by the bottom plate. On the Stygies and Ryza patterns this problem seems to be corrected but I am unsure as how common those patterns are.

In addition, while having a tall profile in of itself isn't a bad thing but the Leman Russ is excessively tall. Taller than any modern tank in service. It is going to stick out like a sore thumb as others have noted. (It is 14.5 ft tall or 4.4m. In comparison, the M1 Abrams is 8 feet tall. The WW1 British heavy tanks, the ones they are based off of is also 8 feet tall. The Monstrous Jagdtiger is 9 feet tall as was the Sherman).

The Leman Russ is a stupid tank design, I'm not disputing that.

But anybody who pretends it's uniquely bad needs to take a look at non-40k things.

There are after all; things that make the Leman Russ look like a stroke of engineering genius.



Or the relentlessly mockable UNSC scorpion with it's pansy ass WW2 era 90mm, piss weak armor, and ridiculous hugeness (the dimensions are roughly equal to the Imperial Macharius Superheavy tank hilariously enough)

(teledyne expeditionary tank)

Or this...thing...

Oh my god the Scorpion... I swear that thing was designed from the ground up to kill it's crew. It's thin armor, the stupidly exposed crew (Seriously, why is the crew only protected by a hatch that can be knocked off by small arms fire?), the stupid way the hull gun is operated, the lack of a coaxial machine gun... I think the reason the Scorpion did as well as it did is because it's Covenant counterpart was somehow even worse.

 Keep wrote:
And what do A2A missiles have to do with aircrafts beeing able to penetrate a AA heavy environment?

The guidance systems are the same, so the air to air missile results demonstrate that missile guidance was far from perfect even in Vietnam. It's a response to your claim that SAMs are a simple problem that we solved back in the 1950s.

Anyway, remember that source you posted for B-52 loss rates? It also points out that hitting those B-52s required spamming "dozens" of SAMs per kill. That's hardly an impressive hit rate.

Hitting aircraft requires accurate tracking of a much faster and more maneuverable target for a much longer time, filtering out the target's countermeasures (flares, etc), and having enough energy to pursue the target despite its evasion attempts

faster? Artillery shells travel in the mach 1-3 range (depending on shot angle) and are significantly smaller then an aircraft. Not sure what movies you watched where Bombers evaded a mach 4 missile...
Proximity Missiles dont require a full hits, so evasions are difficult and even partial hits can be enough to put the aircraft out of action for several days

Ok, so that's the exact curve you used?

No, obviously not. You don't get that data from a projectile when you're tracking it with a radar. Could as well be a round cannonball...

The guidance systems are the same, so the air to air missile results demonstrate that missile guidance was far from perfect even in Vietnam. It's a response to your claim that SAMs are a simple problem that we solved back in the 1950s.
Anyway, remember that source you posted for B-52 loss rates? It also points out that hitting those B-52s required spamming "dozens" of SAMs per kill. That's hardly an impressive hit rate.

I guess you haven't read the article. It's quite obvious that if you can dedicate dozens of escorts just for ECM jamming and other obfuscation, AND fly below the effective envelope of the SAM that it simply cant be as successfull.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Iron_Captain wrote:
Having a modern missile does not make one a modern army. The NVA was numerically and technologically greatly inferior to the US. Not to mention they did not have any infrastructure to speak of. And by waging a guerilla war in the jungle, they definitely were a 'bush army'.

The example is from the bombing missions over Hanoi, not guerrilla war in the jungle.

That the Leman Russ is not a great design is undeniable, but it still is superior to WW2 and even modern tanks by virtue of having far superior technology.

Except it really isn't. Superior technology doesn't matter if your tanks are all immobilized 50 miles from the battlefield because they have no ability to drive over any terrain more difficult than a high-quality paved road. I mean, we're talking about a tank that could potentially be stopped by the average parking lot speed bump. At least the WWII tank is going to reach the battle and contribute.

No it is not. The only contribution a WW2 tank will give to battles in the year 40000 is wasted resources.
The Leman Russ on the other hand is perfectly capable of getting to the battlefield and crossing trenches. It is not going to be stopped by a speed bump.

 Keep wrote:
Proximity Missiles dont require a full hits, so evasions are difficult and even partial hits can be enough to put the aircraft out of action for several days

I'm not talking about making a last-second evasion and dodging a direct hit, I'm talking about making a high-g turn that the missile can't follow. Once the missile's rocket burns out it's gliding and has a limited amount of energy to pursue and hit the target. High-g maneuvering burns energy very quickly, and only the plane is able to replace it. So the missile slows down, falls behind, and doesn't get anywhere near the target.

No, obviously not. You don't get that data from a projectile when you're tracking it with a radar. Could as well be a round cannonball...

You get it because as an engineer designing a counter-battery system you're familiar with artillery shells and know their aerodynamic properties.

I guess you haven't read the article. It's quite obvious that if you can dedicate dozens of escorts just for ECM jamming and other obfuscation, AND fly below the effective envelope of the SAM that it simply cant be as successfull.

I read it, you just don't like the conclusion that it offers. SAMs aren't a magic "no planes allowed" weapon, and certainly weren't back then. In a hypothetical 40k battle you can expect the same kind of ECM/anti-radar missiles/etc to be used to protect the bombers. The only difference would be that the Imperium has a much higher tolerance for losses and will happily sacrifice a million pilots to take down an AA network if it is the key to winning the war.

And yes, it's possible that the Imperium lost the STCs for ECM and anti-radar missiles, but that just goes back to the original point: if the Imperium can't avoid getting stuck in trench warfare it's because of their own incompetence, not because trench warfare is a reasonable thing to expect.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Iron_Captain wrote:
The Leman Russ on the other hand is perfectly capable of getting to the battlefield and crossing trenches. It is not going to be stopped by a speed bump.

Apparently you haven't looked at the design, because there is no way it can handle anything tougher than a high-quality paved road without immobilizing itself. There's no (meaningful) suspension, and an inch or two of ground clearance at most. The only possible explanation for its success is an ork-style psychic effect where the faith of the LRBT's crew allows it to do things that it shouldn't be capable of.

 Peregrine wrote:

Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Iron_Captain wrote:
The Leman Russ on the other hand is perfectly capable of getting to the battlefield and crossing trenches. It is not going to be stopped by a speed bump.

Apparently you haven't looked at the design, because there is no way it can handle anything tougher than a high-quality paved road without immobilizing itself. There's no (meaningful) suspension, and an inch or two of ground clearance at most. The only possible explanation for its success is an ork-style psychic effect where the faith of the LRBT's crew allows it to do things that it shouldn't be capable of.

I don't know if you have ever looked at the time 40k takes place in, but it is quite far (like really incredibly far) into the future. One can reasonably assume the Leman Russ is made of fancy magical space metals and has fancy magical space technologies that allow it to operate as effectively as described in the fluff, despite the design being horrible from an early 2nd milennium point of view.

 Iron_Captain wrote:
I don't know if you have ever looked at the time 40k takes place in, but it is quite far (like really incredibly far) into the future. One can reasonably assume the Leman Russ is made of fancy magical space metals and has fancy magical space technologies that allow it to operate as effectively as described in the fluff, despite the design being horrible from an early 2nd milennium point of view.

"Magical space metals" is not a solution to a geometry problem.

 Peregrine wrote:
Oh no, a 2% loss rate. You do realize that this is the Imperium we're talking about, where sacrificing whole regiments of guardsmen to defend an irrelevant patch of territory is standard practice, right? The Imperium doesn't have mourning families back home or political concerns to deal with. If it takes 100% losses to win the war then they aren't going to hesitate for a moment to do it. Life is cheap, and the only calculation that matters is the value of aircraft vs. the value of targets they destroy added to the value of the objectives they accomplish.

Aircraft are much more expensive than tanks and space-capable ones probably reach crazy price territory. We're talking about 10+x the price of Leman Russ per aircraft and 100+x per space aircraft.
So, I suspect that pulling their aircraft out may make sense, especially space-capable.

 Aszubaruzah Surn wrote:
Aircraft are much more expensive than tanks and space-capable ones probably reach crazy price territory. We're talking about 10+x the price of Leman Russ per aircraft and 100+x per space aircraft.
So, I suspect that pulling their aircraft out may make sense, especially space-capable.

Citation for this? When you answer please remember that the Imperium does not pay money for its troops and equipment, it holds a gun to a planet's metaphorical head and says "give us what we need or die".