If you want to know more - for example how the fuze even knows when to trigger and how it actually triggers the explosion - there is a good (lengthy) video about the M58 hollow charge rifle grenate and fuze design: https://youtu.be/_Xb1CoXLWHg?t=2514
Poor training, poor tactics, poor supply/logistics, poor operational security. And despite Russia's supposed doctrine of having very tight infantry/mechanized unit integration, their mechanized forced have been very vulnerable to Ukraine's infantry. Especially early in the war, Russia's mechanized units were running out of food, water, fuel, and ammunition.
Russia used Ukraine's mobile network and cell phones, then when they realized Ukraine was just targeting where they saw lots of Russian phone numbers, they stole Ukrainian phones off civilians...so Ukraine started accepting reports of stole SIMs/phones and tracking those.
Turns out that surrounding yourself with people who tell you what you want to hear (and who are siphoning off every ruble they can into their own pockets) isn't that great for having a strong armed service.
Also, you've got a force with a lot of conscripts who were lied to about what they were doing, versus a force which has watched their friends and family get butchered. That's one reason you don't go around slaughtering civilian populations...it makes for a very, very motivated, united, angry enemy.
We’ve also seen credible reports that where the reactive armour is meant to have explosives, instead one finds egg cartons. Corruption, through and through.
My understanding is that it’s poor design, storing ammunition in a ring within the turret which turns out is a poor location from an integrity perspective. The “Jack in the box” vulnerability.
> The fault is related to the way many Russian tanks hold and load ammunition. In these tanks, including the T-72, the Soviet-designed vehicle that has seen wide use in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, shells are all placed in a ring within the turret. When an enemy shot hits the right spot, the ring of ammunition can quickly “cook off” and ignite a chain reaction, blasting the turret off the tank’s hull in a lethal blow.
> For Russia, “the people are as expendable as the machine,” he said. “The Russians have known about this for 31 years — you have to say they’ve just chosen not to deal with it.”
The autoloader is a design decision: it replaces a crew member, so Russian tanks operate with a crew of 3 instead of 4. This makes Russian tanks smaller and lighter. Here's a size comparison of the T-72 with the Abrams: https://preview.redd.it/mtwtamct1t821.jpg?auto=webp&s=101442...
For the massed tank-on-tank actions it was meant for, this is good! Smaller targets are harder to hit, and T-72s were supposed to be fighting gun duels against M60s while crossing West Germany, so all the armor is in the front plate. Lighter tanks are cheaper, so you can build more of them, going from 4 crew to 3 means your limited pool of tankers can operate 33% more vehicles in the field. Classic cold war-era doctrine, hard lessons learned from WW2. https://www.rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/comme... (It makes regular operations like tank maintenance or replacing damaged tracks way harder, but oh well, nobody ever said being Russian was easy)
Separately, there is no particular reason to think Abrams tanks wouldn't be vulnerable to the same weapons, if the Russians had that tank today and were fielding them in the same way they're operating their own tanks. Abrams also has light top armor and no ERA tiles on the roof. An anti-tank grenade dropped by a drone on an Abrams ammo compartment would mission kill it instead of killing the crew, but it would still be out of operation. AFAIK, no Abrams are equipped with Trophy in significant numbers, so it would be just as vulnerable to Javelin or other top attack ATGMs.
Tanks are vulnerable from the air, so you need air supremacy; vulnerable to artillery, so you need counterbattery suppression; vulnerable to man-portable AT weapons, so you need dismounted infantry combined arms; vulnerable to AT mines, so you need demining combat engineers, perimeter security so UKR spec ops can't cross lines and plant them, and military police so enforce civilian curfews. Russia is doing none of this, partly due to incompetence, and partly because they just didn't have a big enough force. (Desert Storm took just a hair under a million troops!)
If Russia had Abrams, but held all else equal, we'd still be seeing hundreds of flaming wrecks on the nightly news.
The design is responsible for the catastrofic explosions that blow the turret off the tanks, not for the tank being penetrated. The penetration is achieved by making the missiles explode on top of the tank, defeating the thinnest armor versus frontal armor that has 60-100 cm equivalent in RHA steel (they are composite, so thickness is different).
This Chinese TV news video shows a wild example of the Jack-in-the-box vulnerability. A Russian tank in Ukraine gets hit and the turret takes off like it's headed for orbit.
No, it has nothing to do with shaped charges; they are using missiles that explode on top of the tanks. Most armor of the tank is frontal arc, some on the sides, top armor is minimal, just a few centimeters, so it can be easily penetrated by explosions of these missiles or by aircraft cannon fire from platforms like A-10.
Yes, but it is not how it is used in Ukraine. Quote: "Against tanks and other armoured vehicles, the overfly top attack (OTA) mode is used; the missile flies about one metre above the line of sight, detonating the warhead above the target's weaker top armour".
It has dual-mode: direct attack and OTA. The many tanks in Ukraine are killed in OTA, that does not use the shaped charge effect.
The overflight mode still uses a shaped charge. Even the top armour of a tank is significantly thick enough that a a non-directed explosion from a hand-held weapon probably won't penetrate.
"In conventional overflight missiles a keyhole effect resulting in reduced penetration into the target is caused by a shaped charge jet which develops during the missile flight. The MBT LAW warhead, similar to the BILL 2 missile warhead, incorporates a dynamically compensated shaped and copper lined charge to retain the penetration characteristics."
Yes it does. There're various decent explanations and videos of how both modes work.
To quote from SAAB's own website: "Our NLAW system is a easy system to use. Watch this video to see how it uses PLOS (predicted line of sight) and OTA (Overfly-top-attack) to enable its powerful shape charge warhead hit the tank at it´s weakest point - the turent. Maximising the potential damage to the tank."
