Thread: Russian Tanks Have Design Flaw - Jack-In-The-Box Turrets!

It has been apparent for quite some time that most Russian tanks have a design flaw which results from the storage of shells in the turret. Any hit on the tank which can detonate one or more of these shells can end up blowing off the turret and destroying the tank and crew. A "jack-in-the-box" design flaw. Most of us have seen many photos of these tanks with their turrets blown off, and for good reason.

And the problem seems to exist not only with their tanks, but also for other armored vehicles Russia is using in Ukraine. One can only wonder how they find enough crews to get into these things and go into battle.

Seems like this should have been corrected in early testing. It is something which could continue to plague the Russians in their war in Ukraine. The defenders have excellent anti-tank weapons and the Russians have tanks which are relatively easy to destroy. Sounds like a win-lose story for Ukrainians fighting Russian armor, and has been for over two months!


"Russia's tanks in Ukraine have a 'jack-in-the-box' design flaw. And the West has known about it since the Gulf war"

* https://www.cnn.com/2022/04/27/europ...-ml/index.html

Well let us be grateful for small mercies.

Yes,I pity the crew in those tanks,as much in fact as I pity all those following the orders and pronouncements of that pestiliferous Russian nationalist they have allowed to insinuate himself into their hopefully otherwise better consciousnesses.

It might make a fitting epitaph for Putin if this ends well for Ukraine-a sculpture or a rusty metal statue of a tank with its head/skull cratered in morphed into a symbiotic appearance of our good friend Mr Putin .

It could replace the statues of Stalin that they have not got around to reerecting yet.

Originally Posted by Double Helix

It has been apparent for quite some time that most Russian tanks have a design flaw which results from the storage of shells in the turret.

Don'tcha just love when the papers dumb down a topic.
I wonder how they'd explain why the Abrams doesn't suffer the same problem.

M1 Abrams ammo stowage.

Yes, the Russians do store ammunition "in the turret". But it's in the turret basket - not the visible part that sits on top of the hull and that most people would call the turret, i.e. the ammo is deep inside the hull, near the floor of the tank (and studies show that turret hits are far more common than hull hits: one reason the Brits stow ammo in the hull).

T-14 Armata, but the system is common to Russian tanks.

The actual problem is the autoloader requiring rapid, automated access to rounds, and they are therefore not stowed in protective bins (e.g. the Abrams has its ammunition in the turret bustle and that's separated from the rest of the tank interior by doors that are only open when accessing a round. And that has a "blow-off" cover to vent directly to open air, rather than the vehicle's interior, in the event of a hit on the ammo compartment.
If Ivan could come up with a way of "sealing off" the ammo carousel except when feeding a round to the gun then there'd be fewer catastrophic hits.
NB: the T-14 probably mitigates this problem somewhat. The turret (more of a remote weapon station) may still get blown off, but the crew are isolated from the ammo compartment by a large bulkhead - their survivability has improved.

Those are some nice images of tanks. Figured you had some stuff on this.

Can you post some images of the Russian T-72 and T-90, particularly with the inside features like with the M1 image?

Think I have seen many of these destroyed, but the damage is often so great it is difficult to be sure which tank it is.

Whilst this ascertion may well true I read that one of the key factors is the missile fired by the anti-tank weapons supplied to Ukraine are programmed to go travel parallel to the ground but them go up over the tank body and explode over the turret. This alos create a huge sonic boom which literally shakes the tank occupants to death

Originally Posted by dodster

Whilst this ascertion may well true I read that one of the key factors is the missile fired by the anti-tank weapons supplied to Ukraine are programmed to go travel parallel to the ground but them go up over the tank body and explode over the turret.

They don't "explode over the turret" but "explode into the turret top" to penetrate it. Given that the vast majority of missiles use a shaped-charge warhead this puts a high-velocity slug of molten metal into the, now unprotected, ammo carousel. With obvious consequences.

This alos create a huge sonic boom which literally shakes the tank occupants to death

Nope.
Since most tanks these days are NBC sealed, what happens to the air outside the tank is largely irrelevant to the occupants inside.