"Ranking Post-War MBT Frontal Armor" Topic

Mako11 gave me the idea for this thread.

In another thread, Mako11 raised the prospect of an interesting Crowd Sourced project here on TMP: armor and gun rankings.

The details and game mechanic doesn't matter in some ways. Let's say one was going to rank American and Russian MBTs by frontal armor strength at a very high level.

How might you edit the following list? Tanks grouped together are considered very roughly the same. Anyone else should feel free to add other MBTs from other nations, reorder, regroup, expand the number oif rankings, etc. Just edit and repost.

POST WAR MBT FRONTAL ARMOR
GROUPED FROM WEAKEST TO STRONGEST (high level)

M48

T-54/55
T-62A
M60

T-55M
M60A1/2/3

T-62M
T-64
T-72/T-72A

T-64BV
T-72A (late model)

T-72B
M1/M1A1 Abrams

T-80U
T-90
M1A1HA

T-90A
M1A2

M1A2 SEP

I think a shareable Google doc might end up being more useful?

Yeah, great idea!!!

Let's take a first shot here to see if it's viable and then I'll consolidate the results and let people have at that.

Tried to cross-post to modern/cold war boards but it failed. Maybe a moderator could do that?

I would put forth the following:
M48

T-54/55
T-62A
M60
M60 A1/2/3

T-55M
M60A1/2/3 Hull down

T-62M
T-64A
T-72
M1

T-72A
T64B

T-64BV
T80 Original (pre 86)
M1A1 Abrams

T-72B
T-90

T-80U
M1A1HA

T-90A
M1A2

M1A2 SEP

M60 A Models were pretty crappy unless hull down.
T64 was never really deployed

M1/T72A/T64A were roughly equivalent. The M1 was better against HEP and the Sovs were better against KEP.

There is a model or two of T72 you missed… but they are in too small a numbers to worry with… (Corundum based turret in the model produced in 76… two different models)

T64BV was a different configuration than T64B…Hull went from 60mm steel/105mm glassfiber/50mm steel to 30HH Steel/60/105/50. Later models even changed the turret.

Original T80 Configuration was really just the T64b with more steel mass in the turret(and engine…etc..).

Only T80U came close to the M1A1HA.

A good place for research is tank-net.org. For the last 10 years all these have been hashed out.

Joe Collins

Here's a very comprehensive list by Joe Collins via the Wayback machine,
link . I can't answer for it's accuracy and much real info is still classified I'd imagine, but here you go!

That's very interesting but it doesn't mean much unless it's comparable to how penetrating various guns and ammunition types are. Can anyone rank those?

See the bottom of the listing.

Don't know how accurate the pen rates are.

Jake (my long lost antipodean brother from a different mother)
did quite a good job with his sheet.

The numbers are up for debate… and the question is very complex with modern armor… but I think his figures are quite good.

Paul Lawkowski is the best civilian armor guy. He did the values for Steel Beasts… which is quite a good game. There are a couple of threads on tank-net.org where he expresses his ideas for a miniatures game. Basically the armor values are quite variable.

Jake's values however are quite usable.

Joe Collins

You can get a lot more details into a computer game, because the computer can look up and roll on the charts virtually instantly.

Of course, you still have a couple chunks of randomization, but I think modern APFSDS rounds pretty much ignore armor slope (and therefore ignore "angle on the bow" as well).