Updates in light of Ukraine war

[Imp]

Some Observations
I think quite a lot of the Russian tanks are not fully equipped as in none functional ERA & pre Arena active defence systems are not very good.
Does it need to be looking in the direction the shot is coming from to work?
Reasoning for this.
During Chechenia some tanks were definitely deployed without ERA & I do not remember active protection systems being very effective then.

From photographic evidence two things tend to happen when tanks are hit.
Either catastrophic ammo explosion & flying turrets, seems to happen to virtually all tanks involved in that engagement.
I would postulate despite looking like they have ERA they are not functional.
The other result is the tank being penetrated or despite the fact its a flank shot surviving the first 1 or 2 attacks. These do not initially blow up though they might do so later but the crew often have time to get out.
These have ERA it can stop shots & if penetrated it absorbs a lot of the energy hence no ammo cook off. As they may explode later I would also say fire suppression capability is poor.
Game terms survivability should be less in tanks with no or limited ERA.

To me if you think about it both outfitting the vehicles & training suffer due to the size of the army. Your not talking about outfitting a couple hundred or even a few thousand tanks like Western countries.
The cost would be prohibitive as would training them all to a decent standard. Training rounds for example how many would you need to train everyone to a decent level, then of course there is maintenance costs.

Game terms you would need another OOB troop & tank quality could vary greatly in my view. Also I think Russia expected the Ukraine to just give up when faced with an army of that size, I would bet a lot of the tanks involved in the military exercise are lacking their ERA.


On APS I have only seen 1 tank equipped with a modern active protection system & that looked like it was destroyed by artillery.
Also ATGM use seems rare possibly due to the nature of most engagements. My guess RPG type weapons are preferred because you can pop out take the shot & run.

For me the jury is out I do not know if Arena on is effective or not.
Game terms we have 2 systems I think one should remain as is to represent things like Trophy & possibly Arena & the other should be really dumbed down.

These are just observations make of them what you will not researched anything.

As a side note the Ukraine air force seems to be surviving by using the roads & nape of the earth. Laughed when I saw the fighter that returned with a road sign attached, they are flying low.

[DRG]

Originally Posted by Imp

As a side note the Ukraine air force seems to be surviving by using the roads & nape of the earth. Laughed when I saw the fighter that returned with a road sign attached, they are flying low.

https://www.reuters.com/article/fact...-idUSL2N2VX2PI

Social media users have shared a collage showing photos of a Ukrainian jet they say flew so low it crashed into a road sign. While the incident traces back to August 2020, some online have shared it in the context of the Russian invasion in 2022.

[DRG]

Originally Posted by Imp

Some Observations
I think quite a lot of the Russian tanks are not fully equipped as in none functional ERA & pre Arena active defence systems are not very good.
Does it need to be looking in the direction the shot is coming from to work?.

For the systems to work they need to be installed and if installed.... turned on. There are no reports ( we are seeing ) that indicated any attacking missiles were defeated by anti-missle systems and that could be for anyone of three reasons

• They just are not installed as extensively as assumed
• They just don't work
• They weren't activated

Any one of those or all three. Shora ( VRRS ) (it would appear) needs to pick up the targetting laser for the missle. If it doesn't have one and it would appear it's not being fired towards the direction the turret sensors are pointed it's not going to deploy

ARENA (it would appear)............"uses a multi-function Doppler radar, which can be turned on and off by the tank commander. In conjunction with radar input, a digital computer scans an arc around the tank for threat"

So it has to be turned on and it "scans an arc around the tank" an "arc" does not suggest 360 degrees

The bottom line here is there is much we don't know because those that do know aren't revealing the strengths and weaknesses of the systems

What we do appear to "know" that in the past month if it's on and working it doesn't seem to be doing anything . Certainly the growing piles of burnt out scrap steel would suggest this but again....... it's not a "fair judgement" of a systems performance if they are not installed as SEEMS to be the case

The final bottom line is we can only simulate these systems in a limited way. The game does not differentiate between targeting systems and in the case of Shora many "modern" targeting systems do not use laser and the sytem ( that we know about ) seems to rely on that

There have been adjustments made to both the availability of these systems based on what APPEARS to be the case in 2022 and their effectiveness in detecting and defeating ATGM but it won't be perfect because it can never be perfect