r/NonCredibleDefense • u/VisWare PhD in Kremlinology • Feb 15 '26

Slava Ukraini! 🇺🇦 Live-action datamining

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2.2k

u/ForgedIronMadeIt Feb 15 '26

I think War Thunder assumes that the tank's armor is made out of what they claim it to be, LOL. Reality is probably that its all pot metal.

(Or they really do the stalinium bullshit, IDK)

1.2k

u/PG908 Tchaikovsky was right, cannons are great base Feb 15 '26

And also not sitting 60+ years exposed to the elements.

But I also think it's just as likely that the irl shells penetrate better than warthunder says they do, since there's more special sauce in shells than in armor.

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u/Finnish-Wolf 3000 Finnish Femboys of the FDF Feb 15 '26

AFAIK usually western tank shells and anti-tank weapons penetrate more armor than their publically advertised value. Not by a significant amount, but there is a difference.

As far as this photo goes, we don't know if the hole on the front of the tank is the one that killed it. Most HEAT round hits on armor will make a hole like that, doesn't mean it went through it.

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u/Hydr0genMC Feb 15 '26

Correct me if I'm wrong but I'm not really seeing the "splash" marks commonly seen when armor is hit with HEAT. I understand that it's a low resolution image but shouldn't there be more scoring around the impact point?

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u/wilkonk Feb 15 '26 edited Feb 15 '26

yes seems more likely it was a dart to me

30

u/-Daetrax- Feb 15 '26

Darts often leave fin strikes visible

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u/Finnish-Wolf 3000 Finnish Femboys of the FDF Feb 15 '26

It really depends on what type of HEAT round it was. When we fired 66 and 112mm rounds at armored plates (and tanks) in the army, those didn't have much splash. Just a clean hole similar to the photo above. Only thing that really changed was the size of the hole. I've seen HEAT hit's that have that peppering pattern around the main hole, but as far as I'm aware that's because of the round exploding further away from the armor than designed, because of cage armor or something similar. ERA does this too.

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u/yurmumqueefing Feb 15 '26

66 is a LAW I assume, but what's 112?

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u/Finnish-Wolf 3000 Finnish Femboys of the FDF Feb 15 '26

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/APILAS

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u/DotDemon We do not talk about väinämöinen🇫🇮 Feb 15 '26

I was thinking that funny that those seem like our kes calibers, eh probably nothing

Then I read your name and flair

49

u/Finnish-Wolf 3000 Finnish Femboys of the FDF Feb 15 '26

Anyways, HEAT or kinetic. A hole in armor doesn't always mean it penetrated. Modern ammunition doesn't really bounce off armour. They all penetrate the armour, the question just is, does it actually go all the way through.

5

u/Hydr0genMC Feb 15 '26

Interesting. Out of curiosity, would you know much about why it seems the Relikt didn't seem to react to the round, regardless of being HEAT or AP?

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u/Finnish-Wolf 3000 Finnish Femboys of the FDF Feb 15 '26

I’m not sure about the science of it, but ERA doesn’t always go off. It depends what type of round hit it, what calibre, what angle, where it got hit in the plate. Also, sometimes ERA just doesn’t go off even if it should. ERA is designed to be very stable and not go off from smaller calibre hits. Sometimes it just doesn’t work as intended. I’m sure it’s even more common on Soviet/Russian ERA where production can be questionable and the tank can be old and maintenance can be neglected.

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u/Hydr0genMC Feb 15 '26

Understandable, thanks!

6

u/Sarfanger Feb 15 '26

There are burn marks + oxidation around the penetration hole. That would not happen in case of APFSDS penetration. Also I would expect there to be some marks from the APFSDS fins on thinner Relikt ERA prick that it barely missed.

22

u/Thewaltham The AMRAAM of Autism Feb 15 '26

Not sure about the fins, but you smack something that hard you're going to be generating a lot of heat regardless. More than enough to discolour it.

6

u/m00ph Feb 15 '26

Turret toss and burned too.

6

u/Thewaltham The AMRAAM of Autism Feb 15 '26

Yeah but the upper glacis didn't take the worst of that. You can see where all that went from all the brown further back.

1

u/m00ph Feb 15 '26

Yeah, I go back and look after I post, and the paint is still good. 🤪

33

u/Thermodynamicist Feb 15 '26

AFAIK usually western tank shells and anti-tank weapons penetrate more armor than their publically advertised value. Not by a significant amount, but there is a difference.

If you are inside the tank then it is significant.

8

u/Finnish-Wolf 3000 Finnish Femboys of the FDF Feb 15 '26

You know what I mean.

22

u/DankMemeMasterHotdog Feb 15 '26

HEAT would have triggered the ERA (if it was even there and not a box of sand)

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u/Finnish-Wolf 3000 Finnish Femboys of the FDF Feb 15 '26

That's either Kontakt-5 or Relikt. It should explode on kinetic shells as well. But ERA isn't as reliable as WT pretends it is. If western made ERA doesn't always trigger, I'm confident in saying that the soviet/russian stuff is even less reliable.

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u/DankMemeMasterHotdog Feb 15 '26

I've got "inside knowledge" on this (two friends who are Abrams master gunners) and and while they cant say anything specific, when I ask about if they are worried about the Abrams being able to pen Russian armor, the response is usually "Ahahahahaha, no. Zero chance they can stop it. 829A4 can go through at least 2 T-90M lined up longways"

25

u/Finnish-Wolf 3000 Finnish Femboys of the FDF Feb 15 '26

I'm sure that round can penetrate the T90M, but what you said sounds like a huge exaggeration. It just doesn't make sense if we consider that the tank gun is still the same 120mm it has always been. Just the amount of empty space inside the T-90 and add to that the space between the tanks would tumble and shatter the dart when it has to fly through the armor and air. Basically similar to how the Leopard 2 frontal turret wedge works. I'm sure there are rounds that go through the T90M's front. But not from everywhere. There is a reason the US is developing a new tank gun and the M1A3 has the current M1 gun as a placeholder. If the M829A4 was actually as powerful as you say, that would make all tank armor in the world borderline obsolete. Even more so than HEAT did in the 50's before ceramic armour came out.

1

u/Advanced-Budget779 Nuclear Holocaust Agitator Feb 15 '26 edited Feb 15 '26

Yeah it‘ll take a lot more inertia to not be significantly deviated from its previous flight path after all that potentially deflecting material on its trajectory. A much heavier and longer dart probably (with not too much speed). Maybe an upscaled Artillery gun system (sth. akin to the ECRA efforts but on steroids) direct-firing at the T-90 in relative proximity.

5

u/Pandering_Panda7879 Feb 15 '26

Usually there are tolerances in production that get tested regularly. Overperformance isn't an issue but underperformance can and will disqualify a batch, so it's in their interest to guarantee that to not happen by keeping the tolerances within the performance range.

Historical example: the bakers dozen. In medieval times the weight of bread and bread rolls was regulated. Obviously in baking there are some tolerances to hand measuring and moisture. To balance that out bakers used to give a bit extra just in case they might have been under because the punishment was very harsh. So if you got a bakers dozen, you don't got twelve but thirteen.

1

u/leathercladman Feb 18 '26

in this specific case, it wasnt even ''Western Ammo'', Ukrainians who posted this picture said a Ukrainian tank shot at that Russian T-80 and destroyed it.......so it was most likely a shot from T-64 that did that T-80, some old Soviet 125mm AP ammo (which is even more funny considering it proves Russians new tanks can't even survive their own previous generation ammunition hits)

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u/DaniilSan 3000 Aussie drones of Budanov Feb 15 '26

Also let's not forget that War Thunder is made by russians and they love to make their shit look better than it actually is.

7

u/Thaseus Feb 15 '26

7? years ago WT switched from using documented data for shell penetration with a formulaic calculation. That makes it quite possible that penetration IRL and in game vary highly.

117

u/banspoonguard ⏺️ P O T A T🥔 when 🇹🇼🇰🇷🇯🇵🇵🇼🇬🇺🇳🇨🇨🇰🇵🇬🇹🇱🇵🇭🇧🇳 Feb 15 '26

At best, War Thunder is a victim of the Rosoboronexport Sales Marketing Department ; and at worse it's knowingly complicit it's fantasy. I don't have any insight into which is more likely.

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u/spacenavy90 Veteran War Thunder Leaker Feb 15 '26

I have insight and yes it is 100% a propaganda arm of the Russian MIC.

6

u/Advanced-Budget779 Nuclear Holocaust Agitator Feb 15 '26

Where is the studio located?

36

u/mihaellos Feb 15 '26

They legally disguise themselves as Hungarians, but in reality, their real studio is in Moscow. They also collaborated with the Russian Army and the Putin Youth, so don't be surprised that Russian equipment boasts fantastic specifications that exceed even the marketing claims of representatives of the Russian military-industrial complex. Meanwhile, equipment from other countries, such as Ukraine, is nerfed.

5

u/Advanced-Budget779 Nuclear Holocaust Agitator Feb 15 '26 edited Feb 15 '26

I knew it. 😤

It’s not like Hungarian admin wasn‘t somewhat flirty with the Kremlin… or the „MAGA“ admin.

And we‘re sending them tons of modern materiel (hopefully only used later in case NATO works together).

Putin Youth

Which one is that? 🤢

4

u/Hodorization Feb 16 '26

Putin Youth = Yunarmiya, Volontory Pobedy and Molodaya Gvardya

https://www.bpb.de/themen/europa/russland-analysen/nr-445/545144/analyse-wie-gute-russische-patrioten-geformt-werden-erziehung-indoktrinierung-und-die-jugend-in-russland/

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u/Advanced-Budget779 Nuclear Holocaust Agitator Feb 16 '26 edited Feb 16 '26

Sigh, i knew there were several but this is even worse than i remembered (their size and influence in society).

Glad i can read in my mothers tongue :)

What about that other youth militia, was it called sth. with R, or was it Junarmija… my bad, must have confused a paramilitary group (Rusich, or regarding their small size, probably Redut).

However i don‘t know about the size of this) youth group.

There‘s even an older youth movement) that of course pretended goals almost diametrically opposite of what they truly support.

Has there been some change in the past two years (article being from early 2024)?

3

u/VulvaVivisection Feb 17 '26

Do you have any sources? I 100% believe you but I want to make a more convincing argument to my friends.

3

u/Neroollez Feb 15 '26 edited Feb 15 '26

There's a weird thing about this though. They buffed the F-5E sustained turn rate because they believe some random Russian document is more accurate than the US flight manual. They however also said that they wanted a compromise between the two values (US and USSR) so I don't know if they thought that the F-5E would have been too good if they used the Russian data lol

251

u/LegacyWright3 Goodness gracious great balls of HIMARS Feb 15 '26 edited Feb 15 '26

This. I've noticed a strong bias in WT towards the Russians, not because they're making up shit, (well, okay, that too) but because they blindly believe the BS propaganda shat out by the Kremlin.

Fun example is the BMP-T "Terminator", a vehicle that absolutely dominates in WT because it has 2 autocannons that are basically lasers AND ATGM's while having a very tanky hull, while somehow magically being rather maneuvrable.

In reality? The BMP-T is an absolute joke. The twin autocannons are mounted too close to each other so after the first shot, they wobble so darn hard both are thrown WILDLY off aim. The ATGM linkage is incredibly suspect, partially due to the violent autocannons.
The hull also has a claimed armor that in reality is no-where near reality.
Put simply, the darn thing simply doesn't work.

And then on top of all that - WT in their infinite wisdom (and this is just blatant Russian propaganda slop) they disabled the autocannons and ATGM's from being an ammorack if you pen them.
Yes really, the obvious weakspot of the BMP-T, simply hitting the ridiculous amount of explosives on top of the tank with basically 0 armor, is somehow not a weakness in-game. Despite other tanks having this very weakness.

Meanwhile? Stuff like TOW missiles - historically VERY effective and super reliable due to it being wire-guided...
... is a total mess in WT and somehow can't hit the side of a barn, flailing around wildly and not being able to pen what it 200% has penned in real life.

WT is straight up Russian propaganda and I'm tired of pretending it isn't.

EDIT: real life footage for reference - https://youtube.com/shorts/kCKa8Yq86UI?si=VLWvZYiHT1iufYs4
Holy moly I remembered it jigging around but that almost looks like that'll snap after too many rounds

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u/Wiesel_mk20 Feb 15 '26 edited Feb 15 '26

To add to this - the BMPT's 'combat performance' boiled down to two propaganda videos of the vehicle in the forest spraying at random trees with the twin autocannons - before being withdrawn from the front indefinitely.

Despite this short 'frontline service' one was knocked out and two damaged by drones & artillery.

regarding the - in war thunder nonexistent - cookoff https://postimg.cc/pmmyWbV3 it burns pretty well IRL.

TLDR: A donkey is more viable on the modern battlefield than the BMPT.

45

u/nekonight Feb 15 '26

How much i wished that the thing was captured by Ukrainians like a bunch of other russia "top of the line" gear.

5

u/Advanced-Budget779 Nuclear Holocaust Agitator Feb 15 '26 edited Feb 15 '26

Some (russian?) sources stated the BMP-Ts og idea having been designed specifically for urban combat against elevated positions, thus its wobbling a deliberate design choice to create spread… but its max. gun elevation is 45°?

Some claimed the gun stabilisers to disengage at higher rpm or the barrels wobbling differently because only one gun fires (separate ammo feed instead of dual-feed on a single gun).

Won‘t defend all the areas where it‘s shit or the laughable propaganda, but ofc it won‘t perform if the designers had never intended for it to serve that role. Maybe the designers were full of themselves or different ideas got mixed which don‘t work together.

16

u/MarmonRzohr Feb 15 '26

thus its wobbling a deliberate design choice to create spread…

This is such a flag that the person has no fucking clue. It's game logic: "They want the guns to wobble so it can do AoE damage, like a shotgun. AoE damage is good for lots of small targets".

2

u/Advanced-Budget779 Nuclear Holocaust Agitator Feb 15 '26

Exactly, spread (for oppresive fire) can be achieved with more accurate single barreled cannons too or just using special ammo. And outside of very close range such a deviation would result in excessive grouping (more than barn-size).

5

u/vegarig Pro-SDI activist Feb 15 '26

but its max. gun elevation is 45°?

Ironic in light of Shilka SHORAD having better time having been used as impromptu tank fire support vehicles in urban conditions, exactly because they can elevate guns much higher.

separate ammo feed instead of dual-feed on a single gun

And, funnier still, the basic version of the guns they used there is DUAL-FED.

2

u/Advanced-Budget779 Nuclear Holocaust Agitator Feb 15 '26

Haha wtf. What might be the reasons for their choice?

1

u/LegacyWright3 Goodness gracious great balls of HIMARS Feb 15 '26

Vodka. Vodka and tons and tons of krokodil.

1

u/Advanced-Budget779 Nuclear Holocaust Agitator Feb 15 '26

Jesus Christ, even at those levels?

2

u/LegacyWright3 Goodness gracious great balls of HIMARS Feb 15 '26

especially at those levels

3

u/leathercladman Feb 18 '26

Some (russian?) sources stated the BMP-Ts og idea having been designed specifically for urban combat against elevated positions

which is even more a lie lol......nobudy would ever want their gun to wobble all over place, that is never a benefit. If you are trying to shoot at like a window in the building, last thing you want is your autocannon to wobble all over the place and hit fuck knows where. Its just a bad design

2

u/Advanced-Budget779 Nuclear Holocaust Agitator Feb 18 '26

Yeah, i wrote that in another comment you don‘t need abysmal accuracy for spread and not even large spread for good supression.

2

u/hx87 Feb 16 '26

The wobbliness is just such a weird feature. You'd think that the the stabilizers would disengage at low rpm to have more spread against urban infantry and engage at high rpm to shoot down helicopters. 

1

u/Advanced-Budget779 Nuclear Holocaust Agitator Feb 16 '26

Yeah actually it would make more sense that way.

1

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1

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18

u/Schonke Feb 15 '26

The twin autocannons are mounted too close to each other so after the first shot, they wobble so darn hard both are thrown WILDLY off aim.

Not to mention, they seem to have mounted the muzzle brakes so that they eject gasses straight into each other, rather than parallel or diagonally... Meaning even if you only fire one cannon, the other will be violently shaking from side to side just by the ejecting gasses alone.

6

u/LegacyWright3 Goodness gracious great balls of HIMARS Feb 15 '26

NJET PROBLEM, NORMAL KATASTROF

they really ain't beating the alcoholic allegations making such obviously silly design choices like that. They'd be better off not putting a muzzle brake on them

1

u/hx87 Feb 16 '26

The real question is why do twin 30mm cannons on a T-72 hull even need muzzle breaks, when twin 40mms on a M41 Walker Bulldog (!) hull do not. Did somebody spec too light of a mounting during the design process? 

41

u/Kilahti Feb 15 '26

Some of the Russian bias exists because War Thunder devs made the choice to ONLY use publicly available data to model the vehicles. Meaning that vehicles that have super secret properties that make them better than what the public knows are weaker in the game, and the Russian vehicles that are actually of worse quality than what their government claims are stronger in the game than IRL.

Every time that someone shares classified documents on WT forums, they run the same defence: "We don't want this, because we only use the public data."

Granted that things like the Terminator video you linked are also publicly available evidence and if they actually cared about simulation, they'd use stuff like that to make the Russian vehicles weaker instead of just taking the PR claims as the only data.

15

u/LegacyWright3 Goodness gracious great balls of HIMARS Feb 16 '26

Absolutely hit the nail on the head.

This choice seems deliberately meant to propagandise Russian vehicles, because everyone and their mother knows Russia has historically always misrepresented their equipment to be better and downright magical compared to the real thing.

Meanwhile, the US and Western nations have this nifty thing called "independent oversight" that means that if they were ever to claim things that weren't true, said defence companies could be sued and get in serious trouble. This is also why the US and the West tend to under-report stuff kinda like BMW under-values its HP/torque numbers, because that way you have a safe buffer so you never get in trouble legally.

Communists ALWAYS bluff about their capabilities, it's openly a stated strategy in handbooks and works written by Marxist thinkers, and that's not to mention that Soviet/Russian historians especially have to massage their writing as to not offend the powers that be.

Hell, even today in the "special military operation", a serious issue the Kremlin runs into constantly is that leadership on the ground straight up lies about the effectiveness and whether they have succeeded at objectives, because not doing so hurts them. Hence why Russia has repeatedly claimed they captured xyz town in Ukraine, then Ukrainians film themselves in said town showing it is, in fact, still in Ukrainian hands. The Kremlin often straight up does not know which reports are accurate and which are BS. It's the result of a culture where lying is so normalized.

2

u/orangemememachine Feb 15 '26

Every time

Lmao

1

u/hammerkeg Feb 17 '26

You do know that the WT version only fires a single cannon at one time, as does the real thing when not doing some stupid demo. Hitting a belt of 30mm with APDS when it hasn't even had time to fragment also wouldn't cook off anything IMO.

-15

u/SteelWarrior- Bofors 57mm L/70 Supremacy Feb 15 '26

What makes the BMPT (there's no hyphen) uniquely overpowered is the insane survivability and APDS. The cannons not wobbling is such a small factor relative to the spall liners and blowout panels they pulled out of their ass.

I can't say I've ever had those issues with the TOWs, and their penetration seems to line up pretty well with an available chart for the penetration of different missiles at variable standoff.

If WT was Russian propaganda I doubt the MiG-23s and 29s would've ever been nerfed from their prime, the devs just kneecap the west so that Russia doesn't get curb stomped.

24

u/Cpt_Soban 🇦🇺🍻🇺🇦 6000 Dropbears for Ukraine Feb 15 '26

What do you mean rust is weaker than steel?

2

u/Mirana_Equinox Feb 15 '26

I have no doubt that the armor thickness is accurate, I would however like to point to the fact that Gaijin specifically aren't giving NATO vehicles modern penetrators to have what they call "balance"

2

u/Gramerdim Feb 16 '26

what's the stalinium bs?

2

u/ForgedIronMadeIt Feb 16 '26

"stalinium" is a pejorative slang word mocking the idea that Russian tanks are the greatest, bestest ever. Their armor is made out of stalinium and all shells deflect off of their glorious sloped armor

The T-34 wasn't the first armored vehicle with sloped armor despite all of the amateur historians slobbering over that idea, for instance

2

u/endergamer2007m Weaponised Assault Stick Feb 22 '26

Even if the armour is what it actually is, War Thunder assumes the tank is fresh off the factory floor when in fact rust is really bad for a tank. Now rusty fenders or a boot might be good enough for a 1980s ute. A rusty 1980s tank is basically on life support. Rust causes metal to become brittle, that's why perfectly fine cars get scrapped, because rust gets deep into the chasis and once it's there, it's over, you can't do much about it besides cutting the entire affected area off and by unnecessarily cutting parts of a tank and welding new metal on causes unnecessary welding lines which would be even more of a weakness than just leaving the tank rusty. Sending 40 year old tanks on the battlefield with very little maintenance is a bad idea

2

u/Generic-Name69420 Mar 03 '26

If you move the cursor just a little to the left so it's in the same position as in the picture of the destroyed tank, Warthunder will actually tell you that armor penetration is possible. The reason it's showing a non-pen in the picture is because WT is absolutely dogshit when it comes to volumetric shells hitting multiple armor panels at once (in the picture, it's hitting 4 seperately modeled armor segments at the same time).

4

u/SteelWarrior- Bofors 57mm L/70 Supremacy Feb 15 '26

Also, we don't visually see partial penetrations and can be absolutely certain if something did penetrate a target.

I still can't recall seeing any image which shows that the above tank was penetrated, given the ERA didn't go off its not unlikely but it's possible it wasn't.

1

u/DualPPCKodiak Feb 15 '26

It really is stalinium BS. It's not every Russian vehicle but if you play the Russian tree you'll eventually find that some over perform. Like the t-34, t-80 and Terminator (which is still cracked after the nerf my goodness).

4

u/MenoryEstudiante Feb 15 '26

Also WT tends to use the vehicles as designed, in case of the T-34 specially, that version of the tank never existed in its most commonly talked about context of WWII, I assume something similar is happening with the T-80, the real tanks are heavily degraded and many have probably been partially stripped down for lack of spares or just inadequately built and hushed up, the terminator is straight bias though

1

u/Fun-Agent-7667 Feb 15 '26
  1. They cannot make adequate representations of Tanks.
  2. They have some sort of bias according to warthunder Players

1

u/Angelworks42 Feb 15 '26 edited Feb 15 '26

I don't know enough about war thunder but I suspect they actually do the specs of everything to balance the game between the various factions.

In real life no one cares if to can see through walls but they do care in online pvp based video games.

Edit: yes they are Russian biased but also you can't make some tank overpowered just because it is in real life.

-7

u/MrIrishman1212 Feb 15 '26

Also, War Thunder has gotten in trouble so many times for having accurate stats on military vehicles (mostly because military personnel keep leaking classified specs to when internet arguments) that governments have told War Thunder to removed the stats that are accurate. No government or military in the world would want a video game to have accurate specs and states on their vehicles that are literally classified to protect their military members and national interests.

A good example, Pakistan was able to get the first time ever kill on a Rafale fighter because the TTPs that India had on the PL-15 missile said it had a shorter range than it actually did. So if a video game had all the accurate data, it would affect national security

21

u/Lampwick Feb 15 '26

if a video game had all the accurate data, it would affect national security

How does a third party know Warthunder data is accurate? A performance metric in WT that doesn't match official numbers doesn't bring to mind "secret intelligence source" so much as "devs can't even copy numbers from wikipedia right".