About аrmor:
T-90 has better protection than tanks of NATO. (The advantage of the protection of the T-90 received by the small size and the use of reactive armor and active protection such as a Shtora in addition to the massive combined armor of the tank.)
I don't think that it has any significant advantages in terms of protection when compared to NATO MBTs (but these also don't have any significant advantages over the T-90 in regards to protection IMO). The
small size is more or less irrelevant. Modern APFSDS have an accuracy below 0.2 mil derivation (i.e. after traveling 1,000 m the APFSDS will hit with a very high probability in a circle with a diameter of 0.2 m whose center is the aimpoint, after four kilometers the circle will be 4 x 0.2 m in diameter). Hitting is therefore quite possible even thought the tank is small, which leaves the question how it looks with recognizing/detecing a T-90... given the way how thermal sights work I doubt that the T-90 will be harder to detect than a M1A2 Abrams/Leopard 2A6/Leclerc.
Shtora is a nice thing, but actually does not fit on the T-90. At the places where the two IR-jammers are located is no ERA mounted (this is not the case for the T-80s which mount Shtora), so the center is far less protected than the rest of the turret. Shtora has a low degree of coverage (not 360° like other systems, e.g. MUSS) and does not work against more modern type of ATGMs (thus it will be replaced/not fielded on the next Russian tank).
The usefullness of
ERA is discussable - Kontakt-5 has proven to be capable against older types of APFSDS (German 120 mm DM33, U.S. M829A1), but more modern APFSDS might be superior against Kontakt-5. E.g. Rheinmetall claims that the most common 120 mm APFSDS (120 mm DM43, a co-development of GIAT and Rheinmetall which is also being licence produced by General Dynamics for the M1 Abrams export countries as KEW-A1) offers "
good" performance against ERA and the following APFSDS (120 mm DM53) has been
specifically designed and optimized to penetrate heavy double-reactive ERA (i.e. the type of ERA to which Kontakt-5 belongs). Similar claims have been made by the U.S. (regarding their M829A2 and M829A3 APFSDS) and other countries (i.e. Israel and South Korea). So ERA might not protect so good.
My main question when I read your statement about ERA being an advantage was "Why?". Why should ERA be an advantage? ERA has a low multi-hit capability, low coverage (50-60% typically) and not the best performance. The Germans adopted some sort of heavy NERA on their Leopard 2A5 and 2A6, while the U.S. increased the performance of the composite armour by using new types of heavy metal armour (e.g. DU armour of three different generations ATM).
About firepower:
Ammunition of the T-90 is adapted more to fight against field fortifications, infantry and light-armored vehicles than against heavily armored vehicles - I mean heavy tanks. (Against heavily armored vehicles Russian APFSDS not so effective as NATO’s modern APFSDS.)
Ammunition NATO’s tanks are more adapted to destruction of the vehicles including heavy-armored vehicles than to destroy field fortifications, and infantry.
Again I have to disagree. The T-90 shares it ammunition with the other Soviet-legacy tanks. It is true that the Russians have a specialized HE round and did have a specialized HE round during the Cold War, while NATO just switched to HE (and some countries are still switching). But the main reason was not that they wanted to deal better with fortifications (unless they have optimized their tank doctrine to invade Switzerland
). The Soviet (and until today also Russian) ammuntion doctrine is affected by two facts: Their autoloaders and the money.
Money is the reason why the Soviet tanks (and currently also the Russian tanks) carry HE rounds. It is not that they wanted to deal better with infantry or lightly armed vehicles (why should they care about these guys if they have/had allways a numerical advantage?), the problem lies in the HEAT round. HEAT rounds are pretty costly,
HE-Frag rounds are very cheap. The fact that HEAT rounds cost so much more than other rounds is the main reason why a Soviet tank allways carried less than 10 HEAT rounds (regardless of the type of tank). If the Soviets would have had the money for using HEAT-Frag (like the Germans or Americans) as sole secondary round, they probably would have built them.
The reason why the Russian
APFSDS are inferior than the NATO rounds is the autoloader. Early Soviet APFSDS were simply made of steel (and small cores of WC) because of the lower price, but penetrated still more armour than contemporary 105 mm tungsten/DU APFSDS. When the NATO started fielding 120 mm APFSDS the Soviets still could perform on a similar level until the end of the Cold War, but when NATO increased the length of the penetrators (and the pressure) to defeat heavy ERA the Russians could not keep up... because of the autoloader. The autoloaders can't handle the length required to achieve the same performance as current NATO ammo.
This conclusion about firepower is supported by the fact that such famous NATO’s tank like Abrams have no high-explosive rounds; biggest part ammunition of the tanks is APFSDS rounds. But biggest part ammunition of the Russian’s tanks is high-explosive rounds:
Typical ammunition of the T-90 includes 42 rounds of four types:
- High-explosive rounds: 18 units.
- Guided missiles: 6 units.,
- HEAT-FS rounds: 6 units.,
- APFSDS rounds: 12 units
T-80UK and a part of T-90 MBTs are equipped with Ainet system that allows to electronically fuse HE-FRAG rounds to explode at predetermined moment of flight (over heads of enemy infantry).
Typical ammunition of the Abrams includes 40 rounds of two types:
APFSDS rounds and HEAT-FS rounds.
Actually the NATO has more types of anti-material tank rounds than Russia. The Abrams and the Leopard 2 initially used HEAT-Frag rounds (which still performed as good as ~100-105 mm HE), but later new types of ammo were developed. The Americans have canister rounds (which are similar to tank-sized shotgun shells) and the M908 HE round. The American marines have bought German HE-TF (air-burst HE rounds, similar to Ainet), which have entered/will enter service with Germany too. General Dynamics (the American company producing the M1 Abrams) has developed another type of HE ammo, while Rheinmetall (producer of the German HE-TF round used by the U.S. marines) also plans a cheaper non-programmable HE round. Another U.S. round which is optimized for fighting infantry and fortifications is the AMP, which is designed to replace a number of different rounds at once (i.e. M830/M830A1, M1128 and M908). Rheinmetall has also developed the PELE rounds, which are optimized for fighting fortifications, light/medium armoured vehicles and infantry in buildings.
Also some NATO members (Spain, Sweden and Italy afaik) have decided to buy Israeli ammo, which also includes HE rounds. This last quote from your conclusion is simply wrong. It might have been right back in 1980-1990, but Afghanistan and the Iraq (both Iraqi Freedom and Desert Storm) have lead to the creation of various new NATO rounds.
