The tea thing is real, no joke. The clarity and moral boosting benefits from a cuppa is empire building stuff

The grooves are called Rifling

The U.K. has the best special operations forces in world trained to the toughest standards

The cages on Russian tanks were put on to try and counter the drones. The tubes on the front of turret are smoke screen dischargers, rifled barrels used to be more accurate, but there's very little difference now. A challenger1 in the first Gulf War still holds the distance record for a tank on tank kill, (4.7km or 2.91miles) The ammunition you were looking at is called a Sabot round, once it leaves the barrel, the blue parts of it fall away leaving the thin dart like centre, made of very dense depleted uranium, capable of penetrating around 700mm of armour. One of my jobs as a truck driver was delivering new Rolls Royce later Perkins CV12 engines and gearboxes to the BAE tank factories in Leeds and Newcastle-upon-Tyne as well as reconditioned ones to the army's main workshops at Bovington Dorset, next door to the Tank Museum. Last time I was in the factory where they're upgrading the Challenger3 I was delivering Challenger2 jigs from storage, maybe they're going to use them to produce new armoured panels for the Challie3.

The Vessel, Boiling, Electric, is indeed a godsend. Having done traffic control, when an RMP, at a bridge in Bosnia, during a nasty cold winter's night and stood at my end of the bridge, I can state with certainty that the ability to make tea in the middle of the night, when it is god knows how many degrees below zero! Thank you, Sappers!

Telford, Shropshire. Half a mile from COD Donnington, where that lump of cannon metal for the Victoria Cross is stored.

Providing the antitank threat is managed, the presence of an MBT (main battle tank) to ground troops is scary. Whilst in Kuwait looking after Challenger 1s i remember seeing an M1 Abrahams and thought it looked like a toy in comparison. Challenger was always slower, less agile and with a slower rate of fire, but was/still is tough and hit hard. 70 tons of armour is not a deterrent to be underestimated.

9:37 it’s not ERA (explosive reactive armour) its composite screens. 19:02 these are what we call in the business “cope cages” they were designed (hastily together) cages to protect against ATGMs like Javelin and TOW ATGMs respectively, these cages however never had any effect or chance because both ATGMs I listed have tandem head explosives (one penetration after the initial penetration). 19:37 That cope cage is actually functional interns of stopping FPV drones, also side note: no that is not wood that is metal paint sand colour. 21:01 this claim is factually wrong in every way, it was a triple stacked mine that took of the Challengers track the crew then scuttled the tank using Molotov cocktails leading to the ammunition cook off after that then the ruzzians stated shooting at it.

1. in the 80s, when the last generation of tanks were designed, the rifled gun allowed British tanks to outperform smooth bore guns at extreme range, and there was no equivalent to the British HESH (high explosive squad head) in terms of effective range, because of the spin imparted on the round by the rifling. However, technological advancements in tank rounds have completely negated this advantage. It’s also much easier to work with allies, if you have a common logistics chain for ammunition. 2. The round you enquired about was a practice APFSDS (armour piecing fin stabilised discarding sabot). The shape allows the air to catch the petals (case) as the round leaves the barrel, causing them to fall away, so the penetrator (large dart, made of depleted uranium or tungsten on ‘live ‘ rounds) is the only thing that goes down range. 3. When you looked at the challenger 2 and 3 next to each other, the challenger 3 was ‘straight out of the factory’, whereas the challenger 2 was an early 2000s theatre fit, for Iraq (extra armour and skirts to prevent dust being kicked up) 4. The interesting ‘cages’ on tanks in Ukraine is to prevent suicide drones and drones dropping munitions from impacting the turret. The ‘cages’ or ‘bar armour’ on British and American vehicles is designed to detonate or catch an RPG warhead, before it impacts the armour. 5. When talking about the top speed of a tank, the road speed is pretty irrelevant next to its cross country capability, which leads us back to the hydrogas vs torsion bar suspension question. Not only is hydrogas better in terms of gun stability whilst moving cross country, it allows the tank to move at greater speeds over rougher terrain, when compared to torsion bar suspension. 6. He said Britain were the first to use tanks in 1916, and have used them in every conflict since. That is not true; we didn’t take them to Afghanistan. 7. The tubes, in clusters of 5, on the front of the turret are smoke grenade dischargers. They are be fired together or as a left or right cluster, creating a smoke screen that prevents visual and IR detection for a short period of time.

Telford is a town in Shropshire

The rifled gun was only really kept so they could keep using a round called HESH (High Explosive Squash Head). The range is massive on that round as it doesn’t need any velocity to penetrate. It squashes onto the target and then detonates after. We went to smoothbore, not only because it means we can use NATO standard ammo, but because APFSDS (Armor Piercing Fin-Stabilised Discarding Sabot) rounds need to not spin. The current APFSDS rounds that the UK use have a bit of a rail on them to allow that to follow the rifles in the barrel and not have the round spin. You don’t want the dart of an APFSDS the spin because it reduces penetration of armour as the spin, once the round impacts, disperses its energy over a broader area allowing for less penetration. The current best APFSDS ammo is designed for smoothbore guns too. The drone issue can be solved, it just takes time to adapt. You can fit tanks with point defence such as 20/30mm guns and APS too. These things just take time though. Tanks will always have a place, it’s just how they’re used. They need to be used in combined arms manoeuvres because each element protects each other from all threats. Cage or bar armour is designed to detonate the primary warhead, reducing the likelihood of the round being able to penetrate at all. Tank speeds are generally not disclosed properly. At least with Challenger 2. Crews have said it’s quite a bit faster than the public number suggests. There’s definitely not enough Challenger 3s being made. We need another 100 at least on top of the 148. We need to not be cutting troop numbers either. We need 120,000 personnel at least.

19:30 iirc the reason they have mesh fitted is to protect from weapons like RPGs. Not sure if you know how they work, but basically the delivery mechanism needs a hard impact to detonate, and it sends a piercing metal bolt into the target to deliver the blast. mesh reduces the force at point of impact, either deflecting the projectile or reducing the piercing effect prior to the blast. weapons like RPG 7s are used a lot by non-state military groups so theyre common enough to warrant fittings like these on vehicles

Rifled barrels are more accurate but slow down the velocity of the round slightly. Smoothbore tends to be cheaper (for both the cannon and ammunition) and enables a wider choice of rounds. So it's case of pros and cons. But newer advances in ammunition have negated most of the accuracy problems with smoothbore, so it's the sensible choice these days. Britain was one of the last rifle-barrel holdouts.

Telford is also close to Ironbridge in Shropshire home of the lronbridge museum one of the industrial revolution start up.

The Boiling vessel heats food and can make tea. It keeps the crew alert and fed in cold conditions. As the turret is electronically controlled we have a quite donkey generator running . No main motor running hull down in the cold, warm food and warm drinks nice.

Two words. SABOT rounds. A majority of people think that modern tanks fire big shells, or "giant bullets" But the real story is what MBTs fire in war are mostly Kinetic Penetrator Rounds. Shells that contain shaped munitions that pierce dense amour, then detonate inside the target. which easily masticates the internals of an armoured vehicle. Including the occupants. Tanks defunction if their are no humans to operate it. They have been par-broiled while turned to paste inside. No survivors. Sabots are that powerful... that with the intense thermobaric pressure created... then invariably ignite the ammunition inside the main guns magazine after eliminating the occupants, and thus... completely destroying the threat with high probability. Smoothbore canons provide the high velocity pressures required to fire the these long ordinance packages in order to pierce the most modern composite armours. Truth is..All tanks are susceptible of the Canon on the top of them. If one is noticed first...it will lose the showdown, as will the people inside. No country has better tanks than SABOT ordinance. It's a false sense of security for all armies. Tanks are the last bastion of Attrition in the modern warzone. It doesn't matter if you are the best Tank driver ever known...if you get hit first with a SABOT munition.....or a man portable ATM. You're done for.

The penetration of steel is over 2 and a half FEET ! That's a big hit.

Anti tank warheads have two stages, the first is designed to destroy the reactive armour on the outside and the second charge bores through the armour. The Cope Cages are designed to initiate the warhead and disrupt the operation.

The cages are supposed to detonate the incoming round before it reaches the main armour. Any shaped charges that generate a hot jet of molten copper won’t penetrate the armour as deeply.

The water heater is fantastic once the water has been boiled and the teabags have been used the water heater will fire the used teabags at the enemy.

You need people, not drones, to occupy land. So you still need heavily armored units to break through the defense line. By the way, a laser and a signal jammer are now used against drones. And you can answer the questions about additional armor yourself when you look at how HEAT ammunition works, which is used in anti-vehicle weapons.

Rifling causes spin on bullets and the central fugal force of the bullet spinning keeps it from tumbling and therefore make it stay true in flight and it scrubs off less energy in flight as it stays in its most aerodynamic position. But with much larger rounds it matters less if it's spinning or not as it's a lot heavier and external for es tend to effect it less in flight, where as a small hand gun bullet or riffle bullet would be affected by wind etc as it has low mass compared with a massive chunky shell. As there are no grooves/rifling in the barrel rounds can be fired at higher pressure as the air doesn't escape around the bullet via the rifling grooves.

Great to see the Challenger III

As an English man I love that you got the water boiler 🫖 Enjoy your attitude dude, stay curious!

he did not just say Tell-Ford hahaha

🙂No Connor... your accent attempt I'd look at again. The start was indeed diabolical, but the words / cadence/ last sentence? WOW!!! I almost forgot you were American right in front of me. Your relaxed facial expression during, rather than than the kinda sugared up general American one, sold it freakily well. And it wasn't the stereotypical London accent either. 👏

1:09 it does but the main reason it was changed is due to the fact everyone else in NATO uses smooth bore so it made sense to change it for simpler logistics for ammo in case a war broke out

British tank crews are required to hit a spot within 1mm on the sight screen that’s why it’s so accurate on the video,l smooth bores are basically snipers, rifled cannons give the speed to the projectile making it penetrate more. When the challenger 3 comes into service i’m sure training will be changed as it is a whole new fighting style with the new cannon. Telford is also 9 miles from me :D

I like the tank that you make cups of tea in so cute

Rifleing i think is the word your looking for, the smooth bore rounds will be stabilised for accuracy, also be able to use NATO ammunition. Yet in the Gulf war the longest tank kill was with a Challenger 2 with a rifled barrel!

Hi Connor, yes the rifling on the old gun imparted spin on the projectile making it more accurate , that is an APFSDS round (Armour Piercing, Fin Stabilised Discarding Sabot) its that shape because when it is fired the outer shell peels off leaving the central depleted uranium rod to hit the target , the new cannon is smooth bored as the rest of Nato uses smooth bore ammunition, they are MBSGD's Multi Barrelled Smoke Grenade Dischargers, the plates on the side are composite armour not explosive armour, The BV is the most important part of the vehicle without the BV the crew doesn't work. The cope cages are designed to stop drones hitting the tank .When it comes to Tank numbers one thing that wasn't mentioned was where to put them, it was different when i was serving, we had 72,000 troops based in Germany plus 58,000 in the UK, with the drawdown of BFG (British Forces Germany) and removal of troops from Germany we had to cut back on not only tanks but troops as well simply because there was nowhere to put them..

Connor...the best way to protect tanks and other armored vehicles from drones is to have a layered defense. The first line of that defense is electronic warfare...your tanks need to have coverage from units that can detect and track drone control signals, and jam the ones that are threats. After that, there are many cheap and effective short range surface to air systems that are being deployed...take a look at the VAMPIRE system...that stands for Vehicle-Agnostic Modular Palletized Intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) Rocket Equipment...and it is a modular system to mount laser guided rockets with a high tech sensor system on any vehicle, including Toyota pickup trucks. You gotta love the military and their acronyms. 😂 There are also anti-drone drone systems, so your idea of having those on a tank is one that is already being looked at all over the world. And I could be wrong, but I think it is also a thing that British MREs require hot water? Either to "heat in bag" instead of using an FRH, or because they are freeze dried, I am not sure...but I am almost positive I heard that the boiling vessel is as much about food as it is about hot tea. Like I said...I could be misremembering that. Also...the only way to believe that chart showing what percentage of total global defense spending those countries account for 26:52 is if you actually believe what China and Russia CLAIM they spend on military stuff. If so, I would like to offer you some prime real estate I own in the Galapagos Islands...or maybe you'd be interested in this bridge I own in Brooklyn. ROFLMAO

The in vehicle system was a idea by Tom clancy, it allows every tank to see where each tank enemy or friend

Shropshire, literally 5 mins down the road from me and it's pronounced Tel fud not Tel foord!

Tech detail: artillery is measured in two ways, calibre (diameter of the inside of the barrel) and barrel length as a multiple of calibre. I. e., The new Challenger carries a Rheinmetall 120mm L/55 gun, so bore diameter 120mm, barrel length 6,600mm. The older Rh 120 L/40, as featured on the US M1A1 only has a 4,800mm barrel. Longer barrels generally mean more muzzle energy, which means better armour penetration. Germany upgraded much of its Leo 2 fleet with the longer gun in response to the Russian T-90.

Main battle tanks often sport large, welded "cope cages" to stop exploding drones from taking them out.

Moden smoothbore ammunition is often fin-stabilised so don't need to spin to be stable. I don't know if any ntank rounds use a shaped charge warhead, but their effeciveness is reduced if they spin.

Shropshire not Cheshire, uhhh... by my house-ish!

the rifling in the barrel sends the shell further and yes it was the target.

The rifled barrel does make a projectile more accurate, but at the cost of the Cannon eventually through wear. The Smoot bore Cannon does not need rifling ecasue the Projectile is supersonic, and it wouldn't help but hinder

3:07 The funny shaped bit is a sabot, a sacrificial casing that keeps the penetrator central in the gun barrel as it is fired and as you say keeps propellant gas sealed in. The sabot peels away when it leaves the gun's muzzle so the 25mm thick tungsten needle can make a kebab out of its target.

Smoothbores can fire missiles and 'smart' projectoles as well.

While tea is a stereotypical reason for the hot water in tanks, it was more so we didnt have to get out to feed etc. Its used for light washing, as mention food and rations, sterilization (if needed). If its quiet, there would often be a dedicated 'brew' bitch, (usually the newest and /or the lowest rank) who would make the tea/coffee, put the rations on etc for the rest of the crew. It seems like common sense to have this feature. Also, we have some history with bureaucratic crap and mismanagement - look up the Ajax project. One of the most costly and best examples of clueless people with money. 4 Billion quid so far, and was supposed to be much less!

the anti drone thing you talk about is what will be happening with the new laser they are designing , once it's perfected and efficient enough you could have them on anything , any vehicle ....auto tracking too and thus it can independently target drones and such at any range while the tank its self is in an entirely different engagement.

the caged tanks were built to disperse the energy of the drone attack

Smoothbore allows for higher speed which works well for penetration ordinance which is now widely used. The rifled barrel allowed for greater accuracy at the cost of of the projectile being slower. This was fine when the HESH round (Instead of penetrating, it smushed against armour and set to break it via explosive force) was the superior tank round. However better armour technology eventually made HESH obsolete, which by extension made the rifled barrel obsolete.

I believe British tankies prefer the rifled gun as it is so accurate, ( many years ago they produced a chieftain with a smooth bore gun to evaluate it, after evaluation it sat in a shed as no crew wanted to use it ) The rifled barrel still holds the record tank on tank kill at over 5,000 meters. But as all other NATO tanks use the cheaper smooth bore gun and ammunition this makes its rifled shells very expensive, and to rationalize the ammunition between allies makes sense. But would you buy an ancient smooth bore gun or a proper modern rifled firearm ?

When you said your curoius about the shape at the beginning, the blue bits he is holding drop away. The projectile is the tungsten dart pointy bit in the end. The rest of it is to fill the barrel and propell it before they separate once out of the barrel.

The cages (known as slat armour) detonate the incoming round early. What kills a tank isn't an explosion, it's a superheated jet of molten copper that burns its way through the armour. Forcing the round to detonate even just a few inches away can make a difference by disrupting the copper charge. It doesn't work for every type of incoming but for a very low cost it's pretty effective.

19:25 The cage armour makes the incoming weapon detonate before it reaches the tanks main armour reducing it's effectiveness

Rheimetall (Panzer) have just stuck a Leopard gun turret on an old Challenger chassis - bingo - new tank? Cheap & productive. Good old 'Fritz'

Surely by now, we can have an automatic drone doing spotting and drone protection of drone on drone defence.

He did quickly mention it in the video, but we're obviously a small island nation. For an adversary to get a significant amount of ground based equipment on our shores, they have to get through the Navy and Air Force first so makes sense to spend money on those.

Regarding the last question about focus okn defence spending, the US heads the world in virtually everything to do with military research and spending, so it makes sense to be the NATO arsenal. The next best research leaders are the UK, so it makes sense to give them a large chunk of military research projects. Especially as was pointed out in the video, the UK is an island and extremely difficult to invade. If it comes to the point where the UK is facing invasion, then the rest of European NATO members will probably have given up already, so, with limited budgets, the UK couldn't stand alone. The best way of defeating an invasion is with Navy and airforce, hence the UK is focusing on those two services for the bulk of the remaining spend. I hope the theory never gets tested!

The cage changes the point at which incoming munitions detonate. Explosive munitions depend on the shaped charge being focussed against the tank skin. If it explodes just a few inches away, then it doesn't penetrate.

Connor just a correction to the vids narrative, it us not Tell-ford, it is pronounced Telfud, a small town in Shropshire, well to be precise a new town built in the 1970s.

The rifled bore was more accurate however the smooth bore is cheaper and NATO use smooth bore so the NATO standard means we can share ammunition much like Beta Max was better than VHS, but VHS was cheaper and common...so it makes sense we now choose smooth bore so we can share ammo....

Survivability will count ,if they get the new laser working small enough drones will not be a problem ,the challenger has recently got the longest recorded kill shot , the incorporated electronics make it so deadly at a distance ,and not counting the tank lost due to crew error no challenger has been lost in combat anywhere.

If Britain Wanted a 10,000 tanks then we would build 10,000 tanks .....

I know mate, challenger 2 has a rifle barrel and and has the longest tank kill because of the acracy, challenger 3 has a smooth bore now so all NATO tanks have the same ammo.

Drone defence is being worked on now ,so the drone will not have the same effect later

Telford is in Shropshire just below and to the west of Cheshire.

These aren't new tanks. They're NEW TURRETS. We need to up our numbers as well, but we don't have the manufacturers any more. PS - recent Abrams tanks and Bradley IFVs are also fitted with BVs (boiing vessels). Presumably NOT for tea, though.

Cage armour is too defeat the shaped charge warheads on many at wepons - it "pre-detonates" it before the actual armour and robs it of most of its penetration force. Modern anti tank rounds - long rod penetrators are dense metal darts, they need a "shoe" (the blue shroud around the penetrator) to carry it down the barrel. Shoe or sabot (French for shoe) flies off once it leave the barrel and you get a metal dart flying off to target. Smoke dischargers are the pod clusters on the front. Trophy APS is currently seeing a lot of action in Gaza.

I know so this video was made a month ago and was said they want to scale down soldiers, but in recent news they’ve said the opposite that the armed forces need bulking.

The UK is an Island - its Navy and Airforce have to be the priority

I wonder how many of the new tanks we will be able to afford, probably not many.

On chieftain tank the metal bracket around the tank for storage, like drums of oil, Jerry cans of water,your personal kits ,tents what ever

The curves in a rifle are called rifling (hence the name rifle).

Its a good tank with one problem, its an upgrade of the old hulls. It would have been better to build new from scrach so we could send the old tanks into storage or Ukraine.

the cages are stand off armour good against RPG attacks

Telford, Shropshire

the British Army is a small highly advanced highly trained force, as you said island nation and Nuclear power, we do not need a gigantic land based army, we have a large well armed technologically advanced Navy. while smaller than China it is significantly more advanced. for it's size the UK is extremely powerful but there is no way we are competing with the worlds largest economy or the sheer numbers a country with 1.4bn population can achieve. we are pretty much impossible to invade at this point though i do wish we could double the size of the navy and airforce. another 12 frigates 6 destroyers and 6-10 nuclear subs would be ideal

Have a look at the trophy system. If they can make that effective against drones, if they aren't already, bingo.

Modern Armour Piercing rounds all use a Discarding Sabot principle where a thin (25-30mm) projetile is fired from a 120-125mm Gun, the large gun allows for a greater propellant charge acting of the Sabot to accellerate the round to very high speed, once out of the barrel the sabot falls away leaving the thin pentrator to hit the target, this has a multiplying factor on the kinetic energy in the rod - hence better penetration BUT they work a little better if not spun, British tanks also use a HESH round (High Explosive Squash Head) which is basically a large lump of plastic explosive which forms a pancake on the target before detonating, setting off shockwaves inside the target and creating "scabs" of armour flying round the inside of the tank, but that works better is spun So there was a conflict between DS and HESH rounds The Chally 3 drops the HESH round so a smoothbore gun is the way to go

No idea why music was playing during the video. .

"Rifled barrel" its called - it holds the longest shot in tank history in the first Gulf War. But its shells were different from Nato so we have had to switch to smooth bore which can fire more rapidly with " smart" shells.

The comment about the suspension system is incorrect… the Korean K2 uses a derivative

All British tanks should have recon drones.

The challenger 2 that was stuck in the mud, just needed another challenger 2 to tow it out

He was close though with cheshire so well done conor

Rifling is more accurate however the modern NATO rounds didn't work with it so it's better for overall supply with not that much difference in accuracy

In terms of Tank Numbers the point made that Britain is a small Island is key. If an enemy tried to invade Britain, we have to ask, how many Tanks or other armoured vehicles are going to appear on the beaches for British Tanks to engage? Not very many, so Tanks aren't going to be Britain's main defence. Fighting elsewhere in the world, again it makes no sense for Britain to ship large numbers of Tanks over seas when those other countries have invested in their own Tank forces. Furthermore Britain doesn't have the huge logistics that a country like the USA has, so large numbers of British Tanks are pointless. Leveraging intelligence gathering, information warfare and special operations however is an area where Britain has always EXCELLED (007😂). So it's important for NATO to take full advantage of each members individual assets and as much as possible skew that members military emphasis for the benefit of the NATO as a whole.

The commentator on the vid is a moron when he was talking about the hydro gas suspension system. It doesn't add to the maintenance its easier than torsion bar which is an absolute fecking nightmare in comparison to the hydro gas units on challenger. Torsion bar suspension requires the whole bar to be removed if it needs replacing (so wheel removed, torsion bar pulled out that runs the width of the hull etc), the hydro gas suspension system is a self contained unit bolted onto the outside of the hull....unbolt it and get the replacement from logistics, bolt that one on then send the faulty one back to factory and let trained engineers fix the faulty one (its a lesson brits learned from ww2 shermans, followed on by centurion and chieftans horstman suspension. They were the same all self contained on the outside of the hull).

I love listening to you talk goodnight

Drones mate, the cages are meant to stop drones and missiles etc detonating on the hull.

Have you seen the fat electrician's doom turtle tank video? Great channel!

Tanks are needed. Drones are just a new tool. Be prepared for next generation tech (Only way to say it), making tanks a nerve centre on the forward battlefield.

Fireing drones from a tank isnt exactly a new thing, ....some kinds of armour over the years (i say this because i dont think any modern ones do ...the gun is more powerful) have come equipped with guided missiles (like the TOW for example) a TOW is (in its most basic terms) is kind of a radio controlled anti tank missile (actually i think its wire guided so dont quote me) I know its not exacly the same idea but the point is you can mount a missile rack to a tank, (and i think even fire them from the barrel in some cases) ...a drone rack isnt a stretch (Note: i am just generalising their, i say Armour because some that have might not nessecarilly be classed as Tanks, and it might not nessecarilly be specifically a BGM-71 TOW ATGM .....i am sure somone will say otherwise, their is always that 1 tank nerd 😂)

The reason we kept rifling was for HESH rounds mainly

Kinetic projectiles work better smoothbore instead of the old rifled guns

It's not a new tank but an upgraded Challenger2... with a bigger engine and new turret with smoothbore 120mm gun... and most importantly, it's still got a BV* too! *Boiling Vessel (essentially a kettle and obviously essential for making tea)

Tanks don’t need rifling to be accurate. New ammo is guided.

bro any nation that goes to war without tea.. well im pretty sure we took over you at some point LOL

Drones can be defeated quite easily with anti-drone weapons.

Watch "Britain's most peculiar pervert - The Purple Aki Story" if you want to know about actual UK culture.

Challenger 2 and Leopard 2 had a baby.

Telford, Shropshire. Where I live!

1:17 'Rifling' usually makes it more accurate

I think that the U.K. needs to focus on the navy and air force. next generation ships that can also be drone platforms. The army needs to be compact but effective with high proportion of special forces and able to operate on its own in Falklands style engagements.