1st main battle tank originally called the universal tank was the British centurion only 1 existed 1945 but 105 entered serviced in 1946-1947 . The Centurion came from the development of the A27 Cromwell & centaur cruiser tank from the earlier A24 Cavalier tank all accentually the same tank with differing engines +internals but exterior basically the same. The USA would not Have an MBT till the M48 Patton in 1952 developed out in the Korean war & out of M47 & early M46 Patton both being medium tanks. The M4 Sherman was an Medium tank not a Universal tank later coined MBT by yanks. USSR T-34 in service from 1940 is the most comparable medium tank to the M4 Sherman that only entered service in late 1942 with the 1st combat in September of that year with mixed results by British crews but any tank at that point was preferable to a shortage of tanks. The M4 was the Mk1 Sherman, M4A1 & the Mk2 & M4A2 was the Mk3 in British request as the purchaser that was arrived upon after the complaints-limitations of all American the M3 Lee designated grant in British configuration as the radio operator was taken out done by the commander by welding a radio box on the rear of the turret, hence the grant had 6 crew rather then 7 in the all American Lee. Can't blame the yanks for they didn't really build a tank by that point beside the light M2 Stuarts which armour it was lacking & gun was lacking until the M2A4 in 1939 M2 AT 1937 with the turret removed with a fixed 47mm Antitank gun placed in was rather popular & nifty according to the veterans I talked to. The M4 Sherman tank is not as great as Americans think but considering the Americans went into ww2 as civilian economy with tooling set up for war it is impressive they even managed to produce a medium tank let alone shy of 50,000 in ww2 though USSR outdid them but they had war economy! It's all a matter of context lad but I'm tired of American delusion. Honestly they came into the war the least prepared & has the luxury of Geographical isolation to develop Arms & vehicles which much of their developments were borrowed From the Commonwealth nations & Britain. The USA didn't have radar till Britain gave them it. The USA did not have an effective anti air gun till the Swedish licenced the Bofer's 40mm for US production. I can be brutal to the USA if I want & show they are original copiers before the Chinese but I am not so harsh!

USA had no tank destroyer & neither di the UK as we both had Motor-gun-carriages/MGC's. The 3 inch Churchill MGC & M18 Hellcat MGC are nothing like tank destroyer in role or design. Chrysler merely marketed the M18 they lamely called the Hellcat as USA troops at the time were terrified of German tank destroyers though Why? Yanks always confuse me in their lunacy! Panzerjäger=armour hunter=Tank destroyer main element to be such are as follows: *Panzerabwehr kanone = tank defence cannon = Anti-tank gun which the USA & British MGC's did not contain as wither field howitzers or dual purpose guns. *Think frontal armour sloped at at least 27° with usually no turret. *no bearing & as cheap a plant as possible to keep down cost as a Delahaye, Praga or Maybach both being repurposed car engines to power the tank destroyer. The whole purpose of tank-destroyers was to repurpose the existing automotive industry to produce armoured vehicles powered on a car engine that could effectively engage real tanks! Put an anti tank gun in armoured up car you essentially have a Panzerjäger my lad! The Panzerjäger was used to great effect more so on the Eastern front against near seemingly endless USSR T34 tank that for every 1 destroyed the Germans would say more took it's place in some form or another. Context is everything & the USA as well as Britain had no reason let alone want to redirect civilian luxury automotive industries to making Tank destroyers. The toffs & political elite would never allow it in the west then or let alone today! The poor can go without motors but not the rich unlike German that did quite the opposite due to mainly Austrian thoughts on the matter. Technically speaking The British Archer would be a tank destroyer if not for the detail of the gun being backwards making it a SPG anti tank gun! British tank development was weird & technically we had 5 or 7 standard tanks in ww2 depending on whom you ask. USA & the USSR had 1 respectively as the M4 & T34 having relatively recently made industrial sector. Britain's industries traced back to the Victorian era if not Georgian era in some cases with 1940's technology & so forth slapped on top. Britain much like Japan was in a constant struggle of tradition & progress in military command! Our island nations are much older then the USSR & the USA which the latter Britain made.

The earliest anti-tank missile carrier is the FV1620 Humber Hornet from 1958 a joint venture between Britain & Sweden using the Malkara (missile) a joint development By Britain & Australia. ATGM vehicles came in the need & want to replace (self-propelled-gun) & (Motor-gun carriages) a British ww1 invention. The French Nord SS.10 is the only earlier ATGM I am aware of before the Malkara. French Nord SS.10 were put in quad launcher on doge trucks but only by the 1960's with not much detail from what I have read. i am tired of People conflating GMC's & SPG's with tank destroyer/armour hunters for the later is obsolete in practice & has not been further developed since the Axis in ww2! In many ways most power today try their best to avoid using or give Nazi technology a new sheen to not be associated with said. I'd like to work on old Axis doctrines but I guarantee non would give me funding to do so as the Mechanical & electrical engineer that I am!

Feel like it’s a missed opportunity for a world of tanks plug here

I'm going to answer the last question: Connectivity is the ability to communicate, integrate with, and gather battlefield data for a tactical network. Autonomy is the ability to operate partly or entirely as an unmanned system and/or use AI to enhance the offensive/defensive capabilities of tanks on an individual or squadron level.

And then theres another type: Germany on crack

And the other type is: Germany on crack

Good idea. Maybe do NATO and Soviet/Russian AA systems like the German Flakpanzer Gepard and the Soviet ZSU-24-3 Shilka. Also go into the roll of how these AA guns now are often used to support ground operations like the Shilka Aleppo.

Actually good idea, i would love to see the evolution from trucks with mgs to complex system like the panstir

Yes

Jerman udah nggak pake Gepard

@@meddy833 wasnt the shilka zsu-23-4 or am I just trippin

It started as an artillery piece but transitioned into being used as a dedicated tank destroyer, so it still counts. Plus again, the categories are more about their doctrinal use than how they were actually equipped, and by the end of the war Germany was absolutely using them doctrinally as TDs.

@TheRedKing247 they were good at it too

First stugs yes, like the III A and sturmhaubitze 42 G, but when they received the long 75mm gun, it was definitely a tank destroyer.

I guess, technically, the StuG F still counts, because there it left the assault artillery role, becoming dedicated tank destroyers. They did have however cousins, that have the same chassis, but having a short barreled 105mm howitzer instead of the longer 75 mm gun. The StuH 42s (Sturmhaubitzen), that still have the original role.

An assult gun

Ugh, the Pentagon is the source of most problems- LOL! I get your point, though, and it's a good one.

Aghm. Don't think so.

I think you make fair points but to me the Stryker which I openly admit have absolutely HATED because of its high profile our country has this deadly fascination when building vehicles so they are more noticeable and targetable at distance along with less protection for the American soldiers in them just so the damn thing is deployable has always been my grind against it.

The problems is: the pentago. Also falls short. There is hundreds of small factors that go into a tank that can change depending pn the context

@@m_fredi9549 You can list the issues down to a very finite issues but a basic overall reformation of the mans concept to me is good enough. It does not mean each category cant have hundreds of sub categories or data inputs. Start with the basics and work inward in a more detailed manner.

in Sprocket there is no such a thing such as Cost or reliability, so that kind of stuff ends up happening

TBF, if you look at something like a Merkava or an Abrams, they really are 70+ ton monsters with powerful engines pushing them up to speeds formerly seen only on armored cars and tankettes, all while being almost impenatrable from the front and well protected on the sides and top, and mounting a cannon that can level a midsize concrete building in 2-3 shots or push a DU rod through a full meter of hardened steel. They truly are modern marvels of engineering.

Yep, that's pretty much the point. People make up stuff and their own definitions.

And then we have the STRV 103 which even questions what defines a tank in the first place. Imo it is very much a tank, it just doesnt have a turret but was intended and used as Swedens MBT.

Just like the original designations of light, medium and heavy (according to the video) - it describes a role, rather than the size.

@@kjellkriminell372 I wouldn't say it brings into question what even is a tank, it simply doesn't have a turret, a unique armour design and a very good cannon which a lot of other nations used as well

@@jeffbenton6183 true, however countries did have specific designations (regarding weight and caliber) for those, as opposed to MBT's

right? what I'm hearing is that you can still theoretically build a modern heavy tank and modern light tank, they would just be obsolete; an MBT is therefore a modern medium tank

Very true, the triangle does simplify things a lot, but then again, how do you measure ergonomics and observation capabilities?

Maybe there can be a multiplier of some sort? Adding too many sides to the triangle risks muddling with complexity, but where the hard stats is its "100%" potential, worse ergo reduces how well a crew can reach and sustain it. For example, a powerful gun doesn't work as well if bad optics means the commander and gunner have a hard time getting on target, or the turret is so small that getting ammo into the breach takes a minor juggling act. Top speed might look good if you look at the engine power and the final gear ratio, but if you have a hard time putting the transmission into the final gear, or the final gear has a habit of shattering under load, then you're never actually going to go that fast. Armor has to take into account armor quality, and maybe assembly methods. Riveted tanks are more likely to injure their crew on impact than welded ones. Good escape methods means you have more good crews surviving. So maybe you can have a double triangle. One outer triangle listing the hard stats, one inner triangle of how easy it was for crews to hit that max potential. For example, Pz 3s and 4s were decently ergonomically designed, so the crew can do what was needed fairly easily. However the Panther has a bunch of ergo and reliability problems, which would drag down it's firepower, mobility, and armor protection in all but the most expert crews. Of course you can't really take into account production numbers with this, just 1v1 duels. 1 super awesome tank looks good against 1 ok tank, but not 10 ok tanks.

My only problem with that is how does something like ergonomics define a tank role? Same with fire control.

@@blackopscw7913Agreed, the tank triangle is fine as long as you don't try and use it to measure how 'good' a tank is, only its intended purpose.

@@RainShadow-yi3xr Same here

That's not really accurate. The British did have their own classification of light tanks, mostly machinegun-armed scout tanks equivalent to the Panzers I and II. Cruisers were doctrinally equivalent to medium tanks, being intended for the exploitation role. They tended to be lighter armoured and faster than contemporary mediums, but not to the point of lights, and their tendency to be undergunned until the Cromwell had more to do with the British being short on antitank guns until the Americans started providing them in bulk than a doctrinal choice. The infantry tank classification was essentially the result of "preparing to fight the last war" thinking. The British (and French, although they didn't last through the first year of the war) retained the idea from World War I that the primary role of tanks was to breach trenchlines and to provide cover for infantry advancing behind them. The fall of France demonstrated the flaw of this approach and while the Churchill finished design work and went into production afterwards, it was the last infantry tank. Other powers had infantry support vehicles, but they were generally designed for providing fire support from behind the infantry rather than as mobile cover for infantry. Ironically, infantry tanks might actually be useful in Ukraine, but a tank with enough protection to be able to perform that role on the modern battlefield would probably be prohibitively heavy.

@@Draxynnic Thanks for the addition, i didn't hear of the specific classification of British Light Tanks, will read up on those from whatever material i can find the case with the Churchill though is that there's still the Black Prince Tank, which is in a sense an evoluton of the Churchill, although if we're going with the standard of Mass-Produced and has a History of Service then i can agree with the point Infantry Tanks in Ukraine would probably work if it weren't for accurate Artillery, dense Minefields, and ubiquitus surveillance, as you pointed out it would be prohibitively heavy and i add would still be extremely vulnerable especially from Mines, and would require heavy support to Deploy, Recover, and Repair.

@@nightshade4873 There's a "Light tanks of the United Kingdom" Wikipedia article that provides a decent overview. The Black Prince was certainly experimented with, but it didn't reach operational use for good reason. During its development, the British were also experimenting with more conventional heavy tanks (due to concerns about the Churchill's speed) and the somewhat ridiculous Tortoise (not quite as ridiculous as the Maus and E-100, but the Germans weren't the only ones to experiment with superheavies...). In the end, though, once the designs being put into production were those that reflected battlefield experience, it was the cruiser series that actually saw mass production. Part of my thinking with a "modern infantry tank" would be having frontal-armour level protection in all directions. Would make it less susceptible to drones, artillery, and mines, but probably prohibitively heavy as noted, and likely still subject to mobility kills from mines hitting the track. Western designers also wouldn't make them due to the assumption of an air power advantage (which Ukraine obviously doesn't have).

I mostly agree but German casemate TDs like the Jagdpanther were intended for ambushing tanks and were, along with the Stug, also used as quicker to produce substitutes for tanks. classifying German TDs is pretty hard.

Very good point. Also the fact that respective countries control what numbers are known also doesn't help in evaluating modern tanks. Russia isn't going to tell the truth if lying gets more sales and the same can be said with the US or even comparing export models vs main models.

Ah yes, The Panther Paradox

Because you can configure a tank in many different ways while staying in the same triangle, but you can not fundamentally alter any of the three points without effecting the others.

@@johanmetreus1268 I mean, you could make an engine a bit bigger if you decided that the crew should just deal with breathing engine fumes all the time, and the turret boys better figure out how to curl into a ball so their feet can fit.

@@Appletank8 ...or you could remove all the ammunition inside and have some shells strapped to the turret... yes, I get your point. Should be a fourth parameter, internal space.

Hexagons are the best-agons

or the achilles which is just a sherman without a roof

Also the same case with the TAM's and the P40 in terms of classification.

Calling it a cruiser or cavalry tank might make sense, it's got more firepower than a light tank with similar mobility and armour but it's much bigger and more complex.

Hi

For most modern tanks it's 20-25hp/t, up to 30hp/t in some cases During ww2 only few tanks had power ratio in the 13-15hp/t range, Sherman has around 13hp/t iirc.

@@Ally5141 I knew the power ratios had improved but not as far as you mentioned which is highly possible with turbine engines. Do we have a max HP/T for diesel engines currently used today? Just curious on this. I believe ya. Thanks for the info and correction.

@@meddy833 that's not depend on the engine type, most MBTs will have power ratios in that area, I only know about two turbine powered tanks

20 - 25 per ton are the most modern tanks.

Thanks. I knew it must be up in the 20s for some vehicles. @@korana6308

And then there's just...Chucrhill

Always thought they were better than War Thunders attempts!

Yes on top of that. The first versions of a Centurion tank mounted literally the same caliber gun 76mm as the T34 original gun... So it's literally no different from any other tank, except the Brits just called it an MBT. The sooner people will realize it the sooner they will understand that those definitions are all made up.

@@korana6308 please, apart from a similar calibre the two guns had nothing in common. The difference was even greater than the two 8,8 cm guns used by the Germans. All definitions are made up per default, that is how we end up having any at all.

Hello! There are two very simple explanations for both of these things 1. The thing is, breaking deadlocks can be much easier done with other vehicles and weapons, a heavy tank by necessity has to have a lot of frontal armour, but in a breakthrough mission of WW2 style, it would also need a good bit of side armour too. Even the most heavily armoured tanks today, mainly the M1A2 SEPv3 for current service ones (there are significantly more well armoured vehicles that have not entered production yet, like T-14 armata which is stuck in trials with little funding to fix identified issues due to the industry having other priorities right now) have something along the lines of up to 900mm of kinetic protection (main danger to tanks from other tanks) and up to 2000mm chemical protection (basically everyone else), but while this does sound rather impressive, this is mostly frontally, side protection can be great against chemical but not kinetic rounds, the M1A2 SEPv3 is something in the ballpark of 70+ tons just to have that frontal protection. Adding even half the side kinetic protection, which would be insufficient to protect the tank from any side shots still, would likely require an increase in weight of around 30%, but then you need a bigger engine, a bigger hull, so you find yourself with your tank weighs ballooning into the 100 tons + territory, but at that point there will be massive logistical issues and technical issues we cant really solve in a practical manner even today. And lets say the introduce a tank like that, what would anyone else need to do to defeat it? Well, make their tank gun slightly bigger, the M1A2's L44 gun maxes out at a theoretical maximum penetration of around 900mm, but if you made it longer, or also wider, you can likely make it be able to penetrate more than 1000mm easily, something which pretty much eveyrone has made prototypes of, and you can, even if a bit jankily, stick those guns into your old chassis and the enemy armour advantage vanishes away. There are other factors of improving protection without resorting to adding weight I didnt go into, but they are also being utilised 2. Light tanks were extremely popular because they provided good protection from most common weapons of the era (back during the interwar period an anti tank rifle was an innovation) and could provide decent firepower to support troops, but very quickly fell off once anti tank weapons became more common and eventually so man portable that the protection from light tank armour became a nonfactor. Them being extremely easy to produce even in something like a civilian train production facility also helped, as you didnt need much investment in the infrastructure to upkeep them

Because they fulfil the roles of both infantry- and cavalry tanks, which is what makes them universal. There is simply no benefit in trying to build tanks for different roles.

Maus is essentialy the firepower and armor slider turned to 100 and mobility slider turned to 5

ooo, like a tetrahedron scale!

How did you define your "grandfather of the MBT" since when? because it's all made up anyway, and I would like to hear your definition and opinion. Were heavy tanks more protected from the sides? may be little bit more, though I really doubt that it had any significance, as they still had more protection from the front, just like any MBT. The heavy tanks by definition had everything to the max, except for speed. And their speed was abysmal twice as low as an MBT or a cruiser. That's why they were called heavy, they looked big and the moved slow. But if you give any older heavy tank a modern engine, it would easily become an MBT, as there would almost be no difference.

@@korana6308 i’ll give you some numbers: Tiger had 100mm on the front, 80 on the sides. If memory serves me right, the KV1 had about 70mm all around. Overall not that much difference. Panther had 80-100mm on the front (sloped, so effective thickness would be around 110) and 50 on the sides on later models. The difference between front and sides is significantly more pronounced here. Panther had quite some drivetrain issues, but once most it’s issues were solved it’s said to be able to reach around 45kph, pretty solid for ww2 standards. The modern MBT has most, if not all of its composite armour on the front with its sides consisting of mainly conventional armour, a bit like the Panther.

@@rosbifke915 But my point was a bit different. Is that the frontal armor was always a priority, in any tank. Since the first WW, entering the second WW every tank had a frontal armor priority. You are probably right that proportions were different. But the main logic is that no matter how you cut it, you were bound to always try to defend your frontal armor the most. And after the WW2 basically that proportion started to widen radically. And every single world's MBT started increasing their frontal armor the most and disregarding the sides armor.

@@korana6308 just like the Panther, that’s my point.

The Panther was just an overweight medium in terms of dimensions and frontal thickness for it's date. If we fall for that, we could actually have to consider the M26 Pershing and even the T-34-85 grandparents of the MBT's. Which are not.

It’s very simplified for the purpose of the video! But the Centurion, as a case study, does an excellent job of explaining: a) Why MBTs exist and why they are good b) Why heavy tanks no longer exist (RIP Conqueror) c) Why light tanks still exist (Centurion/Chieftain heavy, CVR(T) not heavy) The point is that unlike traditional Light, Medium and Heavy tanks, the centurion did not have to make any significant trade offs, and once the L7 was introduced it had Heavy tank armour and firepower, with light/medium mobility. I could’ve also used the T-54/55, the T-62, or at a hefty push, even mentioned the Panther.

@@RedWrenchFilms it is true it didn't have many trade-offs, although to be fair the original armour was very poor but an MBT is not about a balance of all 3 things. cent enters as a heavy cruiser tank (and designated briefly as medium) much later it gets the universal term and only MBT once it gets the 105mm. The FV201 is a universal tank and the first vehicle to fill the MBT role, which is being able to fulfil a wide variety of combat roles. fv4201 is the first one given the name MBT in the UK. - but its development is very much favouring guns and armour over mobility and specifically states orders of importance. - the same on many other tanks, they do not adhere to a balance of the triangle and the equal triangle is not indicative of what an MBT is. not trying to kick you in the balls here, much of what you said is on point except the triangle bit on mbts. (also worth adding that at a design stage the triangle as it is, is not really used at all as it is irrelevant in a tank's initial stages of design)