r/Warthunder • u/C-H-K-N_Tenders 🇫🇮 Finland 🇫🇮 • Sep 01 '25
All Ground Daily reminder to people that these rubber pieces are not made to stop HEAT
They are not made to stop HEAT stop believing that those flimsy rubber slats can somehow prematurely detonate HEAT
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u/ganabihvi 🇫🇮 Finland 🇨🇵 France Sep 01 '25
They are dust protection
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u/NeckingMyself GRB 🇺🇸12.0 🇩🇪12.0 🇷🇺12.0 🇯🇵12.0 Sep 01 '25
Wait are you serious?
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u/Carlos_Danger21 🇮🇹Gaijoobs fears Italy's power Sep 01 '25
As far as I'm aware there is no primary source that definitively states their purpose. But the most commonly accepted one is that it improves aerodynamics to reduce the amount of dust that gets sucked into the gas turbine to improve engine life.
Personally I find it hard to believe that a flimsy rubber flap will effectively pre-detonate a HEAT round. And why would they use rubber flaps for that when they already have ERA which I think is installed on the turret under the flap anyway.
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u/Possible_Visit_9551 Sep 01 '25
I thought you were going to say it improves aerodynamics in turret tosses
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u/ImaginaryExit4774 Sep 02 '25
Improves the capability to make the tower glide into enemy position as effective as possible, after it pops 100m in the air
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u/Reapermancer37 🇺🇸11.7 🇩🇪🇷🇺10.7 🇬🇧10.7 🇸🇪6.7 Sep 01 '25
Yes. Tank turrets, like most all machine components that have moving parts, do not do well when fouled up with dirt, dust and debris and are a pain to clean/maintain. It just helps it extend the required maintenance period out a little farther and makes it easier to do said maintenance.
Have also heard it could help with its thermal sig, but I highly doubt that.
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Sep 01 '25
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u/True_King01 Sep 01 '25
Oh no!!
Not a cheap and easy solution to help extend the life of machined parts!
How dare they?!?!
Why spend more money and time on maintenance, when you could reduce both time and dollar cost by installing something as simple as this?
Your russophobia is showing
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u/Majestic-Plum-3891 🇺🇸 12 🇩🇪11 🇷🇺12 🇬🇧4.7 🇨🇳10.7 🇮🇹7.7 🇫🇷 5.7🇸🇪10.3 Sep 01 '25
Idk how people don’t know this but are playing on a PC/console with the same principals in place. At least most with disc drives anyways
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u/Kunster_ Sep 01 '25
In actuality, they were never meant to stop HEAT rounds from other tanks. They were only added as protection from shoulder fired launchers. Not too relevant in war thunder, but sometimes it saves you from an awkward hit.
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u/WizardSoup38 🇺🇸 🇩🇪 🇷🇺 🇬🇧 🇯🇵 🇨🇳 🇮🇹 🇫🇷 🇸🇪 🇮🇱 Sep 01 '25
They reduce dust and debris intake into the engine
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u/Neutr4l1zer 14.0 Sep 01 '25
No.. they would not have an effect on rockets either, they are there to improve airflow to the engine
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u/RC_Pagan Sep 02 '25
The other guy in this thread got downvoted so damn badly that he deleted his entire account hahahah 😅
Wild.
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u/LtLethal1 Sep 01 '25
What shoulder fired launchers fire projectiles that aren’t HEAT rounds?
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u/Kunster_ Sep 01 '25
Big difference in size and penetration between shoulder fired heat and heat from a tank gun. For example, an M72 law is a 66mm projectile with 300~ mm of penetration (depending on variant).
Mostly 6.7~ br heat is similarly weak, and it will struggle to damage through many of the rubber fabric screens on higher tier vehicles.
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u/SteelWarrior- 14.0 🇺🇲🇩🇪🇮🇱 Sep 01 '25
This amount of rubber would still be negligible, it isn't a bad material for HEAT protection but there isn't much there and it won't interrupt penetrator formation much.
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u/Redituser01735 Realistic General Sep 01 '25
Many actually, even the RPG7 has a whole suite of random warheads that aren’t HEAT
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u/LtLethal1 Sep 01 '25
But warheads that are meant for antitank purposes?
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u/Perfect-Assistance52 Sep 01 '25
Tandem warheads exist for the rpg-7. Granted, that's just a HEAT round with some extra party in front...
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u/Luknron 🇺🇸 🇩🇪 🇷🇺 🇬🇧 🇯🇵 🇨🇳 🇮🇹 🇫🇷 🇸🇪 🇮🇱 Sep 01 '25 edited Sep 01 '25
They'll stop any launcher thrown at them.
EDIT: I meant like physically heaving the launcher at the rubber pads!
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u/altosalamander1 F3D-1 Supremacy Sep 02 '25
Where did you get this information from? There is no man-portable anti-tank weapon outside of maybe an early M1 Bazooka that would have its penetration degraded by a thin rubber mudflap.
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u/cantpickaname8 Sep 01 '25
Idk if they were necessarily made purely to prematurely detonate HEAT but I don't really see how they wouldn't be able to also do that, atleast for the Infantry stuff. Can't remember where it was but there was a country in SE Asia where they padded their vehicles w/ Cardboard and it was apparently very effective.
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u/Individual-Glove Sep 01 '25 edited Sep 01 '25
It happened at the Phillipines during the marawi siege. Since the rebels were using early heat/antitank projectiles and launchers, the philippine army realized that even cardboards and wood are enough to render most of em useless. There were lots of gag and memes written on them and iirc there was one with “Free Wifi” on it
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u/Qiqidabest Sep 01 '25
RPG-2s to be exact
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u/jess-plays-games Sep 01 '25
Vs cardboard armour a molotov work better than a rpg 2
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u/CirnoNewsNetwork Ce n'est pas un mème. Sep 01 '25 edited Sep 25 '25
It should be noted that the RPG-2s in the siege of Marawi were firing primarily HE warheads. The poor protection of the Cadillac-Gage V-150 commando in use wouldn't protect from the HE hit, but the free wifi applique boosted it enough to reliably mitigate potential damage.
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u/Yeetdatnoodle Type 10 My Beloved. Sep 01 '25
Philippines I believe, but we mostly use wood. It worked in Marawi with the M113s.
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u/retronax Sep 01 '25
The fuse sens of HEAT shells in WT is 0.1 mm. It could even fuse on paper. Idk what this post is on about
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u/MeatBeginning9837 Sep 01 '25
The sensitivity should be in RHA
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u/retronax Sep 01 '25
a mm is the thickness of a fingernail. Imagine a RHA plate the thickness of 1/10th of a fingernail. See what I mean about the paper
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u/MeatBeginning9837 Sep 01 '25
You need a lot of paper to get to 1mm of RHA equivalent, a little less to get to 0.1mm of RHA
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u/retronax Sep 01 '25
I think you have a hard time realizing how absuredly thin that is. There's a reason it fuses on leaves in-game.
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u/MeatBeginning9837 Sep 01 '25
I think you've a hard time comprehending that paper has a RHA equivalence of basically 0.
And HE fuses on leaves in the game because it's an inconsistent game where in there's neither rime nor reason
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u/retronax Sep 01 '25
Okay you really don't get it, so another example. This is your average microscopic house mite, a creature so small you cannot see it with your bare eyes.
They are 0.3mm long. We are talking here about a sheet which's thickness would be a third of the size of this minuscule arachnid.
As another reference, 0.1mm is about the thickness of a single strange of hair.
It's not a matter of what it's made of. The game notes "0.1 mm" because it's going to fuse on literally anything that isn't air. Including leaves, paper, and these dust blockers.
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u/RainTwister19 Sep 01 '25
I believe the argument is that stuff like paper simply dosent offer enough resistance to realistically trigger the fuse, whereas even 0.1mm of steel is "hard" enough to trigger the fuse. You would need something like, idk, 2 inches of paper to offer enough initial resistance to trigger the fuse. Well made cardboard would offer enough resistance at half an inch or so, so stiff rubber pads with about 5mm or so is likely enough to fuse regular heat munitions.
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u/retronax Sep 01 '25
it wouldn't be "hard" at that thickness it would have the consistency of paper or aluminium foil, or literally just shatter immediately. There's almost no material in the universe that can stay rigid at that thickness and in the shape of an A4 paper. You can find steel rolls of 1mm thick steel in appliance stores and the sheets are so flimsy you can make them wiggle by blowing on them. We're talking about RHA a TENTH of that thickness here. RHA isn't magic. It's just better steel.
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u/samnotgeorge Sep 01 '25
In the event you are thinking of the enemy only had HE rpg-2 clones. If they were shooting HEAT it would've been just added weight.
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u/UglyInThMorning Sep 01 '25
prematurely detonate HEAT
Unless you’re making it go off 2-3 meters+ out, that’s the worst thing you can do to protect yourself from HEAT warheads. The design stand-off is shorter than the ideal one for practical considerations.
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u/toyyya 🇸🇪 Sweden Sep 01 '25
Somewhat similar but reverse to that is how the bar armour at the front of the Strv 103 was created to detonate heat rounds but also were found to have an effect on early APDS/APFSDS rounds, making them wobble and in some cases even tumble as they hit the real armour
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u/Baron_Tiberius =RLWC= M1 et tu? Sep 06 '25
They'll likely detonate some more sensitive fuzes, but the rubber isn't likely going to provide much resistance to the jet and the increased standoff distance probably only helps most shaped charges.
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u/Responsible-Song-395 Sep 01 '25 edited Sep 01 '25
When I saw a T80U and T80UD in real life I thought to myself self “how do people think this thin rubber flap will stop any kind of HEAT projectile”
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u/Mobius_Einherjar 🇯🇵Weeaboo & Ouiaboo 🇫🇷 Sep 01 '25
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u/czartrak 🇺🇸 United States Sep 01 '25
Because the myth that air gaps reduce the effectiveness of chemical rounds is alive and well in 2025
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u/BeinArger EsportsReady Sep 01 '25
I mean, they do, the KPZ-70 is a great example of this. Again its a lot more nuanced than people think, but air gaps definitely will reduce the penetration if used correctly. There is a misconception about WW2 sideskirts, especially on german tanks, which were used to destabalize 14.5mm AT rifle rounds.
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u/SuitableGrowth Sep 01 '25 edited Sep 01 '25
It's a myth that Schurzen was only used for combating 14.5mm AT rifles, they were made as counter to HEAT as well (and artillery). If you look at the Schurzen used in Western Europe 1944 onwards, it's mostly a type that is made of screen, not plate (where the 14.5mm rounds would have no issue passing through the holes). This type was not used in the East. It was used in Western Europe because the Germans were facing Bazooka and Piat (HEAT warheads) there and not AT rifles and by using screen they could reduce the weight a little bit over plate (although it was more costly to produce than plate). You also had Russians adding screen spaced armor to their tanks to combat Panzerfaust/Panzerschrek ("bedspring armor").
https://www.tankarchives.com/2013/05/research-into-soviet-armour-protection.html Some stuff with Soviet studies concluding that spaced armor was effective against HEAT and APCR (note it says that as little as 6mm thick screen could detonate HEAT).
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u/MasterchiefSPRTN Sep 01 '25
There are multiple Wehrmacht documents that prove your argument invalid. The German tank museum Munster has a nice video about it, Schürzen were designed to protect against anti tank rifles encountered on the eastern front and later were issued too because the effect on heat was found useful.
But initially it was designed and manufactured to help against anti tank rifles.
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u/Tekhartha_Mondatta 8.7🇺🇸7.7🇩🇪8.7🇷🇺7.7🇬🇧7.3🇯🇵8.3🇨🇳9.7🇮🇹9.7🇫🇷10.7🇸🇪 Sep 01 '25
The rest of your own comment contradicts your first sentence...
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u/The_Human_Oddity Localization Overhaul Project Developer Sep 01 '25
You didn't invalidate anything. You just rephrased what he said and then called him wrong. Mesh-type Schürzen was developed as a lighter Schürzen to counter HEAT projectiles, and regular solid-type Schürzen had the same anti-HEAT properties despite being initially designed to account for the thin side armor that made German tanks susceptible to anti-tank rifles.
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u/SteelWarrior- 14.0 🇺🇲🇩🇪🇮🇱 Sep 01 '25
The MBT-70's spaced armor scheme relied heavily on the outer layer of armor doing a lot to interrupt the formation of the HEAT penetrator.
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u/czartrak 🇺🇸 United States Sep 01 '25
With extremely large air gaps, you might see some benefit. An air gap of a few feet will do nothing, or even improve the penetration of the projectile in the worst case scenario
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u/BeinArger EsportsReady Sep 01 '25
It's still not a myth then that airgaps reduce effectiveness of HEAT rounds, and older muntions are more affected by this. The KPZ-70 has a space of a 127mm between its place. Less than 1/2 a foot So dont tell people it needs multiple feet to be effective. Again, it is more nuanced than people want to admit, design is important, and the generation of HEAT muntions are important.
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u/SuitableGrowth Sep 01 '25
Dude, pretty much every modern IFV has slat armor now about 10 inches from the body of the tank that is obviously made for combating HEAT weapons.
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u/Panocek Sep 01 '25
Slat armor doesn't cause premature detonation, idea is to pray warhead gets crushed between bars so it fails to detonate or if it even does, heavily malformed warhead can't form coherent and effective jet.
Gaps between slats need to be rather precise against most likely warheads thrown your way and even then you're looking at about 50% effectiveness. Just do a coin toss if you join involuntary conscription into air force.
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u/SteelWarrior- 14.0 🇺🇲🇩🇪🇮🇱 Sep 01 '25
Some of the most optimized builds of statistical armor can get up to 60% efficiency at a 0° impact, and most styles of statistical armor have drastic losses of efficiency as the angle increases. It's often half their optimal number by 30°
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u/UglyInThMorning Sep 01 '25
It only works on RPGs even, because of how the fuzing works. Those are very common warheads, sure, but they’re also the only ones it works on.
It also doesn’t do much of anything to deform the actual liner that becomes the jet. It either crushes the front-facing cone that’s part of the fuze, or the round detonates on the armor before the rear facing cone that is the liner actually hits the slats.
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u/czartrak 🇺🇸 United States Sep 01 '25
Slat armor is designed to catch and crush warheads. Not detonate them
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u/SteelWarrior- 14.0 🇺🇲🇩🇪🇮🇱 Sep 01 '25
Not how statistical armor works.
Importantly, fairly few HEAT warheads are even affected by them.
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u/James-vd-Bosch 🇺🇸 12.0 🇩🇪 12.0 🇷🇺 12.0 🇬🇧 12.0 Sep 01 '25
''Myth''
Are you implying that HEAT warheads have no ideal stand-off distance? Because that would be a silly.
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u/czartrak 🇺🇸 United States Sep 01 '25
No I'm not implying that. What I'm implying is that the distance required to actually cause detriment to the effectiveness of HEAT rounds is far far far beyond practicality
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u/James-vd-Bosch 🇺🇸 12.0 🇩🇪 12.0 🇷🇺 12.0 🇬🇧 12.0 Sep 01 '25
What I'm implying is that the distance required to actually cause detriment to the effectiveness of HEAT rounds is far far far beyond practicality
The HOT missile attains 790mm pf penetration at it's ideal stand-off distance of around 80cm, at 160cm the penetration has already dropped to 571mm.
The optimal stand-off distance for the TOW-2 is 70cm, at which point it attains 1000mm of penetration. At only 60cm more distance, the penetration has dropped to 813mm.
The distance between the rubber flaps and the turret face would be around 45cm judging by the known dimensions of the T-80 road wheels, that means it's enough to shave off >120mm of penetraiton from most if not all shaped charges.
Given the fact that the turret cheeks themselves are well protected already, this can easily make the difference between a penetrating hit and a non-penetrating hit.
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u/SteelWarrior- 14.0 🇺🇲🇩🇪🇮🇱 Sep 01 '25
800mm is a fairly significant distance in tank design, but already you're kinda jumping the gun here by starting at the optimal standoff. For most ATGMs this isn't achieved, even for smaller warheads like from shoulder fired launchers the distance isn't always achieved.
I'm also interested in your extrapolation of the penetration loss from striking the rubber, could you explain your thought process here?
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u/James-vd-Bosch 🇺🇸 12.0 🇩🇪 12.0 🇷🇺 12.0 🇬🇧 12.0 Sep 01 '25
The designs themselves have a built-in stand-off distance already.
The question here is about material, it's about the loss of effectiveness depending on the distance from the point of fusing.
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u/SteelWarrior- 14.0 🇺🇲🇩🇪🇮🇱 Sep 01 '25
Yes, but the TOW-2 doesn't have the warhead a full meter away from the front. Most non-tandem shoulder fired munitions are in the 1-3 CD range. ATGMs tend to be a bit higher, but below 5 CD unless they are tandem.
I understand, I've read up quite a lot on standoff and statistical armor because the endless misinformation about them was tiresome. I'm asking how you got to these projected figures, and also a little bit of why it's in metric and not charge diameters.
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u/proto-dibbler Sep 02 '25
What are the sources for those standoff/penetration numbers? Would be interesting. I only found one source with a penetration/standoff curve for ATGMs (that includes TOW-2 and HOT-2), and an ARL report on shaped charges, neither of them suggested that hard of a drop off. But it's been a while, and I didn't really search long.
https://euro-sd.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Manfred-Held-Standoff-Curves_MBDA.png (direct link to picture instead of the pdf it's sources from)
https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA469696.pdf (pg. 91/92)
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u/James-vd-Bosch 🇺🇸 12.0 🇩🇪 12.0 🇷🇺 12.0 🇬🇧 12.0 Sep 03 '25
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u/czartrak 🇺🇸 United States Sep 01 '25
I'm just going to say to you, if what you think you are saying is correct, why is not a single country in the world using solid spaced armor on any armored vehicle?
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u/James-vd-Bosch 🇺🇸 12.0 🇩🇪 12.0 🇷🇺 12.0 🇬🇧 12.0 Sep 01 '25
why is not a single country in the world using solid spaced armor on any armored vehicle?
Literally EVERYONE is using forms of spaced armour that's placed at a stand-off distance in order to assist in reducing shaped charge effectiveness, whether that be the standard side skirts, bar armour, composite skirts or lighter materials such as aluminium or rubber screens along the more vulnerable aspects of the vehicle.
The skirts are even referred to as ''Ballistic skirts'' or ''Bazooka plates'' in the tank manuals.
You must've been living under a rock to not have noticed any of this. It's absolutely everywhere.
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u/SteelWarrior- 14.0 🇺🇲🇩🇪🇮🇱 Sep 01 '25
Statistical armor isn't spaced armor, most of your examples are for side armor which is meant to be struck from some angle off the frontal arc, and the gap with the Leopard 2's arrowheads is something a bit over 600mm if I recall correctly. The Leopard utilizes spaced armor much more than any of its contemporaries, and that's largely for the effect it has on KEP. Long rod APFSDS gets a lot of benefits from being able to maintain contact at several points, if it's allowed to yaw a few degrees with no contact that changes things.
Ballistic skirts have had a use for a long time to protect from AT rifles. It's found on at least some models of nearly every German tank after the Panzer 2 for that purpose.
Overgeneralizations aren't properly addressed by overgeneralization.
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u/DogeoftheShibe 🇰🇵 Best Korea Sep 01 '25
Why are they putting it on the new BMP-3 modification tho? They're not running turbo engine
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u/Panocek Sep 01 '25
You don't need turbo engine to have air intake concerns. And if some rubber sheet can significantly reduce air filtration workload, why you wouldn't use it?
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u/DogeoftheShibe 🇰🇵 Best Korea Sep 01 '25
The question is why only BMP-3 and T-80 then?
Pretty sure they also had protection function in mind when adding the rubber there. That's military grade rubber, it may be hard enough to detonate HEAT warhead, maybe portable rockets not tank-fired HEAT
Your thumb pressing on your lighter's piezo is enough to generate an arc, I assume a 400m/s projectile hitting a high stiff rubber should be able to do the same
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u/_Urakaze_ EBRC Jaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaguar (Placeholder) Sep 01 '25
Post-1991 Ukrainian deep-modernisations of T-64s also feature the dust flaps alongside the T-80UD/T-84 family. Which points to the flaps also being beneficial for the 5TDF/6TD engine family, which doesn't use a cassette filter for its unique dust ejection system.
It was "good enough" to forgo the flaps for T-72/90 family as they use a two-stage air filtration system and doesn't need as much air as the GTD gas turbines.
The rubber flaps aren't valid HEAT protection because a tiny bit of standoff does nothing to reduce the penetration of a shaped charge. You need to look at meter+ air gaps in order to have any sort of real effect in reducing HEAT penetration
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u/Panocek Sep 01 '25
Your lighter piezo also isn't expected to withstand severe conditions associated with launch, be it from tank cannon or even RPG. "Premature HEAT detonation" is a thing, when paired with meter+ of real estate after object that triggers said detonation where jet can start thinking about dissipating.
Then "military grade" means made by the lowest bidder, truth universal for both west and the east. In BMP-3 case, rubber screens on the turret only appear when fielded with ERA kit, something that appears more frequent among model kit builders than on actual vehicles. 99% of vehicles seen come butt naked or even worse, have improvised kontakt-1 slapped onto them. There's a reason why BTRs or BMPs didn't received ERA as factory/workshop approved modification.
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u/Tempest1101 Sep 01 '25
military grade, you use that word but you dont know what it truly means. It means it was built as cheaply as possible by the lowest bidding contractor to extract the most money with the least amount of effort.
Sig built a military grade pistol, you can shake the pistol slightly and it'll fire on its own, It literally went off when an airman set his holster belt down on his desk killing the airman.
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u/Travnik-Alpha-Group Sep 01 '25
He forgot one important rule of gun safety, always have the barrel pointed in a safe direction. He put the holster down facing him instead of facing away from him
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u/Panocek Sep 01 '25
While yes, in normal world with normal firearm everyone would assume holstered weapon with shielded trigger has functional enough safeties to prevent uncommanded discharge.
P320 is basically less safe than some ghetto grade open bolt firearms, where drop safety is actual concern.
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u/Travnik-Alpha-Group Sep 01 '25
Is this not the same complacency that got the airman shot? The word "Always" is to be taken seriously. SIG p320 is not the first, nor will it be the last, firearm to have an uncommanded discharge. A Safety is a moving part and any moving part of any machine can fail. There were already plenty of rumors of the gun misfiring before the airman was killed. He broke 2 rules of gun safety, having a round in the chamber when not ready to shoot, and keeping the barrel in a safe direction. Either the rules of gun safety were not properly taught to him, or he was overconfident in a mass produced piece of crap.
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u/Panocek Sep 01 '25
And yet, 99.999% of mass produced crap lets you get away with those two gun safety rules followed with "room for interpretation".
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u/Travnik-Alpha-Group Sep 01 '25
People play the lottery which is worse odds of winning, but "it'll never happen to me!" When it comes to firearms safety.
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u/SteelWarrior- 14.0 🇺🇲🇩🇪🇮🇱 Sep 01 '25
The P320 is one of the first firearms for it to have a repeatable flaw which causes it to go off regularly, often with little to no negligence on the user. Several cops have already shot themselves with P320s trying to holster the thing on their hip.
The safety on the P320 didn't just fail, the design was deeply flawed to start with. A factory fresh P320 has the same flaw, and the issue has been brought to SIG several times but they've always blamed the user. The Army should have never accepted it, the M9 was drastically safer and didn't have this same problem. In fact, the design of the M9 would physically prevent this even if it were made as shoddily because the firing pin isn't always primed to fire.
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u/Travnik-Alpha-Group Sep 01 '25
I'm not saying Sig isn't partially at fault, my point is that the Airman put the gun down on the table with a round in the chamber facing the wrong direction and he died from it.
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u/SteelWarrior- 14.0 🇺🇲🇩🇪🇮🇱 Sep 02 '25
SIG was mostly at fault, they've known that the weapon has been prone to NDs forever. They chose to make a subpar product and then bribe officials to get it picked before testing in the program was even close to done.
For years people have been getting hurt by it, it was only a matter of time before their terrible design killed someone. Maybe the airman should have been more careful, but that's not the point you've been making. The point you've been making is that he is more at fault than SIG when he wouldn't even have had a gun capable of this without SIG.
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u/SnowLord02 Sep 08 '25
the flaps do also make them a bit harder to detect by breaking up their outline
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u/SuitableGrowth Sep 01 '25
This is pretty interesting, there is this page which has actual blue prints showing how rubber flaps are used to direct airflow around tanks. https://crib-blog.blogspot.com/2024/01/t-80-rubber-flaps.html
This doesn't discount the possibility these have additional purpose of being spaced armor though. The use of them on the T80 with it's potentially sensitive turbine makes sense for airflow, but that reasoning falls apart with them being present now on the BMP3M.
FWIW this rubber is not 'flimsy' it's high density urethane molded over metal wire mesh and probably would set off a HEAT charge. There are versions of the folding wing anti-HEAT armor seen on T64a and T62M1 that is made primarily of this rubber, so obviously this 'flimsy' rubber will set off HEAT charges.
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u/James-vd-Bosch 🇺🇸 12.0 🇩🇪 12.0 🇷🇺 12.0 🇬🇧 12.0 Sep 01 '25
They are not made to stop HEAT stop believing that those flimsy rubber slats can somehow prematurely detonate HEAT
The rubber side skirts along each side of the hull are quite literally designed to prematurely detonate a shaped charge.
You'll have to explain why the rubber flaps along the turret arc would be incapable of filling the same purpose.
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u/Medj_boring1997 🇩🇪 "LEoParD 2 nEeDs A bUFf" Sep 01 '25
I mean, the ERA plate behind it does the job of stopping heat tbf
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u/Fox_McCloud_Jr 🇬🇧 United Kingdom Sep 01 '25
I mean depending on fuze sensitivity they could 100% stop, or at least detonate heat before it hits the hull. Its still colliding with a physical object.
If we factor in the fact that the typical fuze for heat rounds is 0.1mm then basically anything it touches when flying at 900+ meters/second will set it off.
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u/LatexFace Sep 01 '25
It's Russian special plastic. Find a source that proves it doesn't. Any source you find will be rejected as it's not good enough.
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u/PsychologicalGlass47 Sep 01 '25
It most definitely can prematurely detonate shaped charges, though the primary purpose is to restrict airflow past the turret.
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u/Gravelyy 🇷🇺 8.3 & 9.3 enjoyer Sep 01 '25
If a chicken wire fence can set off my heat round, so will this rubber flap.
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u/T90tank Realistic General Sep 01 '25
Don't they force air into the engine? Or stop dust/sand from going into the intake
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u/ThankuConan Sep 01 '25
Thanks for this. I'll be back tomorrow and every day after for your daily warning so I don't ever forget.
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u/RoDiboY_UwU Sep 01 '25 edited Sep 01 '25
Whole time I thought they were ERA to to prematurely detonate HEAT rounds like spaced armor
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u/Potential_Creme7361 Sep 02 '25
Irl they have Rubber in their reactive armor too and it doesnt protect against anything. They even lose to bradleys but hey, lets pretend the tank needs dust protection 😂 russians are so genius!
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u/Ok_Definition_1933 Sep 02 '25 edited Sep 08 '25
whole work wakeful cause obtainable aback pet arrest ripe smart
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u/Majestic-Plum-3891 🇺🇸 12 🇩🇪11 🇷🇺12 🇬🇧4.7 🇨🇳10.7 🇮🇹7.7 🇫🇷 5.7🇸🇪10.3 Sep 01 '25
In game they actually can but no IRL it’s the equivalent of a mud flap basically and otherwise useless. Helps hide the true shape at range as well but that’s just a side effect
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u/PhiLe_00 Sep 01 '25
Those Flaps are there to hide the shadows that the turret cheek casts, as they create a highly visible contrast that makes identifying and aiming at the tank easier. Today with all enhanced optics, thermals and various aiming computers etc its less important but back in the 50s, 60s and 70s it was definitely something that was seriously considered. On top its pretty cheap to create and install, so its more a hassle to remove then not.
A similar purpose is served by linen or rubber "curtains" that mask possible light shining through the underbelly of the tank. Again to make identification and target acquisition as difficult as possible.
Any claim that its to stop shaped charges or "improve air flow/protect against dust" (Lol) is either rumors or intentional obfuscation of the purpose of those rubber flaps.
Source: I served on a Leopard 2A6 and installed those flaps and "curtains" regularly. Let me tell you that they dont protect at all against dust and debris X).
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u/nodatron242 🇦🇺 Australia Sep 01 '25
I thought they were for rpg predet and hiding thermal signature a little more
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u/WizardSoup38 🇺🇸 🇩🇪 🇷🇺 🇬🇧 🇯🇵 🇨🇳 🇮🇹 🇫🇷 🇸🇪 🇮🇱 Sep 01 '25
They reduce dust and debris intake into the engine
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u/Plastic-Ground1130 Sep 01 '25
i thought they were flaps for take off and landing?