War Thunder's M1 Abrams Controversy 

Still extremely busy with the holidays but I managed to throw this together. Happy New Year!

You missed probably the most infuriating part of Gaijin's dev blog on the M1: They claimed the main reason the M1 cannot have a DU armour is because the suspension wouldn't be able to handle the weight. But they modeled the weight of the DU armour anyways, just without the armour....

A friendly reminder the April Fools event vehicles had a higher BR than their current in game counterparts

Knowing Gaijin if anyone asked for the M10 Booker they'd say its too recent of a vehicle to accurately represent in the game... As they slowly push the Sprut and the 2s38 under the table

This isn't even about there being DU in the hull, it's completely ignoring the improvements in the conventional composite array that happened from the M1A1 to the HC to the A2. So you have tanks running around in Mod.0 Abrams hulls. Maybe getting more chemical resistance and multistrike capability isn't all that "wow" in WT with all the APDSFS flying around, but still.

What I don’t understand is gaijin using the “never used is service” excuse like dawg y’all had the MAUS and E-100 for sale at one point never used in service means nothing

The end conclusion is that the Sep v3 needs added which actually adds armor upgrades of sorts

i love that gaijin excuse is that SEP V2 didn't have DU armor so it would be unrealistic cuz it was only on 5 models but at same time the AZUR kit was fitted on the Leclerc S2 in game despite it being only a one off demonstrator and it actually entered service on the SXX1 ............................................. zZz zZz Happy new years anyways !

Hot take: You should only be allowed to purchase a top tier premium vehicle if you have at least a rank V tech tree vehicle in at least 1 nation.

Gaijin "Don't fuck up US Vehicles whilst buffing and modeling Paper Specs of Russian vehicles" challenge: Literally Impossible

I like the idea of modelling internal elements like the turret basket. A lot of tanks like the Challenger have a LOT of stuff in there that would help. I'm sure other tanks do too.

I think the snail should add in more interesting/funny vehicles to the game mainly for minor nations (Including the UK and former colonies) for example the British bishop tank or the tracked rapier missile system

"it starved to death" brother that goes for every war thunder player not only USA

i think a big issue is that Gaijin has no Data to base the Effectiiveness of DU armor. for the T90M they could just reuse the Armor of the T90A and beef it up a bit there is also a ton of Data for Russian Tank Armor aviable, with Western Designs its a lot harder (please dont start leaking Documents again)

Also Spook i think your right about the needing more support vehicles.... they dont even have the M2 Variants of the Bradly series if IFV in game only its counter part the M3 series known as the Cavalry Fighting Vehicle.... while M2 series is the Infantry Fighting Vehicle, nor their upgrade to armor packages.

Adding Flak Jackets as a researchable option and increasing crew survivability with it researched sounds like it would help a lot.

Thanks for different perspective. All I'd heard about about this before was just people mostly talking about the spall liner but as an American main it'd be nice to at least see some changes

0:04 If Futurama characters were smart they would kill those things on-site.

"getting a good shot on a tank and having the round do nothing" *crys in British*

Oh and they still haven't modeled the challenger 2 correctly

Even Red Effect is skeptical about Gaijin's portrayal of M1A2 SEPV2.

So we need spall liners on all the M113 based vehicles, got it.

The most annoying thing about it is, they SAID 5 tanks had DU hull armor...but didn't add it because it 'wasn't enough'! That is absolutley outrages to me, considering that a LOT of nations have a fair amount of paper vehicles or experimental vehicles. Using the same logic, they should remove the HO229 from germany!

I hope you will cover the Problems with the Ariete especially the armor, I know you don't usually dive into top tier, I think the Ariete and Merkava are the tanks Gaijin has done poorly modeling.

I think that even with improved armour gaijjn would either ignore it or just hope that the number they picked is close enough

The funniest thing to me is that people are only shouting about DU hull, which exists i 5 examples as Gaijin mentioned, but none are talking about quite high possibility that hull was upgraded using DUless materials to save weight. Technology exists since DUless armor was developed alongside with DU one with emphasis on as close performance as possible (same as it was with KE-W APFSDS). There are photographs from pre SEPv3 era showing Abrams hull composite packages being cut open in the factory which would be completely pointless if armor was not replaced.

The issues with the spall liner is that Gaijin modeled them completely wrong. Spall liners do next to nothing against APFSDS, they were designed to protect the crew from high explosive rounds like HESH or an artillery shell from fragmenting the internal armor on a close enough shell. The fragments from a penetrating round would be pieces of the dart itself that shears off as it perforates the armor plate and that little Kevlar lining ain't doing anything to even slow that down. There are photos of penetrated T-72s from Iraq that just show a small clean hole inside of the tank. The tell-tale signs though are of the scorching all over internally. Those shards of DU are under extreme pressure during the shearing and perforation process and are well above the material's combustion values. Once they hit the oxygenated internal compartment, they immediately combust and act much like solid white phosphorus mini bullets flying through the internals of the tank. Also, an MBT's internal NERA portions of the composite matrix already acts as a natural spall liner. The mixed density NERA absorbs and redirects energy throughout the tanks armor so there's little to no worry about spalling. There are M1s that have taken massive IEDs and mines and the crews survived. Any injuries or deaths that occurred weren't from spalling but of the massive energies of the tank being thrown about and the people inside pinballing around violently, slamming into things as they got tossed about. Even the report you used stated it was for shrapnel protection on thinly armored vehicles and referencing artillery or high explosives-based rockets and the like. Also, looking at photos of armored sections of the older M1 series tanks being taken off, the NERA sits directly against the interior hull. So you have this spongey/rubbery composite material sitting directly against the inner backing plate so there's a built in spall liner already for the Abrams so it doesn't need a tertiary one installed. Again, that's if a spall liner was modeled properly at all anyways. As to the DU, the updated source actually corrects the quantity from 5 in storage to an undisclosed and unquantified number. This means that whoever made the original wasn't truly aware of the real number due to not being in the loop due to security reasons or purposely tried to use disinformation on an official document and it got caught and was corrected. The pushback from the community comes from every other nation's tanks having much better hull armor than the Abrams in game and it getting better and better each patch for literally no reason at all. The irony of this being that the US and UK were the pioneers of composite armor research on the NATO side of things yet the Germans who had to figure it out themselves and who admitted that it probably wasn't quite as good as what the UK/US was using was given an armor value in game almost twice that of what the Abram's effectivity was with thinner NERA and steel plates. So you had the Leopard 2A4 with twice the effectivity despite having modeled thinner steel armor and backing plates and a thinner NERA composite and it's been downhill since then. This was more a case of the straw that broke the camels back rather than the big hope that DU would be the game changer. The spall liners given an absolutely massive buff versus what they do in real life is what's staggering. Russia pushed spall liners because they couldn't increase armor as they were limited by hull volume and had limited composite armor coverage. They knew there were areas where their tanks were vulnerable to artillery splash damage and that NATO favored specialized high explosives shells and big ass bombs.

I just wish they would fix M735. I play Japan and my current line up are the Type 16s. I can not pen T72's nor Leopards nor really anything. It feels like playing the British comet which it too has an under performing gun. It also feels like there is a lot of walls where I get instant sniped though the foliage or when I poke out anywhere.

US teammates at top tier are literally useless. I'm glad Gaijin attempted to fix this by giving them an 11.3 premium 🙄

There is enough information to suggest that SEP had a DU hull. The license in 1999 expressly stated 5 hulls but this was removed in the 2006 amendment. 2nd the pentagon has stated the the reason it takes so long for abrams to be sent to Ukraine is because DU has to be removed from the turrets and hulls. SEPV3 has just started it's fielding in July of 2020 not expecting to be finished until 2028. The hulls being stripped of DU is seps and m1a1hc (USMC). With recent releases stating they are going to use m1 hulls in storage from the cold war to increase production of the Ukrainian M1s All of this doesn't matter, tho because Gaijin wants definitive armor values. The SEPv1/v2 armor package is still currently in service. So until 2029, we will probably not have the document Gaijin wants.

The UFP ricochet and the turret ring are the most glaring issues with the M1 these days, even though I play Germany top tier I feel for US tanks, they definitely get the shaft even worse than most countries. I feel like they design Russian tanks for fun (I'm looking at you 2S38) and hold every other country to some arbitrary balance standard.

There honestly isn't a good reason not to give the Abrams a DU hull. If the T-90M gets a spall liner, you balance it with a DU hull for the Abrams. It's the logical thing to do.

Happy new year Spookston!

So Gajin has Russian bias still? What's new?

"Box" is my favourite Quote of yours

Anyone else been having an odd struggle killing the click-baits...? My rounds seem to just get eaten by the turret ring

Its important to remember that m829a3 was designed to counter Kaktus era from the object 640 project, which was similar to Ukrainian Nizh heavy era, it was also designed to counter emerging era threats as well as increase the capabilities of the 120mm gun, so it most likely can counter even current gen era like Relikt pretty effectively.

Idk about the spall liner. The Abrams clearly has something to help with spalling. You can find pictures of Abrams being penetrating from the side by a tandem RPG and it had to little no spalling. The crew was perfectly fine and the tank was 100% operational. So something in there helps with spalling. Either something in the armor or it has some sort of spall liner. Maybe just not a traditional spall liner.

we need to leak more

I remember watching a tv show in 2010 and they had a US solider inside a tank saying they had a pretty good Kevlar spall liner and he even tapped on it. The show was talking about different shells and they were talking about HESH at the time.

I love how reddit was immediately like "LOok he picked our side!" "NO OURS!"

Coming back from watching a video from another RU-vidr with an animal mascot, I’m very thankful that you put your sources directly in the video very frequently.

honestly to solve this issue, I think having trophy and iron fist would ease alot of the high tier US woes. That or balancing US and other countries that are lacking in SPAA to have a cheaper spawn for air to air loadouts on planes, etc.

someone once told me, the M1 was called the M1 ABOOMS

Another thing is the Abram’s gun can’t kill itself in a battle in Afghanistan one was damaged was able to move so another friendly Abram’s was trying to kill it from every angle and couldn’t pin it

I’ve heard from an ex-tanker on TikTok that the Abrams he drove was equipped with spall liners.

I would flood my dungarees with hot fecal stew if they added the M10 Booker

I really haven't had a problem with the premium players leaving after one death at top tier. The biggest is the just the survivability between the strv 122+, 2a7 and t-90, before it was mainly Russian players pressing W and now its three nations. Simply because they already know, its going to take more than one shot to kill them and everyone and their mother knows how to easily one shot and abrams.

speaking of US support vehicles, I honestly want to see the XM246 at 8.3

If you're ever interested in first hand accounts from an Abrams crewman, I'd be more than happy to give some insight. I served as a driver, loader, and gunner on a few M1A2 SEPv2s across the armor company I was in for 6 years before getting out.

My reload is 5 flat in Abram.

they should add DU as a modification if its only on 5 vehicles

I agree that adding du wouldn't change much. If they added m829a3 to the game, it would change a lot only if modeled correctly which we already know they would not because look at DM53 which should be able to penetrate through kontakt 5. I think what would actually help is better cas like harm missiles, better players, and longer range maps. Longer range maps increases the armor protection of all tanks, but at the same time people stock or without laser range finders would not have the best of time.

I can still remember when talks about Leo 2A7 and T-90Ms was considered a joke.

red effect signal boost video, lesgoooo

I know this is about the abrams controversy, but i just realized you can see the impact of the sabot when firing APFSDS at 2:43, i haven’t reached top tier or at least cold war era so this detail just made me go “oh cool”

since the obj 292s been added.... wheres the thumper?

hey spook, would you mind making a vid on the f15a and ain7m and how gaijin fucked up a LOT. also, happy new year.

As someone who works on the M1 as a mechanic, the main problem with it is it has been in service for so many years and yet the Army is just forcing Mods on it to keep it up to "up to date" and it is a nightmare to work on. Dont do it

0:30 I thought we're gonna leak another classified military documents in here.

hey Spookston can you revisit the PUMA last time was a year ago when it was 8.3 would like to see how it preforms now

Nothing would really change gameplay wise if it received the DU armor inserts in-game and it'd certainly be better than giving the SEPv2 access to M829A3. M829A2 is already one of the best apfsds in the game whilst A3 would also likely counter Relikt at closer ranges, which would just make create a whole another issue coming from the USSR players.

I dont know if i can say. but Bradley and M1 has spall liner. Its standard from the factory.

I saw this in my recommended and legit thought it was a reupload for some reason. It looked so similar to the Scandal vid XD

Honestly the one thing they need to do is just model the tank properly. The turret ring is not a weak point. The clearance between turret and hull is like 30mm, how the hell does gaijin think that squeezing a 105mm+ shell into that gap makes the slightest lick of sense?

Videos from former tankers have said there were spall liners

Mad respect to spookston for standing up to the angry reddit crowd. Facts and documentation beat impulse and emotion every time. I can't exaggerate how much I'm enjoying American tears right now. I'd like this video 1000 times if I could. A+ video spooks, keep it up 💪🏼

I mean... if you look at the turret armor 800mm nera plus additional steel it still gets penned easily on the cheeks by a 520mm apfsds round... like whats the math behind that?

I think another us vehicle they could add would be the other Stryker variants like the dragon with the 30mm bushmaster and 4 hellfire missile and maybe at the same br as something like the villas or freccia would be a nice addition the their top tier lineup

Maybe now is a bad time to mention that nearly all the USSR tanks that would have it lack the inclusion of their interior Podboi lining, which also functions as a spall liner?

where the active duty tanker with the classified docs at?! could settle this real quick.

@Spookston The Army upgrades its tank based on the expected peer threat and not their current Op as well as general programed upgrade for the tank. And mind you the SEP v2 uses HAP 5 armor (army designation for DU armor) so were missing alot of armor oh btw if anybody wants an semi-accurate guestimate on the effectiveness of the DU armor: measure the weld line from the bare turret face to the composite armor face and × by 1.2 to 1.4 for KE and 1.6 to 1.8 for CE

Gaigin always messed with the USA battle rating on tanks wondering 🤔 why.

Abrams has spall liners but they are not visible

hey spookston, can you play the duster? i swear to god they nerfed the fire rate of it and made it even harder to use...

While i don't know if they used DU hulls I was told by a tanker that they did in fact have DU armor when they were in Iraq. So i think its possible but its something maybe the govt doesnt want to put it out in the open so that everyone knows their secrets🤷‍♂️

The thing is I remember looking into M829A3 and I’m pretty sure the document I was looking through (US ARMY technical document, I would have to find it) says M829A3 was made to counter Relikt, could’ve said Kontack 5 though

So can someone point me out to where the 2S38 actually saw service? Because if that’s what they’re going off of then idk

99.9% of US Mains problems would be solved if they all had proper line ups. I die within 1 minute of my T-90M usually but I have a T-80BVM in reserve which usually last longer. Meanwhile the 2/3rd of the US Teams are full of AIMs, Clickbaits and Wolfpacks that leave after one death leaving the poor handful of actually skilled and Veteran US Mains to carry the surviving team.

While it may not be any different to the previous abrams in gameplay terms, it was still an important addition to the game if only because its an incredibly iconic and cool looking varient of the tank. They'll just have to add v3 next update

As per Gaijin not adding M829A3 because they believe it won’t make a difference in top-tier, I believe they were meaning against Relikt ERA from the Rank 8 T-90M and T-80BVM. Those are true top-tier presently. T-72B3M, T-80U, T-80UK, T-90A, T-90S etc., with Kontakt-5, are technically no longer top-tier because they are Rank 7 and not Rank 8. This means their statement holds true, as Relikt performs 50% better than Kontakt-5.

spook are you sick man two top tier videos in three days!!! something is fishy

Ha, Red Effect made a video which came to the exact same conculsion, WT Reddit tore him apart, lets see how they take it from a CC they like a bit more...

Spall liner may not be such a problem, if there will be added mechanic which will simulate dasing of the crew after their tank is being hit. Something like blackout in ARB. Lets say , 1-2 seconds for no pen, 4-5 seconds for penetration.

Happy new year spookston. Could you sometime play the Russian yag-10

@5:02 I legitimately don't understand a certain war thunder redditor's idea that the world's most powerful military would easily do X and Y. It's such a flawed argument in the first place. .

Happy new years spooky pookie

happy new year guys

I remember that there was a competition between the Abrams and the Leopard 2 on a Swiss tender, where the leopard 2 won in all categories. Both tanks were extensively tested, to see witch one should they adopt into service. I don't think the Abrams is a good tank design. (sorry americans) That bigass exposed turret ring is basically a GIANT weakspot, where shots doesn't even have to fully penetrate (realistically). Weight and size is another weakness. Being a huge target doesn't help. You know, the Tiger problem, where some bridges were too weak to support the weight. Try to do some crosscountry in eastern europe in the spring or fall. Also generally just transporting them... Upkeep cost is way higher than its competitors, mostly due to the engine. (fuel efficiency as well) Just thought i add my fev cents...

Happy new year spooky

I miss when this game was just WW2 tanks

Happy new year

“Just make up a number” lmao

Third attempt to ask spook to play the t34-85

Funny that since the Challenger 2 got added all britain top tier got was a heavier and heavier challenger 2 with no useful upgrades other than nera i cant see why the abrams is such a huge issue other than its a major nation

Didnt you suggest the sep v2 in one of your earlier videos, I might be wrong

Gaijin adding the 2s38 and 2s25m doesnt exactly contradict historical implementation, they were just pre production vehicles as opposed to adding v3 armor on the v2 which is just nonsense. Theres no reason to add v3 armor to the v2, when the v3 can just be added instead. The winrates are entirely due to premium spam, and will likely even out once they add premiums to germany and russia.

>Doesn't know the exact performance of the armor on the classified modern variants of the M1 >Adds T-90M. Yeah ok.

Spall liners aside, Abram’s have more slight advantages over the Leopard. So if spall liners weren’t just added, America ground is better

Our engineers really need to figure out that turret ring problem. Like it’s such an obvious weak point along with the gun breach section on the front