this post was submitted on 16 Mar 2024
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I am so tickled by the hubris necessary to use an actual jet engine in your tank. Maybe I'm wrong and everyone does it, but to me it seems like the kind of thing you do if you can't imagine ever having to hide the tank, you build a giant bridge-cracker with a jet engine inside. It seems like signature reduction in a peer conflict was not something the designers ever thought about when sketching up their Big Gun Imperialism Mobile.
Both the Americans and the Soviets went to a jet turbine on their MBT at around the same time, but the Russians decided it wasn't worth it with the next generation and went back to diesel.
So don't quote me on this, but I think soviet T-80 also uses a turbine engine (for S P E E D). It also has some kinda angled exhaust, so it doesn't quite deafen you when you see it frontally, but it roars something fierce when you're to the side of it
It offers a lot of power in a smaller and lighter package than an equivalent diesel engine, but it tells you something about how much of an advantage that really winds up being when the later Abramses all added batteries to shore up the biggest weakness of the turbine engine (large fuel consumption at idle) and the Russians went back to diesel engines with the T-90.
And this is related to the relative capabilities of USA vs Russian in terms of logistics.
The Americans can generally afford the fuel, and the logistics tail to keep it flowing.
Russia cannot.
How well the M1A1 serves Ukraine remains to be seen, but so far they've gotten pretty fantastic performance out of every weapon system they've been given, from Javelins to Patriots.