Fatal Flaw? Leopard 2 Shot Trap?

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It boils down to; projectiles changed, armor changed. Simple, but it answers a question that keeps nagging at you until you know. Now the question is, will someone go back to older tech to try and take advantage? Probably does not fit well into the current gun technology.

shot traps dont exist when referring to APFSDS rounds, they just shatter and dont bounce This is one of the worst mistakes in warthunders representation of modern tanks, it depicts rod rounds bouncing instead of shattering

I saw a computer simulation of what happens when the APFSDS penetrator impacts sloped armor and finally understand why it defeats sloped armor. Extremely fascinating.

From what I remember of some older videos on youtube the 2A5's wedge armor was only like 500-1000kg of added weight and mostly armored sheets (so indeed spaced). I don't think it was designed to deflect any shell, but instead to destabilize sabot rounds that penetrated the wedge but weren't long enough to bridge the entirety of the spaced armor. Even if an older type of ammo would be fired at it, the question is how sturdy this wedge really is. If it is thin sheet metal, then even older ammo will not have an issue penetrating it and hitting the main armor underneath. In which case there would not be a shot trap since the shell would be able to penetrate the wedge. The main armor would likely have no issues stopping a 70 year old cannon, so I don't even expect a potential weakness here. The side wedges felt to me like they needed to open in order to get the engine out of the tank, not just to store things underneath. When turned 90 degrees to the side, the turret of a 2A4 barely clears the engine cover on top of the back of the hull. That is what it seemed like on some Revell model kits of Leopard 2 at least.

Short answer: Modern projectiles don't ricochet. There, I saved you twelve and a half minutes.

Sabra tank also uses spaced armor, an upgrade kit for M60s. We have used them in Syria against ATGMs, RPGs etc, they outperformed naked 2A4s by far. It really works well, God knows why they aren't more common. Perhaps because financial reasons, as explained in the video add-on armor isn't so easy to implement rather often heavy modifications are needed. So countries are postponing these upgrades, our 2A4s will be upgraded as well but it will take several years. We didn't move gunner sight up but there is add-on armor almost all around including hull front and sides.

The simple answer is that this is just spaced armor. Its not a huge extra heavy wall added on the turret, but rather it is a large empty box that weight 500kgs that are sitting in front of the turret and forces incoming enemy shots to travel many extra decimeters before it can start blowing a hole into the main armor of the tank. The enemy projectile lose force before it reach the tank, and armor protection gets increased with a minimal cost of extra weight.

The T-72 with the "Dolly Parton" compostite armor was very similar.

Nice to see some more Videos on this. This is a real question peopel ask. I have been asked about this by friends who only know WW2 tanks and who wonder about this.

Even if someone were to use "old" solid armour-piercing ammunition, the wedge armour would hardly act as a shot trap. The plates, which are only about 2 cm thick, would be too weak for this and would not deflect the impacting projectile. The projectile would simply penetrate and then fail against the main armour. I suspect that the greatest danger here would come from relatively small-calibre ammunition, which would be too weak to penetrate the wedge armour, although this would probably not endanger the tank's ceiling plate either. As far as I know, the statement that the additional armour is primarily effective against HEAT is not true. The armour is actually intended to break the long penetrators. The armour plates of the wedge are two-layered, whereby the two layers can move against each other and thus pinch the relatively thin "arrow" and make it swing so that its tip no longer hits the main armour vertically and breaks.

7:45 - Also Japanese Type 10 I believe has "arrow" shaped turret. Though it is smaller and as such less protection against APFSDS. For APFSDS it is important that projectile is shorter than the space between "armors". Because that makes it tumble (or at least changes angle) after it pierced first layer but before it hits the "real" turret. So it depends on which height it also hits, since right in the middle you have most space. On the edges, much less so and if the round is longer than this space it will "almost" behave like it was going through single piece of armor that has thickness of combined layers (outer "arrowhead" and inner "turret") of armor. "Almost", because there still will be deformation and some additional protection. That means that this armor is very good against even latest Soviet APFSDS rounds, but some Russian ones that are especially long (though from memory autoloader makes rounds above certain length impossible) could defeat it or at least would suffer much smaller "penalty" when trying.

Thank you Bernhard and Tobias. Most enlightening.

Great discussion!

The Channel @Sabelzahnmowe did a Video on this exact topic ~1 Month ago - would love to see you both collab one day! :)

What I know which aint much but that wedge is kind of empty space and makes APFSDS dart to stumble so it wont hit nose on to main armor.

The world has moved on from solid shot. Theatre Entry Standard = TES and Challenger has Dorchester armour.

I've been wondering this exact question since 10 years ago(thank you WOT Interesting and glad to see someone actually made a video answering the question!

Glad to see the disclaimer at the start. Governments have to have their priorities right.

Thanks, very interesting.