A T-80 tank flies off a ramp and fires its gun in mid air all to the theme music of "Lost in Space" now THATS entertainment http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JapGjEkve4M
That is entertaining.Imagine the damage just one modern MBT could do on any pre-1980's battlefield!The speed and mobility of todays MBT's is incredible!
Yes, M1 Abrams is faster. But it also weighs ~60 tons, depending on the model, whereas T-80 weighs less than 50 tons. My point is, Abrams' suspension might not be able to cope with that kind of jumping. It's some kind of show-off for the Russians; they're very often showing the jumping abilities of T-80 and T-90.
Some crews have got their M1s airborne, sometimes even unintentionally or so I've heard. For an example see here about 55 seconds in: http://youtube.com/watch?v=q0Oen7VEXN4 if you tried you could probably get almost any post '60s MBT airborne, if you had to order parts for it afterwards is another matter. On Youtube there is footage of a Canadian Leopard 1 doing something similar to that russian tank. http://youtube.com/watch?v=acUNmIq8D8g It's not good for any tank, you will break suspension components from time to time and eventually put stress cracks in the hull. It does look pretty neat though.
M1A1 faster? I always thought the T-80 was ~5kph faster; even if I'm wrong it is only by a negligable about. However, the max speed of a tank refers to on-road speed, and the T-80 has significatly better off-road performance than the larger and heavier M1A1... Largely because the Russians seem to prize mobility and speed over armor and protection, and thin-skinned tanks like the T-80 rely almost entirely upon Kontakt-5 ERA cells for protection... However it does make the tank light enough to warrant excellent cross country performance, which it need because Russia doesnt exactly have mirror-smooth roads :smok:
