Russia's new 'masterpiece' tank breaks down during parade rehearsal

That is embarrassing, the only thing worse would be if it were to breakdown right in front of Putin's reviewing stand at the Victory Day parade and needed to be towed away.

I like the idea of the remote-controlled gun turret but am very skeptical of the claims made about how great of tank this is going to be.

Every singe Russian/Soviet tank, less the T34, performed far lower than the west expected. This is nothing new, but still funny.

I see no point in having people in a tank anymore.

Automation is nice but I'd still rather have someone manning it.

Because they break down and it's handy to have a person on board to fix it.

Also, the remote control gunnery thing is pretty cool especially if you want to use a tank battalion for a TOT indirect artillery attack.

The cold war may be over but it looks like they kept the same idiot Soviet era engineers.

No, they've always looked at their tank crews as completely disposable as any other piece of mass produced equipment so they'll be sticking with the quantity-over-quality method until the end of time. Give it another ten or fifteen years and these new tanks will be as easily shredded by Western equipment and gunners as any of their other crap proved to be, going all the way back to the Korean war through to the Golan Heights to the Bekka valley to the slaughterhouses in Kuwait and Iraq. They're a threat because of their numbers and that's all.

has a quality all its own.

As in how of the best German tanks were overwhelmed by of cheap, shoddy Russian tanks.

More because the Germans were getting overwhelmed everywhere else too, especially with the bulk of the Luftwaffe assigned to defence against Allied bombers attacking German cities. Not losing a quarter million men in North Africa, then another 400,000 in Italy, and then another million after D-Day, along with all their associated equipment, and that result on the Eastern front suddenly turns out to be a hell of a lot different. Delete the several hundred thousand Chevy, Ford, and Studebaker heavy truck that the US gave to the Russians and all of a sudden their armies aren't moving forward quite as quickly either.

has a quality all its own.

As in how of the best German tanks were overwhelmed by of cheap, shoddy Russian tanks.
Or thousands of cheap, mass-produced Shermans? Although in that case it wasn't so much an overwhelming as a battle of attrition that Germany couldn't possibly win.
The principle was still the same though, "we can afford much heavier losses than you".
And in all seriousness, the "finest" German tanks were mechanical nightmares. The Panther was an up-gunned, up-armoured verison of the PzIV but with the same damn drivetrain. The final drive kept breaking so often that tank commanders were afraid to let them go above 10-15mph in open country. And the Tiger had its own mechanical issues on top of being slower than molasses in January.

Or thousands of cheap, mass-produced Shermans?

... and most of those were seriously undergunned, too turning their crews into pure cannon fodder ...

lest we forget

I really like the concept of an unmanned turret, though I think the Russians did it wrong in this case.

You still want it reasonably well armoured, enough to stop any small arms fire from jamming your auto-loader. But you can focus all your thick armour on the hull. Lowers centre of gravity and gives you more hull armour to protect the crew than a regular tank.

The other thing you can do with a crewless tank is make it very low profile. The Abrams and Leo 2 are 2.4 and 2.6 meters tall respectively, you could trim that down to 2 meters or less when you don't need to fit people in your turret. The Armanta is no where near that short, it's at least 2.5 meters tall.

I have no doubt this tank will have as good of mobility as it's predecessors, and I think it will have better crew survivability, but it'll still be turned to mince meat by Leos 2s with the L55 at long ranges, and Abrams/Leo 2s with the L44 at short ranges.

has a quality all its own.

As in how of the best German tanks were overwhelmed by of cheap, shoddy Russian tanks.
Or thousands of cheap, mass-produced Shermans? Although in that case it wasn't so much an overwhelming as a battle of attrition that Germany couldn't possibly win.
The principle was still the same though, "we can afford much heavier losses than you".
And in all seriousness, the "finest" German tanks were mechanical nightmares. The Panther was an up-gunned, up-armoured verison of the PzIV but with the same damn drivetrain. The final drive kept breaking so often that tank commanders were afraid to let them go above 10-15mph in open country. And the Tiger had its own mechanical issues on top of being slower than molasses in January.

I'll bet the final drives broke mostly because of sabotage by the Jewish slave labour that was forced to build them.

Then there was the Elephant . . .