Ariete
Encyclopedia
The C1 Ariete is the main battle tank
Main battle tank
A main battle tank , also known as a battle tank or universal tank, is a tank that fills the heavy direct fire role of many modern armies. They were originally conceived to replace the light, medium, heavy and super-heavy tanks. Development was spurred onwards in the Cold War with the development...

 of the Italian Army
Italian Army
The Italian Army is the ground defence force of the Italian Armed Forces. It is all-volunteer force of active-duty personnel, numbering 108,355 in 2010. Its best-known combat vehicles are the Dardo infantry fighting vehicle, the Centauro tank destroyer and the Ariete tank, and among its aircraft...

, developed by a consortium formed by Iveco
Iveco
Iveco, an acronym for Industrial Vehicle Corporation, originally an alliance of European commercial vehicle manufacturers such as Fiat , Unic and Magirus. Iveco is now an Italian truck, bus, and diesel engine manufacturer, based in Turin...

-Fiat
Fiat
FIAT, an acronym for Fabbrica Italiana Automobili Torino , is an Italian automobile manufacturer, engine manufacturer, financial, and industrial group based in Turin in the Italian region of Piedmont. Fiat was founded in 1899 by a group of investors including Giovanni Agnelli...

 and Oto Melara
Oto Melara
Oto Melara is an Italian defence company with factories in Brescia and La Spezia. It was founded in 1905 as a joint venture of Vickers and Terni. During World War I, Vickers Terni produced many weapons with calibre 40 mm and upwards. In 1929 the company was renamed Odero Terni Orlando with the...

 (aka CIO, Consorzio Iveco Oto Melara). The chassis and engine were produced by Iveco, while the turret and fire-control system were produced by Oto Melara. The vehicle carries the latest optical and digital-imaging and fire-control systems, enabling it to fight day and night and to fire on the move. The first deliveries were in 1995, and the last occurred 8 years later in August 2002.

Armament

The Ariete is mounted with a 120 mm smoothbore
Smoothbore
A smoothbore weapon is one which has a barrel without rifling. Smoothbores range from handheld firearms to powerful tank guns and large artillery mortars.-History of firearms and rifling:...

 Oto Melara cannon, autofrettage
Autofrettage
Autofrettage is a metal fabrication technique in which a pressure vessel is subjected to enormous pressure, causing internal portions of the part to yield and resulting in internal compressive residual stresses. The goal of autofrettage is to increase the durability of the final product...

d and stress-hardened to increase durability over extended periods of fire, allowing the use of APFSDS
Kinetic energy penetrator
A kinetic energy penetrator is a type of ammunition which, like a bullet, does not contain explosives and uses kinetic energy to penetrate the target....

 and (HEAT
Heat
In physics and thermodynamics, heat is energy transferred from one body, region, or thermodynamic system to another due to thermal contact or thermal radiation when the systems are at different temperatures. It is often described as one of the fundamental processes of energy transfer between...

) rounds.

Secondary armament consists of a 7.62 mm coaxial machine gun and another 7.62 mm anti-aircraft
Anti-aircraft warfare
NATO defines air defence as "all measures designed to nullify or reduce the effectiveness of hostile air action." They include ground and air based weapon systems, associated sensor systems, command and control arrangements and passive measures. It may be to protect naval, ground and air forces...

 machine gun manned by the tank commander.

Crew and tank protection

The Ariete's armour is a steel
Steel
Steel is an alloy that consists mostly of iron and has a carbon content between 0.2% and 2.1% by weight, depending on the grade. Carbon is the most common alloying material for iron, but various other alloying elements are used, such as manganese, chromium, vanadium, and tungsten...

 and composite
Composite armour
Composite armour is a type of vehicle armour consisting of layers of different material such as metals, plastics, ceramics or air. Most composite armour are lighter than their all-metal equivalent, but instead occupy a larger volume for the same resistance to penetration...

 blend, similar to the British
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 Challenger 2 tank
Challenger 2 tank
FV4034 Challenger 2 is a British main battle tank currently in service with the armies of the United Kingdom and Oman. It was designed and built by the British company Vickers Defence Systems . The manufacturer advertises it as the world's most reliable main battle tank...

 and the American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 M1 Abrams
M1 Abrams
The M1 Abrams is a third-generation main battle tank produced in the United States. It is named after General Creighton Abrams, former Army Chief of Staff and Commander of US military forces in Vietnam from 1968 to 1972. The M1 is a well armed, heavily armored, and highly mobile tank designed for...

.

The Ariete features two side-mounted, electronically fired grenade launchers. Each launcher consists of four barrels which can be intermixed with either smoke or chaff
Chaff (radar countermeasure)
Chaff, originally called Window by the British, and Düppel by the Second World War era German Luftwaffe , is a radar countermeasure in which aircraft or other targets spread a cloud of small, thin pieces of aluminium, metallized glass fibre or plastic, which either appears as a cluster of secondary...

 grenades. The smoke grenades are capable of shrouding the tank from visual or thermal detection, while the chaff grenades disperse the tank's radar cross section
Radar cross section
Radar cross section is a measure of how detectable an object is with a radar. A larger RCS indicates that an object is more easily detected.An object reflects a limited amount of radar energy...

.
The tank is fully NBC protected.

Fire control and target acquisition

The tank's fire-control system, manufactured by Galileo Avionica, is designated TURMS, and includes day and night panoramic capability for the commander's scope, stabilized gunner's platform including thermal optics
Thermography
Infrared thermography, thermal imaging, and thermal video are examples of infrared imaging science. Thermal imaging cameras detect radiation in the infrared range of the electromagnetic spectrum and produce images of that radiation, called thermograms...

 and a laser rangefinder to increase accuracy and expedite target detection and targeting, and a digital fire-control mini-computer, which is capable of measuring wind speed
Wind speed
Wind speed, or wind velocity, is a fundamental atmospheric rate.Wind speed affects weather forecasting, aircraft and maritime operations, construction projects, growth and metabolism rate of many plant species, and countless other implications....

, humidity
Humidity
Humidity is a term for the amount of water vapor in the air, and can refer to any one of several measurements of humidity. Formally, humid air is not "moist air" but a mixture of water vapor and other constituents of air, and humidity is defined in terms of the water content of this mixture,...

, and exterior weather conditions, combining them with the turret's angle of elevation
Elevation (ballistics)
In ballistics, the elevation is the angle between the horizontal plane and the direction of the barrel of a gun, mortar or heavy artillery. Originally, elevation was a linear measure of how high the gunners had to physically lift the muzzle of a gun up from the gun carriage to hit targets at a...

, attitude, and the barrel's physical wear to increase accuracy.

Powerplant and drivetrain

The Ariete is powered by a 25.8 litre turbo-charged
Turbocharger
A turbocharger, or turbo , from the Greek "τύρβη" is a centrifugal compressor powered by a turbine that is driven by an engine's exhaust gases. Its benefit lies with the compressor increasing the mass of air entering the engine , thereby resulting in greater performance...

 Fiat-Iveco 12-cylinder diesel engine rated at 937 kilowatts (1250HP) at 2300 rpm, with a max torque of 4.615 Nm at 1600 rpm driving through a ZF LSG3000 automatic transmission
Automatic transmission
An automatic transmission is one type of motor vehicle transmission that can automatically change gear ratios as the vehicle moves, freeing the driver from having to shift gears manually...

, with four forward gears and two reverse, allowing for a top cruising speed of 65 km/h. The transmission allows it to climb grades rated up to 60%, and can ford waterways of up to 1.25-m on-the-fly.

Further development

During the first years of adoption, the Ariete MBT showed some deficiencies regarding the powerplant. While the original V12 1,250 hp FIAT-Iveco MTCA (Modular Turbo-Charged Aftercooler) was a coupling of two of the V6 engines used by several Italian Army vehicles such as the Centauro tank destroyer
Tank destroyer
A tank destroyer is a type of armored fighting vehicle armed with a gun or missile launcher, and is designed specifically to engage enemy armored vehicles...

 and the Dardo IFV
Dardo IFV
The Dardo is a infantry fighting vehicle designed for the Italian Army as a replacement for the M113 APC. It is designed and built by the Iveco Fiat Oto Melara Syndicated Company based in Rome...

, it produced less power than the most advanced contemporary western designs. The Ariete's engine had to run at a high RPM to perform well, thus reducing the operating time between failures.

Moreover, to retain a good power-to-weight ratio, the total weight of the tank had to be kept below 60 tonnes. The relatively light weight of the Ariete helped lower consumption and facilitated the transport and mobility of the MBT (especially over bridges). This was obtained partially at the expense of the thickness of the armour that, only partially compensated by the good ballistic shape of the vehicle, raised some doubt about its ability to survive in the harshest environments.

As an improvement, Iveco developed a new version of the MTCA engine. The stroke was lengthened, increasing displacement to 30 litres, with a new common rail
Common rail
Common rail direct fuel injection is a modern variant of direct fuel injection system for petrol and diesel engines.On diesel engines, it features a high-pressure fuel rail feeding individual solenoid valves, as opposed to low-pressure fuel pump feeding unit injectors...

 direct fuel injection system along a new double turbocharger, increasing power output to 1,600 hp at 1,800 rpm (with an electronically reduced torque of 5,500 Nm, maintained from 1,100 to 1,800 rpm to reduce damage to the transmission) and further reducing fuel consumption. The new engine will be adopted during the first general revision of the existing vehicles. As for the armour, Oto Melara developed two different sets (with different thickness) of adjunctive armour, shown for the first time at Eurosatory
Eurosatory
Eurosatory is an International Defence & Security industry trade show that is held every two years in Paris-Nord Villepinte Exhibition Centre, Paris, France. In 2006 it had over 1000 exhibitors and 46,000 visitors. It is organized by COGES in partnership with the French Ministry of Defense. The...

2002.

Operators

- 200
    • 20° Tank battalion "M.O. Pentimalli", 4° Tank Regiment of Bellinzago Novarese (NO), 41 Ariete
    • 3° Tank battalion "M.O. Galas", 32° Tank Regiment of Tauriano (PN), 41 Ariete
    • 8° Tank battalion "M.O. Secchiaroli", 132° Tank Regiment of Cordenòns (PN), 41 Ariete
    • 31° Tank battalion "M.O. Andreani", 131° Tank Regiment of Persano (SA), 41 Ariete
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