Interesting tidbits about the Altay here:
https://armor-il.blogspot.co.il/2018/01/are-there-really-4th-generation-mbts.html"Although it does use an APS and is a very young design, it almost appears to follow the steps of the notoriously badly designed Challenger 2 tank, which within less than a decade since it gained initial operational capability, started having obsolescence issues and required deep and expensive modernization efforts.
The Altay is a new tank that could have been designed with modern approaches to crew protection in mind, but simply wasn't.
As mentioned above, it retains a larger crew of 4 still laid out in a conventional setup in which all crewmen are dispersed at different heights and different points in the tank, and thus vastly increase the required protected area.
It also retains an ammo rack at the front section of the hull beside the driver, which as shown in multiple conflicts already (Turkish operations in Syria being the primary example), is a very dangerous and completely unnecessary setup. This ammo is in the same compartment as the crew is, and thus it is vulnerable in low/medium intensity conflicts where an ATGM could come from everywhere.
The Altay missed an amazing opportunity, and will likely either remain in service long enough for contemporary designs to out-match it with new concepts, or will have a relatively service life to take advantage of these same new concepts."
