Tank Killer - Massive Overkill

[AquaShrimp]

I was under the impression that the Iraqis didn't have thermal imaging, and we did.  Thusly we could see them in their ambush positions.  Going back further than that to WW2, German anti-tank halftrack crews (half-tracks with the huge cannons on them) suffered very high losses due to the fact that if they didn't kill their target in one shot, they would be obliterated by the return fire.

[Hangtime]

Going back further than that to WW2, German anti-tank halftrack crews (half-tracks with the huge cannons on them) suffered very high losses due to the fact that if they didn't kill their target in one shot, they would be obliterated by the return fire.

American armor operated in squads... the kraut halftrack can't kill 4 tanks at once. We'd lose one, suppress, flank and envelop. Numbers game and tactics.

[Cthulhu]

Sorry Guys, been under the car all day.

What was the range on that shot in the video? It sure looked slower than a main gun sabot round to me.

Don't know the exact range of this particular shot, but the weapon has an engagement range out to about 4 miles. The reason it looks slower than a sabot round is that it's 6 feet long. It's actually moving at over 4000-5000  f/s (depending on range)

Two things are for sure: 

One, even if you saw the puff of smoke and realised what it was....it's already too late.  You would barely have enough time to get the words "OH $#!%" out of your mouth.

Two, main gun rounds cannot lock on and track.

 

I forgot to mention that this bad boy can engage two targets simultaneously with two birds in the air at the same time.   (Thank you Texas Instruments  )

Try to keep in mind that the same could be said for the flash of the muzzle of a main gun. Secondarily the target in the clip was stationary. If you are fast enough you don't need to track.

My question is related to the range. It was obviously in line of sight and the rocket does not have near instantaneous acceleration like the cannon round has. This means the rocket would have to track on a moving target since while it might get faster as time goes on it will take time to get up there. It's a situation the TOW addresses as well.

I think you'd be amazed at how quickly this thing gets up to speed. it's doing about mach 2 within 50 ft of the launcher, and mach 3 comes pretty quickly after that. One of the biggest design challenges was getting the on-board electronics to survive the horrendous accelerations at launch (not quite the 80,000g you might see with a sabot round, but still very nasty). TOW, by comparison, has a speed of ~800 f/s, so at extended ranges you really have to hang your bellybutton out there waiting for that satisfying boom. The purpose of the weapon was to give scout units as well as heavy armor units some serious punch from outside the range of conventional MBT guns. At 3+ mile engagement ranges, the weapon still has higher lethality than the M1A1 sabot rd @ 100 yds. And unlike TOW, it's a kinetic energy killer, so it could care less about reactive armor. As far as moving targets, I've seen another video of one of these taking out a T-72 moving at top road speed perpendicular to the launcher about 1.5 miles out. Very ugly.

Neat video, lamest music ever.

Yeah the music blows, but remember the target audience was a bunch of Army generals who grew up on Lawrence Welk.

The Soviets had thermal imaging like we do.  At most, a humvee may have been able to get one shot off. 

At 4 miles they're not gonna hit squat. But they can wave.

Hope I answered everybody's questions. Here's another few bits that might be of interest:

1)  The rocket doesn't steer with fins in the conventional way, but with what we call "attitude control motors", little one-shot rocket motors which exhaust out to the side and "shove" the weapon in the desired direction. Because of this, the rocket has to spin so that an attitude control motor will always be available to redirect the rocket in the direction you want to go in. If you look very closely at about 4 seconds into the video, you'll see one firing. It's been a while since I worked on it, but I think there are about 80 ACM's. Our PAC-3 missile (Patriot Advanced Capability) works the same way, and it's capable of pulling many dozens of G's.

2) The Armor guys from Fort Knox and the MICOM (Army Missile Command) guys were together out at White Sands in the early days of the program to review the potential effectiveness of the system. A rocket sled was used to get an inert weapon (no rocket motor, but with the mass simulated and with the tungsten penetrator on-board) up to speed. A derelict Abrams was used as the target. As I understand it, the weapon punched thru the front turret armor and exited out the back of the bustle. The MICOM guys were all grins. The guys from Ft Knox were not so happy.

3) Anytime you run a sled test, you have to "walk the rail", making sure you don't have any debris on the track. But, because of the nature of this program, the rocket sled tests were routinely carried out at night to avoid Soviet reconnaissance satellites. This presented a special problem, because lots of desert "critters" would come out at night, and at roughly mach 4.3, they'd literally never hear the sled coming. I've heard stories of the crew finding half a coyote beside the track after a test.

[moot]

1) If you look very closely at about 4 seconds into the video, you'll see one firing.

Does it look like a tiny blip from the front of the slug?

[Cthulhu]

Does it look like a tiny blip from the front of the slug?

m00t, it's maybe 35% back from the nose. Just a momentary white flash. I had to slow the video down to 1/8 speed to see it. Usually you can see the ACM's firing as soon as it clears the launch tube, but apparently this was pretty much a straight shot.

Another story:  The four fins at the rear of the bird are folded against the body when it's in the launch tube. They're deployed and locked in place by the centrifugal forces due to missile spin (helical rails in the launch tube). The fins are slightly canted to maintain that spin throughout the flight. Anyway, like I said the fins are folded when it's in the tube. During the early testing phase, one of the test missiles was loaded into the back of the tube with tape on the fins to keep them folded during loading. Time comes to fire the bird and it flies wildly into the ground right in front of the launcher.   Post flight investigation reveals, you guessed it, they forgot to take the tape off. So heads roll, and for the next test flight, there's literally a Senior Vice President on hand who's only job is to make sure the tape is off before flight.

[Rich46yo]

In the future enemy armor is going to be pulverized far beyond line of sight by munitions that see, target, and attack, on their own.

I know tankers will always love their guns and distrust smart munitions but we are entering an age where the odds of an enemy tank formation ever even seeing Yank tanks, or even knowing they are there, are close to zero. And theres going to be no hiding from these weapons cause our troops will be sending missiles up to spot for other munitions coming in. Its a new age where weapons like this, as impressive as they look, actually belong in a museum.

Even future 120mm tank munitions will have ranges exceeding 10 kms, the tankers themselves never even physically seeing their enemy, because the enemy tank has been laser designated by a helicopter, or humvee, far downrange and even behind mountains. The tanker just shoots the round which then rides the light to the enemy tank. The poor schmucks in the enemy tank never even knowing what hit them. This is providing they even make it close enough to Yank forces, somehow dodging all the other smart munitions from land, sea, air, to even get close enough to an American tank.

Which is itself doubtful.

[Maverick]

I was under the impression that the Iraqis didn't have thermal imaging, and we did.  Thusly we could see them in their ambush positions.  Going back further than that to WW2, German anti-tank halftrack crews (half-tracks with the huge cannons on them) suffered very high losses due to the fact that if they didn't kill their target in one shot, they would be obliterated by the return fire.

Iraqis didn't have real time data linked intel of the battle field. Keep in mind that it was the flyboys that were spotting tanks from an ambush position in videos, tanks don't have recorders installed. Thermal imaging is a great thing but with masked by terrain it's no help to folks on the ground. Iraqi positions were pretty much nailed down by frequent over flights and the fact that their tactics were predicated on a static defense.

Iraqis did have thermal equipment but the lacked the equipment to make it really functional like we did for long range engagements. The Republican Guards got the best equipment but they weren't the slobs out there in the fixed positions on the front line. Their tanks also didn't have the range like ours did.

Keep in mind that the WW2 engagements are not up to the same technology as the GW engagements in just about every aspect from weapon to optics. There is a reason why tank destroyer vehicles are no longer in the inventory. They come out second best in tank engagements. The open top vehicles are also very susceptible to artillery since they are open on top.

[Cthulhu]

In the future enemy armor is going to be pulverized far beyond line of sight by munitions that see, target, and attack, on their own.

I know tankers will always love their guns and distrust smart munitions but we are entering an age where the odds of an enemy tank formation ever even seeing Yank tanks, or even knowing they are there, are close to zero. And theres going to be no hiding from these weapons cause our troops will be sending missiles up to spot for other munitions coming in. Its a new age where weapons like this, as impressive as they look, actually belong in a museum.

Even future 120mm tank munitions will have ranges exceeding 10 kms, the tankers themselves never even physically seeing their enemy, because the enemy tank has been laser designated by a helicopter, or humvee, far downrange and even behind mountains. The tanker just shoots the round which then rides the light to the enemy tank. The poor schmucks in the enemy tank never even knowing what hit them. This is providing they even make it close enough to Yank forces, somehow dodging all the other smart munitions from land, sea, air, to even get close enough to an American tank.

Which is itself doubtful.

Rich, what you're describing has actually been in service for quite some time in the form of a precision guided 155mm artillery round called Copperhead.
http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/land/m712.htm

And laser warning receivers are becoming quite common on MBT's these days, so the poor schmucks inside often do know they're about to get smacked. That's when you pop smoke and forget all your "safe driving" habits.

But even laser designation is pretty much a thing of the past now. Current autonomous weapons use millimeter wave radar or LADAR to locate and identify battlefield threats. Here's another one of our babies... LOCASS. This thing actually does 3-D pattern recognition and can differentiate between friendly and enemy vehicles.
http://www.gizmag.com/go/4812/

[gunnss]

Schlock Mercenary's "The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Pirates.


" Rule 37: There is no "overkill." There is only "open fire" and "time to reload."


from   http://www.schlockmercenary.com/


Regards,
Kevin