70 RPG's?!!

[Darth PhysBod]

Any confirmation of this?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/2905817.stm



Wonder what the Iraqi's thought...

[Col. Crackpot]

i don't know about the challenger's but i have a friend in the 10th Mtn. Div who is good friends with a Gulf War tank vet and he said that even the HEAP rounds bounced off of the Abrams' armour and it sounded like getting hit with a giant monkey wrench from the inside.

[RadiO]

We only have 67 Apaches. Could we honestly afford an incident like that which befell the 1st Cavalry Division last week, where 30 of them were heavily damaged?

[Glocksman]

Christ, didn't we (US and/or UK) learn anything from GW1?

The first units deployed during Desert Shield were the lightly equipped Airborne and RDF units that couldn't have done much against heavy armored divisions. They even referred to themselves as 'speedbumps' because if Saddam's mechanized army had invaded Saudi, they couldn't have stopped it.

It was the heavy mechanized divisions that won the first war, and it'll be the heavy divisions that win this war.

Airborne and RDF units have their place, but you don't base your entire military on that model.

[Sea Skimmer]

We only have 67 Apaches. Could we honestly afford an incident like that which befell the 1st Cavalry Division last week, where 30 of them were heavily damaged?

Actually something like 200 are around, and 4th Infantry is bring another battalion or two. The 101 alone has eighty of them.

[Sea Skimmer]

Any confirmation of this?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/2905817.stm



Wonder what the Iraqi's thought...

I can't confirm, but its very possibul. An M60 fighting in Hue in 1968 was hit about thirty times, and it has a fraction of the protection of a Challenger II

[Sokar]

I wouldnt doubt it at all, the Challenger II employs the same armor as the M1 but is sloped even more heavily, RPG's would probably bounce right off , or the HEAT charge would never get a clean, right angle, burn. RPG's are a serious danger to APC's and infantry, but even older armor can take multiple his before being breached by one.

[Ted]

I wouldnt doubt it at all, the Challenger II employs the same armor as the M1 but is sloped even more heavily, RPG's would probably bounce right off , or the HEAT charge would never get a clean, right angle, burn. RPG's are a serious danger to APC's and infantry, but even older armor can take multiple his before being breached by one.

Challenger II uses 2nd gen Chobham armour, M1A2 uses DU armour.

In 1990, the Challenger II was the best protected tank in the world.

[Sea Skimmer]

I wouldnt doubt it at all, the Challenger II employs the same armor as the M1 but is sloped even more heavily, RPG's would probably bounce right off , or the HEAT charge would never get a clean, right angle, burn. RPG's are a serious danger to APC's and infantry, but even older armor can take multiple his before being breached by one.

Challenger II uses 2nd gen Chobham armour, M1A2 uses DU armour.

In 1990, the Challenger II was the best protected tank in the world.

Actually, the M1A2 uses Depleted Uranium on top of Chobham, as does the M1A1HA. The Challenger II might have better protection against HEAT warheads, but the M1A1HA and above are better off against Sabot rounds, which shatter Chobham and to a lesser degree Dorchester.

[Ted]

Challenger II uses 2nd gen Chobham armour, M1A2 uses DU armour.

In 1990, the Challenger II was the best protected tank in the world.

Actually, the M1A2 uses Depleted Uranium on top of Chobham, as does the M1A1HA. The Challenger II might have better protection against HEAT warheads, but the M1A1HA and above are better off against Sabot rounds, which shatter Chobham and to a lesser degree Dorchester.

HEAT rounds are far more common than Sabot rounds though, right?

[Sokar]

By about 1000 to 1 ratio. Most Infantry and even aircraft based anti-tank weapons are HEAT charge based weapons. Only other tanks employ SABOT rounds. Challenger was designed with more empasis on defeating HEAT ammo , while the M1A1 and A2's still retained a more balanced scheme to protect aginst both SABOT and HEAT attacks.

[Sea Skimmer]

HEAT rounds are far more common than Sabot rounds though, right?

Yes by a wide margin. Though the fact is that most HEAT rounds that your likely to encounter wouldn't do anything to any modern tank over the frontal arc. Sabot protection is however very important if your fighting anyone with A T-72 with decent ammo or above.


HEAT missiles like Kornet or Javalin that can defeat the latest tanks through the frontal arc are fairly rare, for now. The biggest missile threat over the frontal arc is overly top attack missiles, which have downward firing explosively forged penatraitor. These missiles can be quite small, but will probably destroy any tank in existence. The TOW-2B and Sewdish Bill-2 are examples of such missiles.

In TOW-2B tests, the warhead through through the roof of M60's, and out the bottom before diging deep into the ground.

[irishmick79]

Aside from the challenger's armor, another problem would be the RPG itself. Very few of them are able fire shells at a high enough velocity to penetrate tank armor.

[Sea Skimmer]

Aside from the challenger's armor, another problem would be the RPG itself. Very few of them are able fire shells at a high enough velocity to penetrate tank armor.

Impact velocity is essentially irrelevant to a HEAT warhead such as that used by an RPG. When you've got an explosion moving at 25,000 fps, another few thousand fps doesn't really matter.

Only soild shot like Sabot and to a lesser extent HESH shells care about velocity.

[Sokar]

Aside from the challenger's armor, another problem would be the RPG itself. Very few of them are able fire shells at a high enough velocity to penetrate tank armor.

Velocity has nothing to do with the effectiveness of a HEAT round. HEAT stands for H.igh E.xplosive A.nti T.ank. Its a shaped charge warhead that on impact detonated and turns a explosives lined copper cone into a jet of superheated metal, its almost plasma like in its intensity. This, then like a welding tool burns through the armor of the tank and into the crew or mechanical compartment. The charge on a RPG is fairly dinky while the kind used by the TOW , Bill-2 or Hellfire is vastly larger. HEAT's effectivness is all determined by the sized of the warhead.

[Darth Wong]

I wonder what the engagement range was. In Grozny, the Chechens used staggered volleys of RPG fire from apartment buildings to take out lots of tanks (co-ordinated to hit the same spot repeatedly).

[Sea Skimmer]

I wonder what the engagement range was. In Grozny, the Chechens used staggered volleys of RPG fire from apartment buildings to take out lots of tanks (co-ordinated to hit the same spot repeatedly).

Several hundred in fact. Grozny has more high buildings then the outskirts of Basra however, and not only where the Chechens attacking with volleys, they had much better RPG's, 18's and 22's vs. Iraqi RPG-7's, and they where doing so quite often from above and behind where there was no reactive armor, and the steel armor was thinner then on western AFV's. Somthing like 90% of Russian tanks that where lost, where lost to hits on areas unprotected by ERA.


However this was only the case in 1995-6, when Russian armor was often fighting almost without any support. When they came back in 1999 they captured Grozny quite quickly and with fairly light losses. Though most Chechen forces where already destroyed at considerable cost in the field.

[Sokar]

I wonder what the engagement range was. In Grozny, the Chechens used staggered volleys of RPG fire from apartment buildings to take out lots of tanks (co-ordinated to hit the same spot repeatedly).

They also had the advantage of firing down onto the far thinner top turret armor. But the ripple idea isn't new, the US Army , when we used LAW rockets as our light AT weapon, trained to hit single tanks with multiple shots as a lone round was unlikely to do much damage.
Steadt hits to the same spot would rapidly degrade the armors effective ness, and eventually allow a penetrating hit.

[Sokar]

Correct me if I'm wrong here Skimmer , but isnt the RPG-7 max range a little ove 500 yards? So engagement ranges are fairly short.

[RadiO]

Actually something like 200 are around, and 4th Infantry is bring another battalion or two. The 101 alone has eighty of them.

Sorry, my bad. I meant the British Army's Apaches, which - to me -seems a small force to sustain the kind of operational strains that acting as the primary means of supporting British troops would bring.

[Admiral Valdemar]

The MoD's budget has repeatedly been butchered by Labour and the Tories over the years. The recent arse kissing Blair has done with Bush about us working with the US militarily should call for more military spending you'd think.

I know we no longer have an empire or need for a large force anymore, but this is getting beyond the Pale.

[Ted]

The MoD's budget has repeatedly been butchered by Labour and the Tories over the years. The recent arse kissing Blair has done with Bush about us working with the US militarily should call for more military spending you'd think.

I know we no longer have an empire or need for a large force anymore, but this is getting beyond the Pale.

Maybe some of the billion or two in aid that Britain will get will go towards the Military?

[Sea Skimmer]

Correct me if I'm wrong here Skimmer , but isnt the RPG-7 max range a little ove 500 yards? So engagement ranges are fairly short.

The rocket can fly about that far, you can't count on hitting much of anything beyond perhaps 300. Though you want to fire from as close as possibul, otherwise the launch is very likely to be spotted and your postion wiped out.

The minimal range for an RPG-7 is only around 20 meters IIRC.

[irishmick79]

Wouldn't velocity be important when figuring in the slope of the armor as far as HEAT round impacts are concerned? The more the armor is sloped, the more armor the core of the HEAT round would have to penetrate, right? So a higher velocity would help the HEAT round penetrate more armor, if my line of thinking is correct. If I'm way off base here, let me know.

[Beowulf]

Wouldn't velocity be important when figuring in the slope of the armor as far as HEAT round impacts are concerned? The more the armor is sloped, the more armor the core of the HEAT round would have to penetrate, right? So a higher velocity would help the HEAT round penetrate more armor, if my line of thinking is correct. If I'm way off base here, let me know.

The HEAT round detontates at the surface of the armor. It's velocity before that doesn't matter really, because the hot liquid metal jet is powered by the explosives.