Maverick ATGM intercepted by APS

[exsonic01]

I was testing something with F-16CJ, and this happened. 

Red dot (Maverick) approaches to the target and ... 

 

It was stopped by APS. (Plus, that explosion was quite higher than the last observed position of the missile. Is this graphical bug?) 

IRC this issue was discussed before, and it concluded that the airborne ATGMs should not be intercepted by APS, and following patch adjusted airborne ATGM's approaching angle, not to be intercepted by APS. Is this right? Is this issue still survives? or it is possible to happen? or is this a different bug?  

ps) Does ingame US airplanes use JDAM kit for their free fall bombs? 

 

Edited March 7, 2017 by exsonic01

[Kinophile]

I've also seen this. I found the US aps more likely to shoot down AGMs than the RUS. 

Anecdotally, I had one game where US tank APS shot down 3 Hind-launched AGMs over the course of the battle. 

[cool breeze]

My intuition tells me that the main problem isnt that the APS can hit the A2G missiles, but that the missiles don't still manage to shred the tank anyway.

 

At least the maverick and russian at25 or whatever its called.  those are both freaken huge.

Edited March 7, 2017 by cool breeze

[exsonic01]

6 hours ago, cool breeze said:

My intuition tells me that the main problem isnt that the APS can hit the A2G missiles, but that the missiles don't still manage to shred the tank anyway.

 

At least the maverick and russian at25 or whatever its called.  those are both freaken huge.

Usually A2G missiles so fast, more than or equals to mach 1 speed, that the APS shouldn't have enough time to react. 

Plus, your mention makes sense, considering the Maverick weighs at least 450lb and could weighs more.  

Whatever the reason, this should be fixed in next module. 

[Sgt.Squarehead]

If the APS is capable of intercepting sabot rounds as claimed, a sluggish lump like a Maverick would be an easy target.....Not claiming this is correct, just pointing out the relative size & speed issues.

[exsonic01]

Maverick is not sluggish... almost all A2G missiles easily reach to mach 1 or more speed. I'm pretty sure Maverick will do the same. And their approaching angle is usually high. 

And I don't buy that any fielded APS at the current stage could able to intercept sabot rounds, yet. Well, it would be possible someday, only in someday..... but still long way to go.

Current APS would be unable to reliably defend against the projectiles with mach 1 or more speed. 

Edited March 8, 2017 by exsonic01

[Sgt.Squarehead]

My point was that compared to a sabot round it's both sluggish and huge.

So it depends what assumptions the designers have made about the Russian APS.

[akd]

Latest Arena is said to be able react to 1000m/s projectiles (but doesn't mean, nor to my knowledge claim, ability to defeat kinetic penetrators).

[MikeyD]

The surprise isn't that it can intercept the incoming missile, its that it can intercept the missile coming in from such a steep approach angle. Its been awhile since I've had the opportunity to fire a TOW2B at an APS equipped vehicle. I can't recall if it successfully  intercepts the overflight missile or not.

[Artkin]

Mach one is about five times slower than a sabot round at 1580m/s

[c3k]

Yeah...the bomb vs. the sabot velocities are clearly a mismatch.

As of yet, as far as I'm aware, no fielded or planned APS can intercept a sabot due to the incoming velocity. (I am not wedded to this statement. It hinges on the phrase "as far as I'm aware". I'm happy to be corrected.)

Tow2 have a flat approach, just a bit higher than the turret. The ability to launch APS munitions to intercept TOW2B rounds is merely a matter of gaining height.

Airborne munitions would seem to be much more problematic, attacking from the top hemisphere of the tank.

APS create a "donut" of protection. That hole in the middle is vulnerable from above. For now.

Feel free to correct any of the above.

[Redken]

1 hour ago, c3k said:

Yeah...the bomb vs. the sabot velocities are clearly a mismatch.

As of yet, as far as I'm aware, no fielded or planned APS can intercept a sabot due to the incoming velocity. (I am not wedded to this statement. It hinges on the phrase "as far as I'm aware". I'm happy to be corrected.)

Tow2 have a flat approach, just a bit higher than the turret. The ability to launch APS munitions to intercept TOW2B rounds is merely a matter of gaining height.

Airborne munitions would seem to be much more problematic, attacking from the top hemisphere of the tank.

APS create a "donut" of protection. That hole in the middle is vulnerable from above. For now.

Feel free to correct any of the above.

Here is a good overview article on hardkill APS and the capability to defeat APFSDS:

http://below-the-turret-ring.blogspot.de/2017/01/hardkill-aps-overview.html

[exsonic01]

 

2 hours ago, Redken said:

Here is a good overview article on hardkill APS and the capability to defeat APFSDS:

http://below-the-turret-ring.blogspot.de/2017/01/hardkill-aps-overview.html

Thanks for the info, this article really sums up nicely. But I'm still skeptical about any claims that modern APS could reliably defend the kinetic rounds at all circumstances. Like the some APS in article, it would just degrade the speed or interfere the path to reduce the power of APFSDS round. But who knows, maybe some of the APS system with positive test results in the article may have a chance to get the contraction in some future, and we could see how effective they are. 

[Sgt.Squarehead]

Excellent article, cheers for the link. 

[John Kettler]

MikeyD,

Don't know whether or not it was a fluke, but in CMBS I've seen a TOW 2B fly straight in the face of a T-90AM and K-Kill it. As for the Maverick, even were the APS somehow able to kill the warhead, the KE of the missile remains would still severely damage if not kill the tank. the APS wasn't designed to deal with such a monster ATGM, let alone a veritable instant before impact. Might be useful to check the design specs for the APS. As I've said before, the not so joke at Hughes was we had a warhead on it in case it missed. The truth of that statement is right in the SECRET WSEG (Weapon Systems Evaluation Group) report on the Yom Kippur War. Israel had the Gen One TV guided Maverick, which was LOBL. The IDF, long accustomed to recovering, repairing and putting into its service damaged enemy tanks, was really upset when it was found the tank hit was practically obliterated. An IDF general said "Your Maverick blows up the enemy tanks so thoroughly we can't fix them." He demanded a solution, and Hughes engineers quickly found it. Instead of locking onto the tank, the pilots were told to instead lock onto the tank's shadow, easily spotted in the blazing desert. Lo and behold, the tanks were now M-Killed, therefore salvageable. The IDF was happy and kept pounding the foe with the super accurate Maverick.

Regards,

John Kettler

Edited March 9, 2017 by John Kettler

[akd]

Are you claiming Maverick achieves total destruction via kinetic energy?

[sbobovyc]

What icon mod is exsonic01 using?

Edited March 9, 2017 by sbobovyc

[John Kettler]

akd,

An inert one completely clobbered an M-48 or 60 (forget which). This was IIR guided, I believe, and it smashed into the engine compartment with such overwhelming that the engine and pretty much everything else in there was destroyed (driven into the ground, too, and the tank's engine compartment caught fire. 100% M-Kill minimum. The late Jacques Littlefield somehow got his hands HEAT version warhead alone was 125 lbs. The penetrating blast/frag warhead was 300 lbs. The video will help you gain some appreciation for the size of this thing, different versions, and terminal approach profiles. The original films were crisp and clear (though the from the missile view had real limits imposed by the seeker), and it's a shame they're not earlier and show what it does to the tank hit. 

Regards,

John Kettler

[exsonic01]

15 hours ago, sbobovyc said:

What icon mod is exsonic01 using?

It is "Bil's CMBS floating icons BETA 3.brz" I downloaded in other website, not battlefront mod forum. 

14 hours ago, John Kettler said:

akd,

An inert one completely clobbered an M-48 or 60 (forget which). This was IIR guided, I believe, and it smashed into the engine compartment with such overwhelming that the engine and pretty much everything else in there was destroyed (driven into the ground, too, and the tank's engine compartment caught fire. 100% M-Kill minimum. The late Jacques Littlefield somehow got his hands HEAT version warhead alone was 125 lbs. The penetrating blast/frag warhead was 300 lbs. The video will help you gain some appreciation for the size of this thing, different versions, and terminal approach profiles. The original films were crisp and clear (though the from the missile view had real limits imposed by the seeker), and it's a shame they're not earlier and show what it does to the tank hit. 

Regards,

John Kettler

Thanks for the explanation and impressive vid. The missile is really huge~! 

[cool breeze]

See what I was saying about it probably not mattering all that much if it blows up a little early from APS?

[John Kettler]

exsonic01,

It was and remains, for the US anyway, a moose of a missile.

cool breeze,

I see no good outcome for a tank which even gets the warhead to detonate from the APS. It's one thing if an RPG or ATGM gets hit and full-on explodes, but quite another if a 125 pound or 300 pound warhead goes kaboom practically on the tank. If the warhead doesn't explode, but the fuze is disabled, then the tank gets hit with a KE freight train, not to mention everything else that happens as the missile splatters itself on the tank. 

Regards,

John Kettler

[akd]

That all sounds rather nebulous and difficult to quantify.  "It's gonna be huge," is not good enough for game design.

[John Kettler]

akd,

Fair point, but look at it this way. Arena is a kind of flying Claymore mine which blasts a bunch of steel pellets downward onto a missile of the order of 1 m long and 6' in diameter, with the goal of destroying the warhead--from a standoff at detonation of what, 6' max? If you go back to the live fire test, for which I have an excellent video below, you can clearly see that the entire hull is completely protected from any RPG warhead effects, leaving us with no idea what might otherwise happen there. Rather than being some undefinable problem, I believe a small amount of work would yield useful answers to the issues raised. It should, for example, be fairly straightforward to compute terminal velocity for a Maverick. Knowing the missile's mass at that point, even to a BOE level (and we do have rocket people here) allows near instant calculation of the KE in the event the warhead doesn't explode. Nor would it be particularly difficult to figure out the first order effects of 125 lbs of HE going off at such a range. This would be even more true of the 300 lb. SAP blast/frag warhead. Maverick's fuselage is 1' in diameter and 8" long, so while it will certainly be perforated a a hit which doesn't kill the warhead, it will, based on the sort of damage we know Drozd inflicted during tests,  hold together and strike relatively intact.

Arena live fire test with high speed camera
 

It would appear, though, that Modernized Drozd (KA3) is another matter entirely, considering it stopped a full-on long-rod KE (BM-12) fired from practically against the tank, in addition to a tank launched HEAT round and an extensive array of handheld weapons, though, alas, no ATGMs. Never have I ever seen such a comprehensive array of live fire anti-armor tests. The damage to the various armor plates is more than adequate proof of the ability of a K-Kill on the warhead to still destroy optics, thermals and other gear.. Indeed, so extensive is the damage in some cases that it's immediately apparent why the Russians in their Arena tests so heavily protected the side upper hull, side lower hull and running gear. Some of those pentrations into the armor plates would've gone clean through the lower hull, for example. Those are ALL very small warheads relative to either warhead version of the Maverick. If I were a foreign nation buying tanks from Russia, I'd buy the Drozd KA3 APS, not the Arena, since it seems to have vastly better capabilities than does Arena. 

Regards,

John Kettler

Edited March 10, 2017 by John Kettler

[John Kettler]

Correction! I hit the wrong key and should note that the Maverick is 8' long not the 8" I typed. 

Regards,

John Kettler

[HerrTom]

9 hours ago, John Kettler said:

It should, for example, be fairly straightforward to compute terminal velocity for a Maverick. Knowing the missile's mass at that point, even to a BOE level (and we do have rocket people here) allows near instant calculation of the KE in the event the warhead doesn't explode.

I'll humor you  .  Back of the envelope: The missile seems to weigh about 210 kg empty, and has a cross section of 0.3 meters diameter.  Call the drag coefficient about 0.3 for finned missiles.  This puts the terminal velocity at 392 meters per second.  Okay, that's probably wrong - that's over Mach 1!  At around Mach 1, the drag coefficient shoots up to somewhere around 0.5, so I'll use that.

Maverick terminal velocity: ~300 m/s.  Kinetic energy: 9.68 Megajoules.
22kg penetrator at 1,000 m/s.  Kinetic energy: 11.00 Megajoules.

So the energy is comparable, but in the penetrator's case it's concentrated in a depleted uranium slug, where the missile is made of aluminum and steel.  This will probably make a sizable dent on the top armour.  In the end, I guess it's like stabbing a guy in an armoured vest versus hitting him with a hammer...

9 hours ago, John Kettler said:

Nor would it be particularly difficult to figure out the first order effects of 125 lbs of HE going off at such a range. This would be even more true of the 300 lb. SAP blast/frag warhead.

As to the blast - that's a done deal.  At 5 meters, 150 kg of TNT will put 1,242 kPa-ms of pressure on the tank.  That's enough to fracture most materials.  Goodbye tank.  (I know these equations are for a hemispherical blast, but I'm too lazy to do the real math).

Explosives stuff from here https://unoda-web.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/assets/convarms/Ammunition/IATG/docs/IATG01.80.pdf#page=10