TOW MISSLE ISSUES NOT REPRESENTED IN THE GAME

[Gary R Lukas]

First of all, after working with the TOW MISSLE SYSTEM for 8 years in the USMC ,it don't make me a TOW MISSLE EXPERT, BUT we had issues with the Regular TOW, Then the ITOW , then finally the TOW 2 came out and we had big issues with the TOW2. Shooting just the regular TOW Missile 10 times, we would have a failure rate of approximately 3-4 missile failures. most of those issues being a Broken Wire from the gun platform to the missile itself. We also had 2 missiles that blew up only 20-30 yards, which was an issue by itself because the TOW missile wasn't supposed to arm its warhead until it went over 50 yards. Here is my last issue about the TOW, they are way to accurate at short ranges. When you fired your TOW MISSILE after the missile leaves the launch tube  the gunner is trying to reacquire its target, then while that's going on , the flight motors kick in and you can't see ****!!!!! around after 10-15 seconds now you can finally make sense out of everything, you can now see the target, see the IR light on the missile and now your heart is pumping hard now because in another 6-10 seconds, your target is getting ready to be obliterated, and they don't even know it!!!!  So if the BF Community can start making the Tows Less Accurate at shorter ranges would be a start, Say from 50 yards to 1,000 yards the hit rate should only be around 60 to 65 percent, From 1,000-2,000 yards the hit accuracy will now be getting better so I would say 70-90 percent, then from  2,000-just over 3,000 yards my percentage would go from 80-95 percent. During Desert Storm during the battle the M2-M3 Bradley had a Huge problems

[dbsapp]

17 minutes ago, Gary R Lukas said:

First of all, after working with the TOW MISSLE SYSTEM for 8 years in the USMC ,it don't make me a TOW MISSLE EXPERT, BUT we had issues with the Regular TOW, Then the ITOW , then finally the TOW 2 came out and we had big issues with the TOW2. Shooting just the regular TOW Missile 10 times, we would have a failure rate of approximately 3-4 missile failures. most of those issues being a Broken Wire from the gun platform to the missile itself. We also had 2 missiles that blew up only 20-30 yards, which was an issue by itself because the TOW missile wasn't supposed to arm its warhead until it went over 50 yards. Here is my last issue about the TOW, they are way to accurate at short ranges. When you fired your TOW MISSILE after the missile leaves the launch tube  the gunner is trying to reacquire its target, then while that's going on , the flight motors kick in and you can't see ****!!!!! around after 10-15 seconds now you can finally make sense out of everything, you can now see the target, see the IR light on the missile and now your heart is pumping hard now because in another 6-10 seconds, your target is getting ready to be obliterated, and they don't even know it!!!!  So if the BF Community can start making the Tows Less Accurate at shorter ranges would be a start, Say from 50 yards to 1,000 yards the hit rate should only be around 60 to 65 percent, From 1,000-2,000 yards the hit accuracy will now be getting better so I would say 70-90 percent, then from  2,000-just over 3,000 yards my percentage would go from 80-95 percent. During Desert Storm during the battle the M2-M3 Bradley had a Huge problems

Interesting. I had impression that TOW is much more accurate and reliable, maybe I was wrong.

At least Youtube have a lot of videos from war zones that show very effective employment of ATGMs of different kinds, including TOW. 

[dpabrams]

How come the Russian's never chime in about how crappy their stuff was?(asking for a friend). All I hear is how crappy the TOW, Dragon, LAW, M735, M60A1 and all the other systems are and believe me, in game they are all crap. But Ivan never chimes in? 

[Vanir Ausf B]

1 hour ago, dpabrams said:

How come the Russian's never chime in about how crappy their stuff was?

[MikeyD]

Distant memory of some long ago TOW-related reading: Don't fire TOW over bodies of water because... just don't. Don't fire TOW if you have cross winds over 7(?)mph. That last number is shaky. I think it said mph instead of kph (a 7kph cross wind would be a gentle breeze). I can't recall if there were any prohibitions against firing in the rain.

Edited July 2, 2021 by MikeyD

[Bufo]

3 hours ago, dpabrams said:

How come the Russian's never chime in about how crappy their stuff was?(asking for a friend). All I hear is how crappy the TOW, Dragon, LAW, M735, M60A1 and all the other systems are and believe me, in game they are all crap. But Ivan never chimes in? 

IMHO 99% of the people commenting here plays the Us side.

[Halmbarte]

6 hours ago, Bufo said:

IMHO 99% of the people commenting here plays the Us side.

I’ve mostly been playing the Sovs so far. The ATGMs mostly work but they aren’t 100% by any means. 
 

The original MACLOS AT3s are pretty crap when you don’t have a very skilled operator. OTOH, the Sovs had them in wide distribution very early. 
 

CM doesn’t model all kinds of failure modes that exit in real life. Your WWII German tanks show up w/o having suffered 50% casualties from the road march from broken final drives or engine fires, your T34s don’t blow their transmissions, and the M60A2’s systems all work. 
 

H

[Holien]

41 minutes ago, Halmbarte said:

CM doesn’t model all kinds of failure modes that exit in real life. Your WWII German tanks show up w/o having suffered 50% casualties from the road march from broken final drives or engine fires, your T34s don’t blow their transmissions, and the M60A2’s systems all work. 
 

H

Btw those be Oranges when the OP is talking Apples which is pretty relevant to actual game play....

 

[Holien]

10 hours ago, dpabrams said:

How come the Russian's never chime in about how crappy their stuff was?(asking for a friend). All I hear is how crappy the TOW, Dragon, LAW, M735, M60A1 and all the other systems are and believe me, in game they are all crap. But Ivan never chimes in? 

You can rest assured that everything is crappy as humans and organisations are involved.

The beauty with freedom is that we stand a chance of highlighting the crap to have a better chance of it being slightly less crap than those that can not talk about how crap their stuff is.

[FogForever]

I have found the M901 w/TOW is a very effective weapon system vs the AI.   However in my 2 PBEM games, one as the US and one as the Soviets, human counter tactics neutralize the M901 w/TOW fairly easily.   They are still good for covering large open spaces but smoke can neutralize that advantage as well if smoke is available.  If you can't count on a decent hit rate from the TOW, then they will be totally useless.  

IMO, the inability for the M901 to go true hull down and to shoot and scoot prevents them from being used effectively.  I haven't used infantry or dismounted TOWs but I suspect they are much more effective than vehicle mounted TOWs.

(Oops, I meant to post in the other TOW thread but I guess it fits here as well.  So just leaving it.)

Edited July 2, 2021 by FogForever

[slysniper]

Interesting original post, since you have imput from someone that actually used the system.

I was only able to watch such guys use the system. 

I do agree, he has some valid points as to accuracy of the weapon.

But I would like to point out, some of the failure problem is during training, they are using old munitions, getting rid of the stuff that has been sitting around the longest.

So that is a factor in some of the failure rate.

Personnally, as for firing problems, I would say it was 1 in 5. from what I saw. As for missing the target, he likely has some good points for short range.

But I do recall long range targets being missed a lot. Normally something failed with the communication by them. Wire issues. So not sure his high percentage at the longest ranges would be correct.

[Gary R Lukas]

I finished reading a book about 73 Eastings and From the Cavalry Commander on down they couldn't believe the issues that they had pertaining to the missile itself, numerous wires breaking, warheads exploding in mid air 6 seconds after launch, it was all there. The book was written by Col Douglas MacGreggor called Warriors Rage.

[Gary R Lukas]

In 1987 In Okinawa Japan I actually had the Honor of shooting an AT-3 Sagger that these Green Berets had on their base. I trained them on weapon Identification, Tank, APC, Aircraft even naval ships and Submarines, then we gave them a 5 day course on the TOW letting them fire a few missiles and in exchange we had a party playing with the Russian weapons they had. PKM...AKM...RPK.....DISHKA Heavy MG, I will take the MA 2 any day after firing that}a few RPG-7's then I finished it off with the AT-3 Sagger, what fun we had back in the good ole days.

[Holien]

19 hours ago, slysniper said:

I do agree, he has some valid points as to accuracy of the weapon.

But I would like to point out, some of the failure problem is during training, they are using old munitions, getting rid of the stuff that has been sitting around the longest.

So that is a factor in some of the failure rate.

I can just imagine the quartermaster when the #hit hits the fan and the Russian's invade saying don't issue those old munitions as they are past their best before date...

Just sayin.... 

[Holien]

7 hours ago, Gary R Lukas said:

I finished reading a book about 73 Eastings and From the Cavalry Commander on down they couldn't believe the issues that they had pertaining to the missile itself, numerous wires breaking, warheads exploding in mid air 6 seconds after launch, it was all there. The book was written by Col Douglas MacGreggor called Warriors Rage.

BTW thanks for the first hand accounts always useful to read, of course it is just one person's perception so has to be weighed with other sources before a model is created and maybe tweaked...

One of the many things  I love about this site is these 1st hand accounts. I would love to hear more about the Warsaw Pact POV and perhaps those from East Germany or former Soviet Bloc countries will pop by to explain about the Saggers crap points? If they ever got to test fire them?

[George MC]

1 hour ago, Holien said:

BTW thanks for the first hand accounts always useful to read, of course it is just one person's perception so has to be weighed with other sources before a model is created and maybe tweaked...

One of the many things  I love about this site is these 1st hand accounts. I would love to hear more about the Warsaw Pact POV and perhaps those from East Germany or former Soviet Bloc countries will pop by to explain about the Saggers crap points? If they ever got to test fire them?

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Sagger-Anti-Tank-Missile-Main-Battle/dp/1472825772 not read it but was recently browsing and was intrigued as would assume cross over to Europe Cold War. 

Edited July 3, 2021 by George MC

[George MC]

Crap. Disappeared down a Sagger shaped rabbit hole… interesting overview off the Sagger 3 http://www.military-today.com/missiles/malyutka.htm

quote from above link: 

A single missile could hit its target with a probability of only 50-60%.

Edited July 3, 2021 by George MC

[MikeyD]

An old reference book of mine said T-62s APFSDS round had a 50-60% hit probability at around 1,250m, itself. Before you mock the Russians, that's pretty identical to M60A1's APDS round. The only difference was the M60A1 round was less likely to penetrate. 

Reading contemporary reports from late 70s thru early 80s its surprising how much stuff in the inventory was, to be a bit harsh, half-baked crap. When M60A3 first showed up in Europe there was the initial lament "Oh no, fire controls made by the same people who gave us M60A2!" The first thing units did when they got the tank was go from one end of the vehicle to the other fixing assembly line manufacturing errors. M60A3s sat in Europe without their TTS sights while a fleet of M60A3 TTSs were delivered to Egypt. That didn't go over particularly well.

Edited July 8, 2021 by MikeyD

[slysniper]

Well, I just finished the battle in the US campaign that uses a bunch of tows for a ambush. 

To tell you the truth, I did not count it. but I would say the game has it pretty close to correct. I was likely running at 60% of what was fired as to getting hits.

I think most of the shots were running around 1300 meters, a few down in the 900  and a very few at longer ranges, I did not check , but like 1600 meters.

 

I sure did not get a feel that the game is over accurate as the original post suggest.

They would need to prove some data as to what is happening in the game before I would investigate it.

 

[db_zero]

I've played a couple of h2h games where the TOW was the primary AT weapon. In both games, while highly effective, I had a number of missiles fly into the ground way short of the target as well many that lost track of the target and flew over it. In most cases the firing vehicle was not being targeted.  Woods, urban areas or any other obstacle where a target can break LOS for a short period seems to do the trick.

On a side note I'm noticing infantry seem to fire LAWS in pairs. IIRC this was the standard doctrine? They are effective on BMPs if they hit that's for sure. I haven't seen them used on tanks yet, but if my opponent gets desperate and sends his remaining tanks into town we'll find out how effective they are. Side, rear or shots fired from higher elevation will probably be needed. 

The 4.2 inch mortars seem nasty. Been dumping them on infantry in the woods where it looks like they are being massed for an attack. If nothing else they sure make a nice commotion.

[MikeyD]

Just yesterday I spotted a good-old AT-3 Sagger ATGM snake its way the full length of a map and take out a M150 TOW vehicle. That was the first time I've seen a a Sagger hit anything in a dog's age.

[Halmbarte]

In ‘79 any Sov ATGM or RPG will take out any of my tanks. Even if they hit none of the US AT weapons is a high probability of a kill on the frontal arc of T64 or T72. 
 

H 

[BeondTheGrave]

3 hours ago, Halmbarte said:

In ‘79 any Sov ATGM or RPG will take out any of my tanks. Even if they hit none of the US AT weapons is a high probability of a kill on the frontal arc of T64 or T72. 
 

H 

There was some discussion of this in the T-64 spotting thread. Over there someone linked a really good document from Paul Gorman ca 1980 where hes complaining that US ATGMs dont stand up against next gen Soviet armor. The T-62 is super vulnerable, but the -64 and -72 kinda arnt. The ITOW improves this, but its still an issue within the game time frame. Soviet ATGM's, OTOH, generally shouldn't struggle with the older M60 design. In the Yom Kippur War Saggers were more than enough to knock out an M60. If they could hit it. The US essentially missed out on a development generation in the mid 60s, while the Soviets switched over to their two tiered approach and so crammed a lot of new toys into that gap. 

[John Kettler]

At An Loc, Vietnam, the ARVN troops killed many NVA T-54s and T-55s with the M72 LAW. There is some shocking information in the article on LAW backblast. Makes a WW II bazooka's seem anemic by comparison!

https://www.historynet.com/arsenal-m72-law-disposable-tank-killer.htm

BeyondTheGrave,

Have read the original SECRET version (link below) of General Gorman's assessment, which appeared in the SECRET level CIA quarterly Studies in Intelligence--in 1980 and was never seen by me in its full and classified form at any point in my 11+ years as a Soviet Threat Analyst. It was exactly the kind of horror story I got when I attended the Soviet Threat Technology Conference in 1985 at the CIA in Langley, Virginia. The summary conclusion was that the only weapons in the inventory that were viable current inventory antitank weapons were the Hellfire and the Maverick with its mighty 173 pound shaped charge warhead. Even the 105 mm DU round couldn't cut it in a frontal engagement at, I believe, 1000 meter range vs ERA equipped T-72. We, on the other hand, were highly vulnerable to theirs. This is why V Corps in Europe later was stripped practically bare of its state-of-the-art 120 mm armed M1HA Abrams tanks (DU in the armor), which had been specifically designed to resist the latest Soviet weapons, and firing the just fielded experimental Silver Bullet DU projectile for the Hail Mary attack into Iraq during Gulf War I.

The Defense Science Board Armor-Antiarmor Summer Study in 1984 came up with the same core conclusions. These are what drove the development and crash deployment of TOW 2A, then, when it was realized even the 6" warhead with double trumpet DU liner, standoff probe and precursor charge still couldn't get through the ERA, the TOW 2 B, with 2 EFF/EFP for top attack against the vastly less well protected top of the tank, aiming to put the missile smack over the turret. Was at Hughes Missile Systems Group, Operations Analysis Department when much of this went down. Hughes made the TOW and the Maverick back then, and my department was deeply involved in TOW analyses, including such things as KTOW (Korean TOW) installed on Hughes 500 helicopters.
https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/document/0000624298

Regards,

John Kettler

Edited December 30, 2021 by John Kettler

[John Kettler]

On 7/1/2021 at 9:17 PM, Gary R Lukas said:

First of all, after working with the TOW MISSLE SYSTEM for 8 years in the USMC ,it don't make me a TOW MISSLE EXPERT, BUT we had issues with the Regular TOW, Then the ITOW , then finally the TOW 2 came out and we had big issues with the TOW2. Shooting just the regular TOW Missile 10 times, we would have a failure rate of approximately 3-4 missile failures. most of those issues being a Broken Wire from the gun platform to the missile itself. We also had 2 missiles that blew up only 20-30 yards, which was an issue by itself because the TOW missile wasn't supposed to arm its warhead until it went over 50 yards. Here is my last issue about the TOW, they are way to accurate at short ranges. When you fired your TOW MISSILE after the missile leaves the launch tube  the gunner is trying to reacquire its target, then while that's going on , the flight motors kick in and you can't see ****!!!!! around after 10-15 seconds now you can finally make sense out of everything, you can now see the target, see the IR light on the missile and now your heart is pumping hard now because in another 6-10 seconds, your target is getting ready to be obliterated, and they don't even know it!!!!  So if the BF Community can start making the Tows Less Accurate at shorter ranges would be a start, Say from 50 yards to 1,000 yards the hit rate should only be around 60 to 65 percent, From 1,000-2,000 yards the hit accuracy will now be getting better so I would say 70-90 percent, then from  2,000-just over 3,000 yards my percentage would go from 80-95 percent. During Desert Storm during the battle the M2-M3 Bradley had a Huge problems

Gary R Lukas,

Have never seen anything quite like your horrifying catalog of TOW failures. Please explain the environment in which there were so many breaks of guidance wires, causing the missiles to crash. Are we talking open desert, brush, trees, mixed or what, please? Can't speak to CMCW modeling of TOW, but while there may be issues in that game, in another game, Firefight by SPI and a board wargame, there was outright fraud. How? The US Army cheated by delivering map sections of real Fort Leavenworth exercise areas, but it cheated by removing brush and water obstacles aka TOW eaters from the map, thus pushing its ability to showcase the long range tank-devouring TOW in the game. As for the exploding TOWs, that is altogether too exciting, and I'm glad. that apparently nobody got hurt.

Regards,

John Kettler

P.S.

Your post is already the top three result in my search for TOW missile failures, and a post from afewgoodmen (a wargaming group) quotes you. That is in the fifth position.

Edited December 30, 2021 by John Kettler