M1A2SEP vulnerability to non-lethal hits

[c3k]

Gents,

I am wondering about the ballistic protection afforded to all the modern communications and targeting gear festooned on and about the M1 Abrams. (The obvious corollary would include all military vehicles, especially the Stryker.)

For example, it seems that the newer Abrams (refer to Steve for the historiography of the naming conventions and their associated updates), have a bit more targeting systems: the gunner's; the commander's; and now, the loader's. How susceptible are they to damage from 7.62x39mm rounds? What about Nato standard? Splinters, IED's, etc.

It seems that the force muliplier abilities added on to the basic armored chassis revolves around optics and electronics. What kind of energies are needed to degrade, damage, or destroy the optic lenses or electronic antennas which provide the increased combat lethality?

Can anyone provide a list of all the external boxes on the vehicles in the game? And, the vulnerabilities of the boxes?

Will BF.C model damage to these systems? How will an Abrams without a Blue Force Tracker handle in-game?

Thanks,

Ken

[flamingknives]

I recall reading a snippet about a croatian 20mm anti-materiel rifle, 20mm being the smallest calibre that would reliably disable the thermal imager on Serbian tanks.

Of course, I can't now recall where I read it, or to which weapon it pertains.

[Battlefront.com]

My understanding is that the sensors and sights are very well protected. They expect them to take hits. How protected, I don't know. I've not read of any tank having suffered that sort of damage without also having basically been cooked anyway.

I'm pretty sure that all Abrams in Iraq have FBCB2 installed now. The problem with the earlier implementation was its integration into the rest of the tank's systems. They called it a communications aplique, meaning that it was laid in on top of the existing analog systems and not fully integrated. I think that this will be fixed for the most part by the time CM:SF rolls around.

Yes, CM can model damage to specific systems. Pretty much anything we want to in fact. Just a matter of picking which ones to model and how to model them. The latter is pretty tough.

Steve

[c3k]

So, I'm playing as a Syrian. I find a 14.5mm machinegun team. (Hmmm, what is the heaviest caliber machinegun in the Syrian arsenal?) I use my team to spray down the lead Abrams, frontally. Sure, they're toast, but glory for the motherland and all that... Anyway, will the game track the possibility of damage to the various Abrams boxes and scopes?

Or, is the Abrams impervious to anything man-portable? (My next question would be about an RPG hitting a sensor. )

What about the Stryker?

Thanks,

Ken

[flamingknives]

There was an instance of a Challenger 2 being effectively blinded by a sustained bombardment of RPG, 14.5mm HMG and small arms fire. They backed into a ditch and were stuck there until the rest of the Squadron rocked up.

Abrams certainly isn't impervious to RPG-7. A number of them have been disabled by flank, top or rear shots with RPG-7 in Iraq.

[John Kettler]

c3k,

I've seen discussions in the past where during OIF?, I believe, mortar fire completely stripped all the radio antennas off U.S. APCs, leaving them unhurt but unable to communicate. When it comes to engaging sights on the M1, if the armored doors are open, then the sights are certainly hittable. Am not sure what the armor level is when buttoned, though, but would guess somewhere in the 10mm range, maybe a bit more. An exposed CCTV camera or similar isn't a big target, but neither is it particularly tough. As for an RPG hit on a major sight, the outcome there is likely to be goodbye sight and probably the person looking through it, too. IMO, the more systems which are exposed on the outside of the tank, the more vulnerable it becomes to the military equivalent of the death of a thousand cuts.

Regards,

John Kettler

[Battlefront.com]

As I said, individual systems can be damaged individually. It's not like CM's nearly "all or nothing" modeling.

Steve

[flamingknives]

John, AIUI the major sights, especially thermals, are mounted external to the hull so their destruction would not endanger the crew. Even conventional periscopes don't provide a direct route into the fighting compartment, which is rather the point.

[c3k]

Steve,

Thanks for the info. I am not sure if I understand: WILL individual systems be damaged, or is it an, as yet, unused capability of the new game engine?

And, if systems vulnerabilities are coded in, could you give us any information on that?

It seems that each of the boxes on a vehicle have a function: as they are degraded, damaged, or destroyed, that funcionability should likewise suffer. That opens up a LOT of areas. I'm not sure how germane they are to the game, however. Essentially, it comes done to a question of damage modelling fidelity.

I'd like to be able to call down some fire (of whatever type) which I know will not destroy a vehicle, but which will DEGRADE it enough so that my other forces will then have an opportunity to destroy it.

Thanks,

Ken

[John Kettler]

flamingknives,

Wasn't aware of that, especially given that many of the interior pictures I've seen looked like there were direct optical connections via hull penetration. The M1 models prior to the M1A2, for example, had an armored housing with protective shutters holding both the optical daylight sight and, right next to it, the thermal sight. I know far less about the CITV on the M1A2, but it looked to me like a major hit on the CITV would ruin the TC's day, with major hit being RPG-7 or similar.

c3k,

Back in my military aerospace days, one of the things I worked was ship attack, back before the IIR Maverick with 300 lb. blast-frag warhead came into service and before the Navy had a decent standoff weapon for shipping strike. The doctrine back then was to precede the Alpha strike with Shrike equipped EA-6s (to force missile guidance radar shutdown) after which the lead flight would pop up and toss bomb Rockeye cluster munitions, with the objective not of sinking the target outright but of causing damage and disruption to everything topside as dozens of dual purpose HEAT/blast-frag submunitions raked mast electronics, superstructure, open weapon mounts, turrets, torpedo and missile tubes, etc.

The effects were magnified by the Soviet practice of having so much of their weapon systems on the deck instead of below it. Once this brutal "haircut" was applied, the vessel was expected to be so damaged and disrupted that it could be sunk with GP bombs using delay fuzing. Sounds like you're envisioning something along the same lines, albeit with a much smaller and less complicated target.

Regards,

John Kettler

[Thermopylae]

The doghouse with the main thermals/optics is mounted on the turret top with angled entry innto the actual turret. You would pretty much have to shoot out the sights (literally dismount the entire TIS/Optic combo) and then pour some sort of burning liquid down the hole in signficant quantities (enough to melt through the sights on the other side). You might alos have luck firing large caliber rounds directtly down the shaft. All very difficult to do, especially as the the doghouse doors are going to be closed after the mains go out.

The CITV being destroyed by small arms/RPG would have no physical effect on the TC. He's on the other side of the tank watching the it on a TV screen. It'd go black/fuzzy/whatever.

Even if you destroy those two there's still the auxiliary sight which, despite being non computerized, is still pretty easy to use and hit targets with out to about a klick and a half thanks to high speed ammuntion and the miracle of hydraulics. You can use the HEAT sight for coax on the auxilairy as well. That one is mounted in the turret, back a ways.

So, in short, yes, eventually, you could knock the sights out, but its unlikely you'd live long enough or have enough artillery ammo.

Vision blocks are still susceptible to degradation, especially the driver's. The turret has a lot of ways of looking out at the world, and TCs can rotate their vision blocks to keep the best ones pointed at whatever. The driver does not have this luxury, so every crack, blur, etc makes him less effective at spotting/driving. In a night fight if you knock out the night vision periscope, the tank will have to slow down a lot or risk some unpleasant landings,

As to electronics, shearing antennas and the MSR would be your best bets, because everything else is internal or coincides with the sights. With the MSR gone, long range (2km+) accuracy would be degraded after 5 or 6 shots. The antennas would pretty much negate FBCB2 and of course normal commo, the latter being far more important than the former.

Rather than go for the hail of death, much easier to go for a mobility kill or abandon. An RPG to the track or a molotov on the back engine deck would be a lot simpler, and an easier shot to make too.

[c3k]

Thanks!

I'm not talking about stripping a box off and using the resulting hole, if any, as a point of entry for a killing round. I'm trying to get the effects of non-killing rounds modelled as they degrade the tank's fighting ability.

The doghouse: what happens if I put a .50 caliber round into it - straight on from the front?

A hail of HMG fire may have an effect: is the effect worth considering? (If the HMG shatters a vision block, but the TC just rotates his ring to use another vision block, why model it?) If the effect is worthwhile - loss of external comms - HOW would it be modelled? Command delay?

Night time ops: has the driver's vision been addressed? (I'd love to see an Abrams blunder about, knocking all sorts of things over )

Thanks,

Ken

[Thermopylae]

Hitting the doghouse head on: If the doors are closed I don't know, probably have to look up the thickness on the doors. Anyhow assuming doors open, you would hit one of three things: the main optics, the thermals, or the laser range finder with the subsequent degrading/destruction of that piece depending on what you hit it with. A piercing RPG hit could very well take out all three.

Now, this isn't as horrible as you might think, if one sight were to go out, the gunner would just switch to the other, though it may be less suited to the situation, and the sights are separate. And you'd still have the CITV and auxiliary sight regardless.

As a side note, it'd be possible to leave a sight functioning, but zoomless (i.e, stuck on whatever zoom it was on when it got hit, or reduced to a the basix 3x) whihc could be problematic. A sight stuck on 50x isn't much use for scanning, and thermals are a hip shoot at 3x as there's only a large box, and no reticle proper per se. It'd matter most for long ranges and the gunner's ability to scan.

The LRF would be a serious loss, but once it went down the commander would immediately jam his battlesight button to jump the gun to whatever battlesight range was for the selected round/weapon, and you can still manually enter range into the computer. It would slow the engagement speed down though. Not massively, but a few extra seconds. The chance of a first round hit would still be extremely high within a couple klicks, but would go down signifcantly beyond 2km and at night (the aux is daysight only, so you couldn't choke the target). Once again, long ranges would be most seriosuly affected.

[undead reindeer cavalry]

Originally posted by flamingknives:

Abrams certainly isn't impervious to RPG-7. A number of them have been disabled by flank, top or rear shots with RPG-7 in Iraq.

also disabled frontally with RPG-7.

rear shots with 23mm AA gun were proven to be effective in Iraq.

[c3k]

Thermopylae,

Thanks. Instead of a single, high-explosive hit, what do you regard as the effect of several large caliber HMG hits on the open face of the doghouse?

Thanks,

Ken

[flamingknives]

URC, frontally? Got a source on that? What was the hit location?

[MikeyD]

About gunners sights getting knocked out, does the Abrams retain the Commander's capability to take over turret controls and fire the gun? i've read reports from Vietnam of M48s occassionally fighting without a gunner in the seat, the commander doing all the aiming and firing by the seat-of-his-pants. Heck, i even heard one story of the TC loading too! Talk about being as busy as a one-armed paper hanger.

[Thermopylae]

c3k: Several 14.5mm type hits would probably disable whichever one of those three systems they struck. I'm not sure what the effect would be of a single hit, but a sustained burst on target (or enough single hits over time) would almost certainly knock out one or more of those systems. It would definitely not be a good thing for the tank.

As a side note, machinegunning the doghouse is harder than you might think. First off, its about the size of a head turned sideways. The doors open sideways, meaning you literally have to hit the optics front on, because the doors block off the 45 degree type shot. Your weapon has to be relatively in front of the turret.

The doghouse is also three meters off the ground and recessed a bit on the turret, meaning close range shots from ground level have a much reduced potential angle of entry. You'd have much better luck firing from an elevated position, though if you get too far above you obviously cut down you potential angle again (theres a small flap on top too, but not nearly as much of a block as the hull/turret or the side doors.)

Flamingknives: From what I've heard is that an RPG, type unknown, went through number one skirt of an abrams, missed the roadwheels, penetrated at a weak point and pierced one of the aux fuel tanks, which obviosuly was bad. It was more of an oblique strike on the flank, but fired from the front. I haven't heard of any other frontal RPG kills, but I could be hideosuly wrong.

MikeyD: Yes, the commander's traverse handle will automatically ovveride the gunner's. He can fire the weapon, has a sight extension of the primary, and his CITV (SEP only, though the A1 has a 3x MG optic for the commander). In the SEPs he can also change magnification with a little thumb doo-dad on his handle, but not in the A1. He has to reach down to the gunner spot to switch between thermals and optics in either though. The commander has no access to the auxiliary sight.

[undead reindeer cavalry]

Originally posted by Thermopylae:

Flamingknives: From what I've heard is that an RPG, type unknown, went through number one skirt of an abrams, missed the roadwheels, penetrated at a weak point and pierced one of the aux fuel tanks, which obviosuly was bad. It was more of an oblique strike on the flank, but fired from the front. I haven't heard of any other frontal RPG kills, but I could be hideosuly wrong.

that's the same one from Mosul that i had in mind. i think there was another one in Fallujah, but it was more like a top hit if i recall correctly.

[Los]

Just to augment Thermopylae's good info..

If the GPS (Gunners Primary Sight) goes down there's the GAS (Gunners auxillary sight) Tank crews train to use both and switch between them since tanks have had various systems go down in combat since the first tank rumbled over the top in WW1. If the LRF goes down the GAS has range finding capabilities. If the Ballistic computer goes down there's ways around that too. Tanks like the Leo and M1 have normal, emergency and manual fire control systems.

i.e. here's the GAS:

http://www.eo.kollmorgen.com/product_spec27.html

The mark of a good tank is not just how well it works when everthing is functioning properly but how well it works when it's half shot up. Crew drills stress fighting the tank in all its conditions.

Los

[John Kettler]

Los,

The link isn't working.

Regards,

John Kettler

[Dogface]

Worked for me.

[Battlefront.com]

URC,

rear shots with 23mm AA gun were proven to be effective in Iraq.

I'm pretty sure you are talking about a friendly fire kill by a Bradley, which was originally reported as AA fire. However, judging by the armor back there a heavy MG could mess up the engine pretty badly.

Los, good to see you here!

Steve

[Denwad]

from what i've read the 25mm bushmaster with AP round can penetrate up to 90mm of armor in ideal conditions ( i think it was the steelbeasts forum )

[John Kettler]

Denwad,

During Desert Storm, Bradleys got T-55 kills from the flank using DU in the 25mm Chain gun.

Regards,

John Kettler