Challenger damaged by IED.

[Peter Cairns]

BBC reporting that about two weeks ago an Challenger 2 was seriously damaged by an IED which resulted in the driver losing a leg (23rd April PM).

Meanwhile, the MoD also confirmed that a British Challenger 2 tank was badly damaged by a roadside bomb in Iraq, leaving the driver seriously injured.

That incident took place on 6 April in the western district of Basra.

Not panic, but concern because up until now we seemed to think that MBT's needed really worry about them. No real detail on exactly what happened.

Peter.

[Panzerfest]

I was under the impression that MBT were pretty much impervious to primitive IEDs other than maybe throwing a track and a few ringing ears, I was shocked when i found this slide show web page.

Sadly the hollow-charge and EFP IEDs seem to be doing there job.

[Nidan1]

If you do a little research you will find that a lot of those pictures were taken during the initial Thunder Runs into Baghdad in the beginning of the war. Especially the very first one which IIRC was hit by RPGs fired off the overpass which caused the tank to catch fire.

A big enough IED will certainly take out a tank, especially the EFP type.

[John Kettler]

Nidan1,

While I agree that some of those pics shown do indeed appear to be from the Thunder Run, many of the others would appear not to be from there and seem to exhibit precisely the kind of damage we'd expect from an IED. Given such nifty practices as stacking several antitank mines, burying aerial bombs or several artillery shells together, coupled with the flat bottom of the M1 series, a broken track is the good end of the likely outcome spectrum. This is borne out by the long string of shattered M1 carcasses being returned to the Lima, Ohio facility (jointly operated by Chrysler Land Dynamics and the DoD) for total zero time rebuilds, as seen recently on the History Channel's Mail Call.

Regards,

John Kettler

[civdiv]

The one hit during Thunder Run was only an M-Kill. And then the US spent an hour shooting at it trying to get it to burn. And many of the shots are the same tanks shot from different angles, while they were burning and after they had burned out, taken while they were being towed and the tow line broke, and finally after they had been pulled back to a base. All told there are like a total of 4 or 5 Abrams in those shots, and one more that isn't even damaged, just bogged.

civdiv

[JonS]

Sounds like the burnt-out C-130 at Khe-Sahn; there was only one, but it was photographed so often and from so many angles, and shown so frequently that it became both iconic, and numerically vastly inflated, giving the false impression that every other C-130 that flew in there was destroyed.

[offtaskagain]

There's also a number of pictures taken in the 1991 Camp Doha, Kuwait fire. The one at 1:03 is an obvious one. I also spotted at least one training accident in there. Most of the rest are of "Cojone Eh" in various stages of it's destruction. There are a few that are of IEDs like the one with its turret blown off but overall it's just a few tanks depicted.

[sross]

Does anyone know any reliable count for how many M-1's have been KO'd in Iraq?

[dangerdaz]

You make a big enough ied you are going to get results!The media hype surrounding this is just sad tbh....They must really be naieve if they thought mbts are immune out there.....

[Andreas]

Originally posted by John Kettler:

Nidan1,

While I agree that some of those pics shown do indeed appear to be from the Thunder Run, many of the others would appear not to be from there and seem to exhibit precisely the kind of damage we'd expect from an IED. Given such nifty practices as stacking several antitank mines, burying aerial bombs or several artillery shells together, coupled with the flat bottom of the M1 series, a broken track is the good end of the likely outcome spectrum. This is borne out by the long string of shattered M1 carcasses being returned to the Lima, Ohio facility (jointly operated by Chrysler Land Dynamics and the DoD) for total zero time rebuilds, as seen recently on the History Channel's Mail Call.

Regards,

John Kettler

How long is that string? In numbers please. Did they break it down by reason for rebuild?

All the best

Andreas

[Nidan1]

I saw the show on "Mail Call" about the M1-A2 rebuild program.

No new tanks are being built, the military is sending tanks to the Lima Ohio plant mentioned by John, to be completely refurbished and upgraded. Essentially after this process the tank is considered brand new according to the documentary.

There were no shattered hulks, just front line vehicles coming in for a face lift.

[ April 24, 2007, 05:18 AM: Message edited by: Nidan1 ]

[SgtMuhammed]

Hell, they don't even need to bring them from Iraq, they have hundreds of old models (105s and various + and IPs) from deactivated units sitting around in storage. They do the same thing with aircraft and ships, it's not like you can just throw these things away like soda cans.

Let us not forget, the media sells more papers if people think the story is tragic or shocking. Bringing a bunch of tanks in for overhauls isn't as sexy as implying that they had all been killed in action.

[Andreas]

That sounds a lot more reasonable.

Wear & tear through constant use in a very harsh environment must be substantial. And that's before anyone starts shooting.

All the best

Andreas

[John Kettler]

For the record, while I don't remember the breakdown given, and there was one, I do distinctly recall seeing two types of vehicles being brought in: earlier M1 models brought into the facility intact for tear down and upgrade and turretless, suspensionless hulks on railroad flatcars. Offhand, I'd say those were combat casualties of one sort or another, and this feeling was reinforced by the ruined state of the exteriors of said carcasses, all of which were in desert paint remnants. BTW, the same facility is doing Strykers and another AFV I don't recall for sure; might've been Bradleys, though.

Regards,

John Kettler

[MikeyD]

"Does anyone know any reliable count for how many M-1's have been KO'd in Iraq? "

The answer's somewhere on this site but I haven't been able to come up with the right word combinations in the search function to find it. I recall that a 2005 report listed something like 24-26 Strykers write-off lost at the time, and Abrams had some big round number like 60 or 80. I remember when I first saw that report I typed out 60 (or 80) X's on my screen to visualize just how many vehicles that was. That's out of more than a thousand vehicles in-theatre, and only counted the unfixable ones - up into 2005.

[ April 25, 2007, 12:30 PM: Message edited by: MikeyD ]

[Fly Pusher]

Originally posted by sross:

Does anyone know any reliable count for how many M-1's have been KO'd in Iraq?

A bit of searching uncovered this pdf from the Lexington Institute which has a table on page 6 giving some vehicle losses.

Numbers listed include 20 lost M1 Abrams tanks, 50 Bradlies, 20 Strykers, 20 M113s and 250 Humvees.

Not to mention >500 other vehicles and 85 helicopters !

They also make the very valid point that increased heavy usage is just 'wearing out' a lot of kit years before it was anticipated that it would need to be replaced.

[MikeyD]

Their source was the Army times. I wonder when those numbers were first published, and i wonder how far gone a vehicle has to be before it gets officially listed as 'lost'. 250 Humvees seems mighty mighty low. That averages just 5 Humvees per month (1 1/4 a week) over the four years. The Army just put in a giant rush order for 7,000 replacement Humvees to make up attrition losses (of all kinds).

[John Kettler]

This, under the OIF section, confirms M1 vulnerability to the kinds of IEDs I described. It further appears that some of the carcasses I saw may be from Desert Storm, for tank losses there were much more than I knew at the time. Further, it appears that the Iraqi T-72s did more damage to our tanks than we heard before. See particularly footnote 5.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M1A2

Regards,

John Kettler

[Sequoia]

Originally posted by Fly Pusher:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by sross:

Does anyone know any reliable count for how many M-1's have been KO'd in Iraq?

A bit of searching uncovered this pdf from the Lexington Institute which has a table on page 6 giving some vehicle losses.

Numbers listed include 20 lost M1 Abrams tanks, 50 Bradlies, 20 Strykers, 20 M113s and 250 Humvees.

Not to mention >500 other vehicles and 85 helicopters !

They also make the very valid point that increased heavy usage is just 'wearing out' a lot of kit years before it was anticipated that it would need to be replaced. </font>

[civdiv]

Originally posted by John Kettler:

This, under the OIF section, confirms M1 vulnerability to the kinds of IEDs I described. It further appears that some of the carcasses I saw may be from Desert Storm, for tank losses there were much more than I knew at the time. Further, it appears that the Iraqi T-72s did more damage to our tanks than we heard before. See particularly footnote 5.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M1A2

Regards,

John Kettler

John, if you read that list carefully, along with the text above and below, you will see that on the contrary, very few M1s were destroyed by the Iraqis. Most were killed by friendly fire or were bogged or M-killed and then destroyed by friendly forces. And 'few' is actually more than were actually killed by anything Iraqi.

civdiv

[Battlefront.com]

The Lexinton Institute report is the only one I've come upon that has listed the breakout of losses in such detail. Note that these numbers are as of late 2005, not curent. The 20 Abrams noted were also reported as combat losses, not non-combat write offs.

The wear and tear on vehicles in Iraq is horrendous. It's one reason why the Army will take a decade to rebuild, by some estimates, even if we exit within the next year. The pricetag to "reset" repairable equipment is staggering, not to mention the amount required to replace lost vehicles. The helo loss is massive in terms of Dollars. There is no way this work can be done quickly even if funding were not an issue. There are only so many places geared up to "reset" equipment.

Yeah, there are still a lot of M113s in Iraq. Many are used by HQ and rear units in the HBCTs. Engineers also use them. Don't expect to see them in CM:SF though

Steve

[Sixxkiller]

Man I would almost rather be in a burning Sherman with a Kompanie of Panthers shooting at me than ride in a M113 again.

[John Kettler]

civdiv,

I wasn't claiming that most M1s lost in Desert Storm were at Iraqi hands. Far from it! Rather, the list had some incidents I had never heard of in which the Iraqis evidently got some licks in. I never really studied the matter, but the only such instance I knew of where an M1 came under T-72 fire that did anything was an M1 shot in the turret side by 125mm HEAT. The real point in providing the link, though, was to present evidence that M1s and the like could be franged by relatively simple IEDs, no fancy P-charges required.

Regards,

John Kettler

[J_Toe]

Here is a vid of a knocked out M1, but again no context, could have been hit by an IED or just immobilized and then destroyed by US forces.

I should imagine the crew were evacuated well before the rounds start cooking off and the gimps with the camera arrived.

Jim

[J_Toe]

Further to the above, just noticed this in the comments section:

I know exactlly what happen to this tank, since my company did the recovery. This tank ran over a IED and threw a track....the crew is ok (some injurys, but not too bad). but it was too risky to recover the tank at the time so the AH-64 place took care of it....we got the tank back here 2 days later, some parts we took off, but the hulk was moved to DRMO

Would be good to see visuals that simulate rounds cooking off etc. in CMSF.