M1A1/A2 operation

[Atago]

Any tankers here? My impression is that the M1A1 AND A2 tanks as well as the Leopard have an advantage over earlier and most Eastern block tanks in their ability to accurately fire while moving. Now this may be a question more for the strategy, Tactics forum - but In CMSF they stop to fire (if operated by the AI). I'm not suggesting CMSF is flawed here, just curious about how the actual tanks fight, and if in CMSF they loose much accuracy if firing on the move instead of stopping.

[flamingknives]

I suspect that firing on the move is something for open ground fighting. In more complex terrain, rampaging about the place would be liable to take you out of sight of the enemy before you can engage.

[M1A1TC]

Any tankers here? My impression is that the M1A1 AND A2 tanks as well as the Leopard have an advantage over earlier and most Eastern block tanks in their ability to accurately fire while moving. Now this may be a question more for the strategy, Tactics forum - but In CMSF they stop to fire (if operated by the AI). I'm not suggesting CMSF is flawed here, just curious about how the actual tanks fight, and if in CMSF they loose much accuracy if firing on the move instead of stopping.

Well, I was a tanker for about 5 years. We used to fire from a slow crawl - 10-20 mph at the most. This gives you the most accurate, steady fire platform, while still moving.

[Atago]

Well, I was a tanker for about 5 years. We used to fire from a slow crawl - 10-20 mph at the most. This gives you the most accurate, steady fire platform, while still moving.

Interesting - moving slowly to present a somewhat harder target for anyone shooting at you while maintaining the ability to shoot.

How did you deal with (or were you trained to deal with) enemy ATGMs?

[M1A1TC]

We used to practice Sagger drills - at the first sign of missile launch everyone screams "sagger", and driver drives in zigzags. Dont know how useful that would be, unless the missile is wire-guided by human eye.

[Flanker15]

Yes most missiles are wire guided by human eye, the sagger is manualy guided with a joystick as well so it's even harder.

The zigzaging would also deplete the missiles kinetic energy by making it constantly change course (unless the guider is skilled enough to still hit the target with out constantly tracking it), so it might fall out of the air before it reaches the target.

[SgtMuhammed]

You would probably only have time to zig once you actually notice the missile and people actually begin to react. Even a slow missile is moving pretty fast. Not much time for the follow on zag.

[Asok]

The Sagger had a flight time of 15-25 seconds. This is plenty. (Modern missiles are generally faster.)

Also, the idea of zig-zagging is not to make just one missile miss you. There are many shooters, shooting at more than one tank.

(I am not a tanker, but the zig-zag drill makes sense to me)

[ChrisND]

And then to throw the gunner off you can always switch it up and zag-zig instead.

[SgtMuhammed]

But if you zag and everyone else zigs you can end up with a sudden metal to metal interface and bring the whole dance to a sudden stop.

Having tracked vehicles attempting to Sagger dance I can tell you that it doesn't really work unless you have trees or other cover to hide behind. I think it is just something to make tankers feel like they are doing something before they explode. It is better to just pop smoke and run for cover.