T72 Vs Abrams - osprey claims no abrams ever knocked out.

[Redwolf]

I once talked to an aging 'spook' who spun a very interesting story. It was about U.S. tanks regularly engaging with North Vietnamese along the DMZ. They were regular slug-fests, set-piece battles across open ground. He even described one M48 being holed right through beneath the turret basket. Not one word about these battles has emerged in the historical accounts. There's two conclusions for us to choose from. Either the aging 'spook' was pulling a Baron Von Munchausen on me, OR the engagements were real but weren't quite successful enough for publication. M48 does not exactly dominate T55 technologically. The "official" story still is we never lost a battle in Vietnam.

"Basket" as in the storage basket on the back of the turret?

A T55 with any gun should be able to penetrate the rear of a M48's turret.

That doesn't make a lost battle, though.

[Michael Emrys]

"Basket" as in the storage basket on the back of the turret?

'Turret basket' is normally understood as that (usually) unarmored part of the turret structure that extends downward into the armored hull and encloses the turret crew. Image of Stuart turret with basket:

Michael

[Rustman]

My definition of knocked out is if the tank is taken out of action, meaning it can't continue to do battle. If a tank loses it's engine, then it's knocked out. It's nothing more than a big chunk of metal, and no longer a threat.

Now if you want to debate a catastrophic hit that launches the turret 200 ft in the air, then probably not. But I have seen plenty of videos of burning Abrams tanks to know that some have been neutralized.

I'm not sure this one was salvaged...

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=4e7f9c511c

Not true...as a mech, there are three official statuses to combat damaged vehicles. First is a mobility kill, which means the vehicle is no longer able to maneuver, but it's weapon systems still function. The second is a firepower kill, which means the the vehicle can no longer effectively engage the enemy, but it can still move....neither of those are considered "knocked out". Knocked out is a catastophic kill. A catastrophic kill is defined as a complete system failure. No conventional enemy force has ever successfully scored a catastrophic kill on an Abrams. The referenced Abrams with the engine fire was not a catastrophic kill. It was a mobility kill and that fire isn't what destroyed it. They decided to abandon it in order to continue mission instead of wasting the time on recovery, so the vehicle was intentionally destroyed. They used thermite grenades on the crew compartments, hit it with DU from another Abrams...and then later it was still deemed to not have been acceptably destroyed enough, so they dropped a JDAM on it. The deliberate destruction of a vehicle does not count.

Now, unconventional warfare is another thing all together. An EFP or a large enough IED can take out pretty much anything, including an Abrams.

[Flanker15]

That just highlights the use of semantics by Government PR to spin "tank destoryed by enemy fire" into something that looks better on a report.

[Redwolf]

'Turret basket' is normally understood as that (usually) unarmored part of the turret structure that extends downward into the armored hull and encloses the turret crew. Image of Stuart turret with basket:

Michael

Makes sense. But that would still be a probable side shot, right?

Not that the M48 was that great in the first place.

[Michael Emrys]

Makes sense. But that would still be a probable side shot, right?

Correct. It would have passed through the hull rather low down. Chances are the armor is pretty thin there as there might not be much rather vital there, I suppose.

Not that the M48 was that great in the first place.

They seem to have performed well enough when properly handled. The Egyptian Saggers ate them for lunch until the Israelis figured out proper tactics against them, and after that they did all right.

Michael

[kipanderson]

Hi,

When it comes to the ’06 Lebanon War it is not that the Israelis could not have won… of course they could. It is just that given the tactics they were going to have to use… near conventional head on assaults on village after village.. their casualties would have been too heavy to make it politically viable.

The reason why they had to fight the war that way was in large part that in the first day or two of the war they discovered the vulnerability of their armour to the now wide spread use of the later tandem warheaded AT rounds being used against them. Thus they quickly abandoned attempts at their armoured spearhead tactics.

This also explains why their overall armour losses where so low given the lethality of the AT weapons against them. It became a case of conventional, head on assaults on villages with every attempt made to minimise presenting the flanks of armour.

In war many weapons achieve their aim by forcing the enemy to use tactics he would prefer no tot use. The effect of ‘90s Russian AT weapons on Israeli armour is a classic of this.

In order to counter tandem HEAT warheads you need mass… not just steel these days of course… but even using the latest techniques and materials you still need mass to stop tandem HEAT rounds. Thus APCs in any form and tank sides are very vulnerable to such warheads.

All interesting stuff,

All the best,

Kip.

[Damian90]

Well the future of tank is more compact tank, fully modular construction.

My guess is a hybrid of Leclerc, M1, Challenger 2 and Merkava Mk.4 designs.

Vehicle with base protection (Level 1), weight will be 50-55 ton, this is optimal weight I suppose.

Well, we can stay with classic manned turrets.

So let say low profile turret like in Leclerc, thanks to that turret is small and with the same mass like bigger turrets it can have same (or better) frontal protection and better side protection, all ready use ammo in isolated compartment in turret bustle with blow off panels.

Turret armor fully modular, also reinforced turret top armor, slat cage in the back also acting like supply basket.

Hull shorter than in modern tanks, lenght could be like in Leclerc. Also modular armor and construction.

Engine should be 1500-2000 HP and as compact at it can be, and Diesel. In back of the hull, behind turret basket should be small isolated ammo compartment with blow off panels, or no ammo in hull at all.

And of course soft and hard kill APS systems.

Level 1A upgrade will increase weight to (if base vehicle weight's 50 tons) 55 or (if base vehicle weight's 55 tons) 60 tons, most protection increase on side of hull and (optionally if neaded?) turret. Slat cage for hull rear and belly addon armor.

Level 1B is protection upgrade also for the front if needed. Weight increase to (if Level 1A upgrade weights 55 tons) 60 or (if Level 1A upgrade weight 60 tons) 65 tons.

Main armament is 120mm or 125mm guns, they are optimal and enough even or the future conflicts.

coax stil should 7,62x51mm, and one RWS connected to CITV for TC with 12,7mm.

Crew min 3, max 4.

Mechanized loading system, if crew is 4 then also possibility to faster manual loading, but then again, low profile turret will be not such low profile.

You all can add anything you wan't to see in IV gen. MBT's.

[theFightingSeabee]

I'm reminded of an Army press conference in late 2003. The press officer said the brand-new recce Stryker that was gutted by fire following a roadside bombing on the road to Samarra wasn't destroyed "by the bomb" but was destroyed by the demolition charge that cooked-off in the burning vehicle! So by some wierdly convoluted logic I guess it wasn't counted as a combat loss. Or something like that - working with six year old memories here.

That same FLAWED logic has kept people from getting purple hearts. BS!!! If a rocket hits your hmmwv, blows the tire, you swerve and hit a tree, the hmmwv springs a fuel leak, and you get burned... That should be considered enemy fire! It wouldn't have happened if it weren't for the enemy firing a rocket.

[/RANT]

[Buq-Buq]

I once talked to an aging 'spook' who spun a very interesting story. It was about U.S. tanks regularly engaging with North Vietnamese along the DMZ. They were regular slug-fests, set-piece battles across open ground. He even described one M48 being holed right through beneath the turret basket. Not one word about these battles has emerged in the historical accounts. There's two conclusions for us to choose from. Either the aging 'spook' was pulling a Baron Von Munchausen on me, OR the engagements were real but weren't quite successful enough for publication. M48 does not exactly dominate T55 technologically. The "official" story still is we never lost a battle in Vietnam.

The truth is far more mundane than you are supposing: U.S.-built tanks . . . M48A3s of the ARVN 20th Tank regiment . . . engaged in "regular slug-fests, set-piece battles across open ground" against NVA tanks during the Easter Offensive in the spring of 1972. The engagements were real, and they did make it into plenty of publications, including Donn Starry's Armoured [sic] Combat in Vietnam, Simon Dunstan's Vietnam Tracks, Gerald Turley's The Easter Offensive and Dale Andradé's Trail By Fire. These are all great books, and if you have any interest in the history of armored combat, they should be in your library and these engagements in your lexicon.

The short version is this: in the spring of 1972, the North Vietnamese Army invaded South Vietnam with a substantial conventional army, including armor, artillery and anti-air assets, in an effort to gain additional bargaining power at the on-going Paris Peace Talks, and to show Nixon's Vietnamization policy as a farce. The NVA struck in all four Vietnamese Tactical Zones (I Corps, II Corps, III Corps and IV Corps), but the biggest battles were in the I, II and III Corps zones, with the NVA striking through Quang Tri City towards Hue (I Corps), through Dak To towards Kontum (II Corps), and through Loc Ninh towards An Loc (III Corps), respectively. Initially, the NVA outfought the ARVN, and gained numerous successes; however, the ARVN troops, with the aid of their American advisors and a considerable dose of American airpower (including air cavalry and ArcLight strikes), ultimately prevailed and defeated the NVA on the ground, recapturing most of the lost ground by the end of the summer of 1972.

The battles of the Easter Offensive saw considerable armor action, since the NVA fielded hundreds of tanks in the various battles. In fact, the battles during the spring of 1972 should have been an indication of the way that tank combat would be fought during the rest of the decade and into the next, if anyone had been paying attention. In the north, on the approaches to Dong Ha and Quang Tri City, the ARVN 20th Tank Regiment fought fierce tank versus tank engagements against NVA armor, including T-54s and Type 59s, as well as PT-76 and Type 63 amphibious tanks. In their first engagement, at ranges of 2500 - 3200 meters, the ARVN tankers killed 11 NVA tanks with no losses to themselves. The AT-3 Sagger ATGM made its combat debut that spring against ARVN armor, but after initial success, the ARVN tankers learned drills to counter the Sagger, including sudden movement and counter-fire to throw off the aim of the Sagger gunner. In the Central Highlands, the NVA tanks were countered again by American air power and the introduction of TOW ATGMs, to include a TOW Jeep-borne element of the 82nd Airborne Division airlifted into the battle zone. The battlefield around Kontum also saw the first combat use of anti-tank helicopters: American TOW-firing UH-1 Hueys of the 1st Combat Aerial TOW Team. Finally, in the siege of An Loc in the III Corps Zone, ARVN troops equipped with personal anti-tank weapons (M72 LAWs) overcame their fear of tanks and blunted the NVA armor probes into the city, proving that brave infantrymen could stand against unsupported armor.

All of these facets of armored warfare* would be brought to light in the Yom Kippur War when the military world would be shocked into believing that "the tank is dead." In fact, all of the lessons learned at such cost in October of 1973 had been highlighted in Vietnam in the spring of 1972. All of this has been written . . . and it is a great story, an important part of the history of armored warfare. I highly recommend it.

Mark

* The possible exception here is the anti-tank helicopter, which really came into its own in the 1980s in Lebanon and Iraq and Iran, rather than proving itself to the world during the Yom Kippur War.

[Battlefront.com]

I for one think that labels are very important and should be maintained according to very strict guidelines. What is done after that should be debated about.

Rustman states that the three types of enemy cased damage are:

1. Mobility kill - can't move, can fight

2. Firepower kill - can't fight, can move

3. Knocked out - can't fight, can't move

A tank that has its gun knocked out during a fight, but subsequently blows its engine returning back to its base, should not be considered "knocked out". It might be, in effect, no different than a tank with both engine and gun damaged by hostile fire, but the two things are not the same.

Now, there are definitely different things to consider beyond this. A "catastrophic kill", in most people's use of the term here, means the tank is not salvageable. There's a big difference between a tank which is "knocked out" because the driver is killed by an IED which also happens to jam the turret vs. a tank which is scattered over 100m2 area after being hit in the ammo bin by a large ATGM. The first tank can probably be put back into action relatively quickly, the second one is never going to see action again. This means nothing during the battle (hence why "knocked out" applies to both), but it usually has big implications to operational and/or strategic levels.

I agree with the statement that no Abrams have been knocked out by enemy tank fire or even AT rockets or missiles. I am pretty sure that some have been knocked out by massive IEDs.

BTW, I also agree with theFightingSeabee that when a soldier is injured as a directly linked result of an enemy action... it should be classified as a combat injury. There should be a difference between a soldier being injured after crashing a vehicle with a tire shot out by the enemy and a soldier injured 2 hours later behind the lines while repairing the vehicle that had its tire shout out by the enemy. In the first instance the soldier was injured while in the process of dealing with the enemy's actual action (having the tire shot out). The second instance the soldier was injured while dealing with the aftermath of the enemy's action (having the vehicle slip off the jack and crush his arm while repairing the battle damage). I thought the military operated along this logic, but it wouldn't surprise me at all to know that for other reasons this logic wasn't applied evenly.

Steve

[JP76er]

That same FLAWED logic has kept people from getting purple hearts. BS!!! If a rocket hits your hmmwv, blows the tire, you swerve and hit a tree, the hmmwv springs a fuel leak, and you get burned... That should be considered enemy fire! It wouldn't have happened if it weren't for the enemy firing a rocket.

[/RANT]

I totally agree!!

[Rustman]

I for one think that labels are very important and should be maintained according to very strict guidelines. What is done after that should be debated about.

Rustman states that the three types of enemy cased damage are:

1. Mobility kill - can't move, can fight

2. Firepower kill - can't fight, can move

3. Knocked out - can't fight, can't move

A tank that has its gun knocked out during a fight, but subsequently blows its engine returning back to its base, should not be considered "knocked out". It might be, in effect, no different than a tank with both engine and gun damaged by hostile fire, but the two things are not the same.

Now, there are definitely different things to consider beyond this. A "catastrophic kill", in most people's use of the term here, means the tank is not salvageable. There's a big difference between a tank which is "knocked out" because the driver is killed by an IED which also happens to jam the turret vs. a tank which is scattered over 100m2 area after being hit in the ammo bin by a large ATGM. The first tank can probably be put back into action relatively quickly, the second one is never going to see action again. This means nothing during the battle (hence why "knocked out" applies to both), but it usually has big implications to operational and/or strategic levels.

I agree with the statement that no Abrams have been knocked out by enemy tank fire or even AT rockets or missiles. I am pretty sure that some have been knocked out by massive IEDs.

BTW, I also agree with theFightingSeabee that when a soldier is injured as a directly linked result of an enemy action... it should be classified as a combat injury. There should be a difference between a soldier being injured after crashing a vehicle with a tire shot out by the enemy and a soldier injured 2 hours later behind the lines while repairing the vehicle that had its tire shout out by the enemy. In the first instance the soldier was injured while in the process of dealing with the enemy's actual action (having the tire shot out). The second instance the soldier was injured while dealing with the aftermath of the enemy's action (having the vehicle slip off the jack and crush his arm while repairing the battle damage). I thought the military operated along this logic, but it wouldn't surprise me at all to know that for other reasons this logic wasn't applied evenly.

Steve

True...there is a disconnect between the military use of certian terms and the perception of those terms in the civilian world. Officially, Catastrophic kill is defined as a complete system failure. No more, no less...that could mean still recoverable by a BDAR standard..or it could mean that the hull is a twisted pile of wreckage and the turret is laying 100 feet away. For the most part, the terms exist as they do for operations and intelligence purposes. It's meant to allow a quick and dirty rough sketch of assets on the battlefield as it occurs...friendly assets in operations and enemy assets in intel, obviously...what weapon platforms are still in play, which ones can be writen off, and which ones may still be able to come back into the game in the future. It helps commanders make those snap decisions, like the decision to abandon and destroy a immobile vehicle in order to push the mission forward vs holding in order to push out a recovery operation, by giving them the best possible information we can attain at the present and they don't have the time to go into fine details. That's obviously going to be updated with more information as it comes in from maintenance reports, BDA reports, AAR's, etc. that will allow for a more detailed and less time sensitive analysis, but as things are occuring we keep things very simple, both for the operations staff and for the crews in contact.

Wounds received that incidental to, but still attributable to, being engaged by the enemy are supposed to warrant a Purple Heart. For example, when I was deployed there was a Marine who was maneuvering under fire and fell into cover in a pile of garbage, and as a result, received a vicious puncture wound to his leg from a piece of scrap wire. He received a Purple Heart. Most wounds aren't directly caused by the actual weapon, but are incidental. My roommate in Iraq had his vehicle destroyed by an IED (he was the driver)...he struck his face on the steering wheel during the blast cutting his eye...Purple Heart. The driver of the Bradley I was in when I got blown up broke his ankle trying to stop the vehicle from going into a canal (the IED destroyed the transmission, so the brakes no longer worked..didn't stop him from trying to push the brake pedal through the floor though). Purple Heart.

[Destraex1]

I suppose the closer to realistic term would be closer to "knocked out of action".

The enemy's immediate concern would be to do this and it would also be the enemy players primary task in CMSF.

[Battlefront.com]

Rustman,

Thanks for the follow ups!

Yup, from the tactical battlefield commander's position there's no practical difference between a tank that has run out of gas and ammo compared to a tank that is scattered all over the battlefield. He's got two tanks that can't perform tasks assigned to them. But, as you say, there are others which are paid to pay attention to these differences between these two situations

Wargamers and military historians are a hybrid between battlefield commander and BDA team. They care about the practical combat results during the battle but ALSO care about what happens to the vehicles after the battle. As a result the wargamers and historians tend to favor the BDA type categorizations than what a battlefield commander in the real world would use.

Good to hear that, usually, the military recognizes wounds received indirectly as a direct result of enemy action. I thought that was the case, however I also understand that theFightingSeabee's point about some falling through the cracks. I'm pretty sure I've seen a couple of those mentioned over the years. No system is perfect

Steve

[Rustman]

Rustman,

Thanks for the follow ups!

Yup, from the tactical battlefield commander's position there's no practical difference between a tank that has run out of gas and ammo compared to a tank that is scattered all over the battlefield. He's got two tanks that can't perform tasks assigned to them. But, as you say, there are others which are paid to pay attention to these differences between these two situations

Wargamers and military historians are a hybrid between battlefield commander and BDA team. They care about the practical combat results during the battle but ALSO care about what happens to the vehicles after the battle. As a result the wargamers and historians tend to favor the BDA type categorizations than what a battlefield commander in the real world would use.

Good to hear that, usually, the military recognizes wounds received indirectly as a direct result of enemy action. I thought that was the case, however I also understand that theFightingSeabee's point about some falling through the cracks. I'm pretty sure I've seen a couple of those mentioned over the years. No system is perfect

Steve

Well, there is a slight difference in those two scenarios. Ammo and fuel fall under the S-4 (Logistics) section...while the commander and S-3 (Operations)section would be aware of a vehicle being out of action due to simply running out of fuel and ammo....the information flow, as well as the majority of the troubleshooting action, would be going through the Admin & Logistics net to the S-4 officer. In the grand sceme of things, ammo and fuel are simple fixes. Chances are the solution to that problem would already be coordinated between the S-3 and S-4 and enroute to the vehicle before the commander even found out.

Of course then later we'd be chewing that vehicle commander's butt for not giving proper ACE reports until after he was black on everything.

[Battlefront.com]

As a good friend of mine, a Marines Infantry Battalion S4, said to me recently... no matter what, someone will figure out how to blame the logistics officer

Steve

[Michael Emrys]

Another proud tradition begun by Rommel.

:D:D

Michael