Quick TOW question

[Jonny(FGM)]

Does anybody know why the man portable TOW takes 3 minutes to set up but 10 minutes to pack down?

[Erwin]

It's the washing and polishing to get it back into looking new so it can be returned for refund?

[Secondbrooks]

Does anybody know why the man portable TOW takes 3 minutes to set up but 10 minutes to pack down?

It's pretty odd and absurd thing that TOW-2. TOW-2 can't be much transported by 2-3 men teams on foot. System it self without missiles weights around 100 kilograms, and has lots of different parts. Theoratically three man can carry ATGM-system itself (one part in back while both hands carries something per each man), but carrying missiles is impossible. So overall my answer would be that they shouldn't be able to either pack or mount the thing... Or should be able to mount and pack but moving should be impossible. It could be simulated by crawling (moving part of ATGM-system to somewhere and returning to fetch remaining parts)

I'd say that packing should take about 3-4 minutes of time with that small team... If they have all equipment carried to firing positions and is in reach of their hands.

Packing should take more time that actual mounting, because there's all those checks which can take about minute, collimating thermal sights to day sights, checking that system is healthy and ready to fire.

It has been 10 years since i last time fiddled with TOW, but i might remember something right :confused:

[Jonny(FGM)]

Thanks for the answer.

It seems to me that using the TOW from a HUMVEE is suicide except at very long range, but likewise to sit about for 10 minutes after you've just blown up an enemy tank seems equally suicidal

[sross112]

Don't they drive iron stakes or something for the tripod? Maybe the ten minutes is getting those out? Just an uneducated guess.

[Alan8325]

It's pretty odd and absurd thing that TOW-2. TOW-2 can't be much transported by 2-3 men teams on foot. System it self without missiles weights around 100 kilograms, and has lots of different parts. Theoratically three man can carry ATGM-system itself (one part in back while both hands carries something per each man), but carrying missiles is impossible. So overall my answer would be that they shouldn't be able to either pack or mount the thing... Or should be able to mount and pack but moving should be impossible. It could be simulated by crawling (moving part of ATGM-system to somewhere and returning to fetch remaining parts)

I'd say that packing should take about 3-4 minutes of time with that small team... If they have all equipment carried to firing positions and is in reach of their hands.

Packing should take more time that actual mounting, because there's all those checks which can take about minute, collimating thermal sights to day sights, checking that system is healthy and ready to fire.

It has been 10 years since i last time fiddled with TOW, but i might remember something right :confused:

A 2-3 man team carrying the whole system + 3 missiles might be far fetched, but somebody needs to carry the TOW components by hand to set it up on the tripod in real life. It probably involves several more people in real life to move the system by hand or several trips by the same people, but letting the 2-3 man team do it in CMSF is probably to avoid having to implement some kind of complex multiple-team splitting micromanagement nightmare. Similar to what they did with increasing the M2A3 Bradley seating capacity to avoid having to split the squads in unique ways to make them fit like in RL.

Maybe the 10 minute pack-up time is a penalty for trying to move the system around too quickly in-game, when in real life it takes more people or several back and forth trips to move everything.