But why?
I don’t think a Sheridan ever fired a missile in anger...and I wonder if a Russian tank has either.
I don’t understand what a missile can do that a HEAT round can’t. If the Ruskies are still sticking to the missile and autoloader, they really are stuck in the past, IMHO.
BTW, in an earlier post, you mentioned the M1-IP! Half the tankers I talk to have never even heard of it. In 1991, that’s what we had at Camp Casey, Korea. Blast from the past.
I'm pretty sure that several [though fewer than a half-dozen] 152 missiles were fired by 101 Airborne M551 crews during the *Operation Just Because* live fire/both ways gunnery exercise in Panama. The intent was not to defeat armor, but to reach out much further than the Panamanian Self-Defence Force's presumed AT weapons could; and I suspect they were expecting Cuban Saggers.
Remember too that Ivan has long preferred smoothbore main guns, much easier to use with HEAT rounds [whose shaped charge/Monroe effect] warheads are not as effective with a rotating projectile. And the Soviets were also early proponents of main-tube launched guided weapons, once again, the idea being to increase main gun range in a day when NATO TOW missiles, Sheridans and M60A3s were a likely threat.
I don’t understand what a missile can do that a HEAT round can’t.
Turn in flight. And follow a laser beam. Or guide in on a heat source.
If the Ruskies are still sticking to the missile and autoloader, they really are stuck in the past, IMHO.
Count on this: they will not likely completely abandon conventional main gun rounds. But if main gun-launched missiles give them double the range or a MUCH better likelihood of a first-round hit, or impact followon capability for massed platoon/company AT fires, or maybe a tank-launched main gun with an infantry support associated laser target designator, you can bet the Russians will tinker.
And if it can be retrofitted to past generations of otherwise vulnerable armor, or to obsolete lighter vehicles like second or third generation BMD/BMP/BTR vehicles, oh yes, they'll take a very hard look at some of those very cost-effective possibilities.
And in a year or so, Comrade Obama's apointees to the USAF will have done away with the A10's ground support capability. How fortunate for Ivan....
The IP’s were a rare breed.
The only way to truly tell them apart is measure the distance from the front edge of the turret to the mounting lug for the recovery cable because a lot of the external upgrades filtered their way down to the baseline tanks.