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....
“Turn in flight. And follow a laser beam. Or guide in on a heat source.”
Why is any of that necessary. With a HEAT round, if you can see it, you can kill it - well over 90% accuracy. So who cares if a missile can be guided...the tank crew guiding the missile is going to get blasted to hell and back while they’re playing Atari with the missile. Just shoot and kill.
As far as range advantage goes - yes a Russian anti-tank team hiding in the bushes can really reach out and touch someone from a long distance...and be more or less concealed while doing it. Even the TOW on the Bradley allows the vehicle to be in a hidden position. But range gets you very little when you’ve exposed the entire tank to launch out of the main gun. I don’t know the speed of these missiles, but they are subsonic, or less than 343 meter/second. So, they have to fly and be guided for 11 seconds...just to get out of the effective range of an M1. In a tank battle, that’s an eternity - using HEAT or Sabot, a tank will have engaged 2-3 targets in that time frame.
I lied! The 82nd [not 101 Abn] Sheridan gunners used M81 HEAT rounds, not Shillelagh missiles, in Panama. I had some thought that they had been trying for both range, and to avoid a stray round causing excessive civilian casualties. It was in Desert Shield/Storm/Sabre that the 82nd fired a half-dozen or so Shillelaghs, obtaining at least a couple of T55 and or T72 tank kills.