Hows that thing hold up under this?
Posted on 09/06/2019 7:58:03 AM PDT by C19fan
A new tank destroyer concept, built for the Polish Army, could become the most effective tank killer in any army. The unnamed vehicle is armed with up to 24 Brimstone anti-tank missiles and can unleash a salvo of tank-hunting missiles, knocking out enemy tank units it can’t actually see.
(Excerpt) Read more at popularmechanics.com ...
An Army analysis after WWII found that only 14% of tank rounds fired were fired at another tank. Most of the rest were against stationary targets and personnel. While vehicles are great, they are not as flexible as a two man portable anti tank rocket team.
I don’t love the headline. To me, a “Destroyer” is a big ship that supports a bluewater navy. I do understand the concept of “tank destroyer”. But they didn’t put that in the headline.
The counter is, eventually, a radar jammer.
Or maybe something simpler.
Or maybe one of the current active protection systems can be pointed up.
Granted there is a counter for the counter, or will be.
The arms race never ends.
I have always wondered what is the difference between a tank destroyer and a tank. Looking at WWII models they look just like a tank.
The difference in their role. TD's typically have no turret with limited lateral movement to the barrel.
In WW2 American TDs were mostly built on Sherman chassis. They had open top turrets, no bow or co axle MGs, only a turret mounted .50 mg. They had thinner armor and were faster than a Sherman and carried long barreled 3inch and later 90mm guns.
Stug Life..
Hows that thing hold up under this?
It’s effective because the tanks don’t work well at sea.
Keeper of the Tread Head Ping List: (Just a bunch of tankers)
Hopefully they got the right house.
Hard to prove it wasnt.
US Navy is using heavily armed marine vehicles (I didn’t pay attention to which ones) on deck to thwart Iranian fast boats in the Persian gulf.
Yes, I read that....and excellent idea.
Tank Destroyer is a mission. The first one's in the US Army were simply 75mm guns mounted in the bed of an M2 Halftrack. The TD battalions learned in North Africa that these were unsuitable as what they really needed was a high velocity cannon. Those were tough to fit inside the fledgling Sherman Tanks, and so needed a new turret. What they came up with was and up-armored Sherman with a roof-less turret.
The Germans also had a simple solution: they took obsolete tank chassis and built a heavier gun into a casemate -- no turret. If you needed to train the gun more than a few degrees, you had to point the entire track at the target.
Many years ago while visiting the Army Museum at West Point, I was enthralled by a beautiful diorama showing a German infantry man crouched behind a stone wall and getting the better of a Sherman tank with a Panzerfaust. As I stood there looking at this, a small boy came up and said “Look at this grampa; how cool!” Then I heard behind me a voice with deep German accent say in a somewhat disgusted tone, “Ya, but you had to be really close, and you would be killed”.
Radar jamming leaves LIDAR and IR guidance...
Many current APS systems actually can counter top down attack missiles.
To add to what Tallguy said, turreted tank destroyers may look like a tank, but they aren’t. Usually turreted tank destroyers have very light armor, suitable only for keeping small arms fire (rifles, machine guns, sometimes the occasional grenade) from getting in and bothering the crew. Tanks usually have armor of a thickness intended to defeat its own main weapon or the likely main weapons of its anticipated enemy counterparts.
Some designs like the US M36 Jackson turreted tank destroyer may have more armor on the front to protect the vehicle from a return tank shot, but the rest of the vehicle is still horribly vulnerable to anything above the rifle level (and even some heavy machine guns can get in). It’s not intended to get into a slugging match with more heavily armored combatants; the traditional antiarmor role for a tank destroyer is to either shoot from ambush or to flank enemy tanks and shoot them in their weaker armor facets.
The reason tank destroyers exist is because they are cheaper and faster to build than an actual tank. Think of them as a giant gun on top of a cheap barely armored box and you’ll get a good idea of the concept of most such vehicles.
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