Not all of them.
The Chinese Type 84 armour piercing discarding sabot round for the Soviet 12.7x108mm AA tank heavy MG, for instance. Or these:
Posted on 11/18/2003 2:35:56 PM PST by fourscore
http://www.sciscoop.com/story/2003/11/3/171841/084
The M1A1 Abrams tank is widely acknowledged to be the best tank in the world. It weighs just shy of 70 tons and much of that weight is armor to protect the vehicle and its crew. There are two main threats against a tank: HEAT (High Explosive Anti-Tank) rounds and KE (Kinetic Energy) rounds. To greatly oversimplify, HEAT rounds produce a blob of super-hot molten metal that cuts through armor like a torch; KE rounds have long, slender dart-like projectiles that punch through armor like a bullet. The structural armor of the tank is designed to stop KE rounds and is based on the so-called "Chobham armor" technology developed by the British. This is basically a sandwich of steel and depleated uranium plates, ceramics, and plastic composite honeycomb. When hit by a anti-tank KE projectile, the ceramic and composite components vaporize so violently they actually push an incoming dart back out the way it came in before it is able to fully penetrate the armor plating. Attached to the outside of the M1A1 is a second type of armor called reactive armor, basically boxes of steel plated explosives that are intended to disrupt the molten plasma jets created by HEAT rounds before they can get to the vulnerable structural armor. Obviously the offense-defense aspects of protecting and penetrating tank armor have been given a great deal of thought by the U.S. military and has resulted in the M1A1 having a virtually perfect record as being unstoppable in combat. That is, until last August 28. On that date, something disabled an M1A1 tank in Baghdad, and the U.S. Army is still trying to figure out what it was.
As reported in Army Times: The incident is so sensitive that most experts in the field would talk only on the condition that they not be identified. According to an unclassified Army report, the mystery projectile punched through the vehicle's skirt and drilled a pencil-sized hole through the hull. The hole was so small that "my little finger will not go into it," the report's author noted.
The "something" continued into the crew compartment, where it passed through the gunner's seatback, grazed the kidney area of the gunner's flak jacket and finally came to rest after boring a hole 1½ to 2 inches deep in the hull on the far side of the tank.
As it passed through the interior, it hit enough critical components to knock the tank out of action. That made the tank one of only two Abrams disabled by enemy fire during the Iraq war and one of only a handful of "mobility kills" since they first rumbled onto the scene 20 years ago. The other Abrams knocked out this year in Iraq was hit by an RPG-7, a rocket-propelled grenade.
Experts believe whatever it is that knocked out the tank in August was not an RPG-7 but most likely something new -- and that worries tank drivers.
"The unit is very anxious to have this `SOMETHING' identified. It seems clear that a penetrator of a yellow molten metal is what caused the damage, but what weapon fires such a round and precisely what sort of round is it? The bad guys are using something unknown and the guys facing it want very much to know what it is and how they can defend themselves."
"It's a real strange impact," said a source who has worked both as a tank designer and as an anti-tank weapons engineer. "This is a new one. ... It almost definitely is a hollow-charge warhead of some sort, but probably not an RPG-7" anti-tank rocket-propelled grenade.
In the end, a civilian weapons expert said, "I hope it was a lucky shot and we are not part of someone's test program. Being a live target is no fun."
Not all of them.
The Chinese Type 84 armour piercing discarding sabot round for the Soviet 12.7x108mm AA tank heavy MG, for instance. Or these:
Too close and you just point the weapon at the target.
And it will almost certainly miss. SACLOS ATGMs have a pI (probability of on-target impact) of about 0.05 inside their minimum range.
I've fired RPG7s at tanks, hitting tracks and sprockets with little effect other than to burn a half-inch hole through track shoes and maybe blow off the rubber track block pads. the more usual aiming point is the third support roller, but the Abrams skirt protects that helpful target, not that it helped the crew much in this case. A much better target on an Abrams is the engine compartment from behind, offering at least a chance at a mobility kill from damage to the turbine or final drive [or setting the air cleaner assembly afire] or the bustle rack and APU at the back of the turret in hopes of detonating the rounds stored inside- not likely, unless you've got one of the *magic bullets* used in the example under discussion.
The idea of our 5-million dollar M1A2 SEP and M1A1-D tanks being killed by a $35 RPG-7D rocket launcher is unsettling, to say the least.
-archy-/-
Back to "boots on the ground!"
Don't remember the exact line but something about,
"A hundred pounds worth of private school education falls to a three ruppee slug."
Kipling neatly described a particular time and set of circumstances and yet did so in a manner that's both universal and timeless. It's not the same one you reference, but your quote recalled that in The Ballad of Boh da Thone we are told that:
The wind of the dawn went merrily past,
The high grass bowed her plumes to the blast.
And out of the grass, on a sudden, broke
A spirtle of fire, a whorl of smoke—
And Captain O’Neil of the Black Tyrone
Was blessed with a slug in the ulnar-bone—
The gift of his enemy Boh Da Thone.
(Now a slug that is hammered from telegraph-wire
Is a thorn in the flesh and a rankling fire.)
The U.S. government has protested and Kostunica has been doing his best to get this under control, but corruption & anti-American attitudes among Milosevic hold-overs have made it tough to root it all out. Under Milosevic, Serbia was an enemy of the USA and a friend to our enemies.
;^)
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