Quoting Hackworth (p.108):
(p.108)"When I examined the tanks, I found each had been killed by a missile that had burned a hole through the armor. The hole was about the size a pencil would make if you stabbed it through a sheet of paper."
(p.111)..."When I examined the tanks, I found more of the little holes. The missile had melted its way through the armor, changing the air pressure. That alone was enought to kill the crew inside. The metal from the hole is called spalling. It's melted, it's hot, but the minute it's forced into the tank it hardens again ans starts zinging around at a tremendous velocity, slicing through all those young, tender, fleshy bodies.
This was General Tus's secret weapon.
It had to be a modified French Milan missile. I had seen those same telltale holes in Iraqi tanks in the French sector during Desert Storm. But that still left the question of where General Tus was getting them.
The next day I was sitting with another Coration oficer in a cafe just behind the lines. I bought a bottle of the local rotgut and we killed it plus a couple more. When we were both hanging onto the edge of the table, I showed him my magic leter from General Tus [cooperate with him where possible etc.] and told him how much the tank killer program impressed me.
"It's the Milan," he said
The system cost $80,000; each missile cost $20,000. They were getting them from South Africa. The officer raised his glass.
"The South Africans hate the Serbs," he said. "And they love the profits."
At first description, I thought this sounded like some kind of "Star Wars" weapon. Perhaps an extremely high-speed projectile a la Arnold's movie Eraser.
If the French have an Abrams-killer, I guess that's one more thing we can be thankful to them for. (Lafayette, nous sommes arrivee! ... Lafayette! ... Lafayette?)
Not.
Saddam's electrical supply was notoriously unreliable. Any possibility that they were working on some kind of 'rail gun'? Perfect launch vehicle for such a weapon would be an ordinary bus. Revv up the generators, get close enough, and phht ... hardly even any noise.