3rd Infantry Seizes 3 Bridges in Fiercest Fighting So Far

">>>>which has a claimed ability to penetrate 1100 to 1200 millimeters of steel armor protected by explosive armor<<<<<

1100 mm of armor, works out to 43 inches and change (at 25.4 mm per inch). I sense some serious POO or Putin in the air here..."

hmm not impossible, the TOW II had the capability of penetrating 52 inches (+) of homogenious steel. That's the extent that I can tell you, the remainder of it is classified information. I was a TOW Critter in the Marines from 1975 to 1991 before I was medically retired. The Soviets had an equally impressive piece of Anti-Tank gear that worked very much like our TOW did. The Sagger however was the one they used most during the time I was in and it sadly lacked in it's targetting ability. Basically a Sagger was fired from a launch point while the gunner sat some distance away. He had to fly the missile into his sights and then match up the target and the missile manually in order to get it on target. Even so for a stationary target they could hit 60 to 80% of the time, moving 40 to 50% of the time (this was a well trained gunner). The TOW and the soviet version operated on quite a bit different level. The Optical Sight of the weapon actually sent signals to an MGS (Missile Guidance System), these signals were interpreted by the MGS which then sent signals down a wire to the missile control surfaces. The Signals told the missile to move left right up or down acccording to where the gunner had his crosshairs. We had a 98% first round hit capability regardless of moving or stationary.

Semper Fi

I understand HEAT has generally been replaced by other types of round, even in AT missles?

Had to. The reactive armor on Russian tanks has rendered "standard HEAT" ineffective, except for non-reacive armored tanks. Now, AT Missiles are like Javelin, or have two stage warheads (one for the box of explosives, and the second for the main armor); new TOW missiles use this.

Maybe the round attacks specific parts of the tank-like Javelin exploding above and sending its load downward through the lightest part of the tanks armour.

That's not what the article seemed to imply. The discussion seemed to be rated, tested performance through armor plate, not performance charateristics.

I do know that the improved TOW round, which has been copied with great success by the Russians and Chinese, can kill any tank in the world at a greater range than most main gun rounds. Maybe this Russian AT round is the result.

Possibly. I was just questioning the 43 inches. 110-120 mm worth of armor penetration, and defeating reactive armor would make a formidable enough AT system. It does sound like they still don't have the fire control systems available in the ITOW (thank God).

The Composite armor it had no problem with, basically the TOW II could punch right through that pretty easily. The Reactive presented somewhat more of a challenge. What they did was to attach a longer probe to the missiles nose cone and in that probe was a small explosive. It was designed to give a standoff capability to the missile that allowed it to detonate the reactive armor while still allowing the follow on shaped charge to deliver the killing blow to the tank itself. The TOW IV (I think, been 12 years since I retired), has a fly over shoot down capability now. It doesn't hit the tank itself, it flies over the top where the armor is thinnest and delivers it's shaped charge into the top of the vehicle. Quite effective and it also (from what I remember) has the ability to better set off ammo in the ammunition compartment thus completing the tanks destruction.

I was in Quantico for a Weapons Demo in early '87 where they had a new TOW (can't remember the designation) that they were working on. This one used fiber optics and was a vertical launch horizontal flight characteristic. Basically it operated somewhat like the Sagger did, but it had a 10,000 meter range (Tow II was 3800 meters). There was a small camera built into the nose of the missile. The gunner launched the missile and "flew it" like a video game out to it's target. The beauty of this weapon was you could fire it from almost anywhere, it launched vertically to 100 meters and then levelled out in a horizontal flight, the gunner could then fly the missile anywhere he chose just as if he was sitting on top of it telling it where to go. Don't know if they ever completed work on this thing but it damn sure looked impressive. I was an instructor with the Heavy Weapons Section at School of Infantry in Camp Pendleton when I retired. That's the best info that I have at the moment. I loved TOW's, still do, best damn anti-tank missile system the ground troops have ever seen.

Semper Fi

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