It is worth noting some more recent developments. Though not accepted for service yet, the XM111 is a guided conventionally launched projectile fired from the 120mm cannon. It comes in two variants, one with a KE penetrator, the other with a shaped charge. It was designed for both line of sight and indirect fire, testing gained a hit at over 8.5km. (The M1 normally isn't expected to engage much over 4km). Something else worth noting is that you can put a missile on anything, but if you want a proper accurate tank gun, you need something heavy enough to mount it, and hopefully tough enough to take what comes back the other way. So pretty much for a tank gun's firepower, you need a tank, but for a missile's firepower, you can use anything-but-a-tank.
@@kylesenior Which is why it has not entered service! But it is an example of extant technology which combines the capability of a missile with the speed and ease of a conventional round. The issue is that there seems to be no need for it, not that it doesn't seem to work, which is an interesting addition to the arguments in this video.
Good video! A couple of other factors to consider: Missiles tend to be more fragile than tank rounds. Rounds can stand more bouncing around and mis-handling in armored vehicles than can missiles. Missles tend to be bulkier than tank rounds (particularly while in their shipping containers) thus potentially limiting the shooting capacity in tanks.
Javelin is a prime example. Even in its carry container with special shock absorbing rings around it the soldier can easily make it inoperable if he simply stumbles and bumps the container against the ground or say a tree. That's not going to happen with a HEAT or APFSDS tank shell.
@@tommihommi1 which happened to the Dutch army during operations in Yugoslavia. The field commander upon receiving his Dragon missiles found that the propellant charges on ALL of them were cracked, rendering the missiles more dangerous to his own troops than to Serbian tanks and APCs. The same was true for most of his LAW rockets and even his mortar shells. This left the Dutch batallion in Yugoslavia without any anti-armour capability at all and inevitably led to the failure of their mission . The culprit was poor maintenance and storage under incorrect conditions in the Dutch war supply warehouses, while never publicly stated I guess the entire Dutch munitions stockpile was probably similarly affected.
I'm on the other side of this. The gun itself is a better weapon. The problem is there big and need transport, so you make them mobile. But you want them protected, so they weigh a lot with armour, so the mobile platform grows giant and all the gadgets and equipment on the tank and training the crew is super $$$ . the problem is no matter how tough you make it, the other side will build a handheld missile 1 50 year old guy like me can fire smoking a cigarette destroying the tank after 30 minutes playing the video game version for training. Tanks also are more vulnerable to be destroyed from the air more then ever with drones. Rommell knew in ww2 planes had made large formations impossible unless you owned the skies. Artillery, the oldest take destroyer since ww1, is so accurate, 1 or 2 guns can do some real damage to tank formations as we have seen some video coming from Ukraine. Israel had problems with the first wire guilded missiles in the Sinai. Bazooka and panzerfoust had several upgrades in ww2 and proved deadly thats how quickly war changes.
That is just with the commonly-available rocket motor tech, there is some newer rocket motors that would vastly improve missile speed, the problem is _mass production_ and that's the real problem with mil-tech.
@@darugdawg2453 I think It does, very few missiles are capable of jamming the APS detection to get a direct hit. APS is overpowered as hell, Trophy APS even stops Javelins. There are probably blind spots in the rear or you could fire an RPG from a very high position down into the tanks roof but it would need to be very close for that. About US army testing Trophy: ...the U.S Army has reported similar success in tests. “I tried to kill the Abrams tank with ATGM 48 times and failed, despite the fact that some of them were supersonic,” said US Army Col. Glenn Dean.
@@darugdawg2453 as with anything in the realm of modern industrial warfare not being impervious is irrelevant. Everything is about probabilities & cost. Active defense lowers effective hit probability & that's all that matters. Sure you can always go with higher speeds, better guidence, better tech, but that has an added cost too. Anything that reduces the probability of a fast & speedy kill while increasing the cost of achieving a given hit probability is a problem.
Also I think that tank guns are there for the higher versatility; tanks often shoot at structures/buildings in infantry support, and here the ability to shoot HE is very important.
@@Rokaize A tank shell can cost from a few hundred dollars, or the local equivalent, to a few thousand, maybe even into the low tens of thousands for a DU round (uranium is a very hard metal, and thus an absolute sod to work with, as well as needing considerable additional safety measures), and can reach out to maybe 3 or 4 miles, although you're unlikely to hit anything other than a large stationary target at the far end of that range. An NLAW might make 1 mile under ideal circumstances, and costs £20,000. A Javelin has a similar max range to the tank shell, but costs about £200,000
Important to keep in mind as well that MBTs are not only designed to fight other tanks, but also support infantry or other vehicles. That may require the use of HE or smoke rounds. Missile systems to deliver those ammunitions would take too much room to be any useful.
yes, that's why it is so bad idea for politicians to tell army what they need to buy or where they are "best" used. You get tank barrel launched missiles or even worse ATGM Carriers liek IT-1, or Gallipoli campaign ... or as with any other war, Ukraine.
I think he didn't bring it up because all of his example (M551,M60A2,T-64,T-90) already pack powerful punch against infantry. So only the AT capability are used instead. Remember that he is talking about gun-launched ATGM and not ATGM in general.
@@meow1990_2 Usually the have different dimensions, also APDSFS is much cheaper than missile 10 fold or more. Missile is much more finicky. They need to be checked more often for defect, especially on rocket engine part. etc. Since currently they give no advantage to tank, while having many disadvantages, no not really
I wasn't an assaultman [Javelin] or a TOW gunner in the US Marines, but my buddies who were said they were trained to [ideally] trigger two additional smoke/demo explosions when firing so a tank crew had to choose among the 3 choices
@@willtaylor9309 probably obscure position of launch point, but if the enemy tank has APS system, the Javelin will be neutralized and the approximate position of launch will be shown to the crew. But the only armies I know that use APS on their tanks and are capable of neutralizing Javelins are US and Israel's army. (they use the same Trophy APS system)
@@willtaylor9309 yes to obscure position. I think they were using Dragons at the time in addition to TOWs, a very slow going ATGM that was wire guided iirc
Khrushchev was a big fan of missiles and rockets - see the Cuban Missile Crisis & the Space Race. Many Soviet rocket designers were Ukrainian (Khrushchev lived in Donbas as a child and governed Ukraine prior to WWII) and familiar to him. It was also a way he could take leadership of military matters within the Soviet Union, like Stalin but with a more progressive, modern approach (these opinions are stated in his autobiography)
"Khrushchev was a big fan of missiles and rockets - see the Cuban Missile Crisis" You mean the Soviet response to the US putting missiles in Turkey? The ones that were quietly removed in agreement with the Soviets taking out the missiles in Cuba?
@@princeofcupspoc9073 That is what few Americans were aware of at the time, US missiles in Turkey. Their existence was not disclosed until years later. The entire Cuban Missile Crisis was the result of a misstep by JFK. He had campaigned on a missile gap. In reality, the missile gap was 17:1 in favor of the U.S. McNamara told him this upon the start of the new administration. Rather than admit error, JFK ordered the construction of 500 more ICBMs. This convinced Khrushchev that the Americans were going for first strike capability, which realistically they already had. JFK himself knew nothing about the US missiles in Turkey until told by his advisors of their existence.
Another point to consider is that the line of sight might no always be clear. An APFSDS will go through a bush or a small wall without deviating or loosing too much penetration, while a missile will probably get deviated by the bush and stopped by the wall
Missiles can go over the obstacle, though. I don't think it's practical quite yet, but I doubt there will be much longer before guided missiles are increasingly the obvious choice.
@@m0nkEz The advantage of conventional high velocity projectile is the low time between fire and impact. And there is no realistic way to intercept them, passive or active system. Yes, it is possible with missile, but size of missile required to reach the same velocity would be stuff like losat, very big and limited in carrying capacity.
@@jintsuubest9331 There were tank kills in WWII from shooting right through buildings at one another. So I don't think that'll stop anyone from firing through your house at the enemy vehicle on the other side of it. Only some bureaucratic ass-kisser might be stopped by such a philosophy, but not anyone experience in warfare.
I think they also wanted to mount anti-tank missiles on other types of armored vehicles that could not support big guns, like the Bradley. Missiles do not have that huge recoil.
@@MilitaryHistoryVisualized You can mount a missile on a rowboat, or an anti tank canoe. You cant swim a gun across a river. A tank round is likely better against more things than a missile though. A heat round is cheaper to shoot at a bunker or building. You can fire smoke rounds or flairs from a gun, though I am not sure anyone does. Its also far cheaper to train with real ammunition on a gun than with a missile.
@@scottmccullough8030 I am also surprised that folks forget one of the biggest factors in weapon choice Ammunition and logistics. I can print tank shells in their thousands. But anti tank missiles need to be carefully assembled and checked, with delicate electronics that can render the weapon utterly useless. And most missile weapons are larger than tank shells, and when attacking we note there were problems for the KV tanks from world war 2 due to having small ammunition stowage capacity! Modern ammo remains large and limited, if you sacrifice yet more ammunition for a bigger missile you will need to retreat to a ammo truck after even less time fighting on a battlefield!
@@user-pq4by2rq9y you do note that recoilless weapons require a mechanism to discharge sufficient propellant to balance out the kinetic energy of the shell being fired? So they usually have worse back blast than missile weapons? And are poorly suited to confined spaces, like inside a turret. I wonder just how big a blank Shell you might need to balance out a HVAP type round.
this long ago TOW/DRAGON repair tech loved this video. Just as an aside, a design flaw in the Dragon trainer made it very unlikely that any one live firing for the first time would get a hit. The simulator had a weight that shifted when the training blank was fired BUT it did NOT leave the training launcher, thus the weight on the gunner's shoulder never changed. So first live round fired the gunner would tend to rise as the 10 kilos of missile left his shoulder, often causing the missile to drop-if not bounce on it's flight path. I watched as EVERY DRagon round fired by a Ranger company did exactly that at Yakima firing center. Every shot missed the target train-even after a Master Sgt opted to jump on the trains engine to control the throttle.
Interesting video. However, I would like to point out that one of the main reasons to use a gun-fired ATGM is to compensate for the fact that Soviet-type tanks have a much lower silhouette and so do their guns. Overall they have a narrower range for elevation and depression. ATGMs don't care. They'll climb or dive where you guide them. This means, for example, they can be fired from the top of a hill at targets downhill where cannons wouldn't have a firing solution. For this same reason, they can be fired at helicopters with a greater chance of success than tank shells would. (In theory.) Still, I find that most of the points in the video concerning the advantages and disadvantages of ATGMs vs shells are valid, I would like to put a little caveat on the travel time difference. In a tank vs tank scenario, even if there is a 1000 m/s difference. The humans operating the target vehicle will still, most likely, be unable to make their 50+ tons vehicle "dodge" the missile in time even if they are aware it is coming. Furthermore. You can correct the trajectory of an ATGM, you can't correct a shell in flight. In conclusion, the question 'Are missiles better than shells?' is just as relevant as the question: 'Is a sledgehammer better than a screwdriver?' Think of that what you will.
Agreed regarding physically dodging the missile. However, if they spot the incoming missile in time, it does increase their chance to pop smoke and disappear from the view.
This is not completely true, soviet gun launched atgms are laser beam riding and they require the main sight to aim at the target, gen 1 atgms like the malyutka can do that but not russian barrel launched ones
@@Ropetor are the later generation barrel launched atgms like Svir/Invar/Refleks-M exclusively tied to the main barrel sight? I would’ve thought they would’ve added the ability for the commander to guide it in.
@@fenriders7008 All russian tanks in service except t14 and t90M don't have a citv. They use the same unstabilized night vision sight from with from 1978. Commander in t72/t80 is almost blind with minimal hunter killer capability, the commander can override the traverse and point the gun to a target but the targeting needs to be done by the gunner, he has a monitor that allows him to watch trough the gunner sight and he has his own controls but no CITV Russian tanks mostly use the sosna-u gen 2 thermal sight with a laser rangefinder attached to it, they also have a sight called duplet as a secondary sight but it uses the same laser rangefinder as the main sight. Russian gun launch atgms are all laser beam riding and the only sight capable of emitting is the main sosna-u or pmn-t wich is another thermal seen in use by the T-80BVM
Logistics is always the one point that gets missed any time someone comes up with a shiny thing... The very minor point that you may have missed is "how many rounds can you carry?" and once you fire those rounds/missiles off, how easy/hard is it to resupply? Missiles come in their own shipping containers which are extremely bulky, where as a pallet of tank rounds is a heavy but easy cargo unit.. Re-loading a tank with it's basic fire allotment is a well practiced routine for your tank crew... but a re-supply of a vehicle of replacement missiles is a much more complicated thing... Overall, the logistical support for the weapon system really makes it a not very good choice for an tank.
Another thing we have to take into account is the types of countermeasures available against missiles vs. tank gun rounds. There are several types of active protection systems against ATGMs that can shoot down incoming missiles with something like an automated shotgun (e.g. Trophy, Arena), or use electronic warfare to interfere with the missile guidance. And this is in addition to various types of reactive armor. On the other hand, once a kinetic round leaves the tank gun, there is little you can do about it. Shotguns, smokescreens, and electronic baffles have no effect whatsoever on an incoming APFSDS round.
I mean, there were dedicated missile carriers like the Pereh in use and ATGMs are in frequent use as secondary armament for IFVs like the Bradley or Puma that simply don't have the space and carrying capacity for a full-blown 120 mm cannon.
@@brain_tonic True. Come to think of it there are vehicles like the M1128 and the Rooikat that have something akin to a MBT cannon mounted on a wheeled platform.
while games can just come ever so close to reality, I have a clear preference for stabilized guns or at longer ganges even unstabilized gun systems over ATGMs because I always kinda feel betayed if i launch an ATGM, the enemy tank stops, laser range finds me and shoots/kills me and then dodges the missile... - quote from a War Thunder veteran, circa 2022, digitalised :D
In real life there's a slightly longer delay on the target tank shooting back and dodging, because only its commander or maybe gunner spots the missile first, and then he has to deliver the order to gtfo to the driver, and try to maybe guide the gunner to aim back at were the missile came from. Source: I did my millitary service as a CV9030 gunner
Reminds me of the old "Sagger" drills back in the late 80s and early 90s. If you see a puff of smoke, the driver drives in a random zigzag pattern while the gunner fires in and around the puff of smoke. You done need to kill the sacred operator, just make him flinch and jerk the missile off course.
not so useful anymore, NLAW, Javelin, etc are fire and forget. NLAW procedure is to track target for 3secs and fire, it tries to predict where the vehicle will be in 5 secs. (it only has a 800m range, which is pretty short to be on the receiving end of a 125mm HE shell).
@@orbitalair2103 I believe the NLAW is not guided per se. It simply predicts a path based on prior movement. In theory, if a driver sees the launch, eratic maneuvers may evade the NLAW.
@@demonprinces17 It is still effective if the missile is not a guided fire and forget missile. The US TOW is still command controlled. Same for some Russian AT missiles. Many of them are beam riding.
A thing to consider is also that vehicle mounted missiles are often mounted on the side or top of a tank, making them hard to reload and easy to damage. While light artilery fire could not take out the main gun, it can make external missile launchers inoperable
@@JakeInaitor5000 Me neither... might be just a funny coincidence. I don't get it either and I would consider myself well versed in the womble madness.
Has any army ever considered a gun-launched surface-to-air missile ? It would certainly be a very useful self-defense capability for tank formations, especially against attack helicopters. Also, love the Soviet Womble reference.
@@Laotzu.Goldbug That was one of the advantages of the Soviet missile systems. Their missiles were much faster than the TOWs coming back the other way, and at long range, their accuracy simply couldn't guarantee a hit on a target. Of course, you'd need to hope you had a missile in the tube at the time.
...At the typical range from which an armoured vehicle would engage aircraft would a guided SAM have a significant advantage over, say, a proximity fuse round? (IIRC the M1 Abrams is capable of firing such ammo) Legitimate question, as a non-expert I am intrigued
One has to appreciate the kind of gamechanger hollow charges were. During WW1 and most of WW2, AT warfare was "Fire a really hard projectile really, really fast". Speed was the one property for deciding if you made a kill. Shaped/Hollow charges do not need speed for killing. That is what makes them man portable and easily added to IFVs. Of course you can also put a S/H charge into a tank gun round. ATGMs not fired from the barrel are propably best left as secondary weapon for those vehicles that can bot fire modern AT rounds.
Also interesting is that tank-fired antitank rounds have largely reverted back to firing something hard and fast at the enemy instead of shaped charges lol
1:40 I think a big reason why the US doesn't peruse gun launched Anti-Tank missiles anymore was the debacle that was the Shillelagh system soured them to the idea.
+@@jamesharding3459+ It suffered from So Many problems that the Pentagon just chose to retire the platforms early than bother improving them after they Finally got a mediocre level of effectiveness that took Decades to achieve. Them trying to use caseless ammo for the gun rounds probably didn't help along with how in early models firing a shell would break the missile guidance components.
Small quibble: you should have specified, in the tittle and in the beginning, that this video relates to guns vs missiles as _tank armament_ . Otherwise, a viewer comes in thinking it's an overall comparison.
Two additional points, if I can. 1. A gun is more flexible. As soon as I pull the trigger I can traverse onto a new target as the round is "fire and forget" whereas most ATGMs require a beam rider or optical tracking (i.e. keep the gun pointing at the first tgt until you hit/miss). With the gun, you can shoot at targets at 12 O'clock, then 9 O'clock then 3 O'clock (esp. if the tank has CITV or similar Hunter/Killer equipment), while the missile is still looking at the 12 O'clock target. 2. The gun can fire many different natures (types) of ammunition (anti armour [Kinetic or Chemical], smoke, HE, Canister or similar anti personnel rounds, ...). Having only an ATGM forces you to shoot at say a truck with an ATGM rather than say HE.
While I can't say anything about gun-launched ATGM missiles, but - for example - the RPG-7 shoulder-launcher can use several types of HEAT (normal and tandem), fragmentation and thermobaric ammunition. The reason why tanks don't carry multiple types of gun-launched missiles is that their gun-ammunition is already good enough for the task. As for shooting at trucks, Russian tanks usually have a heavy machine gun (12.7mm, similar to the US .50 caliber).
@@CalinCETERAS I was using a truck tgt as an example. Ideally you would use coax on transport. But there is no "smoke" ATGM, nor a Cannister ATGM, etc. This is one reason why the "ATGM only" (note only) option wasn't adopted.
Going into the video I'm going to say the one thing: Cost! People are talking alot now about the Javelin vs cold war tanks, completely forgetting that Javelins are 120,000 USD each and against tanks 2x older than the soldiers fighting.
another factor to consider is equipment such as hard kill anti APS and missile dazzlers, which along with ERA are much more useful against shaped charges than AP rounds.
About the propability to hit with a tank gun: In the 90s a Leopard 2A4 crew was supposed to hit and kill enemy tanks up to 3000m with the first shot, at least that was the training requirement/goal. Also, a tank gun is rather easy to use. Advanced targeting systems make that easier, not more difficult. The gunner keeps the sight on the target, uses the laser for the distance, maybe has to hold an extra button if the target is moving, then uses the trigger. To avoid detection by enemy laser detectors and thus warn the enemy, the gunner can laser the ground next to the enemy tanks. While laserguided missiles operators have to keep a laser on the enemy the whole time, or at least for every course correction during flight. (not sure how technology progressed there) Id use a tank gun anytime unless you got a ATGM for ranges, say 4km+, where the enemy tank cant reliably shoot back at you.
I cant say exactly why but I feel like guns are more accurate, less proned to errors, more simple, cheaper, less fancy. More of a "boom, problem solved". Edit: in more accurate I ment close range, because they are faster, you can hit a target almost instantly. A missile uually needs some time to gain speed.
if I am having a normal gun. with a AT shell and discovers a enemy truck. I can allways fire. what I got and load a HE. it´s not like I am going to fire of something that is more expensive then the truck I am shooting at. I am kind of shure my commanders wouldn´t like if I use the firecontrol system to clear the breach from a rather expensive and rare missile.
@@alexxu3004 it's not like those tech aren't already commonplace by the 70s. A fancy FCS will always be more cost effective than throwing a sophisticated system onto the enemy everytime you fire
@@piscessoedroen ya, and ATGMs are common since 1950s too, long before any reliable high penetration apfsds came to world. also you overestimate how much missiles cost, a typical cold war era tank launched missile cost only about $5000-20000, and your modern day tank rounds cost 4000-10000 per shot anyway not including the cost of the high pressure gun barrel itself. You would think missile is more complicated but it's pretty much just a rocket-powered RC drone with explosives, on the other hand tank apfsds are super hardened material with high requirement of dimensional accuracy. cost is never the issue here.
Tanks need to have a gun for fast shooting and ammunition capacity (and cost). And once you have to have a gun, then why complicate things in the tank when a different vehicle can carry the ATGMs? The missile vehicles can fire overwatch from longer ranges out of range of enemy tanks and thus don't need as heavy of armor. They basically act as attached tank destroyers. As a bonus they can carry infantry.
Basically, why have a tank that has ATGMs in place of a gun when you can either have IFVs with ATGM launchers or another lightly armored transport vehicle with one sitting a bit off in the back.
I sat in a gunners seat on a M60 with a 105mm gun. The gun round is so fast that I could see the round strike the target at 2,000 meters BEFORE I heard the sound of the gun going off. The speed of a gun round is almost instantaneous !
With the American Army thinking of replacing the gun with missles didn't stop with tanks. The US Navy and Airforce thought the samething with the F4 Phantom had no gun and used missiles instead. Until it was realised the aircraft had to have a gun. One other thing more rounds could be carried on a tank.
I must strongly object to higher complexity require more training per default. Starting out with the GrG m/48 (Carl-Gustaf), it takes months of training to become proficient and reliably hit a moving target. First generation of missiles took weeks to learn how to effectively guide the missile to the desired impact point. Learning how to use Rb 56 Bill could be done in a week, while learning how to use a Javelin can be done in a couple of days. (Note that this does not include the tactical skills necessary, as to which firing positions to select, concealment and so forth). Another aspect not brought up is that after WWII, the main focus in gun munitions was HEAT, which has a much lower velocity making them far more difficult to correctly lead on moving targets at longer ranges. This trend was not changed until the 1970's with the long rod penetrators. These projectiles did not see the sharp decline in armour penetration over range as the previous kinetic penetrators had, and thus removed the need for chemical penetrators for long range engagements.
Something that hasn't been discussed here is that conservation of momentum dictates that a missile system delivering the same momentum (weight x speed) of ordnance on target will always weigh more than an equivalent load of tank shells, which biases logistics in favour of tank shells. Guns and rockets both work by conservation of momentum - the forward momentum of the projectile / rocket is matched by the rearward momentum of whatever materials it pushes off, called the reaction mass. In the rocket's case, it carries all the reaction mass it needs for forward flight on-board, which it then pushes off by burning them in its motor and ejecting it out the back as exhaust. It needs to carry enough of this reaction mass to provide enough momentum to reach the target, which of course makes it very heavy, especially since some of that reaction mass is used to push the remaining unburnt reaction mass forward along with the missile body. For a tank shell, the tank shell reacts against the propellant gas, which reacts against the gun breech, which reacts against the tank, which reacts against the Earth itself. So in a very real sense a tank shell cheats by dumping all of its reaction momentum into the Earth, which it (and the tank / truck / ship / C17 carrying it) doesn't need to carry around, making tank shells in general much lighter than an equivalent momentum missile.
A missile is a expensive, sophisticated piece of rock capable of precise and minute movements to accurately hit it's target for maximum damage. A tank shell is a big fucking rock thrown at incredibly high speeds at relatively low cost. There're many different kinds of rocks that can be thrown, but they're all still cheaper and easier to use compared to missiles. Not to mention, tank rounds are easier to handle, maintain, and takes up less space, which means you can carry more ammo, which means gun goes boom boom more. Man humanity really hasn't changed much now has it?
Great topic! I've wondered about this for a long time.
2 ปีที่แล้ว +1
First: Brilliant Icon for Top Attack :) As well as for Subsonic :) With the Russian invasion of Ukraine I recently thought about this very question. Always interesting to see different nations come to differenty conculsions for differenty reasons. Thanks for the very well researched video. Good that you got some proper Video of the Panzerjägers together before the rearrangament. One point that I think you didnt make that will likely degrade the viability of ATGMS against the top of the line MBTs, will be or already is in some cases, the addition of a hard kill system like Trophy. As far as I could find out, those systems cant currently intercept APFSDS arrows and that should give the tank gun a comparative advantage for some time. Until the pendulume swings again.
Ships face the same choice. There was a time in the 60's when it looked like missiles might replace guns on ships. It didn't happen. Missiles cost more and artillery shells have a "repeatability" that ensures they fire with the same force every time.
Poor example. The guns have been replaced by missiles as the main armament, both anti-air and anti-ship. Only a small number of guns remain on modern ships as auxilliary weapons or CIWS.
@@Pikilloification During the Falklands War, the 1991 Gulf War, the 2003 Iraq War and during the current Russian invasion of Ukraine modern destroyers and frigates used their DP guns to effectively bombard shore targets.
That's a thing: Although some of the most advanced missiles have fire-and-forget systems, the target adquiring still needs line-of-sight. However, there isn't any technological reason to not be able to adquire the target indirectly, via a small drone, for example. I'm not talking about the drone launching the missile. I'm talking about a small drone that can adquire the target, send the info to the missile so the operator can safely launch it from behind a hill or something.
Both of those exist already, and both have been used with some success. However, neither is a complete replacement for actual tanks. Missile trucks are _extremely_ vulnerable to artillery (which generally won't do too much to actual tanks except in the case of direct hits) and small arms fire. Drones have the limitations of aircraft in general (they don't like bad weather).
Great Video as always :) I'm not Irish but with St. Patrick's day upcoming, Shillelagh is pronounced "Schelela" for german speakers like us ;) Gaelic pronounciation makes no sense to me but competent people actually speaking the lingos told me it is perfectly logical ;)
I have always wondered about barrel erosion from the rocket propellant. In the Soviet system does the rocket have a small kick out charge like an infantry weapon or does it go full bore no pun intended with the main propulsion out the barrel? What if any residue might be left in the barrel? Is there any issue with increased barrel wear or pitting of metal?
As I understand it has a small kick charge that is just like the gun round propellant, just smaller, enough to get the round out of the tube, then the flight motor starts up. So theres no real difference in barrel or gun wear. Russian engineers and designers are generally pretty thoughtful about such things.
I am not knowledgeable about this so take my words with a grain of salt. But I would imagine the stresses of a rocket and a smoothbore cannon round would be comparable in overall "wear" but very different in terms of how. The cannon obviously would involve extremley high chamber pressures and velocities. In other words an extremley brief but intense impulse. The rocket would involve much lower pressure but much higher heat and much more propellant/residue left in the barrel which could be damaging. I'd certainly like to hear an engineer/knowledgable person's take
@@0sm1um76 Well going from orbitalair said you would use same principles of firing the round to make missiles leave the gun then missile would ignite its engines. So that would mean it would be no different then firing regular round.
The "e" in the standart Latin transcription of the Cyrillic letters is pronounced "o" (sometimes "jo"). Hence "Krushchev" is spoken "Crushtshow" - wich is actually correct.
Why have I not seen anyone develop a tank 'drone'. It would be so much better than having people crammed inside an increasing vulnerable tank. I know they have little ones that shoot guns, but I'm talking full sized, cannon shooting tanks.
Pretty sure there is something in development, but you need also consider that almost all main battle tanks nowadays are upgraded versions of Cold War tanks: M1 Abrams, Leopard 2, Challenger 2 (produced since 1993, but development goes back), T-90 (upgraded T-72), T-80, etc.
Excellent video, as usual. Thank you for this analysis. There is nothing more fearsome and morale-boosting than to hear your own MBTs firing off high velocity 120 mm main gun rounds. Missiles are also a necessity to a well-rounded armed force do have their place too. This is especially being demonstrated against so-called well-protetced and ERA-clad Russian MBTs falling victim to infantry teams armed with Javelin, RPG, NLAW, and even Molotov cocktails. This is not one system that takes all types of questions, it is finding the balance and proper application of weapons and tactics to win a conflict.
barrel launched ATGMs are a good idea I think, additional options at longer ranges, able to target helicopter (in some cases) and a tank is generally a safer place for the operator
There's also that hollow (shaped) charge the penetration is dependent on the diameter of the warhead. That's why the 152 mm Shillelagh (love hearing a German try to pronounce a Gaelic word Shil- lay- lee), not one for the 105mm L1 was the missile chosen.
I think a solution would be fire-and-forget missiles. Coupled with an auto-loader you could maybe be able to engage several ground and air targets simultaneously.
Missiles are bulky which is why most vehicles carry them outside the vehicle. Hard to protect the crew from cook offs and round count is very low. They are also much more expensive per shot. When you’re at the front of the line you may have a lot of potential targets and many of these are lower value targets that can be dealt with quicker and just as effectively with a gun with less risk to the crew and less need for resupply of ammo.
Despite these experiences both sides have used and still have tanks equipped with only ATGMs with intent of using these vehicles as tank hunters ( M901 and Khrizantema-S or Shturm-S). It would be nice to mention that not all tanks are created equal especially if we take loose definition of a tank as armoured tracked vehicle. The purpose and task dictate what armament are going to be used on the vehicles and many IFV's are great examples of tanks equipped with ATGMs.
Given the discussion is of gun Vs missile, that only really applies to armoured vehicles capable of carrying large guns - main battle tanks. It's not really fair to compare an ATGM against a 23/30mm cannon, and most armies don't consider AFVs or tank hunters as "tanks" in terms of their tactical doctrine. Dedicated ATGM systems, or AFVs with ATGMs, also have have different usage scenarios and are deployed differently to an MBT. They tend to be in scouting (AFV), infantry support or other ancillary roles rather than taking the place of an MBT. They are also significantly easier to knock out with other weaponry given their much reduced armour, and in the case of tank destroyer equivalents are usually less mobile.
For MBTs I completely agree. For vehicles like IFVs, however, I'd say an ATGM is a valuable addition. I don't see huge value in gun-launched ATGMs. I can't think of many situations where I'd take one over a sabot.
There is a constant strive to make armor more effective against both chemical and kinetic penetrators. In general ERA has only in recent years seen a focus on better protecting from kinetic penetrators. There have also been significant developments towards jamming different kinds of missile tracking systems which in cases of laser warning receivers also offer a heads about a gun targeting system. Active protection systems are also being installed on several vehicles from many nations and they also mostly protect against missiles. On the other hand missiles like the TOW offer effective ranges in excess of 4 km where current anti tank guns are of very limited use.
On a tank, a gun is more verstaile than a missile to achieve different missions than just killing a tank. Also, even if some ATGMs have a marginal or sometimes entire capacity of defeating buildings and bunker, a gun can still do something similar. From the perspective of a turret, you don't want your ammo to wait 10 seconds before hitting the ennemy. The actual usefulness of ATGM comes that they could be used from light vehicles and by infantry teams, to attack a tank, as well as be carried on nearly all platforms (while putting a RH120 gun on a vehicle needs a chassis and some adaptatins to be usable).
I wouldn't be surprised to see any future MBT development include a tandem or top-attack option for ammo in addition to more conventional ammo like APFSDS and Multipurpose rounds. The development of APS and soft kill systems might further complicate the choice and the logistics/requisition of ammo. Weapons like the Starstreak and Fin-Guided ammo are also irons in the fire, worthy of consideration.
I would argue that Infantryman AT missile is better than towed gun. Just poking at you, in context you present, as tank on a tank, I agree with your arguments :P As everything it is about a cons and pros. Missiles are good for infantry or scout cars, helicopters or if you do not need direct view for fire. Fire and forget missiles took away one great weakness, ie need to guide missile to target, not being able to move on another target or into cover. Other one, projectile speed will take some time to overcome, Good video, thanks for the effort.
There is one point I didn't hear mentioned regarding penetration, especially at the time the debate was being conducted in the 50s and 60s. This is that the penetration of a shaped charge warhead is, all else equal, proportional to the diameter of the missile. For a missile launched from the gun tube, the diameter is going to be constrained to the gun, so a HEAT shell suffers no size disadvantage compared to a missile from the same gun. The HEAT shell will suffer a little bit from thicker walls (to withstand the acceleration force of firing it out the gun) that cut into the overall diameter, but this may be a marginal effect. Another effect that can reduce the penetration of a HEAT shell is rifling-induced spin, which causes the effect of the shaped charge to be dispersed and less focuses in comparison to a missile that is not rotating as rapidly. The French actually built a HEAT shell for the AMX-30 with roller bearings between the warhead and outer casing so the warhead wouldn't be spinning as rapidly to avoid this issue. What really gave ATGMs (in general, excluding gun launched ones) an advantage in penetration is that they could be much fatter than a competing cannon shell. TOW is 152 mm (6") in diameter, compared with the 90 and 105 mm cannon it was designed to compete with, for example, and exactly matching the diameter of the HEAT shell (out to 800 m) and Shillelagh missile (beyond 800 m) for the M551 and M60A2 tanks.
An MBT is so expensive, conspicuous and requires so much regular training for a large operation and maintenance team, adding the expensive of ATGM seems pointless, except to add a largely theoretical advantage of longer range. The ATGM was introduced to armies as a way to defeat tanks using lighter, faster and cheaper unarmored vehicles with smaller teams and requiring much less maintenance (exception: helicopters), killing tanks without slugging it out with them.
The LAHAT has a number of advantages. It's very light at 13 Kg. It's short at ~1m length. It's very inexpensive compared to other AGTMs like Javelin. It has both direct and top attack modes. It's warhead is effective, yet small enough to limit collateral damage in urban areas. It has a lower launch signature than most other ATGMs. It has pretty good range, 8 km. Its warhead's rated penetration is 800mm of RHA, and it has a tandem warhead to defeat ERA. It can be used from tank guns, light armored or unarmored vehicles, helos, drones, UGVs and remote-controlled unmanned launchers. A version has been tested for the 106mm recoilless rifle. Given it can be used in so many different ways it's cost can be further reduced with a bigger buy for tank, mech infantry, helo and drone uses. Obviously if that's done the commonality in parts, maintenance, training and simulators also reduces costs. Perhaps the biggest drawback is LAHAT's semiactive LASER homing. Modern armored vehicles can have LASER detection systems, as well as LASER dazzler countermeasures systems that blind or destroy the imaging systems on the attacking missile launcher. But an advantage is that the target can be designated by other sources than the launcher itself using separate LASER target designators. Overall, the high capability and low cost makes it a very attractive ATGM system. The Indian Army is LAHAT's biggest customer, used in their Arjun tank guns and from Mi-8 helicopters.
Those tell tale exhaust trails, acceleration for shoot and scoot, munition size too. As usual, an interesting and well researched piece. Fire and forget weapons such as javelin and brimstone offer an interesting weapon for other vehicles. The long range Brimstone can hit 450 m/s. Moran's figure for TOW seems about right to me
In my opinion, gun launched ATGMs for MBTs seem a bit redundant since they don't exactly increase the practical engagement range too much and has the advantage only at or past the gun's range, but then the problem is fact that the target has around easily around 10 seconds to use countermeasures or find cover. ATGMs for autocannon armed IFVs like BMPs still seem like a decent idea to give capability to engage enemy tanks, but hard mounted solutions like BMP-3 gun launched missiles and Bradley's TOW (which can't be dismounted as far as I know) feel a bit bad to me since IFVs can't really take hits from MBTs at any range. Do you know if the gun launched missiles could be used in a "one two punch" fashion, by first launching a missile and loading a new round while the missile is in air to hit the target with a regular round almost at the same time as the missile?
Note that only Soviet/Russian MBTs can fire missiles through their gun, whereas Western MBTs don't. One design constraint of the Russian 'pancake' turrets and extremely low profile coupled with carousel-type autoloaders is the lack of gun elevation that's possible. The breech, compared to Western MBTs, has very little room to go down, resulting in lower in elevation angles and a corresponding reduction in possible gun range. They designed barrel-launched missiles because they needed something to match Western MBT engagement ranges without completely replacing their tanks: an expedient (kinda jank) solution to an unavoidable problem.
The Soviet tanks are designed mainly around combat in the East European Plain(yes, the Soviets think NATO will attack first). Which meant the stand off distance provided by the missiles can actually be achieved. With the carousel auto loader limiting the length of ammunition it’s almost impossible to upgrade old Soviet tanks over a certain point since their APFSDS rod simply couldn’t be any longer. This means the effective range of the 125mm on the T-72 against M1A1/Leopard2A5 would be almost suicidal, whilst Svir/Refleks gives them the option to plink away at 4~5km.
In theory some smart ATGMs could let you hit targets that are obstructed from the gun, if you for example have a drone detecting the enemy tank. It could also let you fire on something that the gun is not pointing at. But the production costs would be high and the system very complex with full drone integration etc.
@@austinduong-van6071 How do you explain the range of 8,200 meters in indirect fire (artillery-style)? See wikipedia link for 100mm tank gun: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/100_mm_anti-tank_gun_T-12#HE-FRAG That 8200 meters is the range possible with 700 m/s HE shells, it shoots faster HEAT and even faster APFSDS
Another factor to consider is actual possible engagement ranges. A British tank made an ~8km kill, most CAN fire further than a missile, if a good line of sight exists.
Missiles and rockets can have far more range than a tank round. Even long range artillery are replacable by cruise missiles with 1000 km or heck ICBM with incredible accuracy. It's the cost that's most important difference: a missile need expensive gyro sensors and rocket fuel whereas a gun can shoot basic projectiles with gunpowder. In the future with rail guns, that wouldn't even be a necessity as any metal material should suffice.
Generally I think main battles tanks are going the way of the Dodo. Besides guided anti tank missiles there are also howitzers ie the PzH 2000 and ARCHER which can fire munitions like SMArt155 and Bofors BONUS from 38km away. These rounds break up near the target and each contains 2 independent self-guided submunitions designed to destroy tanks. Both can fire these quite rapidly ie 8-12 rounds per minute continuously.
It is worth noting some more recent developments. Though not accepted for service yet, the XM111 is a guided conventionally launched projectile fired from the 120mm cannon. It comes in two variants, one with a KE penetrator, the other with a shaped charge. It was designed for both line of sight and indirect fire, testing gained a hit at over 8.5km. (The M1 normally isn't expected to engage much over 4km).
Something else worth noting is that you can put a missile on anything, but if you want a proper accurate tank gun, you need something heavy enough to mount it, and hopefully tough enough to take what comes back the other way. So pretty much for a tank gun's firepower, you need a tank, but for a missile's firepower, you can use anything-but-a-tank.
?
XM111 was cancelled more than a decade ago.
@@kylesenior Which is why it has not entered service! But it is an example of extant technology which combines the capability of a missile with the speed and ease of a conventional round. The issue is that there seems to be no need for it, not that it doesn't seem to work, which is an interesting addition to the arguments in this video.
Is a source allowed to argue with the video? And what were u more deadly with a tow or 120mm
I thought that was for anti-heli work anyway.
This sounds like a redo of the old SADARM round that was going to make armour weak at the knees back in the 70s. Never really went into service.
Your choice of icon to illustrate the “top attack” made me laugh hard enough to spit my drink. Well played!
Agreed. The subsonic icon was also awesome :)
Thank you, I spent quite some extra time to make it.
@@MilitaryHistoryVisualized Your time was well spent. ^^
@@MilitaryHistoryVisualized As a Javelin Gunner, I appreciated the Top Attack icon.
🤣👍
@@tyree9055 did anyone made this an unofficial symbol of the Javelin units yet?
Good video!
A couple of other factors to consider:
Missiles tend to be more fragile than tank rounds. Rounds can stand more bouncing around and mis-handling in armored vehicles than can missiles.
Missles tend to be bulkier than tank rounds (particularly while in their shipping containers) thus potentially limiting the shooting capacity in tanks.
Solid rocket motors turning into bombs from being mishandled is scary
Javelin is a prime example. Even in its carry container with special shock absorbing rings around it the soldier can easily make it inoperable if he simply stumbles and bumps the container against the ground or say a tree.
That's not going to happen with a HEAT or APFSDS tank shell.
@@tommihommi1 which happened to the Dutch army during operations in Yugoslavia.
The field commander upon receiving his Dragon missiles found that the propellant charges on ALL of them were cracked, rendering the missiles more dangerous to his own troops than to Serbian tanks and APCs. The same was true for most of his LAW rockets and even his mortar shells. This left the Dutch batallion in Yugoslavia without any anti-armour capability at all and inevitably led to the failure of their mission .
The culprit was poor maintenance and storage under incorrect conditions in the Dutch war supply warehouses, while never publicly stated I guess the entire Dutch munitions stockpile was probably similarly affected.
I also love the content but I think it needs some music
I'm on the other side of this. The gun itself is a better weapon. The problem is there big and need transport, so you make them mobile. But you want them protected, so they weigh a lot with armour, so the mobile platform grows giant and all the gadgets and equipment on the tank and training the crew is super $$$ . the problem is no matter how tough you make it, the other side will build a handheld missile 1 50 year old guy like me can fire smoking a cigarette destroying the tank after 30 minutes playing the video game version for training.
Tanks also are more vulnerable to be destroyed from the air more then ever with drones. Rommell knew in ww2 planes had made large formations impossible unless you owned the skies.
Artillery, the oldest take destroyer since ww1, is so accurate, 1 or 2 guns can do some real damage to tank formations as we have seen some video coming from Ukraine.
Israel had problems with the first wire guilded missiles in the Sinai. Bazooka and panzerfoust had several upgrades in ww2 and proved deadly thats how quickly war changes.
Presumably missiles are also more vulnerable to active defence systems too due to their slower speed and relative complexity/fragility
That is just with the commonly-available rocket motor tech, there is some newer rocket motors that would vastly improve missile speed, the problem is _mass production_ and that's the real problem with mil-tech.
Active defence does not makes the tank impervious to a missile
@@darugdawg2453 I think It does, very few missiles are capable of jamming the APS detection to get a direct hit. APS is overpowered as hell, Trophy APS even stops Javelins.
There are probably blind spots in the rear or you could fire an RPG from a very high position down into the tanks roof but it would need to be very close for that.
About US army testing Trophy: ...the U.S Army has reported similar success in tests. “I tried to kill the Abrams tank with ATGM 48 times and failed, despite the fact that some of them were supersonic,” said US Army Col. Glenn Dean.
@@darugdawg2453 as with anything in the realm of modern industrial warfare not being impervious is irrelevant. Everything is about probabilities & cost. Active defense lowers effective hit probability & that's all that matters. Sure you can always go with higher speeds, better guidence, better tech, but that has an added cost too.
Anything that reduces the probability of a fast & speedy kill while increasing the cost of achieving a given hit probability is a problem.
Not against the slower, more fragile HEAT rounds
Also I think that tank guns are there for the higher versatility; tanks often shoot at structures/buildings in infantry support, and here the ability to shoot HE is very important.
>structures/buildings
i.e. ukrainian hospitals and apartment buildings
Shooting guided ATGM at a big statistic target is such a waste of money is the biggest reason i think.
Why can’t you use an HE missile for the same thing?
@@Rokaize Missiles are kind of expensive to just shoot them at buildings all the time.
@@Rokaize A tank shell can cost from a few hundred dollars, or the local equivalent, to a few thousand, maybe even into the low tens of thousands for a DU round (uranium is a very hard metal, and thus an absolute sod to work with, as well as needing considerable additional safety measures), and can reach out to maybe 3 or 4 miles, although you're unlikely to hit anything other than a large stationary target at the far end of that range. An NLAW might make 1 mile under ideal circumstances, and costs £20,000. A Javelin has a similar max range to the tank shell, but costs about £200,000
Important to keep in mind as well that MBTs are not only designed to fight other tanks, but also support infantry or other vehicles. That may require the use of HE or smoke rounds. Missile systems to deliver those ammunitions would take too much room to be any useful.
yes, that's why it is so bad idea for politicians to tell army what they need to buy or where they are "best" used. You get tank barrel launched missiles or even worse ATGM Carriers liek IT-1, or Gallipoli campaign ... or as with any other war, Ukraine.
I think he didn't bring it up because all of his example (M551,M60A2,T-64,T-90) already pack powerful punch against infantry. So only the AT capability are used instead.
Remember that he is talking about gun-launched ATGM and not ATGM in general.
But couldn't the shells designed to destroy tanks simply be replaced by ATGMs and then leave a supply of HE and Smoke shells?
@@meow1990_2 Usually the have different dimensions, also APDSFS is much cheaper than missile 10 fold or more. Missile is much more finicky. They need to be checked more often for defect, especially on rocket engine part. etc. Since currently they give no advantage to tank, while having many disadvantages, no not really
@@klonik79 Makes sense! :)
I wasn't an assaultman [Javelin] or a TOW gunner in the US Marines, but my buddies who were said they were trained to [ideally] trigger two additional smoke/demo explosions when firing so a tank crew had to choose among the 3 choices
You mean to obscure their position with two other smoke clouds, that could be launch points? Or to protect the missile?
@@willtaylor9309 probably obscure position of launch point, but if the enemy tank has APS system, the Javelin will be neutralized and the approximate position of launch will be shown to the crew.
But the only armies I know that use APS on their tanks and are capable of neutralizing Javelins are US and Israel's army. (they use the same Trophy APS system)
@@Welterino note that a lot of US abrams tanks aren't even equipped with trophy APS systems.
@@willtaylor9309 yes to obscure position. I think they were using Dragons at the time in addition to TOWs, a very slow going ATGM that was wire guided iirc
@@Archeangelous Yeah, tactics for Dragon and TOW were much different than modern NLAW and Javelins.
8:10 "Top-Attack ATGMs" This quality analysis is why I watch this channel.
Excellent video as always Bernard! Was a pleasure to review the script and help out.
Thanks again!
Khrushchev was a big fan of missiles and rockets - see the Cuban Missile Crisis & the Space Race. Many Soviet rocket designers were Ukrainian (Khrushchev lived in Donbas as a child and governed Ukraine prior to WWII) and familiar to him. It was also a way he could take leadership of military matters within the Soviet Union, like Stalin but with a more progressive, modern approach (these opinions are stated in his autobiography)
"Khrushchev was a big fan of missiles and rockets - see the Cuban Missile Crisis" You mean the Soviet response to the US putting missiles in Turkey? The ones that were quietly removed in agreement with the Soviets taking out the missiles in Cuba?
@@princeofcupspoc9073 That is what few Americans were aware of at the time, US missiles in Turkey. Their existence was not disclosed until years later. The entire Cuban Missile Crisis was the result of a misstep by JFK. He had campaigned on a missile gap. In reality, the missile gap was 17:1 in favor of the U.S. McNamara told him this upon the start of the new administration. Rather than admit error, JFK ordered the construction of 500 more ICBMs. This convinced Khrushchev that the Americans were going for first strike capability, which realistically they already had. JFK himself knew nothing about the US missiles in Turkey until told by his advisors of their existence.
Khrushcev did such a great job in Cuba, they gave him a retirement dacha, and let him bask in the glory they heaped on him....right?
@@scottkrater2131 He got a nice big garden to grow things in. A better retirement deal than Malenkov or Kaganovich I think
@@MsZeeZed and that's the truth.
Another point to consider is that the line of sight might no always be clear. An APFSDS will go through a bush or a small wall without deviating or loosing too much penetration, while a missile will probably get deviated by the bush and stopped by the wall
Missiles can go over the obstacle, though.
I don't think it's practical quite yet, but I doubt there will be much longer before guided missiles are increasingly the obvious choice.
Missile can deal with bushes. Not wall.
Also you will not risk shooting AP throught a wall cause you don't know what's behind.
@@m0nkEz
The advantage of conventional high velocity projectile is the low time between fire and impact. And there is no realistic way to intercept them, passive or active system.
Yes, it is possible with missile, but size of missile required to reach the same velocity would be stuff like losat, very big and limited in carrying capacity.
@@jintsuubest9331 I think you very much would put an AP round through a wall if you suspected an enemy tank was behind it.
@@jintsuubest9331 There were tank kills in WWII from shooting right through buildings at one another. So I don't think that'll stop anyone from firing through your house at the enemy vehicle on the other side of it. Only some bureaucratic ass-kisser might be stopped by such a philosophy, but not anyone experience in warfare.
I think they also wanted to mount anti-tank missiles on other types of armored vehicles that could not support big guns, like the Bradley. Missiles do not have that huge recoil.
Yeah.
@@MilitaryHistoryVisualized You can mount a missile on a rowboat, or an anti tank canoe. You cant swim a gun across a river.
A tank round is likely better against more things than a missile though. A heat round is cheaper to shoot at a bunker or building. You can fire smoke rounds or flairs from a gun, though I am not sure anyone does. Its also far cheaper to train with real ammunition on a gun than with a missile.
@@scottmccullough8030 I am also surprised that folks forget one of the biggest factors in weapon choice
Ammunition and logistics.
I can print tank shells in their thousands. But anti tank missiles need to be carefully assembled and checked, with delicate electronics that can render the weapon utterly useless.
And most missile weapons are larger than tank shells, and when attacking we note there were problems for the KV tanks from world war 2 due to having small ammunition stowage capacity!
Modern ammo remains large and limited, if you sacrifice yet more ammunition for a bigger missile you will need to retreat to a ammo truck after even less time fighting on a battlefield!
You can use a recoiless gun to handle recoil, but weight would still be a issue
@@user-pq4by2rq9y you do note that recoilless weapons require a mechanism to discharge sufficient propellant to balance out the kinetic energy of the shell being fired? So they usually have worse back blast than missile weapons? And are poorly suited to confined spaces, like inside a turret.
I wonder just how big a blank Shell you might need to balance out a HVAP type round.
this long ago TOW/DRAGON repair tech loved this video. Just as an aside, a design flaw in the Dragon trainer made it very unlikely that any one live firing for the first time would get a hit. The simulator had a weight that shifted when the training blank was fired BUT it did NOT leave the training launcher, thus the weight on the gunner's shoulder never changed. So first live round fired the gunner would tend to rise as the 10 kilos of missile left his shoulder, often causing the missile to drop-if not bounce on it's flight path. I watched as EVERY DRagon round fired by a Ranger company did exactly that at Yakima firing center. Every shot missed the target train-even after a Master Sgt opted to jump on the trains engine to control the throttle.
My favorite parts of this video were the "Top-Attack ATGMs" (8:11) and the note that anti-tank missiles are still Subsonic (10:56).
Interesting video. However, I would like to point out that one of the main reasons to use a gun-fired ATGM is to compensate for the fact that Soviet-type tanks have a much lower silhouette and so do their guns. Overall they have a narrower range for elevation and depression.
ATGMs don't care. They'll climb or dive where you guide them. This means, for example, they can be fired from the top of a hill at targets downhill where cannons wouldn't have a firing solution. For this same reason, they can be fired at helicopters with a greater chance of success than tank shells would. (In theory.)
Still, I find that most of the points in the video concerning the advantages and disadvantages of ATGMs vs shells are valid, I would like to put a little caveat on the travel time difference. In a tank vs tank scenario, even if there is a 1000 m/s difference. The humans operating the target vehicle will still, most likely, be unable to make their 50+ tons vehicle "dodge" the missile in time even if they are aware it is coming.
Furthermore. You can correct the trajectory of an ATGM, you can't correct a shell in flight.
In conclusion, the question 'Are missiles better than shells?' is just as relevant as the question: 'Is a sledgehammer better than a screwdriver?'
Think of that what you will.
Agreed regarding physically dodging the missile. However, if they spot the incoming missile in time, it does increase their chance to pop smoke and disappear from the view.
This is not completely true, soviet gun launched atgms are laser beam riding and they require the main sight to aim at the target, gen 1 atgms like the malyutka can do that but not russian barrel launched ones
Excellent point. Never thought of this.
@@Ropetor are the later generation barrel launched atgms like Svir/Invar/Refleks-M exclusively tied to the main barrel sight? I would’ve thought they would’ve added the ability for the commander to guide it in.
@@fenriders7008 All russian tanks in service except t14 and t90M don't have a citv.
They use the same unstabilized night vision sight from with from 1978.
Commander in t72/t80 is almost blind with minimal hunter killer capability, the commander can override the traverse and point the gun to a target but the targeting needs to be done by the gunner, he has a monitor that allows him to watch trough the gunner sight and he has his own controls but no CITV
Russian tanks mostly use the sosna-u gen 2 thermal sight with a laser rangefinder attached to it, they also have a sight called duplet as a secondary sight but it uses the same laser rangefinder as the main sight.
Russian gun launch atgms are all laser beam riding and the only sight capable of emitting is the main sosna-u or pmn-t wich is another thermal seen in use by the T-80BVM
Love the Soviet Womble reference for "Fire and Forget".
Logistics is always the one point that gets missed any time someone comes up with a shiny thing... The very minor point that you may have missed is "how many rounds can you carry?" and once you fire those rounds/missiles off, how easy/hard is it to resupply? Missiles come in their own shipping containers which are extremely bulky, where as a pallet of tank rounds is a heavy but easy cargo unit.. Re-loading a tank with it's basic fire allotment is a well practiced routine for your tank crew... but a re-supply of a vehicle of replacement missiles is a much more complicated thing...
Overall, the logistical support for the weapon system really makes it a not very good choice for an tank.
Yeah, something the navies forgets even more, considering VLS systems generally can only be reloaded at specialized ports
Unless itslike russian tank missiles
Another thing we have to take into account is the types of countermeasures available against missiles vs. tank gun rounds. There are several types of active protection systems against ATGMs that can shoot down incoming missiles with something like an automated shotgun (e.g. Trophy, Arena), or use electronic warfare to interfere with the missile guidance. And this is in addition to various types of reactive armor. On the other hand, once a kinetic round leaves the tank gun, there is little you can do about it. Shotguns, smokescreens, and electronic baffles have no effect whatsoever on an incoming APFSDS round.
I mean, there were dedicated missile carriers like the Pereh in use and ATGMs are in frequent use as secondary armament for IFVs like the Bradley or Puma that simply don't have the space and carrying capacity for a full-blown 120 mm cannon.
I think the point stands that if your vehicle has the capabiity of carrying a gun you take that over Missiles.
@@brain_tonic True. Come to think of it there are vehicles like the M1128 and the Rooikat that have something akin to a MBT cannon mounted on a wheeled platform.
8:10 You made my day.
Highly anticipating the deployment of anti-tank battalions based on the bouncing-plumber tactic!
This guy is GREAT!!! His facts are impressive - numerous, on point, and INTERESTING!!! Thank you for your encyclopedic presentations!!!!
while games can just come ever so close to reality, I have a clear preference for stabilized guns or at longer ganges even unstabilized gun systems over ATGMs because I always kinda feel betayed if i launch an ATGM, the enemy tank stops, laser range finds me and shoots/kills me and then dodges the missile...
- quote from a War Thunder veteran, circa 2022, digitalised
:D
i do absolutly agree, exept if im in the Wiesel 1A2, then no one sees me in the first place, that little thing is a wild Wiesel!
In real life there's a slightly longer delay on the target tank shooting back and dodging, because only its commander or maybe gunner spots the missile first, and then he has to deliver the order to gtfo to the driver, and try to maybe guide the gunner to aim back at were the missile came from.
Source: I did my millitary service as a CV9030 gunner
Its a game bud. Relax )
Brit ATGM carrier like striker and swingfire Allan also launch while hidden like the Wiesel, just with much worse missiles.
@Napalmratte also, give us more naval content dude! Keep up the great work, love the channel.
Thank you for a nicely thorough but concise summation of this topic. Always enjoy your videos.
Reminds me of the old "Sagger" drills back in the late 80s and early 90s. If you see a puff of smoke, the driver drives in a random zigzag pattern while the gunner fires in and around the puff of smoke. You done need to kill the sacred operator, just make him flinch and jerk the missile off course.
not so useful anymore, NLAW, Javelin, etc are fire and forget. NLAW procedure is to track target for 3secs and fire, it tries to predict where the vehicle will be in 5 secs. (it only has a 800m range, which is pretty short to be on the receiving end of a 125mm HE shell).
Forgot about those, but was 40 years ago
@@orbitalair2103
I believe the NLAW is not guided per se. It simply predicts a path based on prior movement. In theory, if a driver sees the launch, eratic maneuvers may evade the NLAW.
@@demonprinces17
It is still effective if the missile is not a guided fire and forget missile. The US TOW is still command controlled. Same for some Russian AT missiles. Many of them are beam riding.
That subsonic icon is great
A thing to consider is also that vehicle mounted missiles are often mounted on the side or top of a tank, making them hard to reload and easy to damage. While light artilery fire could not take out the main gun, it can make external missile launchers inoperable
Very informative video, thank you!
Did not expect the Mario/Womble icons. Well played, those got me good.
Glad you enjoyed!
15:40 a wild SovietWomble appears! How did his pictogram made it into this video?!
I was like is there a reference I'm missing, cause I've watched most of his TH-cam stuff more than one and I couldn't think of anything?
@@JakeInaitor5000 Me neither... might be just a funny coincidence. I don't get it either and I would consider myself well versed in the womble madness.
it's a recurring joke in MHV. not often, but womble's icon is usually attributed to generally wonky things.
Ah thx, I was really wondering how he endet up there :D I like it !
Has any army ever considered a gun-launched surface-to-air missile ? It would certainly be a very useful self-defense capability for tank formations, especially against attack helicopters.
Also, love the Soviet Womble reference.
The LAHAT mentioned at the end of the video should also be able to deal with helis, I considered adding that line, but didn't.
@@Laotzu.Goldbug That was one of the advantages of the Soviet missile systems. Their missiles were much faster than the TOWs coming back the other way, and at long range, their accuracy simply couldn't guarantee a hit on a target. Of course, you'd need to hope you had a missile in the tube at the time.
...At the typical range from which an armoured vehicle would engage aircraft would a guided SAM have a significant advantage over, say, a proximity fuse round? (IIRC the M1 Abrams is capable of firing such ammo) Legitimate question, as a non-expert I am intrigued
One has to appreciate the kind of gamechanger hollow charges were.
During WW1 and most of WW2, AT warfare was "Fire a really hard projectile really, really fast". Speed was the one property for deciding if you made a kill.
Shaped/Hollow charges do not need speed for killing. That is what makes them man portable and easily added to IFVs. Of course you can also put a S/H charge into a tank gun round.
ATGMs not fired from the barrel are propably best left as secondary weapon for those vehicles that can bot fire modern AT rounds.
Also interesting is that tank-fired antitank rounds have largely reverted back to firing something hard and fast at the enemy instead of shaped charges lol
@@gimmethegepgun I think that was due to ERA developments getting too good. But right now ERA is pivoting towards AFDPS defeating too.
1:40 I think a big reason why the US doesn't peruse gun launched Anti-Tank missiles anymore was the debacle that was the Shillelagh system soured them to the idea.
Odd, considering that the system showed the potential, just held back by technologies of the time.
+@@jamesharding3459+ It suffered from So Many problems that the Pentagon just chose to retire the platforms early than bother improving them after they Finally got a mediocre level of effectiveness that took Decades to achieve. Them trying to use caseless ammo for the gun rounds probably didn't help along with how in early models firing a shell would break the missile guidance components.
@@cnlbenmc True. But those were engineering problems, not inherent to the concept.
My shot at it: You can't shoot an ATGM in 2 seconds and you can't shoot 10 ATGMs in a minute.
Not with that attitude you can’t
Small quibble: you should have specified, in the tittle and in the beginning, that this video relates to guns vs missiles as _tank armament_ . Otherwise, a viewer comes in thinking it's an overall comparison.
Two additional points, if I can. 1. A gun is more flexible. As soon as I pull the trigger I can traverse onto a new target as the round is "fire and forget" whereas most ATGMs require a beam rider or optical tracking (i.e. keep the gun pointing at the first tgt until you hit/miss). With the gun, you can shoot at targets at 12 O'clock, then 9 O'clock then 3 O'clock (esp. if the tank has CITV or similar Hunter/Killer equipment), while the missile is still looking at the 12 O'clock target. 2. The gun can fire many different natures (types) of ammunition (anti armour [Kinetic or Chemical], smoke, HE, Canister or similar anti personnel rounds, ...). Having only an ATGM forces you to shoot at say a truck with an ATGM rather than say HE.
While I can't say anything about gun-launched ATGM missiles, but - for example - the RPG-7 shoulder-launcher can use several types of HEAT (normal and tandem), fragmentation and thermobaric ammunition.
The reason why tanks don't carry multiple types of gun-launched missiles is that their gun-ammunition is already good enough for the task.
As for shooting at trucks, Russian tanks usually have a heavy machine gun (12.7mm, similar to the US .50 caliber).
@@CalinCETERAS I was using a truck tgt as an example. Ideally you would use coax on transport. But there is no "smoke" ATGM, nor a Cannister ATGM, etc. This is one reason why the "ATGM only" (note only) option wasn't adopted.
Going into the video I'm going to say the one thing: Cost!
People are talking alot now about the Javelin vs cold war tanks, completely forgetting that Javelins are 120,000 USD each and against tanks 2x older than the soldiers fighting.
another factor to consider is equipment such as hard kill anti APS and missile dazzlers, which along with ERA are much more useful against shaped charges than AP rounds.
In the words of TF2 heavy, “Some people think they can outsmart me. Maybe, maybe. I've yet to meet one that can outsmart bullet.”
8:05 the mario symbol for the top attack of Javellin was a really nice touch.
About the propability to hit with a tank gun: In the 90s a Leopard 2A4 crew was supposed to hit and kill enemy tanks up to 3000m with the first shot, at least that was the training requirement/goal.
Also, a tank gun is rather easy to use. Advanced targeting systems make that easier, not more difficult.
The gunner keeps the sight on the target, uses the laser for the distance, maybe has to hold an extra button if the target is moving, then uses the trigger. To avoid detection by enemy laser detectors and thus warn the enemy, the gunner can laser the ground next to the enemy tanks. While laserguided missiles operators have to keep a laser on the enemy the whole time, or at least for every course correction during flight. (not sure how technology progressed there)
Id use a tank gun anytime unless you got a ATGM for ranges, say 4km+, where the enemy tank cant reliably shoot back at you.
Thank you for the excellent overview and content, very much worth the view.
Glad you enjoyed it!
Another superb presentation.
Many thanks!
I cant say exactly why but I feel like guns are more accurate, less proned to errors, more simple, cheaper, less fancy. More of a "boom, problem solved".
Edit: in more accurate I ment close range, because they are faster, you can hit a target almost instantly. A missile uually needs some time to gain speed.
ya, thanks to fancy stabilizers, range finders and ballistic computers
And don't fail because some debree or branches were in the way
if I am having a normal gun. with a AT shell and discovers a enemy truck. I can allways fire. what I got and load a HE. it´s not like I am going to fire of something that is more expensive then the truck I am shooting at. I am kind of shure my commanders wouldn´t like if I use the firecontrol system to clear the breach from a rather expensive and rare missile.
@@alexxu3004 it's not like those tech aren't already commonplace by the 70s. A fancy FCS will always be more cost effective than throwing a sophisticated system onto the enemy everytime you fire
@@piscessoedroen ya, and ATGMs are common since 1950s too, long before any reliable high penetration apfsds came to world. also you overestimate how much missiles cost, a typical cold war era tank launched missile cost only about $5000-20000, and your modern day tank rounds cost 4000-10000 per shot anyway not including the cost of the high pressure gun barrel itself. You would think missile is more complicated but it's pretty much just a rocket-powered RC drone with explosives, on the other hand tank apfsds are super hardened material with high requirement of dimensional accuracy. cost is never the issue here.
Tanks need to have a gun for fast shooting and ammunition capacity (and cost). And once you have to have a gun, then why complicate things in the tank when a different vehicle can carry the ATGMs? The missile vehicles can fire overwatch from longer ranges out of range of enemy tanks and thus don't need as heavy of armor. They basically act as attached tank destroyers. As a bonus they can carry infantry.
Basically, why have a tank that has ATGMs in place of a gun when you can either have IFVs with ATGM launchers or another lightly armored transport vehicle with one sitting a bit off in the back.
I thank you sir, using Mario as the symbol for top attack missiles.😂 pure genius. “It’s a me Mario!!” Tank go boom!
I have no idea why im not subscribed to you anymore but i just found you again
Shillelagh is pronounced "Shil-ay-lee". Throwing that in there before The Chieftain has a hernia ;)
Thank you for getting there first. My emotional support missile also thanks you.
I sat in a gunners seat on a M60 with a 105mm gun. The gun round is so fast that I could see the round strike the target at 2,000 meters BEFORE I heard the sound of the gun going off. The speed of a gun round is almost instantaneous !
i love all the little icons,,< devil in the details,subsonic>
With the American Army thinking of replacing the gun with missles didn't stop with tanks. The US Navy and Airforce thought the samething with the F4 Phantom had no gun and used missiles instead. Until it was realised the aircraft had to have a gun.
One other thing more rounds could be carried on a tank.
Informative, thanks.
Luv the icons, inc. Super Mario attacks and unicorns are hybrids.
Glad you like them!
I must strongly object to higher complexity require more training per default.
Starting out with the GrG m/48 (Carl-Gustaf), it takes months of training to become proficient and reliably hit a moving target.
First generation of missiles took weeks to learn how to effectively guide the missile to the desired impact point.
Learning how to use Rb 56 Bill could be done in a week, while learning how to use a Javelin can be done in a couple of days.
(Note that this does not include the tactical skills necessary, as to which firing positions to select, concealment and so forth).
Another aspect not brought up is that after WWII, the main focus in gun munitions was HEAT, which has a much lower velocity making them far more difficult to correctly lead on moving targets at longer ranges. This trend was not changed until the 1970's with the long rod penetrators. These projectiles did not see the sharp decline in armour penetration over range as the previous kinetic penetrators had, and thus removed the need for chemical penetrators for long range engagements.
Something that hasn't been discussed here is that conservation of momentum dictates that a missile system delivering the same momentum (weight x speed) of ordnance on target will always weigh more than an equivalent load of tank shells, which biases logistics in favour of tank shells.
Guns and rockets both work by conservation of momentum - the forward momentum of the projectile / rocket is matched by the rearward momentum of whatever materials it pushes off, called the reaction mass. In the rocket's case, it carries all the reaction mass it needs for forward flight on-board, which it then pushes off by burning them in its motor and ejecting it out the back as exhaust. It needs to carry enough of this reaction mass to provide enough momentum to reach the target, which of course makes it very heavy, especially since some of that reaction mass is used to push the remaining unburnt reaction mass forward along with the missile body.
For a tank shell, the tank shell reacts against the propellant gas, which reacts against the gun breech, which reacts against the tank, which reacts against the Earth itself. So in a very real sense a tank shell cheats by dumping all of its reaction momentum into the Earth, which it (and the tank / truck / ship / C17 carrying it) doesn't need to carry around, making tank shells in general much lighter than an equivalent momentum missile.
A missile is a expensive, sophisticated piece of rock capable of precise and minute movements to accurately hit it's target for maximum damage.
A tank shell is a big fucking rock thrown at incredibly high speeds at relatively low cost. There're many different kinds of rocks that can be thrown, but they're all still cheaper and easier to use compared to missiles.
Not to mention, tank rounds are easier to handle, maintain, and takes up less space, which means you can carry more ammo, which means gun goes boom boom more.
Man humanity really hasn't changed much now has it?
My (flawed) interpretation of the entire outcome of this discussion: MOAR DAKKA.
Great topic! I've wondered about this for a long time.
First: Brilliant Icon for Top Attack :) As well as for Subsonic :)
With the Russian invasion of Ukraine I recently thought about this very question. Always interesting to see different nations come to differenty conculsions for differenty reasons.
Thanks for the very well researched video. Good that you got some proper Video of the Panzerjägers together before the rearrangament.
One point that I think you didnt make that will likely degrade the viability of ATGMS against the top of the line MBTs, will be or already is in some cases, the addition of a hard kill system like Trophy.
As far as I could find out, those systems cant currently intercept APFSDS arrows and that should give the tank gun a comparative advantage for some time. Until the pendulume swings again.
I love the little memes you put in your videos.
Ships face the same choice. There was a time in the 60's when it looked like missiles might replace guns on ships. It didn't happen. Missiles cost more and artillery shells have a "repeatability" that ensures they fire with the same force every time.
They have largely supplanted them for most purposes, though.
Poor example. The guns have been replaced by missiles as the main armament, both anti-air and anti-ship. Only a small number of guns remain on modern ships as auxilliary weapons or CIWS.
Well, but they aren't the main anti-ship weapon anymore. But they are still useful for AA, smaller targets at closer ranges and shore bombardment.
@@AldanFerrox Shore bombardment? Hardly. Tomahawks for example are much more effective.
@@Pikilloification During the Falklands War, the 1991 Gulf War, the 2003 Iraq War and during the current Russian invasion of Ukraine modern destroyers and frigates used their DP guns to effectively bombard shore targets.
Vee-hikill! Love it, B’s accent is a delight to my ears.
Possibly the best image to use mario for javelin top attacking atgm
That's a thing: Although some of the most advanced missiles have fire-and-forget systems, the target adquiring still needs line-of-sight. However, there isn't any technological reason to not be able to adquire the target indirectly, via a small drone, for example.
I'm not talking about the drone launching the missile. I'm talking about a small drone that can adquire the target, send the info to the missile so the operator can safely launch it from behind a hill or something.
You need secure coms then, and that's hard. Opens the door for EW interference.
Great video as always, thanks.
Drones and missile trucks/technicals may be the future though at least defensively.
Both of those exist already, and both have been used with some success. However, neither is a complete replacement for actual tanks. Missile trucks are _extremely_ vulnerable to artillery (which generally won't do too much to actual tanks except in the case of direct hits) and small arms fire. Drones have the limitations of aircraft in general (they don't like bad weather).
Great Video as always :) I'm not Irish but with St. Patrick's day upcoming, Shillelagh is pronounced "Schelela" for german speakers like us ;) Gaelic pronounciation makes no sense to me but competent people actually speaking the lingos told me it is perfectly logical ;)
My Dad, born in Waterford, pronounced it Shi-Lay-Lee.
I have always wondered about barrel erosion from the rocket propellant. In the Soviet system does the rocket have a small kick out charge like an infantry weapon or does it go full bore no pun intended with the main propulsion out the barrel? What if any residue might be left in the barrel? Is there any issue with increased barrel wear or pitting of metal?
As I understand it has a small kick charge that is just like the gun round propellant, just smaller, enough to get the round out of the tube, then the flight motor starts up. So theres no real difference in barrel or gun wear. Russian engineers and designers are generally pretty thoughtful about such things.
I am not knowledgeable about this so take my words with a grain of salt.
But I would imagine the stresses of a rocket and a smoothbore cannon round would be comparable in overall "wear" but very different in terms of how.
The cannon obviously would involve extremley high chamber pressures and velocities. In other words an extremley brief but intense impulse. The rocket would involve much lower pressure but much higher heat and much more propellant/residue left in the barrel which could be damaging.
I'd certainly like to hear an engineer/knowledgable person's take
@@0sm1um76 Well going from orbitalair said you would use same principles of firing the round to make missiles leave the gun then missile would ignite its engines. So that would mean it would be no different then firing regular round.
@@0sm1um76 I used to make rocket motors. All tube launched missiles use small kick charges. Watch the javelin and nlaw videos closely at launch.
Soviet system barrel-fire missle do have a kick out charge, similar system like Israel LAHAT also have kick out charge
The "e" in the standart Latin transcription of the Cyrillic letters is pronounced "o" (sometimes "jo"). Hence "Krushchev" is spoken "Crushtshow" - wich is actually correct.
These debates rarely come down to better. They almost always come down to context.
Why have I not seen anyone develop a tank 'drone'. It would be so much better than having people crammed inside an increasing vulnerable tank. I know they have little ones that shoot guns, but I'm talking full sized, cannon shooting tanks.
Pretty sure there is something in development, but you need also consider that almost all main battle tanks nowadays are upgraded versions of Cold War tanks: M1 Abrams, Leopard 2, Challenger 2 (produced since 1993, but development goes back), T-90 (upgraded T-72), T-80, etc.
Excellent video, as usual. Thank you for this analysis. There is nothing more fearsome and morale-boosting than to hear your own MBTs firing off high velocity 120 mm main gun rounds. Missiles are also a necessity to a well-rounded armed force do have their place too. This is especially being demonstrated against so-called well-protetced and ERA-clad Russian MBTs falling victim to infantry teams armed with Javelin, RPG, NLAW, and even Molotov cocktails. This is not one system that takes all types of questions, it is finding the balance and proper application of weapons and tactics to win a conflict.
barrel launched ATGMs are a good idea I think, additional options at longer ranges, able to target helicopter (in some cases) and a tank is generally a safer place for the operator
Great episode!
How yall doing bro long day at work need something to focus my adhd on
There's also that hollow (shaped) charge the penetration is dependent on the diameter of the warhead. That's why the 152 mm Shillelagh (love hearing a German try to pronounce a Gaelic word Shil- lay- lee), not one for the 105mm L1 was the missile chosen.
I think a solution would be fire-and-forget missiles. Coupled with an auto-loader you could maybe be able to engage several ground and air targets simultaneously.
Missiles are bulky which is why most vehicles carry them outside the vehicle. Hard to protect the crew from cook offs and round count is very low. They are also much more expensive per shot.
When you’re at the front of the line you may have a lot of potential targets and many of these are lower value targets that can be dealt with quicker and just as effectively with a gun with less risk to the crew and less need for resupply of ammo.
Despite these experiences both sides have used and still have tanks equipped with only ATGMs with intent of using these vehicles as tank hunters ( M901 and Khrizantema-S or Shturm-S).
It would be nice to mention that not all tanks are created equal especially if we take loose definition of a tank as armoured tracked vehicle. The purpose and task dictate what armament are going to be used on the vehicles and many IFV's are great examples of tanks equipped with ATGMs.
Given the discussion is of gun Vs missile, that only really applies to armoured vehicles capable of carrying large guns - main battle tanks. It's not really fair to compare an ATGM against a 23/30mm cannon, and most armies don't consider AFVs or tank hunters as "tanks" in terms of their tactical doctrine.
Dedicated ATGM systems, or AFVs with ATGMs, also have have different usage scenarios and are deployed differently to an MBT. They tend to be in scouting (AFV), infantry support or other ancillary roles rather than taking the place of an MBT.
They are also significantly easier to knock out with other weaponry given their much reduced armour, and in the case of tank destroyer equivalents are usually less mobile.
Well done and thank you!
For MBTs I completely agree. For vehicles like IFVs, however, I'd say an ATGM is a valuable addition.
I don't see huge value in gun-launched ATGMs. I can't think of many situations where I'd take one over a sabot.
There is a constant strive to make armor more effective against both chemical and kinetic penetrators. In general ERA has only in recent years seen a focus on better protecting from kinetic penetrators. There have also been significant developments towards jamming different kinds of missile tracking systems which in cases of laser warning receivers also offer a heads about a gun targeting system. Active protection systems are also being installed on several vehicles from many nations and they also mostly protect against missiles. On the other hand missiles like the TOW offer effective ranges in excess of 4 km where current anti tank guns are of very limited use.
On a tank, a gun is more verstaile than a missile to achieve different missions than just killing a tank. Also, even if some ATGMs have a marginal or sometimes entire capacity of defeating buildings and bunker, a gun can still do something similar. From the perspective of a turret, you don't want your ammo to wait 10 seconds before hitting the ennemy.
The actual usefulness of ATGM comes that they could be used from light vehicles and by infantry teams, to attack a tank, as well as be carried on nearly all platforms (while putting a RH120 gun on a vehicle needs a chassis and some adaptatins to be usable).
fire and forget is Soviet womble? XD Love the vid though, always so grundlig :)
I wouldn't be surprised to see any future MBT development include a tandem or top-attack option for ammo in addition to more conventional ammo like APFSDS and Multipurpose rounds. The development of APS and soft kill systems might further complicate the choice and the logistics/requisition of ammo. Weapons like the Starstreak and Fin-Guided ammo are also irons in the fire, worthy of consideration.
Quite interesting!
Neat...so now let's cover tube artillery missiles...like the copperhead which I totally forgot about for ages until this video. 😁
I would argue that Infantryman AT missile is better than towed gun. Just poking at you, in context you present, as tank on a tank, I agree with your arguments :P As everything it is about a cons and pros. Missiles are good for infantry or scout cars, helicopters or if you do not need direct view for fire. Fire and forget missiles took away one great weakness, ie need to guide missile to target, not being able to move on another target or into cover. Other one, projectile speed will take some time to overcome, Good video, thanks for the effort.
Ayy 15:40 - SovietWomble! :D
haha, but why though? What reference is it? Can't remember of any bullshittery where fire and forget was a prominent feature.
Thanks, that was really interesting.
There is one point I didn't hear mentioned regarding penetration, especially at the time the debate was being conducted in the 50s and 60s. This is that the penetration of a shaped charge warhead is, all else equal, proportional to the diameter of the missile. For a missile launched from the gun tube, the diameter is going to be constrained to the gun, so a HEAT shell suffers no size disadvantage compared to a missile from the same gun. The HEAT shell will suffer a little bit from thicker walls (to withstand the acceleration force of firing it out the gun) that cut into the overall diameter, but this may be a marginal effect. Another effect that can reduce the penetration of a HEAT shell is rifling-induced spin, which causes the effect of the shaped charge to be dispersed and less focuses in comparison to a missile that is not rotating as rapidly. The French actually built a HEAT shell for the AMX-30 with roller bearings between the warhead and outer casing so the warhead wouldn't be spinning as rapidly to avoid this issue. What really gave ATGMs (in general, excluding gun launched ones) an advantage in penetration is that they could be much fatter than a competing cannon shell. TOW is 152 mm (6") in diameter, compared with the 90 and 105 mm cannon it was designed to compete with, for example, and exactly matching the diameter of the HEAT shell (out to 800 m) and Shillelagh missile (beyond 800 m) for the M551 and M60A2 tanks.
An MBT is so expensive, conspicuous and requires so much regular training for a large operation and maintenance team, adding the expensive of ATGM seems pointless, except to add a largely theoretical advantage of longer range. The ATGM was introduced to armies as a way to defeat tanks using lighter, faster and cheaper unarmored vehicles with smaller teams and requiring much less maintenance (exception: helicopters), killing tanks without slugging it out with them.
The LAHAT has a number of advantages. It's very light at 13 Kg. It's short at ~1m length. It's very inexpensive compared to other AGTMs like Javelin. It has both direct and top attack modes. It's warhead is effective, yet small enough to limit collateral damage in urban areas. It has a lower launch signature than most other ATGMs. It has pretty good range, 8 km. Its warhead's rated penetration is 800mm of RHA, and it has a tandem warhead to defeat ERA. It can be used from tank guns, light armored or unarmored vehicles, helos, drones, UGVs and remote-controlled unmanned launchers. A version has been tested for the 106mm recoilless rifle. Given it can be used in so many different ways it's cost can be further reduced with a bigger buy for tank, mech infantry, helo and drone uses. Obviously if that's done the commonality in parts, maintenance, training and simulators also reduces costs.
Perhaps the biggest drawback is LAHAT's semiactive LASER homing. Modern armored vehicles can have LASER detection systems, as well as LASER dazzler countermeasures systems that blind or destroy the imaging systems on the attacking missile launcher. But an advantage is that the target can be designated by other sources than the launcher itself using separate LASER target designators.
Overall, the high capability and low cost makes it a very attractive ATGM system. The Indian Army is LAHAT's biggest customer, used in their Arjun tank guns and from Mi-8 helicopters.
The autor is west bias dont loss your time...
Very relevant right now.
Thanks!
Thank you!
Those tell tale exhaust trails, acceleration for shoot and scoot, munition size too. As usual, an interesting and well researched piece. Fire and forget weapons such as javelin and brimstone offer an interesting weapon for other vehicles. The long range Brimstone can hit 450 m/s. Moran's figure for TOW seems about right to me
Nice touch with using Mario for "top attack" icon, lmao
That 'Still Subsonic' icon...😂
;)
In my opinion, gun launched ATGMs for MBTs seem a bit redundant since they don't exactly increase the practical engagement range too much and has the advantage only at or past the gun's range, but then the problem is fact that the target has around easily around 10 seconds to use countermeasures or find cover.
ATGMs for autocannon armed IFVs like BMPs still seem like a decent idea to give capability to engage enemy tanks, but hard mounted solutions like BMP-3 gun launched missiles and Bradley's TOW (which can't be dismounted as far as I know) feel a bit bad to me since IFVs can't really take hits from MBTs at any range.
Do you know if the gun launched missiles could be used in a "one two punch" fashion, by first launching a missile and loading a new round while the missile is in air to hit the target with a regular round almost at the same time as the missile?
Note that only Soviet/Russian MBTs can fire missiles through their gun, whereas Western MBTs don't. One design constraint of the Russian 'pancake' turrets and extremely low profile coupled with carousel-type autoloaders is the lack of gun elevation that's possible. The breech, compared to Western MBTs, has very little room to go down, resulting in lower in elevation angles and a corresponding reduction in possible gun range. They designed barrel-launched missiles because they needed something to match Western MBT engagement ranges without completely replacing their tanks: an expedient (kinda jank) solution to an unavoidable problem.
The Soviet tanks are designed mainly around combat in the East European Plain(yes, the Soviets think NATO will attack first). Which meant the stand off distance provided by the missiles can actually be achieved.
With the carousel auto loader limiting the length of ammunition it’s almost impossible to upgrade old Soviet tanks over a certain point since their APFSDS rod simply couldn’t be any longer. This means the effective range of the 125mm on the T-72 against M1A1/Leopard2A5 would be almost suicidal, whilst Svir/Refleks gives them the option to plink away at 4~5km.
In theory some smart ATGMs could let you hit targets that are obstructed from the gun, if you for example have a drone detecting the enemy tank. It could also let you fire on something that the gun is not pointing at. But the production costs would be high and the system very complex with full drone integration etc.
@@austinduong-van6071 How do you explain the range of 8,200 meters in indirect fire (artillery-style)? See wikipedia link for 100mm tank gun: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/100_mm_anti-tank_gun_T-12#HE-FRAG
That 8200 meters is the range possible with 700 m/s HE shells, it shoots faster HEAT and even faster APFSDS
Unless the guidence unit is integrated into the missile itself, you can load but cannot fire the round before the missile hit the target.
Another factor to consider is actual possible engagement ranges. A British tank made an ~8km kill, most CAN fire further than a missile, if a good line of sight exists.
Missiles and rockets can have far more range than a tank round. Even long range artillery are replacable by cruise missiles with 1000 km or heck ICBM with incredible accuracy. It's the cost that's most important difference: a missile need expensive gyro sensors and rocket fuel whereas a gun can shoot basic projectiles with gunpowder. In the future with rail guns, that wouldn't even be a necessity as any metal material should suffice.
The M551 Sheridan had antitank missiles and it was used in the MBT-70 but Congress cancelled it in 1969.
Generally I think main battles tanks are going the way of the Dodo.
Besides guided anti tank missiles there are also howitzers ie the PzH 2000 and ARCHER which can fire munitions like SMArt155 and Bofors BONUS from 38km away. These rounds break up near the target and each contains 2 independent self-guided submunitions designed to destroy tanks.
Both can fire these quite rapidly ie 8-12 rounds per minute continuously.