China Defense Blog has a couple of must reads up. The first covers cold weather training that Chinese Marines are undertaking...read it here.
The next covers a top attack projectile designed to destroy heavy armor. Isn't it time we deployed TROPHY on our vehicles?
Drink it in. The Chinese are making moves.
TROPHY doesn't work against top kill munitions.
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DeleteTROPHY doesn't work against top kill munitions.
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See Video...
https://idfspokesperson.wordpress.com/2011/12/28/11390/
M&S
DeleteWell, that's a nice commercial, but Israel has yet to field demonstrate such an intercept capability against a vertically attacking munition.
Slowman,
DeleteIsrael has yet to field Trophy, period, in an active war.
Hence Merkava getting nailed to a cross by blundering forward into a tight wadi with raised slopes and caves on either side whereupon they were 'top attacked' (vertical defilade) by Kornet (AT-4 Spigot) at ultra close range. If infantry still has a mission role in mechanized maneuver it is as a rapid insert, limited duration, airmobile vertical envelopment capability _specifically_ to ensure security/block force overwatch of chokes like this.
Of course 2006 was quite awhile back.
Offtopic:
ReplyDeletehttp://s017.radikal.ru/i439/1501/3b/d800d224edfc.jpg
This photo of allegedly loading tanks in a Czech Republic’s airport to Ukrainian Cargo plane “Mria” caused a lot of disputes in Ru-internet.
Plane is in the air and Flying to Africa ,supposedly Nigeria bought 16 tanks from Excalibur ,who bought 58 T72A in Hungary ,which were originaly bought in Belarus in 1996.
DeleteIn any case shipping Tanks via air freight is expenisive and even An224 needs 4 trips to deliver 16 tanks.
http://www.flightradar24.com/data/airplanes/ur-82060/#55f1ba8
ROK's Black Panther also employs a top attack weapon, though it is closer to a BONUS/SFW than STAFF/TERM/X-ROD/MRM_KE/CE.
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The Korean Smart Top-Attack Munition (KSTAM) is a fire-and-forget, top-attack anti-tank munition with an effective operating range of 2–8 km, developed specifically for use with the K2. It is launched as a kinetic energy projectile, fired from the main gun in a high trajectory profile comparable to that of a mortar. Upon reaching its designated target area, a parachute deploys, giving onboard millimeter band radar, Infrared and radiometer sensors time to seek and acquire stationary or moving targets. When a target is acquired, an explosively formed penetrator is fired from a top-down position, to exploit the weaker top armor of tanks. Target acquisition can also be directed manually by the tank crew via a remote-link. These characteristics allow the launch vehicle to remain concealed behind cover while firing successive rounds towards the known location of an enemy, or provide effective indirect fire support against targets hidden behind obstacles and structures.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K2_Black_Panther
Everyone who knows anything about Tank Warfare (namely the progression to closer and closer, intra-urban, fighting zones where late-LOS is at instant overmatch) knows that the way forward is active protection, MRSI and _self-homing, LOAL,_ CLGP.
Couple this to a 6 round rotary launcher and a lower caliber to absorb the recoil and suddenly you have perhaps 200 square feet of target area to try and roof protect against near orthogonal impacts rather than 60 square feet of the glacis and turret cheeks.
Victory in tomorrows tank fight will be defined by:
1. Spectral reduction. Especially IR.
2. Network targeting to include persistent drone constellations on all quadrant lanes.
3. MRSI saturation by multishot.
4. Layered CRAM/AHEAD/Steerable Cannon rounds (bus kill) + APS (mini missile SLIDs and plasma kill last-ditch)
being more important than heavy armor.
5. The sheer ability to develop the cheapest possible guided rounds and stock pile them in huge numbers.without
becoming vulnerable to threat state component firmware imbeds or reliability issues.
It will NOT be about King Tiger syndrome (Tiger E = 100mm hull front, 25mm roof armor; Tiger B = 150mm hull front, 40mm roof; Sherman = 76mm hull front, 30mm roof). It will be about effective (Adaptiv, Black Fox plus plenum masked power plant) active-IR camouflage to reduce the threat of CLGP lockon on a fast tank which generally return fires 2-3 round bursts at precision aimpoints updated in midcourse by UAV network noded, OTH, sensors.
Kept in constant contact with the friendly ground force component commander in a BCP vehicle with an elevating mast.
i find it hilarious they put the M1 Abrams as the target picture.. instead of Leopard or Le Clerc or Merkava or even japanese made tanks..
ReplyDeletei guess we all now know who these wonder weapons aimed for lol
Likely hood of weapon being used against Leopard or Leclerc is very remote but M1 and Merkava might find themselves in the croshair ,but most likely targets are sill T72 and clones.
DeleteMerkava's top armor was pretty heavy duty. i would be interested to see how merks fare against top attack ATGM rounds..
DeleteBadly. Tank armour is weakest there. There is a limit how thick you can make the topside hatches without turning them unusable, not to mention the thicker the armour, the harder to install topside sensors, vision periscopes and RWS.
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