Great question! Let's discuss various ways that you, John Q. Citizen, can take on vehicles.
Since modern vehicles are particularly defended from underneath against IED's, would it be easier to drop some thermite on top and let it burn through? How easy would it be to run up to a tank if the quarters were close enough? Also, do czech hedgehogs work against modern vehicles, or have they been designed to shove them out of the way?
I can't recall what the name is, but there's a type of shaped charge that when it explodes creates a trench to trap the tank that detonated the charge. There's also just digging trenches. Anti-tank obstacles still work. Tracks aren't much harder to disable than they were in WWII. Even if your IED doesn't penetrate the hull you can still leave the tank standing still. Modern tanks rely on sensors for navigation and gun aiming. These sensors are small targets but vulnerable to small arms fire.
All in all you will find more success if you forget about penetrating the hull and instead focus on immobilizing the vehicle or damaging peripheral devices to cripple it. A bunch of guys in an armored box aren't all that dangerous. It's when that armored box moves and has a gun on it that it is a danger.
Focus also on infantry support. A tank without support is dead. Tank by it lonesome? Shove a bomb down the barrel or in the tracks. Light it on fire and make things uncomfortable for the crew. Throw flaming gasoline down the air intake and damage the engine. Put thermite on the APU. Etc, etc. Your strategy will always involve first killing whatever infantry is near the tank. If you can clear the gap you can disable the vehicle.
Also, how easy is it to run up on a tank for molotovs or whatever? Do the sensors allow for auto-targeting, or does the commander still have to joystick the gun around?
Jaxon White
Fuel
So it has a range of "only" 150 miles before it has to start turning around. A MPG estimate I'm pretty damn sure was done under the most favorable conditions possible (straight line on highway, low speed), so likely even less than that. 500 gallon drums are big enough to need a dedicated vehicle.
Easton Wood
Yes, auto-targeting already exists.
Ryan Allen
Not nearly so. They wised up to this post-WWII and engine bays now have anti-fire countermeasures. You can still cover the tank in fire to try and cook the crew, but the large thermal mass of the vehicle makes that really fucking difficult. You can also burn up the oxygen around the tank to try and suffocate the crew out. Takes quite a bonfire though to be effective.
The main cannon has some pretty sophisticated computer aiming systems, but the hull mounted MGs still have a person behind them doing most of the work.
Justin Sanchez
do you think a large wad of thermite putty would be able to burrow through the top of an abrams?
Nathaniel Robinson
Given the amount and time needed to do so, you would need to have coverfire to prevent the tank crew or others from removing it. Cost-wise, molotovs would be more effective.
Angel Hughes
Step 1: Most tank manufacturers contract out all sorts of of vital components. Find these subcontractors and destroy some of their factories. Focus on parts that either have a short lifespan (tracks, engine filters) or are easily destroyed (sensors, radios, weapons stations). Step 2: Use IEDs and mortars to damage said electronics. Mortars should ideally use shrapnel instead of HE since most of the tank's soft bits are deliberately positioned to be shielded from ground-level shell fragments. Step 3: Raid the tank's supply lines, both to cut them off from any existing reserves of spare parts and to starve them of fuel and ammo. The reason we're doing this last is because 90% of the supply line is itself defended by numerous AFVs, so we need to thin their numbers a bit first. Step 4: Blow up all the surviving AFVs using the modern ATGMs that your country's enemies just sold you
If you encounter a fully operational MBT before step 4, your only realistic chance of survival is to blind it with a smokescreen and get the hell out of there. APCs/IFVs can sometimes be defeated by IEDs or anti-materiel rifles (usually hull sides/rear are rated for 14.5mm at 1000m), but this is not reliable by any stretch.
Where there's tanks, there's usually a bunch of screening infantry whose job is to stop exactly these sorts of tactics.
Dylan Russell
If I'm reading wikipedia correctly, the thinnest armor on an Abrams is still foot-thick composite armor. I doubt thermite would do much against that. But on a stryker, the armor is apparently less than an inch thick, so thermite would work great there. Put it over the engine block, driver area, or whatever.
Matthew Moore
Please explain how they are really used. I just see them being used on literally just some dirt, in practice exercises. Totally confusing.
Jason Torres
I'm not entirely clear on that either, but from what I gather, charges in the tubes blast the tubes into shrapnel that shreds barbed wire and blows the ground away for a couple meters around the circumference of the tubes, which would make a ditch. For what it's worth, they were shown being used in the opening scene of Saving Private Ryan.
Sebastian Rogers
Unless you and the boys raided the armory for some legitimate AT, pic related. Pack your shit and leave. Use the sewers or something to gtfo An IED will only disable or track it, but that can also be enough to buy you time to leave. Have fun getting close by the way, tanks are usually protected by infantry.
How about flame fougasses? The British made them to act as cheap anti-tank measures and it should work well in an urban setting where fuel tanks and other debris are more inconspicuous. iirc the Soviets and Germans used similar flame mines to some success.
Depends if the barrel is rifled and if you've got enough boom to bulge the thing.
Nicholas Anderson
Nah. Thermite is pretty slow and melting through armour by heat isn't really something that is done today. Not to mention you need a ton of it to melt through a tank. You either go for kinetic energy penetrators (APFSDS) or you focus some explosive energy, which is done by HEAT. Some whacky plan to drop and ignite thermite on top of a tank is needlessly complicated and slow, considering how even cheap disposable AT launchers can penetrate ~400mm RHA you might as well ambush the tank, use AT mines and fire at weak points such as the top or back of the cannon. Tactics are everything and simple solutions will work with good tactics and training. There's a great book in the PDF thread, "The Poor Man's RPG" that's really worth reading if you are interested in AT warfare and the history of man portable AT weaponry.
Brandon Morales
But more importantly hit their supply lines. How much good is a tank going to do the enemy when the engineers haven't had the parts to keep it running for a month, it's running low on ammo, the crew haven't slept in 3 days, and they just cracked open the last tanker of their 'super-emergency, no for real this time' fuel supply?
Henry Morales
a) breach is open: Part of the shockwave and some of the shrapnel will make it inside the tank. Possible concussion and hearing damage for the crew. b) round loaded in barrel Might cause a barrel-burst if the shockwave manages to bypass any safety in the round's fuse. c) breach closed, no round loaded: Very little damage to tank gun, most pressure vents out the front.
You are getting in a very risky situation though. Almost all guns have coaxial machine guns, and if you get up next to the barrel all it takes is the driver to start moving the tank or the gunner to swing the turret a little and you either get crushed by the tracks, or your head bashed in by the barrel. Ideally you should use the hand grenade to clear any infantry nearby, then use the confusion and shock to get closer and throw an AT grenade somewhere on the turret or thee top.
Carson Flores
1) One of these carries 1/3 of the fuel needed for an average Abrams tanks daily operation. That's total capacity of course, some portion of that will be used by the truck itself to get to the Abrams in the first place, and it's an "off road" vehicle so it has shitty mileage. If you blow these up whenever you see them, the tanks literally will only operate a few hours per day, and won't be a problem.
B) A tank can't collect taxes, climb stairs, knock on doors, bully people, or interrogate witnesses. The entire point of a police state is that a door-shaped thing has to move through the average individuals door, and demand that the individual inside his home do something he otherwise wouldn't. The cheapest door-shaped thing is a human being, which means sending soldiers to terrorize people, which can be dealt with easily. '''Tanks can't do anything worthwhile for a police state, that's why each EU state has like 100 combat ready tanks, and 10,000 combat ready wheeled vehicles.
•) Wheeled combat vehicles can be easily dealt with by or the simple expedient of burning their tires off with a molotov, or since their armor is usually rated to over 100m AP machine gun ammo, just coming in under 100m with a 7.62NATO AP round hunting rifle can take most out.
?????????????? There's no machine guns on the hull.
Turret pintle mounts have their own targeting systems, often with better sensors than the base FCS because the turret pintle mounts are used as "periscopes" scouting at night for infantry trying to ambush it. And the coax is slewed to the base FCS along with the main cannon.
Que? It's about 1200mm RHA on the front turret, 800mm RHA on the front glacis, 600mm on the front hull, 600mm on the turret sides and front hull sides, 400mm on the rear hull sides, 100mm RHA on the rear turret and rear hull, only 60mm RHA on the top turret and top rear hull. It used to be over 72mm but the latest update reduced it to save on weight, and the hatch has almost no armor it's just 10mm steel and kevlar. The top 60mm can even be penetrated by some heavier AGLs and MLRS, there's a reason every abrams rides around with a passel of Bradley to save it's ass. Abrams is only formidable in a bull rush towards unprepared enemies… if it gets ambushed or even just isolated in an advance, it is dead meat to 1950s cannon technology.
No real damage, the frag will scratch the inside of the barrel which will cause it to miss every time. And after a few shots the pressure of routine firing itself may be enough to inveigle the cracks and destroy the cannon. Tank cannon are operated very near the peak containment pressure of the system.
David Wilson
I don't think so, user. Pic related is my attempt to test it out
Don't be an idiot by going after hard targets. Go after soft targets instead. For example, the families of the drivers and gunners. Pretty hard to come to work if your wife and kid might get killed while you're gone. Of course, only ebil terrorists do that. :^)
Julian Phillips
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Ryan Rivera
It's what they did in Ukraine, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Iraq, etc. and it's how it would go down in America.
Aiden Anderson
What scenario are we talking about? Civil war in the US? Either cut out the fuel (blowing up the pipelines should create a serious logistical hurdle or do ), or go after the manufacturing plants so that the enemy cannot replace the losses and has no spare parts for maintenance. Then enter gorilla mode and pick them out one by one.
Also, if a civil war in the US happens, you can bet every other country in the world intervening, so you'd probably get ATGMs and similar from that way
David Ramirez
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Leo Ortiz
Now here's a man who knows how to win a civil war.
Real question is why did they decide to use a fucking jet engine?
Matthew Bennett
And why use a big heavy tank, when the American doctrine & situation before, and now, required either light tanks for easy deployment over seas and Airborne, or medium tanks for non-difficult deployment from sea to Europe, while being defensive enough for Soviet offensive?
Liam Phillips
Because the other guys have big heavy tanks.
Nolan Roberts
Abrmas has least amount of ammo in hull among all tonks. Its also stored in isolated area with blow out panel, no other tonk has same hull ammo arrangement..
I think small amount of ammo outside main storage was requirement for combat damage persistency. Even if main ammo storage is taken out abrams still have several round to fire back it his offender to score clutch return kills.
Christian Morales
How hard would it be to take out a tank via bore obstruction of the main gun? I'm thinking of something like a cannonball with a can of Great-Stuf (the expanding foam spray) behind it, all held on a piece of steel tube with a peircing mechanism for the can on the end.
If you're in an urban environment, distract the secondary MG so it points behind the tank, run up, shove the pole in, pull a drawstring or something that actives a springloaded punch for the can, and now you have a heavy metal object well sealed in ~4-6 feet down the bore. This requires there to be no infantry support and a set of titanium balls, but it seems like a workable way to get a mission kill on a tank using materials found in most people's garage (it doesn't have to be a cannonball either, something hard and roughly bore diameter should work, you can always cast concrete balls using quikrete in a pinch).
Just stand in front of the thing. If a column of tanks crewed by chink bugmen could get held up by one guy because they were reluctant to run him over, then tanks crewed by (near-)humans would probably stop too. At least in some contexts, and only in the beginning of the period during which you need to deal with tanks.
James Ward
If you're doing this in a human country whatever side you were on will get a MASSIVE aid in ammo, instructors, food, medicine and anything else from around the world as long as there's a picture of you bravely stopping the tank and/or getting run over
Easton Lewis
I don't believe it.
Help will only come when you show you are winning.
Dominic Foster
Yet your own government still supports ISIS. Foreign powers will support rebel groups just for the chance to prolong fighting to further weaken the government, even if those rebels have no chance of winning in the long run.
Xavier Bell
ISIS has a chance of winning before the SAA gets their shit together (pre-2012), in fact many people were supporting them because they thought they were gonna win.
This is why support and the scale of ISIS start to trickle down further and further when their losses start to mount and they pretty much now become a boogeyman.
Levi Gonzalez
Fast way to clear obstacles. That's it.
Jason Brooks
You need to spend some more time on /diy/, amigo.
Hunter Sullivan
I actually just found what I really was talking about. It's called the McNaughton tube, and when detonated can create a trench 28 feet wide and 8 feet deep.
Ayden James
To be fair, not even the MPs know of the hull stowage compartment in the Abrams making it a fairly popular way to sneak contraband into the base. You have to also look at the drawing to see that the hull rack is not located inside the turret ring. I'm pretty sure It can only be accessed when the turret is at 12 oclock and has a blast door and blow out panels on top of it like the bustle rack. Its simply there to hold more rounds so the crew can transfer them to the bustle when there's a lull in the action.
It can run efficiently on multiple fuel sources instead of pretending it can burn anything according to the book but in reality never actually making its stated power and shitting the bed like a multi-fuel diesel, its actually efficient when the vehicle is on a road march or in combat operations, its completely silent running which believe it or not, is a tactical advantage, it worked for the Swedes in the S-tank, it worked for the Krauts in some models of MBT-70 and it worked for the Russians in the T-80 but if we have one its a crime against tanks and something everyone thumbs their nose at because America can't possibly have anything good according to eternally asshurt europoors we protect for free.
What changed was that ships were built with ramps that pulled out right at the dock level so you could drive whatever you needed on and off without being limited by the crane's max capacity along with there being much more permanent bases to keep the vehicles in in Europe. Not to mention that western Europe was completely rebuilt by that time to resemble a first world country with working roads and bridges and the battle plan did not involve attacking into the USSR in the event of WW3. We could suddenly afford for them to be heavy.
As for people talking about all sorts of cartoony rube goldberg machines with stuffing bombs right down the barrel that has a co-axial machine gun running along it and thermite, no. These are all just as stupid as they sound and would be suicide to try. The gooks in north korea climbed ontop of Pershings and literally burst into flames from the heat coming off the engine before they were hosed off by the tank behind it. The best way to stop a tank with no proper anti-tank weapons is to destroy the trucks carrying the fuel, ammo and spare parts. Otherwise, you stay as far away as possible from one.
Molotovs became a meme the second someone gave red army tankers some wire and a shitton of pine branches.
Yeah it's super easy. Just make sure that you have atleast 8 other buddies with you so that atleast one of you can get close enough to throw that glass bottle. Nah, actually, make sure you have 9 other friends with you, one of you faggots need to bury the rest. I'd probably take more people with me due to developments in fire control systems during the last 70 years or so.
William Torres
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA no Although I will admit that the predominantly higher frequencies a turbine produces have some advantage.
Zachary Bailey
A tank that also fulfills a role of SVBIED? Brilliant!
its don't. IED protection is a meme. It doesn't mean immunity from IED. It means that the crew might survive if the device is small enough. You can't proof a vehicle from explosives. The key is to use enough explosives. Example: 10kg of TNT equivalent detonated under the track or wheel of a vehicle is enough to de-track a modern MBT, disable most older MBTs, or destroy almost any lightly armoured vehicle. There's nothing stopping you from using more, either. Explosives are also dirt cheap so they're the perfect weapon for insurgents. the 10kg of TNT equivalent I mentioned would be about as expensive to acquire as a few rifle cartridges or less.
Stick of dynamite covered in glue, or a mine on a stick, in Minecraft of course
Alexander Campbell
Tanks aren't made of 10mm steel plates anymore, user
Gavin White
To an extend IEDs protection is itself a meme, caused by Burgernormies wanting a clean war and not wanting to see their soldier coming home in boxes. Tanks aren't invulnerable and in a conventional war a lot more scary things than IDEs are moving and flying around that can kill a tank. Yet somehow when these tanks are used to violently occupy a foreign country and fight guerrillas, people expect them to be invulnerable moving fortresses who are fought by the enemy head on.
Nolan Watson
What, you're going to tie an anti-tank mine to a stick and hit the tank with it?
Cameron Peterson
It's probably troops doing pioneer training, so it's mostly tree-trunks being relocated to more convenient location.
Even these MRAP's will get rekt by a concrete-mixer-turned-into-shaped-charge. Sure the crew inside the mrap may or may not survive in one piece, but they are going to be injured to some extend due to them being thrown around inside that vehicle.
You don't kill tanks, you go after politician families when everyone sits at the table for diner. Politicians or beucrats won't have tank protection.
Ian Edwards
What if the politician has put himself and his family in a tank, in Minecraft?
Charles Foster
Get in with your diamond pickaxe and grief his wife and children in front of him until they rage-quit. Then kill him so he loses all of his stuff and then make him watch as you destroy his house and farm and fill in all of his mines, kill his cattle/pets and then finally once nothing is left, notify mojang that he’s selling torrents of the game and get his account banned.
Alexander Phillips
Starve the crew by making them search for you then steal the tank when the driver jumps out to find food
Maybe we would leave if you would stop paying 70% taxes to abort your next generation and put some of that money into defending yourself instead of telling us to foot the bill so you can have your neetbux.
How do you think I know you're not actually swiss?
Because burgermutts can actually point out where Switzerland is on a map, right :^)
Dominic Parker
bet the average street white amerigan would at the same rate as the average white european. which is not as high as it should be, but not as low as you think. you should point this ire at muhammed muhammed and give us some emotional support against jamal sanchez. shit sucks.
Grayson Reyes
Cant remember where it was, some dusty middle east shithole probably, but a massed rush with tires and molotovs works breddy gud, as long as they dont have too many infantry to back the tanks up. Nothing like being slowly roasted to death to really make them think twice.
Luke Reyes
Or, mine vulnerable points like sewers and things wherever they run under a road. Tanks useless if its on its side in a big fuckin hole.
Ethan Wright
Right JewSA occupation benefits everyone else in NATO besides America, that’s how it works. By the way, Kike, had yourself before we do, it will be much more painful if we have to do it.
Joseph Cruz
More disappointed that we made the mistake of not letting Russia run you over in a week tops and ban 8ch for all of Europe and instead pay billions to ensure you can continue to fund free houses, college, and abortions for all by stealing 70% of everyone's paycheck which forces the entire country to live in two room apartments that they can only afford 30 seconds of heat or air conditioning a week in and one bicycle per family of two women and five cats.
Its because Switzerland has no US troops deployed in it due to its strict neutral policy and is one of the only countries in all of Europe that could probably win a war completely on its own against an invading Saddam era Iraq. The fact you are sperging out with all this hatred of the evil supply sergeants and pencil pushers at the local airbase shows that you are ether not Swiss, or are stupid enough to lose your national identity in order to look cool on the internet by being as petty and impotent as the rest of the europoors.
I mean, all europoors seem to have rape fantasy's of being liberated like Berlin in 45 so I guess they are mad they don't get to be invaded again and lose when they have an army consisting of entire dozens of rusted through helicopters and an even a platoon of tanks. Don't forget hundreds of early 60s battle rifles with 50 rounds of ammunition to go with each one!
That was in Saudi-Arabia if I'm not mistaken. It wasn't a tank. Just a humvee-like technical of sorts and a checkpoint consisting of maybe a fire team at the most. The moderately inbred soldiers at the post let the hoard of screaming Muslims of a slightly different peaceful sect run right up to them without even noticing and pelt them with at least 20 Molotovs without them firing off a single shot before they were all drowned in flame. Not a tactic that would work too well if you were fighting against human opponents. Saudi's are famously talented at losing tanks in embarrassing ways.