TornadoADV said:
Eclectic Dreck said:
This same trend holds true today. A modern Main Battle Tank (Like the M1 Abrams), from the right angle, has several feet of advanced composite armor protecting it from enemy fire. In spite of this, a single anti-tank projectile, fired by a small team of infantry, are more than capable of destroying the tank and killing its crew. Thus why you see tanks in modern warfare most commonly used in pitched battle in open terrain: because their defensive edge means little in the face of well designed weaponry.
You've obviously never seen what the Abrams can absorb damage wise, even before the models as old as the A1 (mostly known for replacing the 105mm with the 120mm). Getting a mobility kill on an Abrams turns it into a very angry pillbox with 360 arc coverage.
To put it simply, the Abrams is able to resist almost anything in even our arsenal short of a GBU-28 through the top armour and keep the entire crew alive.
The list of things that can destroy the Abrams (truncated) that is only included in the US land arsenal:
105mm Howitzer (HE) round
155mm Artillery (Many variants)
Javelin
TOW
Various Mortars
AT-4 (Improbable but not impossible)
Various Anti-Tank mines (not presently used)
30mm Cannon (Multiple impact, especially if delivered on some location other than the glacias plate)
Various calibers and types of cannon rounds of different calibers (105+)
Things that can cause significant damage or disable an Abrams:
Various 40mm grenade rounds (HEDP for example)
Anti-Material Weapons (M82 for example, largely a threat against the electronics suite)
AT-4
Heavy Machine Gun Fire (Same as the anti-material rifle. No real threat of a kill in most circumstances but such a weapon is easily capable of delivering damage to an Abrams that would result in a significant degradation of its combat capabilities until repaired)
Anti-personnel mines (Largely a threat against mobility)
What you have to realize is that the Abrams', like that of any tank in the world, is designed around the premise that it will be able to face a target head on. The vast bulk of the armor on the vehicle is thus reserved for protecting the front leaving comparatively thin RHS armor to protect the rear, bottom and even parts of the top of the vehicle. This means that penetrating the armor on these locations is comparatively easy as you'll find that said armor is, in places, only a few inches thick. At close enough range, there are plenty of relatively low power (with respect to modern equivalents) tank rounds that are more than capable of defeating the Abrams front armor.
Beyond the possibly of a legitimate kill of the vehicle (which is shockingly easy with any of a number of widespread anti-tank missile systems), a great many infantry portable weapons are capabale of damaging an Abrams in some capacity that degrades it's ability to fight. This can include things as simple as damaging a tread (rendering the vehicle immobile), to igniting the external fuel tanks on the vehicle (which can easily result in the vehicle's destruction) or even damaging the fancy electronic gizmos that are, by necessity, on the outside of the tank. These same gizmos are, as much as anything else, responsible for the absurd increase in lethality that modern MBTs have over those in use decades ago.
Yes, a tank is relatively hard to kill, but all it takes is one good hit to disable or destroy it. This is largely the reason why infantry still has a role in modern warfare (mobility also helps in this regard): an infantry squad can take several casualties before they are no longer considered a combat effective unit. Complex terrain simply favors infantry over armor. The widespread use of various ATM systems simply reinforces this age old lesson of warfare.
And, incidentally, the effectiveness of the Abrams owes less to any superiority of design than it does to the effective application of combined arms along with various force multipliers. Effective fire finding radar mean that US counter-battery fire is incredibly effective. Total air superiority means that enemy formations and command and control are disrupted long before combat actually engages. Yes, fancy electronics mean that the Abrams can fight at ranges where older tanks would struggle to put steel on target much less make a legitimate kill and the fantastic protection (Which is, incidentally, not even best in the world by any stretch) certainly make it a hard target to kill.
But, an immobile tank is a dead tank
unless there are significant friendly assets to support the vehicle. Yes it can defend itself, but such is of little use when something as minor as anti-tank rounds from an infantry portable mortar could easily be zeroed onto the vehicle. The bottom line is simply this: The Abrams is very far from invincible and it's success has less to do with its ability to deflect and absorb damage than the simple fact that the Abrams has
never been used in a battle against a significant,
prepared, and technologically equivalent foe.
