I just cannot fathom the cognitive dissonance it must take for people to accept having men sharing those sex-segregated facilities with their daughters.

Boys have no idea how good they have it.

Mostly because HEAT rounds are not the be-all/end-all for antitank weapons that they were hoped or assumed to be. The roots of missile obsession (particularly in the West) were seen very clearly in the 60s when the US F4 Phantom was designed without an air to air gun because missile technology was supposed to be a quantum leap forward in lethality and the military proudly proclaimed the air to air cannon obsolete, but the missiles proved themselves to be unreliable and the lack of a gun was a big distadvantage because one way or the other BVR engagements didn't pan out like they were expected to and many air to air encounters went to gun range anyway. The same mindset occured with tank to tank weaponry because the shaped charge/HEAT round was thought to be the death knell of armor, mostly because by the 60s there was no real thickness of rolled homogeneous steel that could stop the effect of the modern shaped charges of the day and it's ability to penetrate steel. There were a number of Soviet and Western concept vehicles designed around missile main gun systems in addition to the Shillelagh (The MBT70 was also capable of missile fire as well) and the Soviets in particular had a bunch of interesting stuff that never made it past the prototype stage, but at least for once the institutional resistance to change helped prevent the tried and true main gun round from being fully replaced by antitank missles. The missiles didn't stop being deployed en masse, but at least tanks kept their proven deadly cannon because it remained the best and most effective way for a tank to kill another tank in a head to head conflict, and so the armored forces continued to race for bigger and better tanks while trying to cope with the advances in missile tech as best they could

It wasn't really til your good countrymen invented Chobham armor in the 70s that tanks had the potential to absorb direct hits from HEAT rounds. Yes, the soviets were pionering explosive reactive armor but the early stuff was junk and dangerous, and even the modern designs have some level of tradeoff. Russian Kontakt-5 is pretty amazing stuff but still not as good as the improved internal Chobham armor that the M1A2SEP uses. It's battle proven though and allows the much smaller T72, T80 and T90 series tanks to have a similar level of HEAT round protection as the much larger western MBTs like the Abrams, Challenger 2 and Leo2, which has allowed their physical armor to be optimized against western MBT kinetic rounds

Yes, shaped charges are extremely dangerous and there are a number of modern ATGMs that will make you have a bad day even against a well designed MBT, but missiles and HEAT rounds have a really slow time of flight/time to impact compared to kinetic rounds moving over a mile per second. The majority of antitank missiles are wire guided which means the operator of the missile launch system must have continuous visual contact with the target and steer the missile until impact. They don't lock on or have fire and forget capability like air to air missiles

This means a lot of variables come into play as the missile flies to the target. Crew training, situational awareness and terrain all play a huge role

You can see them coming if you know what to look for and if you can see them you can take evasive action. We called it the Sagger Drill, named after the Sagger ATGM that the Soviets employed back in the day. "Sagger Sagger Sagger" was the platoon command which meant wire guided missiles were inbound. On the defense that meant you rolled backward down behind the berm in your 3 tier battle position and let the missiles fly overhead. On the offense it meant you sped up, slowed down, zig zagged, tried to find a defilade, zipped behind trees, buildings, burning tanks or whatever you could find to put between you and the incoming missile, and at the last second before impact you always tried to something completely unpredicable to throw off missile controllers aim. Remember, he's looking through a telescope at possibly 2000m or more and tanks really aren't very big at that distance to most optical guidance systems. He has a bit of job just keeping the cross hairs on you but now you're doing a bunch of random shit to complicate his task

The missile firing solution is also affected by terrain between you and the launcher. In a flat desert the missile does indeed have a near optimum performance envelope and would perform to spec (typically 3 to 5km, sometimes farther. Main gun fire is typically effective to 2000m, but a canadian tank crew has scored a tank to tank kill at 4300m), but in most other environments there could easily be enough terrain variation that the the wire spooling out of the back of the missile could hit the ground and get entangled and snap during flight, which would break the connection to the launcher optic. Terrain can dramatically reduce long range visibility, which is really the missiles primary advantage, and if you take that away now the missile operator is in a much more precarious position because as soon as he launches he is likely within immediate effective direct fire weapon range of your vehicle. If he's pretty fair away when he launches you could lay down suppressive fire against the missile launcher position because the launch would definitely leave a signature and you will almost certainly see it. The M2 HB commanders MG could suppress out to 1800m with reasonable effectiveness, meaning that the enemy guy laying on the ground looking through the launcher optic at your big ol Abrams would have 50 cal rounds dropping all around him. Not fun for him, and it's much worse much faster the closer he takes his shot. The Isrealis used a very effective version of this to defend themselves in the 67 and 73 wars despite the fact that the Soviet missiles of the day were technically outclassing the Isreali tanks. Arab gunners flat out lost their nerve when faced by effective concentrated direct fire at their positions which nullified the 'on paper' superiority the missile system

The devil is always in the details for weapons systems and ATGMs have their own details to worry about. You can pop smoke mortars with Salvo 1 and Salvo 2 on the Abrams and your whole vehicle will be covered by white phosphorus smoke. If the launcher optic can't see you he can't hit you, so ideally you'd move a few dozen meters away from your last known position under cover of smoke and the missile would miss. No one enjoys direct fire against their position so main gun rounds or effective MG fire can rattle the enemy enough to disturb the firing solution. On the offense you would absolutely be looking for defilades or other cover or concealment as you haul ass toward the enemy during a frontal assault. If the defense was stiff enough and you had priority of fire you'd call up Red Legs and have the organic mortar battery drop smoke on the enemy, or smoke between you and the missile positions to obscure your advance while you continued hauling ass toward them. Any amount of obscuration will complicate or ruin his ability to keep the cross hairs on target and there are a lot of ways to do that. Another example is night attack. The Abrams is completely built for night fighting, but the majority of wireguided missile systems are not equipped with i2 or thermal targeting systems, so the West would continue to use our night advantage and fight in the dark whenever we could

Tube launched laser guided missiles fired from the 125mm 2A46 series cannon found on the T80 and T90 tanks are definitely a threat because they don't rely on wires to guide them, but the same basic principle applies as wire guided missiles in that he must keep his turret mounted laser designator on your vehicle the entire time of flight. This has a couple of important effects, number 1 being his main gun is out of the fight the entire time of flight he is trying to destroy you. By itself that isn't the worst problem because he's probably using the missile against you well out of main gun range, but it does mean that he can't use missiles in a closer range typical tank fight (less than 2,000 meters) because you'll open a can of whoops ass with your main gun kinetic penetrator and beat his ass by accuracy and rate of fire. In terms of overall effectiveness if an MBT uses a tube launched laser guided missile now you have an expensive MBT performing an attack scenario not much different from a troop carrier or wireguided infantry unit which again means he is not using his flat shooting fast kinetic rounds to keep the mathmatical MBT direct fire effectiveness at it's optimal rate. Number 2 is that because he has to keep the laser painting you you can also deploy anti laser aerosol (which is part of your Salvo 1 and Salvo 2 smoke mortor shot) and if the laser hits a wall of smoke it isn't radiating back into the seeker on on the warhead. You can also drive into a defilade or behind cover or concealment as mentioned against wire guided missiles and you'd still sagger your ass off when the missile entered your visual ID range. Laser guided missiles have unique advantages but only a very limited set of conditions that let them operate at maximum design parameters, so while they have a purpose and are definitely not to be dismissed,they aren't even close to making main gun cannons obsolete, and you can't rely on them as your main weapon either. Not against a tank equipped with an effective main gun cannon anyway (Side note laser guided main gun missiles are often used against helicopters or fixed emplacements...things that are relatively stationary and don't see the missile coming from extended ranges)

The proliferation of effecttive-enough missiles makes MBT life on the battlefield tricky, but overall it's due to sheer volume of a determined attack vs the lethality of a single weapon instance. By comparison main gun rounds from an MBT will hit their target in 1 to 3 seconds depending on how far out the target is, and the rate of fire of a typical well trained Western MBT crew is 1 round every 3 to 5 seconds. That is a huge disparity in effective fire compared to missiles and because ATGMs don't reload quickly or have a fast time of flight they need a volume of fire to be a credible threat against a trained crew with good situational awareness. There are almost no countermeasures against a modern tank main gun round and accuracy is incredibly high. Advances in modern armor technology are still preventing HEAT rounds from having unlimited target effect on the tank it hits, and there are significant advances in active armor defenses (notably the Soviet Arena active protection system, as well as Shtora, and the Isreali Trophy active protection system) that can either blind the missile seeker or outright destroy it in flight right before impact. Shtora and Arena have dubious service histories due to the failure of client states to properly train with and employee them, but the Russians never stopped improving them and neither did the Isrealis. The US is pretty late to the game having relied on the high tech Chobham armor design for at least 10 years too long, but we're getting there finally with active defense systems

Lastly, the shaped charge has a serious drawback in physical design in that it needs to have the detonator device strike the armor face correctly in order for the charge to detonate properly. An indirect or glancing hit may cause the detonator to not fire correctly and the warhead may break up on impact (pancaking). Because the detonator has to strike nose first a really obvious defense is to put something in between the detonator and the armor face causing it to explode first before reaching the hull. In WW2 we've seen the million photos of Shermans using logs and sandbags to protect themselves against the panzerfaust and panzershreik, but even in WW2 they used stand off armor plates bolted to the tank to detonate the shaped charge before it hit the tank itself. The modern age of low intensity regional conflict has brought us Mad Max style slat armor cages that literally break up the warhead before the detonator hits the hull. Syria has a lot of photos of all kinds of vehicles with herky jerky ass slat armor to protect them. It looks like crazy shit but it works because again, the detonator must strike the armor face at the proper angle to achieve the target effect. Anything that changes the strike angle or interrupts impact before detonation can (and often does) protect the target vehicle. Finally, still speaking of needing the correct impact angle to make the detonator work properly, there are a number of challenges that they face simply because of the design of the tank itself affects the impact. Hitting the road wheels acts as slat armor for example, or hitting the bustle rack on the abrams turret acts just like slat armor and detonates the round before it hits the turrent. No, I for damn sure don't want my duffle bag and clean undies blown to fuck all by a shaped charge hitting my stowage rack, but at least it didn't penetrate the turret and blow my ass up with it

So in a nutshell, naaa, they dangerous but they ain't as dangerous as a tank main gun round

Bet that is the longest post in 24/365 history

Probably could have made that 365 different posts

Or just said 'because reasons'

But you asked a technical question, so I gave you a technical answer

Here we are on page 122

You know what has a 122mm gun? The Soviet IS3 tank, thats what. Actually they had a bunch of tanks that used it in WW2 and it was prolific after the war until the T55 100mm gun, the T62 115mm gun and finally the ubiquitous 125mm cannon from the T64 onwards til today

I know HK bro doesn't like to get up at 0545 like I usually do, but right now I'm reasonably confident I will also not be getting up at that particular hour tomorrow


Or today. That's like 4 hours from now


Alpha two three out

Eisenhower...he was a guy that did things right? I definitely don't remember chaney but pretty sure the E guy won something big like a war or whatever and or got elected to something after that. PTA or maybe city council. I don't know, but I like the guy. I like Ike. Ike is cool

Now I'm really out. My AN/VRC46 went tits up like they usually do

And yes, the statement "The Abrams is a two million dollar tank with a two dollar radio" is fucking spot on and describes about 87% of the trials and tribulations we had as an armored attack force that relied on the motto "Shoot, Move and Communicate"

It's pretty hard to communicate when your two dollar radio goes tits up all the gotdam time

And that's why I still know my goddamn hand and arm signals for tank platoon formations

Can you believe that?

Who the hell needs to remember how to open the damn hatch and start waving their arms like a crazy person so that 3 other tank commanders who hate their life choices that led them to that moment can turn and look at the crazy person waiving their arms and know what formation they need to smoothly and by the numbers slide their 2 million dollar tank into?


Well me, I'm one of those people unfortunately. My radio was deadlined more than I can remember, so I got really good at ASL for tank combat

Not quite what you're talking about, but I think there are ways to use HSA doll hairs to pay for things like trauma and first aid supplies.

The cone of shame

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I mean, or you could send her to me and I could get into AK irons like I used to

That's hilarious, sad, and entirely expected.

This is why we are the best tech forum.

Also, what we doin today?

Baking bread

Roger, wilco

Sessy bitch right there

Yup

What rank has to get Congressional approval? Full bird, or general?

Well now.

That is a very interesting thought

Smart

So close

What kind?

We are gonna weigh in steers today.


I need a quick little nap before this bullshit starts

Also

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Meet Tiny Tim

It's warm enough the mud shouldn't be too frozen. Have a nap there. A gay nap if you want.

My man

I hadn’t used the Infantry had and arm signals in over 2 decades, and yet I was able to do them without any hiccups last weekend even though I missed the class on them

Dude. Stop with the cuteness.

Boer?

Watching the dog while the rest of the family goes to church, and then crating him so I can go and help with our special needs class, and then helping the kids do their laundry, and then watching felon ball, then trying to get some, and then sleep

Oh, and eating.

Allegedly he's waiting until at least after the Superbowl to announce anything so he doesn't take away from that.

Your dog has a funny looking face.

Shower time

No.


A nap in Salma Hayeks boobs would be great

Future pot roast

Lebensraum. WWII

Yea.

He's a week old.

I'm crate training a goat

Tacos or chili, most likely

This one might end up being a damn pet tho

That's a funny looking dog.

Fuck.

He's a little leggy right now

Too slow old man

I was just about to say...

His name is tiny Tim and you're training him. He's no dinner. He's no dinner at all.

My wife likes your flooring.

Without being copypasta, probably.