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Back in the 1990s I recall reading Tom Clancy’s loving paean to the M1 Abrams,
Armored Cav, in which he related that the unkillable tank had never been knocked out by hostile fire. The Abrams’ 120mm cannon effortlessly peeled the turrets off of T-72 tanks in the Gulf War, while Russian anti-tank missiles and 125mm shells couldn’t pierce the American tank’s Chobham armor. In fact, the Abram’s
own gun reportedly struggled to penetrate the Abram’s depleted uranium armor.
This first appeared earlier and is being reposted due to reader interest.
Since then the Abrams has been involved in a lot more war, and it has had to forsake its invincible reputation. During the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq, several were knocked out by massive IEDs or RPGs in the vulnerable rear armor, others by advanced Russian-made anti-tank missiles such as the
The
T-72B3M also called T-72B4 is an upgraded version of the T-72B3M Main Battle Tank developed and manufactured by the Russian company Uralvagonzavod. It was unveiled for the first time International Russian army Tank Biathlon competition in October 2014.
The design of the T-72B3M is very similar to the T-72B3 with a crew of three including the driver seated at the front middle of the hull, the turret in the middle with commander and gunner, and engine at the rear of the hull.
The main armament of the T72B3M / T-72B4 consists of one 2A46M5 125-mm smoothbore gun which is a modernized variant of the standard 2A46M cannon, also known as the D-81TM. It can fire a wide range of ammunition, including Armor-Piercing Discarding Sabot (APDS), High-Explosive Fragmentation (HEF), and High-Explosive Anti-Tank (HEAT). It can also fire the anti-tank guided missile 9M119 Reflex (NATO code: AT-11 Sniper).
ARMOR: Chinese Laser TOW Tryout
April 8, 2021: China recently revealed a new ATGM (anti-tank guided missile) that is larger than earlier ones and uses top-attack warhead technology. It was later reported that a version of this new missile had been revealed, called the ATF-11 and better photos were provided. It appears that the larger vehicle mounted missile and the new portable version are the same and are in fact a laser guided version of the American TOW (Tube-launched, Optically tracked, Wire-guided). The ATF-11 was is not the first Chinese missile to use top-attack tech. That showed up in the 1980s when they introduced the HJ-8, which is nearly identical to the American TOW 2 in size, weight, range and, according to the users, performance. The ATF-11 appears to be a laser guided version of the HJ-8. There were American and Israeli laser-guided (wireless) TOW missiles but they never seemed to be worth putting into service. That same fate may