And while you read this, ask yourself: "Does this sound like an environment in
which a combination of MGS, MMEV and LAV-TUA could ever hope, even with
a change of tactics, to be a be successful in?"
Seriously, I'm very, very worried....it's not like RPG's are uncommon and guerilla
tactics don't get shared very quickly.
M. ???
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A few eye openers in here.
Army Times
March 14, 2005
Making the best tank better
Abrams fares well in Iraq, but safety upgrades sought
by Sean D. Naylor
Fighting in conditions far removed from the north European plains for
which it was designed, the Abrams tank has proven its value in the war
in Iraq, according to the Army's chief of armor.
Not a single tanker has been killed by a conventional antitank weapon,
Maj. Gen. Terry Tucker said in a Feb. 18 interview. The few fatalities
suffered aboard tanks have been caused by roadside bombs or small arms,
he said.
Nonetheless, the Army is considering upgrades so the Abrams will
prevail on battlefields for the next quarter century. Among changes under
consideration for the near term are better protections for the tank's
commander and loader while they fire their machine guns, and a new
anti-personnel round for the Abrams' 120mm main gun. The long-term upgrades on
Tucker's mind include improved armor and a new main gun.
About 4,500 troops have served on tanks in Iraq. Of those, three
soldiers have been killed inside their tanks by roadside bombs. An additional
10 to 15 crew members have been killed while riding with their heads
out of the hatch, standing on the tanks, or, in one case, by an insurgent
who climbed onto the tank and shot down into the crew compartment,
Tucker said.
â Å“I am unaware of any case where any tanker in Iraq has been killed
inside of a tank by a penetration of a tank round or RPG or any other
munition,â ? Tucker said. â Å“It's a pretty safe place to be.â ?
About 1,135 Abrams tanks have seen action in Iraq, Tucker said, some
more than once. Of those, he said, â Å“probably 70 percent have been hit or
damaged in some way. In fact, it's hard to find an Abrams tank out
there that has fought in Iraq that has not been damaged.â ?
Eighty tanks have sustained damage that required them to be sent back
to the United States for repairs, said Tucker, noting that the damage
was â Å“fairly minorâ ? in some cases.
â Å“If a seam or a weld was broken, that's pretty delicate work, and we
couldn't do that in theater, so we've brought tanks back to the U.S. for
welding repairs,â ? he said.
â Å“About 63 of those 80 tanks will go back to the fleet,â ? Tucker said.
The remaining 17 â Å“will probably never go back to the fleet.â ?
Those figures mean that 1 to 1.5 percent of the tanks involved in the
fight in Iraq might not return to action. â Å“I'll take those numbers any
day,â ? Tucker said.
A different fight
Tucker acknowledged that the loss of even a few Abrams tanks has come
as something of a reality check to the armor community. In the 1991
Persian Gulf War, during which Tucker commanded a cavalry squadron, tank
combat involved Abrams tanks engaging and destroying their Iraqi
counterparts with overwhelming fire in the open desert.
â Å“This fight's different,â ? he said. â Å“The enemy's learned from that. And
the technique that they're using is massed fire against one tank: 14,
18, 20 RPGs â †I've heard reports of tanks taking 50 RPG hits. It's a new
technique that they're using, and in fact we're having some significant
damage on tanks that has to be repaired before we put them back in the
fight.â ?
Tucker cited an Abrams with the 3rd Infantry Division (Mechanized) that
took part in the first â Å“thunder runâ ? into Baghdad as an example. The
tank was struck by 14 to 18 rocket-propelled grenades, one of which
knocked out the hydraulics system so the crew had to operate the turret in
manual mode. Nevertheless, the tank completed the first thunder run and
then went on the second, its crew still fighting with the tank in
manual mode.
â Å“That crew refused to get off of it, because that tank couldn't be
killed,â ? he said.
Early problems
Not every Abrams was quite as resilient. Tucker estimated that the
number of tanks that had to be temporarily abandoned or pulled out of the
fight immediately due to combat damage was â Å“at least 17 and probably in
the 20s.â ?
However, no tanks have been permanently abandoned in Iraq, he said.
Even if U.S. forces had to scuttle a damaged tank â †in some cases by
having another tank fire on it; in others, by having Air Force jets destroy
the damaged tank with Maverick missiles â †to prevent sensitive
equipment from falling into enemy hands, U.S. troops retrieved the carcasses
and brought them all back to the United States.
The survival rate of the tank and the soldiers who fight in it was a
testament to the Abrams' design, according to the chief of armor. â Å“The
Abrams tank was designed and built to be able to take the kind of
punishment it's been taking in Iraq, and be repaired and put back into the
fight,â ? Tucker said.
â Å“That tank is designed with the ammunition separated from the crew
compartment, and if the ammunition is ignited in the storage compartment,
the tank is designed for the back of the turret to blow out, so the fire
and the explosion goes outward, as opposed to inward, so you don't
injure or kill the crew,â ? Tucker said.
The general estimated that Iraqi insurgents have used a dozen different
types of RPGs against the Abrams in Iraq. â Å“My concern is that in the
future we'll see more of the newer types, which are more powerful and
have more capability,â ? he said.
But contrary to rumor, there is no indication that any â Å“exoticâ ?
antitank rounds â †including foreign-made missiles such as the Milan, new
versions of the RPG, or new tank main gun rounds â †have been used against
the Abrams in Iraq, the general said.
Other than a couple of enormous custom-made bombs, the Abrams and its
crews have survived everything that Saddam Hussein's army and insurgents
in Iraq have thrown at it. Meanwhile, the officials the Army pays to
plot the future of the Abrams are not resting on their laurels, according
to Tucker.
â Å“We still think of the Abrams tank as the king of the fight, and I'm
here to tell you that it is, but I'm also here to tell you that the
Abrams tank is 25 years old,â ? he said.
â Å“We've improved it a lot over the years ... but it's still a 1980 tank,
and we have more work to do to keep the Abrams tank king of the
battlefield for the next 25 years, because 25 years from now, when the
American Army goes to fight, it will go to fight in Abrams tanks.â ?
In the near term, the Army has studied how the Abrams has fared in Iraq
and come up with a series of improvements that it refers to
collectively as the tank urban survivability kit, or TUSK.
But these capabilities are not funded in the Army budget, said Maj.
Chad Young, assistant product manager for M1, M1A1 and TUSK. The service
has not yet finalized how much it would cost to put TUSK on each tank,
Young said.
A program that is funded and will be fielded to tank units in Iraq
â Å“probably this summer,â ? according to Tucker, is an anti-personnel canister
round (â Å“a big shotgun round,â ? Tucker calls it) for the Abrams' 120mm
main gun.
Meanwhile, looking farther into the future, â Å“the Abrams tank needs to
become more lethal ... [and] more survivable than it is now,â ? Tucker
said. â Å“It's fairly easy to make it more lethal and more survivable,â ? he
continued. â Å“The challenge is going to be to do that while we try to make
it lighter and more mobile.â ?
Studying new armor
To solve the mobility problem, the Army is examining new types of
composite armor and electrified armor that have the potential to be lighter,
yet provide a greater level of protection than the highly classified
composite armor package with which the Abrams is presently equipped,
according to Tucker.
In 2008, Army will begin to field its next-generation family of combat
vehicles, the Future Combat Systems. That won't mean the end for the
Abrams, which is scheduled to serve until at least 2040. In fact, the
first FCS-equipped unit of action will probably include one FCS battalion
and one battalion of Abrams tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles, Tucker
said.
The challenge for the Army's doctrinal community will be to figure out
how the Abrams and the FCS family of vehicles will operate together,
according to Tucker. â Å“That's not an insignificant effort that we have to
go through,â ? he said.
The general noted that the issue of what type of gun the FCS mounted
combat system should have has yet to be settled. â Å“There's lots of
debate,â ? he said. â Å“Is it 105 [mm]? Is it 120 [mm]? Is it electromagnetic? Is
it a death ray? What's that gun going to be? We're not quite sure yet,
but ... we probably ought to put the same gun on the Abrams that we're
going to have on the FCS. That would make sense.â ?
Having different main guns on the two systems would entail an
unnecessary logistical burden, he added.
â Å“I can see some day that the gun in the Abrams tank will be more lethal
than it is now, and half the size, half the weight,â ? Tucker said. Other
dramatic changes are in store for the Abrams, he suggested.
â Å“I can't tell you what the tank is going to look like in 2017, when it
fights with FCS, but I'll tell you it'll be significantly different
from what it is now.â ?
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