Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ames!amdahl!amdcad!military From: zonker@ihlpf.att.com (Thomas M Harris) Newsgroups: sci.military Subject: Re: pickup trucks vs. tanks? Summary: Yep, it really happened. Message-ID: <27205@amdcad.AMD.COM> Date: 12 Sep 89 07:46:40 GMT References: <27171@amdcad.AMD.COM> Sender: cdr@amdcad.AMD.COM Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories Lines: 37 Approved: military@amdcad.amd.com From: zonker@ihlpf.att.com (Thomas M Harris) The actions in questions took place in northern Chad and the enemy was Libyan. They actually put ATGMs such as Milan and TOW on the trucks as well as machine guns (which was why they took on tanks). The pickups were four wheel drive, too. The main tactic seems to have been to try to catch the Libyans napping, zip in shoot things up, and then zip out before anyone could do anything about it. The tactics are hit and run, but one of the big success factors is that the pickups could avoid the main guns and get to the side or rear of the tanks to fire. In order to return fire the Tanks would have to use their exposed AA MGs which the Chadians suppressed with their fire. Since the tank commader typically uses the AA MG the Chadians probably did nasty things to the Libyan chain of command as well. Note that on most modern tanks there is no bow MG, just one coaxial with the main gun, and the AA MG on a ring outside the Commander's hatch. The GDW game Test-of-Arms has several scenarios. Also I just picked up a discount book "Warfare in the 20th Century (outside the two world wars)" which had a chapter about the fighting. There is at least one case where they butchered about a battalion of Libyan tanks hitting them at night, the Libyans had mined their perimeter and so did not post a sufficient guard. The Chadians went thorough the field at full speed and were in the camp before the crews could mount up. At any rate it seems that the Libyans are prone to panic and pretty badly trained so such tactics worked rather well. Also the from what I've read the Libyans have a Tank Heavy army and not much infantry. So if you can get in among the tanks you can do some real damage. I suspect that against a well trained armor unit such tactics would not have worked. For example in the Test-of-Arms scenario of the attack described above the Libyans win about half the time with just their sheer firepower. Non Cuniculus Est, Tom H.