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From: bakken@cs.arizona.edu (Dave Bakken)
Newsgroups: sci.military
Subject: Re: U.S. Ground Vulnerablity
Keywords: Tanks, Iraq
Message-ID: <1990Aug28.030655.21474@cbnews.att.com>
Date: 28 Aug 90 03:06:55 GMT
References: <1990Aug22.025624.16870@cbnews.att.com>
Sender: military@cbnews.att.com (William B. Thacker)
Organization: U of Arizona CS Dept, Tucson
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From: bakken@cs.arizona.edu (Dave Bakken)

In article <1990Aug22.025624.16870@cbnews.att.com> cperlebe@encad.Wichita.NCR.COM (Chris Perleberg) writes:
>
>
>From: cperlebe@encad.Wichita.NCR.COM (Chris Perleberg)
[ Chris thinks the US doesn't yet have nearly enough armor in SA]
>All this is extremely unsettling.  That leaves the U.S. forces very 
>vulnerable to the estimated 5000 tanks in Iraq's arsenal.  

Our troops have TOW missiles.  They have a range of 4,000 metres, 
and I think can travel that distance in 10-30 seconds.  The
best of Iraq's tanks can hit targets at 2,000 metres and they
can only go 20mph when nobody is shooting at them.  They are sitting
ducks.  Plus, we have helicopters that have extremely complex sensing
equipment; for a good article see today's New York Times.  A helicopter
crew told how the tanks are sitting ducks in the desert, and they 
bragged that they could take out 200 tanks in an hour.  Even if
they are an order of magnitude too optimistic, I think that we
are in really good shape.  It is harder to use TOWs on offense,
but obviously that is not true of helicopters.

Of course, the above assumes that we have obtained air superiority...
-- 
Dave Bakken                     Internet: bakken@cs.arizona.edu 
Dept. of Comp. Sci.; U.of Ariz. UUCP:     uunet!arizona!bakken
Tucson, AZ 85721; USA           Bitnet:   bakken%cs.arizona.edu@Arizrvax
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