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From: LNF@psuvm.psu.edu
Newsgroups: sci.military
Subject: Re: Light Ground Fire vs. Fancy Helicopters and Planes
Message-ID: <1990Oct15.033550.12173@cbnews.att.com>
Date: 15 Oct 90 03:35:50 GMT
References: <31106@netnews.upenn.edu> <148@cheltenham.cs.arizona.edu>
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From: LNF@psuvm.psu.edu

In article <148@cheltenham.cs.arizona.edu>, bakken@cs.arizona.edu (Dave Bakken)
says:
>
>In article <31106@netnews.upenn.edu> sal@grasp.cis.upenn.edu (Marcos
>Salganicoff) writes:

>This is not clear.  I am no expert on tank warfare.  However, some of
>the folks on sci.military are, and they have talked about the chobham
>armor (developed jointly by the US and UK) that is on the M1 tanks.
>Someone said that they have done extensive tests on it with just about
>every type of anti-tank weapon around, and it took *three* hits of
>anything *in the same spot* to penetrate (I don't know how many types
>of artillery shells, if any, they tested.  But artillery obviously is
>going to hit tanks much less often than an anti-tank weapon aimed at
>the tank).  If this is true, it makes the M1 relatively invulnerable.

I'm not sure about the validity of the rumor that the M-1's armor
is that impervious to attack.  If my memory is correct, at the time
*production* of this tank got underway there were major complaints
about:  1) the high profile of the tank, 2) the width & weight of
the vehicle making air transportibility a problem and 3) the knowledge
that we and presumably the Russians had the existing technology to
breach the armor.  I believe that they were talking about high density
shells such as the spent uranium rounds made for this purpose.  This
was quite a while back and I'm not sure where the technology has improved.

Larry