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From: kevin@ccs.QueensU.CA (Kevin Broekhoven)
Newsgroups: sci.military
Subject: Tank surface to air, anti missile capabilities
Message-ID: <1991May7.062305.12334@amd.com>
Date: 4 May 91 21:04:17 GMT
Sender: military@amd.com
Organization: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.
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From: kevin@ccs.QueensU.CA (Kevin Broekhoven)


In a recent posting to this list, the armament of the M1A1 tank was
listed as as the main gun, and a couple of machine guns.  The "tubey"
things on the outside of the tank seem to be smoke grenade launchers,
rather than mortars or missile launcher tubes as I had originally
thought.

Pictures of the M1 in Canadian Defence Quarterly (CDQ) show two machine
guns on top of the tank. These are presumably operated by someone who,
with laudable courage, has disdained the protection afforded by the
tank armour, and exposed a portion of his body to the unfriendly
attention of his adversary.

I had understood the modern tank to be a highly sophisticated weapons
system employing state of the art electronic fire-control, and rapid
response to incoming threats.  I have been told that firing a TOW
against a modern tank is a task requiring selfless dedication to duty
and unflappable resolve, as the tank is capable of locating the threat
in seconds, and responding with "awesome" amounts of suppressive
anti-personel fire.  After other tanks, infantry with anti-tank TOW
missiles, and tank-hunting helicopters must be the highest priority
threat the tank must deal with.

Somehow, a few of our lads in a tank sporting 50 tons of DU armour,
a 120 mm main gun, and two externally mounted machine guns don't fit 
the high-tech picture I had formed in my mind.

My Questions:

1. Do modern tanks (and specifically the M1) have any surface-to-air
capability?  Does the main gun have an anti-helicopter capability?
or is one of the crew supposed to stick his nose out of the turret
and use the machine gun in a fire-fight with a helicopter gun-ship?
Or is the tank dedicated to surface warfare, relying on other 
weapons systems for air-defense?

2. Do they have any anti-missile systems?  Or do they just get a
warning that there's an "incoming" and it's up the the human
crew to turn the tank around and respond to the TOW operator?

3. Why are the machine guns externally mounted, and manually operated?  
WW1 footage shows tanks with machine gun muzzles protruding 
from the armour, so that the operator could operate them from the
relative safety of the interior of the tank.  I would have expected
that by the nineties, that the top of the line US tank would feature 
computer-controlled, electrically driven gatling guns capable of 
putting thousands of rounds per minute into low-flying air craft, 
incomming missiles, or any other threat coming to the attention of
the operator who would be _inside_ the tank.  Nobody is expected
to poke their nose out of the turret and operate a machine gun
in a high-intensity battlefield on one of the "killing zones" of
central Germany are they?  -- say it ain't so!

	[Ah, the joys and perks of being a tank commander.  :-) --CDR]

Thanks in advance,

Kevin Broekhoven                     Computing Centre
applications programmer              Queens University K7L-3N6 (Canada)
Bitnet, NetNorth: BROEKHVN@QUCDN     IP: kevin@ccs.QueensU.CA (130.15.48.9)
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