2 M1A1 tanks destroy by Iraqi.
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A picture of a M1A1 destroyed by friendly fire in 1991 Gulf War.
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One Abrams crew man did die in the gulf war, ironically a tank commander that was killed when ammo in a target he knocked out exploded when he drove past unbuttoned.
No Abrams crew members were seriously injured or harmed in the Gulf war, even in friendly fire incidents. -
Seen the pic before. These are pictures of M1A1s which were shot up or deliberately demolished by their own troops several more times after the initial accidential friendly attacks disabled them to prevent them from falling into enemy hands.
Pretty amazing if the crew could survive inside that kind of pounding. Looks like they dropped a mk-82 right onto the roof. -
Hmm, SingaporeTyrannosaur, much as I am pro-US as far as this current war effort is concerned. .
The fact that US is taking casualties and is losing some tanks in the process is very real. Note that it was reported in an American military related paper that the tanks were DESTROYED. I do not think they would have done so if they were not totally sure or if the tank could be serviced and brought back to war again.
Also, I find reports that the crew is not injured pretty amazing, either that or the crew members were injured but not dead, and could be fixed up in hospital again. . . i seriously doubt if the crew is unscathed. ..
sorry. . not always pro-US.. .i see case by case. ..
and foga, you want peace, but is an Iraq with a large military force controlled by ONE man in the Gulf promoting the peace? I think removing saddam through this war will bring about greater peace to the region than the voices of all the anti-war protestors combined. . . -
dear laser, if there's two options,
one is the peacful disarament of iraq
and the use of force to bring down the regime,
i would want peace.
since the situation has gotten so bad that a
peaceful settlement of this issue have vanished,
i support a quick and decisive war to bring down saddam and his regime. -
if the Abrams are so damn invincible....why don't they continue their onslaught right up to Baghdad ?
Obviously, some have been knock-out. If the American news reports them than is must surely be true coz they seem to be downplaying their losses ...and only owned up when Aljazeera shows the it on tv. Look at the POWs, dead GIs and downed Apache....US only admit it after Aljazeera showed them on tv. -
"Iraq: Desert Dispatch -- U.S. Surprised By Iraqi Use Of 'Kornet' Antitank Missiles By Ron Synovitz
RFE/RL correspondent Ron Synovitz is embedded with a unit of the U.S. Army's 3rd Infantry Division currently outside Najaf, a city in central Iraq now encircled by U.S. troops following 36 hours of heavy fighting. He reports that U.S. troops are encountering an unanticipated, and formidable, weapon in the Iraqi arsenal -- Russian-built Kornet antitank missiles.
Najaf, Central Iraq; 27 March 2003 (RFE/RL) -- U.S. military intelligence is warning American troops that Iraqi soldiers have begun to use a wire-guided missile system against American tanks that the U.S. military previously did not know they possessed.
It is called the AT-14 Kornet surface-to-surface missile. It has a range of 3.5 kilometers, and it is emerging as the Iraqis' most effective direct-fire weapon against U.S. armor in the desert of southern Iraq.
Iraqi commandos traveling in three-man teams dressed in black civilian robes and riding in Nissan pickup trucks have been moving against the flanks of columns of armor from the U.S. Army's 3rd Infantry Division and launching broadside attacks from several kilometers away using the system. Those attacks have already disabled at least two Abrahms tanks and one Bradley armored troop carrier.
U.S. military intelligence officials are extremely interested in capturing one of the missiles intact. They also are instructing American soldiers who destroy one of the Kornet launchers to save the remains of the system for close inspection.
The Kornet is a Russian-built missile system developed by the KBP Instrument Design-Making Bureau in Tula. It is primarily designed to destroy tanks, but can also be used against fortifications, entrenched troops, and small-scale targets. It has been used by the Russian Army and has reportedly been sold to the Syrian Army.
The appearance of the Kornet system in Iraq is of particular interest to U.S. officials because of a recent dispute with Moscow over its alleged weapons sales to Baghdad. The U.S. State Department has accused KBP of supplying Iraq with the Kornet missiles, something KBP and Moscow have vehemently denied.
In a phone call on 24 March with U.S. President George W. Bush, Russian President Vladimir Putin said the American allegations of Russian sales of missiles, night-vision goggles, and radio-jamming equipment were "groundless."
The AT-14 Kornet is a wire-guided missile system. In such a system, the missile literally pulls a thin wire along behind it as it moves toward its target. Those who fire the Kornet control it by keeping the sights of their launcher trained on the target. That way, the missile can be guided at moving targets like tanks and armored troop carriers.
As a direct-fire weapon, the missile travels in a straight line, rather than in an arc, as it would with mortar or howitzer artillery.
Direct fire is considered more effective than indirect-fire weapons like the mortar artillery because the person who is firing the weapon can see the target himself, rather than relying on forward troops to spot and provide information on where the target is.
But the need to keep a Kornet launcher's sights locked on the target means that it must remain stationery after it has fired. After a Kornet missile has traveled 3.5 kilometers, the guidance wire has completely uncoiled and breaks. The missile then becomes erratic, no longer able to lock onto the target.
Another disadvantage of wire-guided missiles is that they cannot be fired over trees, power lines, telephone lines, or water. That's because the wire will snag and break, or will malfunction, disabling the guidance system. That means the Kornet will lose its effectiveness against U.S. tanks once the U.S. forces advance near the canals and power lines around Baghdad.
But for now, in the open desert, the Kornet's 3.5-kilometer range is helping Iraqi forces to equalize the advantage that U.S. weapons have had in earlier battles in this war because of their superior range. A U.S. Abrahms tank has an effective range of 3 kilometers and can destroy targets as far away as 4 kilometers:
The range of depleted-uranium ammunition fired from the 25-millimeter chain gun of a Bradley troop carrier is classified information, but I have seen that weapon fired in battle here in Iraq and it rivals that of the Kornet."
I thought that the AT-14 Kornet was a laser guided ATGM with a range of 5KM. Can anybody confirm? -
Most ATGMs are fired at closer range, even if they can reach kiolmenters out. It's must be pretty hard to steer a missile on a target at 5km.
Vindicating my point, it is intresting to note that the term they used here was "disabled" for the knocked out american AFVs. The journal you all see to be treating as gospel gives very graphic visualizations that are apparerntly more fiction then fact. -
Face it - disabled, destroyed - all the same. The US has lost 2 M1s and possibly a crewmember to enemy fire.Originally posted by SingaporeTyrannosaur:Most ATGMs are fired at closer range, even if they can reach kiolmenters out. It's must be pretty hard to steer a missile on a target at 5km.
Vindicating my point, it is intresting to note that the term they used here was "disabled" for the knocked out american AFVs. The journal you all see to be treating as gospel gives very graphic visualizations that are apparerntly more fiction then fact.
Have you fired a live ATGM missle before? -
yah
pretty cool -
Big difference, if you bothered to study proper military terms of equipment status "disabled" and "destroyed" imply two very different things. No where was it stated if it was a recoverable or non recoverable loss. I suspect it's highly likely it's a recoverable, the iraqis will have to put an artty round, explode 250kg of explosive below it or drop a 2,000 lb pounder on an M1 to destroy it, the rest of their firepower is just kinda puny. An ATGM to the rear wun really harm the recoverability status of the Abrams much.Originally posted by bcoy:Face it - disabled, destroyed - all the same. The US has lost 2 M1s and possibly a crewmember to enemy fire.
Have you fired a live ATGM missle before? -
whether its a recoverable or non recoverable lost, its not important now to the US military planners....the fact now is that they are facing M1A1 loses and they have not even started the real ground fighting with the Medina division.
BTW, you seem to be in self-denial....maybe its time to remove your nose from the crack of Bush's butt and breath some fresh air. Inhaling too much of his BS, is bad for your health. -
Oh really? maybe I should invite an American M1 crewman here to tell you otherwise. There are weakpoints in the M1, which could destroy it totally. Hitting the rear end with an ATGM would just do it. Recover and repair can mean different things as well. All M1s' are recovered. Repairing it is a different story. If they could, they would. If its destroyed, the tank is still recovered to prevent the makeup of the armour laminate from being discovered.Originally posted by SingaporeTyrannosaur:Big difference, if you bothered to study proper military terms of equipment status "disabled" and "destroyed" imply two very different things. No where was it stated if it was a recoverable or non recoverable loss. I suspect it's highly likely it's a recoverable, the iraqis will have to put an artty round, explode 250kg of explosive below it or drop a 2,000 lb pounder on an M1 to destroy it, the rest of their firepower is just kinda puny. An ATGM to the rear wun really harm the recoverability status of the Abrams much.
My opinion - the tanks were "destroyed", on the other hand, a politically correct (ie. polite) way to put it - "disabled". You make your choice.
BTW. What formal military study of terms have you taken? -
Spike or Milan?Originally posted by SingaporeTyrannosaur:yah
pretty cool -
Most likely destroyed by the simple RPG !! ... Dun believe izzit ? Read this.Originally posted by warspite:If it was hit in the back as claimed, thats understandable. All MBTs have the weakest armor protection at the rear and top of the vehicle.
http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/ops/war/docs/rusav.htm
How the Chechnians destroyed 200+ Russian T72/T80/AFV Amoured vechicles using only RPG, AK-47 and tactics.
For all u noe, that iraqi's may have read info from this website on how to confound the enemy.
http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/ops/war/docs/990000-battle.htm
Mebbe malaysia is planning to build national services training around forming hunter killer squads -
Your infantile insults nowistanding. There is still no conclusive evidence to warrant a "destroyed" as you would like it to be, as a matter of fact, the burdern of evidence is with that the Abrams probably took recoverable damage, that is damage sufficent to put it out of action but not enough to be a write off like you see in the above pictures.
That said, unless the Iraqis managed to put RPGs through the roof of that thing or hit it with an arty round like that, I seriously doubt "destroyed" as you would like the par say.
BTW. What Bush likes to say has little bearing on what I hold to be the case on the Abrams, unfortunately you blow your own foot off again by failing to seperate politics from basic technical argument when you launch your own points. -
From salvage operational notes:
The term Disabled as used formally usually refers to units which have had some form of of their normal function taken from them either via mechnical failure or by human intention. Hence disabled can refer to AFVs which have had some form of their normal functions which have been removed. However, the term disabled is used to describe units which are generally recoverable under most circumstances (not witholding actual external situtations which can prelcude recovery).
Examples of disabled AFVs include:
A tank which had thrown a track (mobility kill)
Powerpack or powertrain destruction
Avionics or turret damage due to internal ammunition explosion
etc...etc...
Disabled AFVs have had their capabilities reduced, possibly to the point where they are no longer currently combat ready. The unit will be generally functional following proper salvage and repairs.
Destroyed
This is used to describe units which has been reduced to a point where it can no longer function in any capacity nor be recovered to that point. Status-wise, these units cannot be recovered and are considered by all means to be destroyed.
example.
T-72 with it's turret blown off
The burnt out Marine LVTP-7 we saw on TV.
The M1A1 pictures posted above
These units have been damaged beyond the ability to be recovered.
That said, what I can point out is that unless we have pictures of those knocked-out Abrams, making snap judgements on it being "destroyed" is at best ambigious but rather imaginitive senarios based on a journal. No amount of propangada, or lack or it, is going to change the actual survability of the Abrams and that's what I am pointing out here, that it will remain the same even if the iraqis dun resist as fiericly or fiercer then they did.
What I have consistently argued is that such incidents may not be as bad, or surprising as they seem, for such things have indeed happened before. I am not arguing that the Abrams MUST have survived the attacks, but just that there is a fairly good chance they didn't turn out as bad as we'd gleem from that report.
I have also pointed out that M1A1s have endured ammo explosions and caught fire before in history from initial causes. And though they have been disabled, they were returned to front lines following repairs.
Again, I am not arguing that they MUST survive the attacks, but rather that they have a fair chance of doing so. If you can think a bit about how they write the article, the army journalist on the ground seeing the tank on fire from the hit and already puts it down in his as being "destroyed" before sending it off, an on-the-wire report. What he does not see nor report however, is the acessment of the damage inflicted on the tank and what the salvage crews did with it, and that's what I'm trying to say, based on history case studies, that this is a pretty hard tank to put out of action for long.
If we do see destroyed or burnt out Abrams when they attack Bagdad, I would not be surprised at all, what I am driving at here all along, (unfortunately which eternal pessimists engaged in infantile mud slinging without bothering to actually take pause and think) is that it may not and is probably not as bad as it seems. Once you understand the limits of the technology. -
*clap clap clap*Originally posted by observe:whether its a recoverable or non recoverable lost, its not important now to the US military planners....the fact now is that they are facing M1A1 loses and they have not even started the real ground fighting with the Medina division.
BTW, you seem to be in self-denial....maybe its time to remove your nose from the crack of Bush's butt and breath some fresh air. Inhaling too much of his BS, is bad for your health. -
Cashing in on the infantileness... now THAT's a sign of intelligent life.
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self-denial....Originally posted by SingaporeTyrannosaur:Cashing in on the infantileness... now THAT's a sign of intelligent life.
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Typically iraqi information minister style, which is yours.
Thinking personal attacks somehow add the the validity of your points. -
*yawn*Originally posted by SingaporeTyrannosaur:Typically iraqi information minister style, which is yours.
Thinking personal attacks somehow add the the validity of your points. -
too tired to talk anymore brudder.
need to work tomorrow.
let's stop here.
peace. -
yawnz... I have no fight with you... for the only victim of your own foolishness is yourself...
go in peace, have a nice day. -
hm... sometimes some things just cant be help..!
