Graf is the only place I the world that can be dusty and muddy at the same time.
I don’t know if you if you heard, the commander at 73 Easting (then CPT McMaster) has recently been appointed as Commanding General of Fort Benning. Soon to get his long delayed second star.
No, you are welcome. Thanks for all the effort you put in. If we ever meet., the first beer or 5 is on me.
If you had been granted a commission and Russian Citizenship and put in command of armour forces at Grozny in 1995, what would you have done differently. Is it all hindsight or mistakes were made which should have been obvious at the time. And why have tanks not had such bad days since in similar situations, Falluja, Helmand, Wana, Swat etc.
Any stupid/silly things people (other people, of course, never you) have done with their tank?
Do you think tanks will be largely superseded by UGVs?
Ah Grafenwoehr. You tankers provided my limited entertainment when we would stay overnight in Tent City. My buddies and I would procure some beer and a boombox, load the tape player with Ozzy Osbourne and guzzle beer on the ridge overlooking the tank range right behind Tent City. Great fireworks with the tracers from the .50 gunner and then the tank roars down the lane, main gun blazing away at a target that only the gunner can see its so dark and far away.
Grafenwoehr, where I got really hammered one rainy night, and as the tent leaked water onto me and my sleeping bag in my slumber, I dreamed of going pee, and yep…pissed my bag with no way to really clean it.
Grafenwoehr, where my tent-mates and I would steal the NCO’s diesel canisters in the middle of a winter’s night and replace it with our empties for the pot-bellied stove instead of shucking all the way to the pump.
F Btry, 333rd FA, 3rd Armor 1988-1992 Fliegerhorst Kaserne.
Did you ever put a lesser ape into one of your vehicles on November 24th to celebrate Tank’s Gibbon?
When a tank is disabled (tread blown off), what do you do? Stay with it (and wait for rescue), or pop the hatch and get away on foot?
The stetson might look goofy, but Cav at least knows how to tie bootlaces.
I am interested in the turbine engine. How reliable was it? How loud was it, inside and out of the tank, compared to a conventional engine? How different was it to drive than a tank with a conventional engine? Do you think the next-generation MBT will have a similar powerplant?
So you’re throwing me not only a live wire, but a high voltage one at that.
Tanks have always been problematic in urban areas. Armor doctrine going back to Rommel emphasizes mobility and swift attack, which urban terrain prohibits. Then factor in the increasing lethality of man-portable anti-tank weaponry, and an environment that provides ready concealment and cover to infanty, and you have what’s called “an adverse correlation of forces.”
The wise tactician recognizes the relative strengths and weaknesses on his own forces as well as his opponent’s, and formulates his attack plans accordingly. Which is why tanks have been used to some good effect in some urban areas, under the proper conditions.
A tank is a sledge hammer, and to tankers, most tactical problems resemble nails. To paraphrase words I’ve posted here before in another thread, since it’s our job to smash the ever-loving shit out of our opponenets, that’s not a bad mindset.
But not all problems are nails. So the answer to the Grozny-problem from my perspective in late 1994: it’s a political problem with a potential military solution waaay above my pay-grade.
Nothing to ask (right now, I’m sure I’ll think of something), but just want to pop in and say hello from 3/2CR (formerly 2SCR [I don’t know why they took the Stryker out of our name], formerly 2CR.) Small world sometimes.
Do you mean like this?
Personally, I saw one of our 3rd Platoon tanks in Hohenfels Training Area drive into what appeared to be a very large puddle (or small pond?) and then it promptly sank up to the bottom of the turret.
Fortunately, the driver had his hatch closed, but it was one hell of a recovery operation. It took two M-88 recovery vehicles to pull it out of that mud-hole.
Another time at Hohenfels, when I was Driver on the platoon sergeant’s wingman tank, we blew out the hub (bearings and all melted) and had to do a field repair. The platton leader’s wing tank stayed with us for a bit, but then departed to catch up with the rest of the company. The Gunner on our platoon leader’s wing tank took over driving from the regular Driver just because he wanted to drive for a bit. He was horsing around (swerving back-and-forth across the tank trail, an improved dirt road) when he got too close to the edge of the road as it wound around a hill. The edge of the road gave way, they went over the edge, and slid sideways about half-way down the hill before the track caught on something and the tank flipped and rolled the rest of the way down. The regular Driver was a buddy from basic, and he wound up with a fractured neck.
He didn’t have any paralysis or anything, but the Army medicaled him out.
On a lighter note, in SA as we were moving north towards the border/Neutral Zone, we stopped overnight in some patch of nothing. Engineers with bulldozers dug us very nice (and deep) fighting positions for out tanks. The holes were deep enough that the top of the hull/bottom of the turret was just about at ground level.
Well, we got some rain that night. And there’s something about rain in a desert that when it does rain, it !@#$%& pours.
The next morning, one of our tanks was sitting in a hole full of water. For some peculiar reason, that patch of ground held water instead of draining like it did for every other vehicle in our entire Division.
Possibly. I’m kind of down on robotic remote-controlled warfare. I think it sanitizes war too much. The way things are going, war will be fought by X-Box champions sitting in plush chairs in climate-controlled rooms, munching Cheetos and drinking Mountain Dew as they drop bombs on graphic representations of people.
That’s all fine-and-dandy for whiling away a rainy afternoon when it’s just a game. When it’s real people dying from real bombs…it’s just too clean and antiseptic for my tastes.
Do they make you pay for that?
What do you fear about it being too clean and antiseptic?
When you were in combat, how did you feel when you were engaging the enemy?
I would be concerned that leadership of the side with the robots would be more willing to go to war because their own soldiers weren’t at risk, and less concerned about damage to the other side.
When a tank is hit, does it really look like it does in this video?
The entire engine/transmission assembly (a FUP, or Full-Up-Pack) is pretty reliable if the crew is paying attention to their maintenance. As far as noise, I think dB-wise it was relatively quiter than a comparable diesel engine (but still fairly loud!), but at an overall much higher pitch; like a giant vacuum cleaner.
Outside, the noise was much quieter. Depending upon terrain and atmospheric conditions, it could almost be a stealth tank noise-wise. Of course, there’s still “track-noise,” from movement, and since the turbine exhaust is ~900 degrees, there’s a significant IR/Thermal signature as well, although the exhaust louver design attempts to disperse and minimize that “footprint.”
There were reports that in Iraq during DS/DS, tanks were able, at night, to get within engagement range of their coax MGs (~700m) before defending Iraqis even knew they were there. That’s believeable to me due to terrain (fairly flat, no noise reflection from hills or trees), soft sand to absorb tread noise, and atmospheric conditions (very dry air retarding sound propagation).
I never drove a conventionally-powered tank, so I can’t compare.
I can say from what I was told by “old hands” (former M60 tankers) that there’s slight but noticeable power-lag (a second, at most) with the turbine engine, but that when it “catches up” there’s more power/torque from the turbine.
The big drawback of the turbine engine and it’s higher performance is that it’s a gas hog. Some critics have trash-talked the Abrams because of that, citing such things as “short legs” in “pursuit scenarions.”
I say: WTF?! 
In a “big picture” strategic sense, I suppose that that’s a possibility. But the strategic situation I trained for was defense of western Europe from Soviet/Warsaw Pact agression. Not pursuit of fleeing forces.
And any offensive action has built in “phase-lines” of advance with pre-planned “Log Points” (logistical resuplly points) in favorable (defensble) terrain to us. This is a highly developed art in the U.S. Armed Forces, direct experience of WWII. Our military leaders are well aware of logistical constraints on both tactical and strategic operations, and plan meticulously accordingly.
And they do that very, very well.
And “short legs” and “logistical tail” did not seem to be a problem for us in DS/DS. Terrain chokepoints bottled up Saddams forces fleeing Kuwait; it’s amazing what kind of “cork” you can put into even predominantly flat-assed desert by blowing a few key bridges; thank you Air Force!
So I say “Nuts!” to the armchair generals who think that you can get Abrams-level performance on-the-cheap. Now as to whether the anticipated global strategic situation in the coming decades needs Abrams-level performance, that is another matter entirely. For now, it doesn’t appear to be so.
Tanks, like Infantry, do not work alone. The smallest practical unit of tank is the two-tank section. Two sections make a platoon: a platoon leader/2nd Lieutenant, a platoon sergeant/Sergeant First Class, and a “wing tank” for each. The ranks given are typical, but may vary a bit based upon availabilityof personnel. I’ve had Staff Sergeants for platoon sergeants, and 1st Lieutenants as platoon leaders.
If a tank were to throw track in combat, the resulting crew actions would greatly depend upon the threat level they faced. If for some reason they faced imminent capture or destruction, they could abandon the vehicle under covering fire from their wingman, and “extricate to the rear” with alacrity.
If they were just “in action,” they might continue to fight in place until the engagement was over, and then either attempt to effect repairs on-the-spot, or have a recovery vehicle tow them out of the zone to a safe area where they or maintenance assets could effect repairs.
In heaping mounds of humiliation. And beer.
Ethilirist pretty much nails it, but there’s a bit of a personal reason for it as well, dealing with the difference in nature between “being there,” and “watching it on TV.” Humans do unspeakably cruel things to each other in the name of war; there are also instances of, well, amazing grace.
It is good, IMO, to reckon the cost of war by looking into the face of your foe, because then there is a human connection, and mercy is possible. It’s what separates us from the barbarians.
When it’s clerks pushing buttons half a world away, they’re just servicing man-shaped silhouettes with ordnance. There’s no more emotion, good or bad, than shooting a paper target at a shooting range.
I couldn’t say; I never shot anyone in combat. Being on a command tank is sort of like being, oh, say, a combat medic; you’re in the fight, as bullets are whizzing about you, but you aren’t actually in the fight.
