Hence my comment about the poor risk/reward from our POV. 
The concrete bombs were/are our standard training round. Cheap & plentiful. OTOH, the precision guidance kits are not cheap.
This is all about reduced collateral damage. Dropping a 500# into a city trying to plink tanks or APCs or whatever hiding in the alleys produces a lot of collateral damage. A concrete round not so much, even if it misses.
So it’s a case of the taxpayers paying an extra ~$30K per shot to prevent a YouTube video. Whether that’s a good deal or not is unclear to me.
The development of various “reduced signature” bombs, including the GBU-39 Small Diameter Bomb - Wikipedia is an attempt to get a better mix somewhere between the 500# HE and the 500# concrete.
I’m sure this isn’t a high priority in the brass’s decision-making process, but another advantage of such a weapon is that you never need to worry about unexploded ordnance.
It it just me, or does anyone else think it’s funny that the guys who drove tanks figure the tank shreds the ship, while the ex-navy guys figure they destroy the tank without breaking a sweat, and the air force dudes are like, “Fools, I’ll destroy you all”?
You have just encapsulated the entire 20[sup]th[/sup] Century history of American military doctrine in once sentence. 
None of the very pro-ship posts were well informed IMO. Some of the pro-tank posts by tankers might have been a bit one sided, but they are still basically right.
The pro-ship side fails to sufficiently recognize IMO three things:
-how much more unrealistic it is to assume the tank is easy to see with no terrain or building cover, whereas ships are on the open water with no cover except in really fluky cases.
-how much bigger and more vulnerable the DDG is as a target, whereas the absolute accuracy of the two sides’ main guns, within tank gun range, is broadly similar.
-how little the DDG’s weapons are optimized to destroy tanks, whereas the tank’s ammo while not ideal for attacking an unarmored warship could still wreak havoc.
Plus a lot of posts have pushed back, reasonably IMO, on the idea of one tank: tanks rarely operate alone just like they don’t sit completely in the open if there’s any shallow fold in the ground, building, other vehicles etc around to partly conceal them. You can always tilt any scenario till it favors one side, but modern unarmored ships are at a disadvantage within range of tanks.
The main potential offsetting factor is the ship’s H-60 helo, under favorable assumptions (fitted with Hellfire designator/launcher kit, carrying anti-armor capable versions of the missile ships don’t always carry). But if the helo spots hostile tanks soon enough, the rational reaction of the DDG is to get out of range, go astern on the narrow waterway if necessary.
I think a lot of this discussion would be clarified, slightly, if we actually limit the destroyer to a particular model. For example, if we posit a Zumwalt with a railgun, which is seriously being considered, I suspect it would punch a pretty neat hole even in something as well armored as an Abrams.
Other notes: GBU-24s were dropped on Libyan tanks and open them up just fine.
No sane pilot wants to willingly fly into an IADS if it’s even remotely well crewed.
Right, which is why in any real world transit of the Suez Canal or the Strait of Mallacca you won’t see a lone destroyer sailing through hoping not to meet any opposition.
It’s been a truism that shore guns beat naval guns, and a tank is a mobile armored shore gun, so the tankers probably have an edge in a “lone destroyer scooting along the coast hoping not to get shot at” hypothetical scenario.
This really encapsulates it in a nutshell. Is the DDG a target of opportunity for the tank platoon/company? Or is it a dedicated mission? Same goes for the DDG: is it making a routine transit that just happens to bring it in clos(er) to shore, or is it on a dedicated mission that must bring it close(er) to shore?
In the case of “dedicated missions,” there’s going to be a whole lot more going on than tank(s) vs. DDG; both (tanks and DDG) would merely be “the tip of the spear.”
Fast movers and attack helos, recon drones and such, artillery assets (tube and rocket) for and from both sides…it would be really messy. Drop all variables into one of the Pentagon’s “Tactical Scenario Model” computers, set to frappe, and call me with the results.
If the DDG is a “target of opportunity” for a tank platoon/company “hanging out” for some reason close to a watery body, then there’s been a major intel snafu on the Navy’s part. Maybe the Navy skipper’s smart enough to have his helo scouting for him, and it spots the tanks, reports back and the DDG scoots away to safety. Maybe the helo misses the tanks (them being all tactical and stuff), and the DDG sails blithely into harm’s way.
Maybe the tanks spot the DDG and start up their engines to kick off the engagement (maybe they need to move closer; maybe they want a more advantageous position; maybe they want to be ready to displace tactically after starting the engagement), and gets spotted by the DDG’s own onboard sensors, allowing the DDG to sail away/maintain a safe distance before the tanks can engage.
If, maybe, what if…all I know is that, in my experience, our DivArty Support’s been rescinded due to the Divisional Volleyball League Finals, our AH air support got lost on the way, and then diverted to the Volleyball Finals, and our fast-mover air support is already bored with this mission, dumped their ordnance on a “target of opportunity” enroute to the battlespace, and is already back at the Air Farce O-Club, trying to get in a quick 9-hole game before supper.
In which case, we’re going to sit quietly in our fighting positions, watch and wave as the DDG goes by, and call it in in a few hours as part of a routine SitRep.
That’s the Army way.
Slight threadjack, who would win that vollyball final? DivArty or AH air support?
Neither; Signal Battalion always wins.
Attack Helicopter. Sure they are rotary not fixed wing, but they have lots of pilots. Have you not seen Top Gun? 
I trust that you were joking about using a nuclear bomb (B61) against tanks
Nope. Not kidding even a little bit. At least not within the scenario of WWIII USSR/Warsaw Pact vs. US/NATO across western Europe.
Today? Nobody who knows is gonna say.
In fairness, you don’t use a nuke against a tank; you use a nuke against an Division+ of AFVs; tanks, personnel carriers, command tracks, wheeled and tracked arty and logistical support, The Bomb likes 'em all, and the more the merrier.
Likewise, there are things the pro-tank side fails to recognize.
- An Arleigh Burke class destroyer is 500 feet long
- It takes seconds for someone in the armored CIC to fire a Tomahawk. They can fire multiple missiles at once in a pinch. All they need are GPS coordinates which they can get from radar. If the tank is hidden in ground clutter, they can plot it’s location visually once the tank fires it’s first round.
A tank can put holes in it, but how many holes does it take to sink a 500ft ship and can it be done faster than the flight time of a Tomahawk?
Pretty sure the plans call to hit Russian Armour forces the moment they move into the Balts.
If the ship is in open water far from cover, then it is completely, 100% impervious to the tank. All of the pro-tank arguments have started from the premise that the ship is not in that situation, because if it is, there’s nothing at all that can be said. The destroyer has the greater maximum range, and the tank cannot close range, and that’s the end of the discussion.
Of course they do. After all, the Signal Corps is the great-great-grandfather of the Air Force. 
It’s a slow Sunday night of laundry, so I’ll kick this back into gear:
As others in the know have already pointed out: yes, Tomahwak TLAMs (-C, -D, or Block IV) are potent weapons, yet they are NOT “point-and-click” instant kill anti-armor weapons. They are sub-optimal for point targets like individual tanks, much more useful against static targets like buildings and such, perhaps masses of parked armor “in-the-open,” so to speak.
An Arleigh Burke-class DDG is a very “soft” target;" its defenses optimized against other missile- and torpedo-equipped naval vessels and aircraft, and predicated on a “Don’t-Get-Hit-In-The-First-Place” doctrine.
An M1A2 tank section (2 tanks), platoon (4 tanks) or company (14 tanks), with 18 ready rounds each of mixed M830A1 HEAT and M829/M829A1 APFSDS-DU rounds, at a rate-of-fire of 1 round each every five seconds (the United States Army standard for Tank Gunnery!) would be devastating against a soft target like a DDG. Yes, the DDG can shoot back, and it might be a “Bad Day” for a tank or two, and then again, it might not. The M1-series (indeed, most modern MBTs contemporaneous with, or even more advanced than, the M1 family) are battle-hardened and incredibly tough, as has been proven in rigorous testing and real-life combat experience; they can take damage that would literally destroy buildings and lesser vehicles, and still keep effectively fighting, even if in a degraded (less-than-undamaged/optimal) mode.
A “word” on the M830A1 HEAT round:
Cool pic of an M830A1 round in action.
OTOH, real-life experience has shown how “soft” modern warships can be once hit; just look at the U.S.S. Stark, U.S.S. Cole, and the more recent U.S.S. Fitzgerald; none were sunk, yet all were Not Mission Capable after receiving damage.
As I (and others) tried to illustrate in above posts, modern combat is a team sport; without dedicated support, I doubt that an Armor unit would even try to engage a modern warship, should it (somehow!) find one in range; in my actual, real-life combat experience, we would most likely call it in, and let the Puzzle Palace (higher command) decide what optimal assets should be allocated to engage the warship.
Like, maybe, our own Naval and/or Air Force assets. :rolleyes:
Should “Higher,” for their own inscrutable/indecipherable reason(s) decide that we are the “optimal assets,” and orders us to engage, I can guaran-goddamned-tee you that the DDG wouldn’t see us coming, and wouldn’t know what hit it until and as such time as we opened the case of whup-ass. I know a tank platoon, even a tank company, can effectively hide (terrain dependent, natch) from even thermal- and radar-equipped searchers.
We’ve done it. Time-and-time-again, I’ve directly participated in such “hide-and-seek” “war games”/training missions against United States Army Air and U.S. Air Force assets assigned to “play” with us. These guys are no slouches; they know their trade just as well as our Ground Force commanders know theirs, and they (Army or Air Force) never made it easy for us.
Sometimes, we “beat” them; out training, equipment, and efforts, combined with favorable terrain, let us “win;” sometimes, it did not, and we “died.” If I had to buy a drink for every Attack Helo and/or Air Force Driver who “killed” me, I’d need a winning Lottery Ticket to cover the bar tab. If the Air Force Drivers had to buy drinks for everyone in every Armor unit that successfully evaded them, they’d need the same winning Lottery Ticket(s).
I’ve seen Army Scout/Infantry units and Attack Helicopter reconnaissance and observation helos go right by tank companies that were effectively “hiding” (camouflaged/concealed) a mere hundred meters away; had one memorable occasion when an OH-58 hovered right above us, searching all the points of the compass for us except the one he could’t see: straight down!
To summarize (and let me stress this yet again: in my direct experience): a modern Armor unit, properly trained and equipped, with even moderately favorable terrain, can (and figuratively has) disappeared from the face of the Earth. We were Invisible, until and as such we decided to “make our presence known;” and when we did, it was a friggin’ massacre.
For the “other guys.”
Otherwise. LSLGuy nailed it: “tanks in the open” are in, at best, a “decidedly non-optimal tactical environment” against “enemy air;” IADS notwithstanding, our best hope is in our IADS and friendly “fast movers” keeping them “distracted” enough to allow some of us to live, perhaps enough of us to live that we’re still “mission capable” afterwards, numbers-wise.
If not, then “our” (the formation of “tanks in the open”) only hope is that there’s more of us than them, and that they run out of munitions before we run out of tanks for them to kill. Beyond that, it’s up to fate/God/The Devil/Bob.
Things to bear in mind: while I was in tanks, I was never in Armor; I was Cavalry, more specifically, Armored Cavalry*, a distinction that seems to have been lost in this age of Asymmetric Warfare, and its emphasis on lighter, more mobile (and less logistically intensive) assets.
A properly trained, equipped, and commanded modern Armored Cavalry unit (Squadron; Regiment) is a sneaky, fast-moving, hard-hitting, logistically self-sustaining formation. It’s Mjollnir, in the hand of Thor, if Thor were every bit as sneaky/devious as Loki.
*The 1st Cavalry Division, in my time with them at Ft. Hood, had consistently trained as a standard Armored Division for their standing REFORGER mission; when we were tapped to head to Saudi Arabia in August of 1990, we quickly retrained/reoriented to be more like a heavy (with our 1st and 2nd Brigades, more like two) Armored Cavalry Regiment(s).
I recall one well-meaning, yet not-particularly-bright 2nd Lieutenant wonder why we were training on Cavalry missions. 
Us NCOs just looked at him with respectfully blank looks (that otherwise spoke volumes :dubious:); our CO, an 0-3 Captain, observed dryly, “Well, Lieutenant, we are 1st Battalion, 5th Cavalry Regiment, 1st Cavalry Division, and we’re being deployed to cover for and screen the XVIII Airborne Corps. D’ya think that that might have something to do with our assigned training scenarios?”
Lieutenant: :smack::o
Captain/NCOs: :rolleyes:
Of course, XVIII Airborne Corps, consisting of testosterone-laden, overconfident Wind Dummies who are almost as good as they think they are, decided that they didn’t need no stinkin’ “Cavalry Division” to help them! So they parked us out-of-the way, in the middle-of-the desert, at the corner-of-godforsaken-“no”-and-“where,” and left us there to rot for the better part of three months.
It wasn’t until VII Corps started arriving out of Germany that General Schwarzkopf decided that the 1st Cav could be better utilized helping out VII Corps, and the overall Theater Battle Plan, than sitting in the middle of the desert swatting flies and contemplating our navels. :smack::mad:
Well…the OP posits (implicitly, at least) a scenario where both sides have at least a chance of inflicting damage/harm on the other. As such, our notional DDG will be anywhere from point-blank-meters to 4,000 meters from the tanks, possibly as far away as 8,000 meters (less-than-optimal for the tanks, but still theoretically possible).
Otherwise, you are absolutely, 100% correct. If we count only “organic assets*,” and not 2nd Tier Support Assets (like, Artillery and/or Aviation Support) for the tank unit, the DDG’s “organic” assets offer some very potent, possibly decisive advantages over its armored adversaries.
*I would like to point out at this time that the AN/TWQ-1 Avenger Air Defense System, while not assigned as an integral part of a U.S. Armor unit, could still be directly assigned as an “additional asset” to an Armor unit.
If the DDG is aware, or somehow made aware, of the presence of the tank(s) before entering effective combat range of that tank/those tanks, then all the advantages go to the DDG. Its TLAMs are potent weapons; while not really optimized against “hard” targets like tanks operating tactically, they nonetheless possess rather nasty warheads that can make even tactically operating tanks miserable. Or dead.
The DDG’s helos, MH-60 Seahawks, aren’t typically outfitted with Anti-Tank armaments like AGM-114 Hellfires or AGM-65 Mavericks. But it isn’t beyond the realm of possibility that, mission dependent, they very easily could be. In fact, the Hellfire is specifically listed as being (capable of, at least) mounted on Seahawks.
While not an overall “game-changer,” it is a factor our putative “armor unit” would have to contend with and worry seriously about. The “advantage” to the “armor unit” is that Arleigh Burkes carry at most only two MH-60s; and while I think (someone feel free to correct me if I’m wrong) that those two MH-60s might carry as many as 8 Hellfires each, they can only probably fire one at a time, for a maximum of two “in-the-air/heading-for-a-target” at any time. If they can “ripple-fire/sequential-fire” multiple missiles, and the helo “gunners” can locate additional targets and shift aim on the laser designator quickly enough…it might be a very bad day to be a tanker playing “shore battery” against a Naval vessel.
I don’t know if the Hellfire system and it’s fire control components have this capability.