And with regards to nothing else, this is where we get the term “sabotage” from, workers on strike used to throw wooden shoes into factory machinery to jam them up.
Except that IFVs like the Bradley are more expensive than the Achzarit/Namer, and almost as heavy, because of their turrets. For basically the same price, an infantry vehicle can have a turret, or it can have lots of armor - but it can’t have both. The U.S. went with the Bradley because of doctrine, not cost or mobility, and the Israelis went with the HAPCs for the same reason.
Hydrostatic shock is a myth that’s only theoretical on its best day. There’s a lot of water in people, but it’s all locked up on a cellular level. The real killer is ripping and punching holes through people, not shockwaves through the body’s water - which couldn’t even effectively travel owing to the vastly different density and composition of a body’s organs and bones.
I would favor “Bruiser” or “Sluggo,” myself.
“Pierce.”
Wikipedia suggests 20-30mm, with a muzzle velocity of around 5000 fps. Compare this with a 50cal sniper rifle: diameter 12.5mm, muzzle velocity just 2500 fps.
Ashley Pomeroy’s video of a watermelon exploding after being hit by a sniper rifle is an apt demonstration. Now imagine a projectile 2-3 times that diameter, travelling twice as fast, with a tip that’s not quite as steeply swept back. Because of the shape and speed of the sabot round, the lateral velocity imparted to the target’s tissues will be quite a bit larger than for the sniper round; because of its size, 4-9 times more tissue will have this lateral velocity imparted upon it. The sabot round, being much larger and made of tungsten or DU, will be far, far more massive than the sniper round, and so it will lose relatively little velocity as it passes through the body.
I expect a human being, hit in the torso with a sabot round, would be pretty completely dismembered. I would expect head, arms, and legs to found separately, with the victim’s trunk obliterated as completely as that watermelon.
That’s pretty much my point. The lesson learned from the Bradley is exactly why the US Army is going light instead of continuing down the heavy route. It was developed for a specialized role in a war that was never fought and is an unloved child these days. Instead of expanding or upgrading the Bradley fleet, or investing in a new IFV design, the US Army acquired legions of HMMWVs and Cougars. Even the poorly-armed Stryker is chosen over the Bradley for the IFV role.
All of these are lightly (or un-) armored wheeled vehicles. A certain type of heavy transport hasn’t caught on in the US Army because they’re not investing in heavy transports at all, of any type. Current doctrine calls for quantity and flexibility instead.
For low-intensity warare, I agree that wheeled armored vehicles are better - and Israel uses plenty of them for that purpose, too (the Israeli army will put armor on anything heavier than a skateboard). But none of those armored HMMVs or M-ATV will be useful in a full-scale, high-intensity war, which is what the Bradley and the HAPC are designed for - and which is still the ID’s main purpose. An armored truck will provide protection against IEDs, not ATGMs.
We have to be ready for the last war not the next one.
We have to be ready for the most dangerous war.
Let’s be fair here, nothing short of an active defense system is going to provide protection against ATGMs. That’s the point of an ATGM. Once you’re proof against HMGs, the only things you can plausibly armor up against beyond that point are IFV/AAA scale autocannons and aging tanks. A theoretical modern-versus-modern conflict wouldn’t have any of the latter, and the former can be expected to always be accompanied by troops with ATGMs (or have them mounted on the IFV itself). Armor on transports isn’t a hugely useful thing if you’re planning for a symmetrical conflict.
Yeah, the Bradley underwent a lot of criticism during its development, some deserved, some not. A few of the major ones were the reduction of troop capacity by half compared to the M-113 it was replacing, survivability and cost. Cost-wise, did every troop carrier need to be equipped with the best ATGM the Army had available at the time or would it have made more sense to have say one per platoon? The armor was greatly improved on later models.
I think there’s something to your WAG; Israel does have its own way of doing things. I remember being nonplussed when I first found out the Merkava has a 60mm mortar. The idea of equipping tanks with mortars seemed so bizarre I didn’t know what to make of it.
I’m no expert, but I’m pretty sure that modern tank armor is capable of stopping even the most advanced ATGMs or armor-piercing tank rounds. Maybe we should ask some of our SDMB tankers.
The official reason for the mortars is to shoot flares and provide indirect fire (like against infantry hiding behind a hill); but really, I suspect it was more due to “why not?” - the added weight and volume was negligible, and who knows, it might come in handy.
Current-day MBT-level armor can generally stop 80s-era or older surface-to-surface ATGMs, but only frontally, and only for the lighter missiles. The Soviets tended to believe in what was, for the time, massive overkill when designing their vehicle-mounted missiles, so some of those can still potentially be a threat even frontally, especially if you’re not in a top-of-the-line MBT. Air-to-surface, or modern surface-to-surface ATGMs are just futile to try to armor against, because they’ve either got very heavy warheads, use a top-attack profile to strike the most vulnerable part of the target, or both.
Penetrators are in much the same boat, always having a hefty advantage over armor of a similar era. The idea of it being otherwise doesn’t even pass the smell test. If armor were ever to surpass weapons capability, ground warfare changes dramatically. The generally accepted fact of “modern MBTs are basically invulnerable” has come about because there hasn’t been a conflict in which they’ve been fighting each other, only enemies using equipment that was already outdated when they bought it (or worse, when the original owners bought it, decades ago…)