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September 29, 2006

Target! Tank: 8600 meters. Sabot.

There are five basic classifications of weapons: melee weapons, missile weapons, mines, chemical weapons and nuclear weapons. A melee weapon is a sword, knife, club or similar instrument that does its damage by being bashed against the enemy, pushed into him, or some similar manner of employment. Missile weapons are weapons that throw some object away from the launcher, and do their damage when (if) that object hits its target. For the purposes of what I want to talk about the rest of the types are academic.

Missile weapons themselves can be operated in two distinct modes: direct fire and indirect fire. Direct fire means that you see your target, adjust for distance (a projectile falls due to gravity as it travels from its launcher) and other factors (some modern systems adjust for humidity and reported cross-winds half-way to the target!), and fire a projectile at that target. The principle is the same for bow and arrow, rifle and bullet, or cannon and shell. Today, of course, computers do much of the work for tank guns and artillery, such that a modern American tank can reliably hit targets with one shot at 4000 meters. (Which is why our invasions of Iraq and Kuwait were so seemingly easy: the enemy was destroyed before he could come within his own 2000 or so meter effective range.)

Indirect fire, on the other hand, is a mathematical game. Rather than taking an enemy and putting your gunsight on him, you determine where the enemy is in relation to you, do some math, and fire a shell along a parabolic arc which (hopefully) intersects that point. For that reason, you can shoot at targets 20-50 miles away with artillery (and anywhere in the world with large missiles) with a pretty good chance of hitting the enemy. Modern guided (usually GPS or laser) artillery shells have an excellent chance of hitting the target with one or two shots at 30 or more miles, if there is a person near enough to observe the target.

The primary difference between direct and indirect fire is simply that of seeing the enemy. Because a tanker or infantryman sees the enemy, he can choose his own targets. Because artillerymen cannot see the enemy, their fires have to be directed by observers who can see the target. But the US has just changed the equation in a fundamental way: the US has introduced a tank shell that has scored a kill at 8600 meters!

In other words, US tanks equipped with the MRM can now offer direct fire on targets that it cannot observe directly, giving the benefits of direct fire (pick an enemy and kill him without outside assistance) and indirect fire (range and difficulty, to the enemy, of returning fire or defending themselves) in one platform.

This is as much of an advance over WWII as WWII was over the US Civil War. In other words, once this is in full-scale use, there is not a conventional army in the world, regardless of size that can expect to win against the US Army. Which means we had better get very, very good at counter-guerilla work, because we're going to be seeing a lot more of it in the future, at least until we have an adversary rich enough and sophisticated enough to keep up, should that ever again happen.

Posted by jeff at September 29, 2006 11:26 PM

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Comments

Cute, but how is it revolutionary? To me it seems like a neat little trick to have up your sleeve (your MBTs can pinch-hit as artillery pieces, firing a nifty high-tech shell with terminal guidance).

Posted by: daniel at October 2, 2006 5:22 PM

Here is how it is revolutionary. Say you are an American tank commander, equipped with this shell and Blue Force Tracker. You see a cloud of dust, too far away to make out any details. You check Blue Force Tracker: no friendlies in front of you. You fire into the middle of the column, and hit the enemy — even though you had never actually seen him, and had no spotter. Heck, fire a spread of rounds, and let them each track to a separate (hopefully) target.

Unlike artillery, this is a kinetic energy penetrator, which is a more effective armor killer under most circumstances. Unlike artillery, there are conditions where you don't need a spotter to hit a point target. Unlike artillery or normal tank rounds, you can fire at a moving target with an excellent chance of scoring a hit.

Right now, very few armies could get their tanks in range of ours in open country, even if there were only our and their tanks around. With this, very few armies will be able to even see our tanks in open country before they (the enemy) are killed.

Posted by: Jeff Medcalf [TypeKey Profile Page] at October 2, 2006 6:43 PM