The Battle of Baghdad

[Az]

It depends on the street. In a narrow alley, yes. On a major boulevard, no.

[MichaeltheGreat]

30 tanks driving down one road does not make for taking over a city of five million.

RPGs can easily penetrate roof armor on an Abrams, as well as rear turret or hull armor.

The Abrams' ammo storage for its main gun rounds is via a separate rear section of the turret, with blowout panels in the roof and armored doors on the inside of the turret operated by a pressure switch at the loaders right knee. This works so that the loader can keep both hands free to retrieve a round, and the armored doors automatically close when the loader removes his knee from the switch.

Kramerman - there's basically two types of modern anti-armor penetrators, kinetic energy penetrators (sabot rounds), and chemical energy penetrators (HEAT rounds and ATGMs). The Abrams and Challenger series are purpose built to defeat chemical penetrators with their Chobham armor - basically, there's a matrix of metal and ceramic (with a 30mm DU covering layer on the M1A1 and higher) that is designed to dissipate the heat jet from a shaped charge round.
The 75 mm rear armor can be penetrated by large CEP ordnance, including the larger RPGs, and the roof armor is something like half that thickness, so it's even more vulnerable. Frontal and side armor is in the 350-410mm range.

CEP ordnance has two main characteristics - penetration depth of a given armor type is a function of the cross-section of the round, so larger is better, and penetration is independent of range. Kinetic penetrators are the opposite - they are velocity (thus range) dependent, and the smaller the size, the better.

[CerberusIV]

Originally posted by Kramerman
I also heard that the Iraqis obtained some kind of shaped charge antitank missile launchers from russia. From what I know of the HEAT warheads, shaped charges are pretty mean, and could conceivablely defeat M1 armor head on, i would think. Where's MtG?

Chobham armour is a laminate of steel, aluminium and ceramic material. A HEAT or shaped charge round generates and focuses a jet of superheated gas/molten metal against the armour. The largest shaped charge projectiles used in WW2 could, in ideal conditions, cut through 8 inches of steel plate. However if there are two plates with an air gap between them (spaced armour) the molten jet dissipates between the plates and its ability to cut through the inner plate is much reduced. Chobham armour takes this a stage further and the shaped charge jet is diffused between the laminate layers, and possibly the ceramic layer doesn't vaporise anyway, so HEAT rounds don't do anything against the main armour.

The British Challenger 2's, with similar armour, have been used in Iraqi towns and RPG-7 rounds were ineffective. RPG-7's have fairly small warheads anyway and limited use against modern tanks. They would probably be more effective against Bradleys.

Modern AT missiles are more powerful but the fancy wire or laser guided types have a minimum range which makes them difficult to use in confined areas. They would still have to hit an Abrams from the side, rear or better still above, to stand an chance of doing significant damage.

EDIT: Damn, MtG beat me to it.

[Kramerman]

ah, thank you both.
I knew the top would be vulnerable, but ignored this because i forgot to take into account that guerillas could be in buildings above the tanks, and could then shoot down on them .

[MichaeltheGreat]

The cute part is that in a lot of areas (not around the "Victory statue" and military parade ground, but around most other areas), the combination of building height and street width would give RPG teams or ATGM teams shooting vantage points which the armor could only reach with their external MGs being operated with the crew unbuttoned.

[CerberusIV]

If it comes to knocking out tanks/artillery or strongpoints in built up areas, this looks to be an interesting technique.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/2919249.stm

I have not heard of this before and it could be complete BS but there is no reason why it should not work.

Ironically some of the early Tornado's were IIRC known as the Blue Circle airforce (Blue Circle was a brand of concrete in the UK) because the radars were not ready and they had concrete ballast instead.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Oh yeah. You don't want to be near one when it hits.

[Kramerman]

there is still the danger of one of these going off course and landing on a house or something, but i suppose that is a lot better than a real bomb going of course and landing on a house...

[MichaeltheGreat]

For the people in the house, it's the same. The concrete will blow apart on impact, and fragments will rip through whatever it first hits, but the lateral damage will be less. In the direction of movement of the bomb, the major mass will still have some penetrating power against soft masonry walls, etc.

[Fidel]

Originally posted by Ned
MTG: I think you are ignoring the fact that the Iraqi's are not putting up an effective resistance anywhere. We are able to defeat everything they can throw at us with ease. All the troops at the front are saying the same thing.

Why not send in three columns in from different directions and see how far they get before they are forced to stop. I think they will take the center of Baghdad within hours. Saddam's regime will then collapse.

why would they fight at all. according to pentagon, more soldiers and equipment were destroyed in 'accidents' and 'friendly fire' incidents.
also, iraqis have obviously mastered the art of teleportation. units disappear (after being annihilated) and then reappear in battles...
we'll see in a couple of days - things will be much clearer...

[Chemical Ollie]

The Americans admit to have lost one vehicle and one soldier KIA during the little show-off raid this morning. Iraqis claim this is the one (picture). Looks like some kind of APC to me. On the other hand, footage on Swedish TV news showed an Abrams-looking wreck with crowd dancing around it, and that was completely different from this.

[Lord Merciless]

Come on, this can't possibly be an Abrams. Do you see the twin doors at the back of this burnt-out tank? The only APC in American arsenal that has twin doors is LAV25, used by the Marine Corps. However, LAV25 uses wheels, not tracks. Thus, it's more likely that this burnt-out vehicle is an Iraqi one.

[Chemical Ollie]

Originally posted by Lord Merciless
Come on, this can't possibly be an Abrams...

Did I say that? I said it looked like an APC. I do not have a photo of the Abrams wreck, but it had a long gun barrel and the characteristic turret shape of an Abrams.

[Az]

I saw the american Vehicle, and it was an Abrams. The pic above is not it.

What long gun barrel?

[Chemical Ollie]

Originally posted by Azazel
I saw the american Vehicle, and it was an Abrams. The pic above is not it.

What long gun barrel?

Longer than on the APC above.