11 ms·
Russian-manufactured armored vehicle vulnerability in urban combat (1997)
- themodelplumber 5y ago> obvious requirements for a future anti-armor weapon for urban combat is a low-signature, multi-shot, recoil-attenuated, light-weight weapon which can be fired from inside enclosures This is really interesting to think about. The first thing that comes to mind is this method from WW2: "Another method used by the British Home Guard in 1940 was to place dynamite or some other high explosive in a thick sock and cover the lower part with axle grease and then place the grease covered part in a suitable size tin can. The antitank sock was pulled out, the fuse lit and the sock thrown against the side of the tank turret in the hope it would stick until the explosion. If successful, it caused internal spalling of the armor plate, killing or injuring the tank crew inside" [1] An adaptation of that method, if it could be applicable, seems more amenable to differing means of propulsion, possibly solving the issues: low-signature, multi-shot, recoil, and light-weight. A greasy-sock-gatling-cannon? Something else? One never knows, but it's pretty intriguing to see a general specification for the next evolution of anti-tank. 1. https://military-history.fandom.com/wiki/Anti-tank_grenade https://military-history.fandom.com/wiki/Anti-tank_grenade
- kcb 5y agoThe British PIAT from WW2 kind of fits that description. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PIAT https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PIAT
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- dnautics 5y agoA small drone places a dynamite stick at a vulnerable spot Edit: spacing
- themodelplumber 5y agoOK not to be funny, but that is so close to being haiku. You mean like what we saw in Iraq against US armor, etc.?
- dnautics 5y agoYour wish is my command. (Haikus don't have to have exact syllable counts) This will be my last post on hn ever.
- themodelplumber 5y agoToo true! End the syllable regime! I love it. Plz stay
- stjohnswarts 5y agoso much depends upon a red wheel barrow glazed with rain water beside the white chickens
- adolph 5y agoA closer look at video footages by DAESH reveals that the bombs dropped by drones are not as effective as vehicle-bombs since 40 mm munitions have limited effect. However, a drone with the help of a simple mechanism can still inflict casualties on ISF personnel or cause the injury of personnel and render them ineffective in the fight. Page 36: https://setav.org/en/assets/uploads/2017/08/Report88.pdf https://setav.org/en/assets/uploads/2017/08/Report88.pdf
- giantg2 5y agoYou'd likely need shaped charges or thermite (on a flat surface) instead of dynamite.
- Natsu 5y agoThermite wouldn't be too hard to, would it? Potassium permanganate and glycerine can be used to start the reaction among the metal shavings reliably with a small (~2 sec) delay.
- giantg2 5y agoIt could be tough to manufacture the components if they aren't available. Magnesium is a more reliable way to ignite it.
- Natsu 5y agoBoth of those are readily available at drug stores, I'd find magnesium ribbon a bit harder to get, honestly, though I don't know how that changes at commercial scale.
- antishatter 5y agoAs demonstrated in the motion picture “saving private Ryan”
- adventured 5y agoFor anyone curious (the scene): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLUJsyN7AYg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLUJsyN7AYg
- throwaway0a5e 5y agoThat might work in 1950. Nobody is bum rushing a modern tank. Well someone might, but they ain't living to talk about it. Modern tanks are too well integrated with mechanized infantry and their visibility is too good to be surprised by a man delivered explosive device. I mean you might get away with it in downtown Fallujah where you only need to rush 10yd but it'll take you three dozen bodies trying before you get a single mobility kill. You wanna kill a modern tank, plant an IED in the street and wait.
- themodelplumber 5y agoAh, but they covered those contingencies in the article. Multiple teams, a machine gunner on the team to take out infantry, channelized environments with e.g. basement cover, and location research.
- throwaway0a5e 5y agoIt all comes down to numbers. How many bodies, how much explosives, etc. can you afford per tank?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 5y agoWhat? Tanks are blind. Without infantry support up close they are less effective.
- dragontamer 5y agoBased on the antitank Twitter thread going around, the IED is optional. It sounds like a good ol pitfall trap is all you need, which apparently can be made by just removing road signs, so that the tank might drive into a poorly supported road, collapsing into the sewer under the street.
- baybal2 5y agoRPG 7 grenade can be modified to remove the failsafe, and attached on a long, 5 meters+ stick. RPG 7 piezodetonator normally needs 30G-40G acceleration to arm. https://www.armedconflicts.com/attachments/11561/14_-_Pancierovka_RPG-7.jpg https://www.armedconflicts.com/attachments/11561/14_-_Pancie...
- themodelplumber 5y ago5 meters! Fascinating. Is this for anti-tank? Does removing the failsafe mean disabling some kind of projectile distance-sensing tech or what? Just...reach...a...little...closer (shields important parts of body)
- blarg1 5y ago> some kind of projectile distance-sensing tech I'd assumed it would be a timer.
- chiph 5y agoThe mechanism varies with the warhead. The PG-7 uses the acceleration from launch to set off a primer. This starts a slow fuse that will cause self-destruct if the grenade doesn't hit a target within a few seconds (so you don't have a live warhead cluttering up the place, requiring an EOD team to dispose of it.) It also burns away a safety plunger that allows the piezo-impact fuze to complete it's circuit and ignite the shaped-charge. So to get one to detonate manually, you're going to have to simulate the 40-ish Gs of a launch, the delay of flight to allow the safety to disengage (but not so long that the self-destruct happens), and be far enough away to not get injured by the explosion. That's a challenge.
- baybal2 5y agoThe safety bypass on PG 7 only requires a piece of wire to connect detonator around the safety, or removal of pyrotechnical spacer with basic tools.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 5y agoHow to deliver something like this from a distance? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RKG-3_anti-tank_grenade https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RKG-3_anti-tank_grenade
- ruined 5y agomodern armor is incredibly resistant to spalling. HESH rounds, the high-tech version of sticky dynamite, have fallen out of favor in preference to kinetic penetrators and shaped charges. the hardest part of applying anti-tank munitions to a tank is getting close to the tank. so, they're generally projectile weapons. man-portable devices have size and recoil limits that immediately rule out kinetic penetrators. shaped charges work at lower velocity, but are massive and conical, so they mostly have to be rockets fired from a recoilless launcher. there has probably been some work trying to deliver shaped charges via drone to reduce launch signature, but that would be much slower, more costly, vulnerable to active defenses, and vulnerable to electronic countermeasures. eventually if your drone is small and fast enough, it's a missile, and if it's big enough to launch from out of reach, you just launch it from an airfield, and we already do both of those.
- outside1234 5y agoRegardless, the widespread handing out of AK-47s seems to indicate that the Russians are going to be in for at least an Iraq if not an Afghanistan. Not hard to imagine a slow motion killing field in these cities.
- LegitShady 5y agoI worry that handing out arms to civilians means Russia is going to have excuses for any civilian casualties from now on. Sprinkle an ak47 on the body take a picture and call it justified.
- woah 5y agoDo they care about having excuses?
- ch4s3 5y agoIt’s sounds like the Ukrainians have priced that in. There are already videos popping up of Brits, Canadians, and Americans firing on Russian positions around Kiev. I’m also hearing form some Ukrainians that they’re planning to make it Russia’s Vietnam.
- rcurry 5y agoI’m sure the US and allies will make that happen. This isn’t Afghanistan - even if the Russians occupy the Ukraine we will be supplying the insurgent forces with technology that will make the Russians feel like they’re fighting the Martians.
- stevespang 5y ago
- deutschewelle 5y agoExcellent read and some of these tactics would be still applicable in urban settings but the Russian army is in a very different state than in the 90s, early 2000s. Although I ponder how you could defend against RPGs launched from a skyscraper or high rise.
- baybal2 5y agoThey just repeated the Grozni fiasco yesterday. Tanks, and apcs went near highrises in Kiyv, and all predictably got ambushed, and destroyed by roof shots from regular RPGs, not even nLAWs. The video of MTLB with strelas escaping in panic is from that time. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/ukraine-russia-kyiv-russia-car-b2023347.html?amp https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/ukraine-russ... Kiyv is a modern megapolis with hundreds of highrises, and skyscrapers forming urban canyons. ---- Russia deployed 60 BTGs to frontlines with 40 being held back behind lines. Their losses now are 3-4 BTGs in 2 days. Some more were routed, or damaged, and may return. At 3.5 BTGs per day, Ukraine needs to hold for 2 more weeks to make succesful Russian invasion with takeover of the whole country impossible. Loss of half of invading force means retreat to any sane general. My fear now is that they are mostly using conscripts now, not the professional units, and new hardware. It may be that they are using cannon fodder to expend defender resources before pushing in witch crack troops. ---- Excerpt on RPG 7: "In December 1994, the Russian Army entered the break-away Republic of Chechnya and attempted to seize the Chechen capital of Grozny from the march. After this attempt failed, the Russian Army spent two months in deliberate house-to-house fighting before finally capturing the city.(18) During the fighting, the Russian conscript force was badly mauled by the moremature, dedicated Chechen force. During the first month of the conflict, Russian forces wrote off 225 armored vehicles as nonrepairable battle losses. This represents 10.23% of the armored vehicles initially committed to the campaign.(19) The bulk of these losses were due to shoulderfired antitank weapons and antitank grenades. The Chechen forces were armed with Soviet and Russian-produced weapons and most Chechen fighters had served in the Soviet Armed Forces. The Chechen lower-level combat group consisted of 15 to 20 personnel subdivided into three or four-man fighting cells. These cells had an antitank gunner (normally armed with the RPG-7 or RPG-18 shoulder-fired antitank rocket launcher), a machine gunner and a sniper.(20) Additional personnel served as ammunition bearers and assistant gunners. Chechen combat groups deployed these cells as anti-armor hunter-killer teams. The sniper and machine gunner would pin down the supporting infantry while the antitank gunner would engage the armored target. Teams deployed at ground level, in second and third stories, and in basements of buildings. Normally five or six hunter-killer teams simultaneously attacked a single armored vehicle. Kill shots were generally made against the top, rear and sides of vehicles. (See diagram 1) Chechens also dropped bottles filled with gasoline or jellied fuel on top of vehicles.(21) The Chechen hunter-killer teams tried to trap vehicle columns in city streets where destruction of the first and last vehicles will trap the column and allow its total destruction. The elevation and depression angles of the Russian tank barrels were incapable of dealing with hunter-killer teams fighting from basements and second or third-story positions and the simultaneous attack from five or six teams negated the effectiveness of the tanks' machine guns. The Russians attached ZSU 23-4 and 2S6 track-mounted antiaircraft guns to armored columns to respond to these difficult-to-engage hunter-killer teams.(22)"
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- myth_drannon 5y agoBut will they just straight up enter Kiev with vehicles or do Falluja style phosphorous bombing first? Former is just suicide.
- 9oliYQjP 5y agoRussia has a 10:1 advantage to the US in tactical nukes. They have all sorts of creative nuclear devices that can very much be used in theatre without triggering a MAD scenario. Why the big discrepancy? US weaponry is better. It's more precise. It's more effective. Head to head, Russia realized that they had no hope of competing against NATO. So they decided they won't. They'll just invest in and strategize around the use of tactical nukes which help them level the playing field without triggering a MAD scenario. It's all they've been investing in and cared about in the last 10-15 years if you've been paying close attention. Putin isn't crazy enough to use strategic nuclear weapons. He's absolutely enough of a sociopath to use tactical nukes, particularly to avoid a potentially brutal urban assault on kyiv. I hope I'm wrong. But when you consider Belarus and Russia just completed nuclear drills in the past month and they're using a lot of conscripts in their first wave, it can't be ruled out.
- europewide 5y ago
- BXLE_1-1-BitIs1 5y agoA friend who grew up in Soviet Hungary told me that they got military training in high school. Every kid graduated knowing how to make molotov cocktails and disable tanks. The Russians lost a bunch of tanks in Budapest.
- baybal2 5y agoSame was for me in Russia. Basic military education was included in high school programme. It's just keep constantly being renamed by deceptive, and cryptic names to disguise what it is "UVP," "OBZh," "Sociology," "OVO," "Sports orientation" Amusingly, kids in Moscow, and central parts of Russia don't have it in their programme.