From my understanding, the armor on the Abrams isn't identical to the British version; what America did was to get the British Chobham armor, than basically re-make it with a few modifications to fit on the Abrams.

BTW, what kind of a name is Chobham?? Is that the guy who designed the armor or something??

It is the place where they designed the armor if my memory is correct.

Originally posted by AtheiX
I've changed my tank rating. The current tank ranking is:

9. T-80

And now, further places.
10. PT-91 & T-72M4Cz ex aequo
11. Leo 2A3
12. T-72
13. Challenger
14. Leo 2A2
15. Leo 2A1 & T-64 ex aequo

Ask any British tank commander and they'll all tell you that although Brit and US tanks are equal in many ways, there isnt a tank on planet earth that can fire whilst on the move like the Challenger 2 can. And when your flying across the desert with half of Iraq chasing you, thats quite a good thing.

Man, you make it sound as if you're racing through a desert with some enemy chasing after you literally; of course a British tanker will say that, same as an American tanker will probably say the same.

The Abrams and Challenger are two of the three best tanks in the world.

Originally posted by MickeyDee
Ask any British tank commander and they'll all tell you that although Brit and US tanks are equal in many ways, there isnt a tank on planet earth that can fire whilst on the move like the Challenger 2 can. And when your flying across the desert with half of Iraq chasing you, thats quite a good thing.

Either Discovery or History channel had a special on the Challenger 2 just this past week. That is one mean fighting machine. In Basahra (sp?) using what they call a hunt and kill method trashed 8 Iraqi tanks in 40 seconds. That is one shot every five seconds and the tanks were on the run while this took place.

In addition another tank was disabled and unable to move yet because of that assume armor still no one in the tank was killed. Again that shows the tank is one very well built machine.

It should also be noted the original Challenger failed it field tests, yet when put into service during the first war in Iraq it proved to be a very battle worthy tank. In one instance during that war the tank scored the longest shot that killed another tank and set a new record.

As for which is better the Abrams or Challenger I would say the Challenger has a slight edge based on its record.

The much vaunted Republican Guard - the 'elite' of the Iraqi army, had some 50,000 men under arms. These men were divided in to 6 Divisions and were equipped as follows:

a. 3 Armoured Divisions.
b. 2 Infantry Divisions.
c. 1 Mechanised Division.

The armoured divisions were equipped with modern (by Arab standards) T-72s. Each division had 400 T-72s.

There was also another Republican Guard unit - commanded by Quasi Hussein. They were 10,000 strong in 4 Brigades - 1 armoured and 3 infantry.

The armoured brigade was armed with the Iraqi 'Lion of Babylon' homemade T-72 which had been developed just after GW1.

To be fair, by the time of GW2, only 100 of these tanks had been produced and the factory was struggling to keep up production of spares for the whole Republican Guard.

Spacemonkey - APFSDS-T = Tracer or Training round. Not tungsten.

Chobham Armour:

As a previous contributor stated, Chobham armour was invented by us Brits - in the early 70's! It is an English invention that happened, as with so many things, as a mistake. Its composition is still secret!

There is so much talk about Abrams having chobham armour. That is simply untrue. The Abrams utilises chobham-like armour. Whilst we might be a puppet state of America, we would not divulge such sensative material to anyone - allies or not.

Anyway, the Chally 2 uses a ceramic type sandwich armour - again composition is super secret, so the original Chobham armour is redundant!

Chally 1 in GW1 was armed with 120 mm L11A5 rifled gun, as does Chally 2.

Rifled barrel = increased range. Smoothbore = shotgun - but also good for firing missiles - as the T-80/90 family of tanks ably demonstrates.

Originally posted by MickeyDee
Ask any British tank commander and they'll all tell you that although Brit and US tanks are equal in many ways, there isnt a tank on planet earth that can fire whilst on the move like the Challenger 2 can. And when your flying across the desert with half of Iraq chasing you, thats quite a good thing.

Phhh...where did you hear this? How is the fire control system on the Challenger better then any other tank? "Flying" is also a bad word to describe the Challenger, it's one of the slowest tanks out there.

[edit on 21-3-2005 by Kozzy]

Originally posted by MAVERICK05
im not sure what to believe. is the british challenger 2 better than m1 a2 abrams that the us has? DO YOU REALLY THINK THE US WOULD LET ANOTHER COUNTRY HAVE THE MORE SUPERIOR VEHICLES? my answer is hell no.

Gen 2 chobham armour is superior to Gen 1 - do you really think we'd let another country have superior armour?

Oh and BTW Warrior is far, far superior to Bradley which kind of screws your point doesn't it.

Why is the warrior so superior ? An RPG causes the same damage to a Bradley as a warrior. There is no superiority.

A warrior is armoured like a tank

it uses chobham armour and is thus very well protected whereas an M1A2 Bradley goes up like a tinder box

It should also be noted the original Challenger failed it field tests, yet when put into service during the first war in Iraq it proved to be a very battle worthy tank. In one instance during that war the tank scored the longest shot that killed another tank and set a new record.

Those are some tough field tests....

Originally posted by Lucretius

Oh yeah the Abrams uses some Clobham technology, but has DU intowoven in the armour to provide maximum protection, something the British don't have. It is far from 1st generation Clobham armour and probably more effective than 2nd generation Clobham.

Wrong again... the DU inserts cover 3 key areas of the tank and are simply some bolted on plates to protect the crew should the ammunition explode.
They don't actually offer much protection at all

Sorry buddy, but you are wrong. Du is actually interwoven with a mesh as one of the layers of the armour. There are much stroger and lighter materials that would protect the crew from an ammo explosion rather than using heavy DU plates. Besides a hit from a DU SABOT would more than likely cause a sympathetic pyrophoric reaction if there were DU plates. Interwoven in the armour it is far more inert.

Chobham 2nd gen is Proven the world most effective armour. Everyone knows the challenger 2 is the heaviest armoured tank in NATO, look it up in any millitary encyclopedia.

Well its a heavier tank with more armour by weight, not in the quality of the armour though.

The challenger 1 saw the biggest action in the 1st gulf war and holds the record for the longest ever kill.
Incidentally the challenger 1 failed it's field tests and thus the challenger 2 was developed which has very little in common with it's predecesor. IN fact the Challenger 2 went on to "blow away" the field tests that the mk1 failed.

Hmm I thought the biggest armoured action was at 73 Easting, which involved the Americans.
The Abrams also clocked several kills over 4 km. I'm sure it was only a question that they were closer when they decided to blow away the tanks.
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Sure it's been said but the only way to be truly sure is a blue-on-blue battle between C2 and Abrams. Unlikely to happen.

Only total kill on a Challenger has been by another Challenger, couple of mobility kills due to mines but that's it. Abrams has a weakness to RPG resulting in mobility kills - that fact alone makes the C2 a better tank.

On Warrior armour this has been upgraded since Bosnia - it's classified but likely to be Dorchester (gen 2 Chobham)

`rouge 1` - unforunately your wrong - the armour employed on the M1A1/2 is a variant of the british chobham , but with added plates , its not `interwoven` as you put it.

BUT , there is concern over the use of DU in the armour - attempts are being made to try and get chobham 2.

Oh , and i can believe a warrior could withstand a hit from a 120mm shot - but at long range not close , those warriors ARE mean mofo`s.


Has anyone seen the picture of the british challeneger after it took a direct hit at close range of a T-72 sabot round? the trench it dug up the front armour was very spectacular! and it failed to penetrate of course.

Originally posted by rogue1

The Abrams also clocked several kills over 4 km. I'm sure it was only a question that they were closer when they decided to blow away the tanks.
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The challenger 1 regularly engaged iraqi t-72's at ranges in excess of 5.1km