M1 Abrams = British main gun

Before you all scream *No its german* hear me out


the ORIGINAL M1 Abrams used the M68A1 main gun from the M60 , which , is itself a licenced version of the British L7A1 used on the Centurion Tank from 1959!!


it was replaced in 1985/1986 with the M256 (which it still uses).


Lots of info on the M1 and variants

M68 = modified L7


ok , now i can appreciate that most people will know this BUT , its mainly for those who don`t AND is testament for a design primarily from the 1950`s and is STILL in use today (south africa , Argentina, Bahrain, Austria, Egypt, Greece, Israel, Portugal, Spain, Turkey, Taiwan to name but some!!)

[edit on 10-12-2005 by Harlequin]

I dont want to ruin your parade, but for example the MiG-21 is also from the 50s and in wide use today.

Now the question is: is this more a result of technical excellency or simply because there is no money or impetus to replace those? Though 105mm are still used today, you will RARELY find them in front-line units. The decision to arm the M1 was contrary to the projected idea to get away from the cheap-but-too-light-and-small attitude american tank designers had shown in the decades before (Sherman is an example for this type of design)

This is particularly unexplainable because the M1 was a follow-up to the German-US Kpz/MBT 70 project, where the americans initially wanted to use a 155mm (!) AT cannon as main armament - and the Russian tanks already had more powerful cannons at that time.

yes the mig-21 is in service today - ask the usa who flew against them in cope india


but i digress - IMO its the result of the L7 being the best gun for the job - at teh time EVERYONE wanted it , it armed MOST tanks in the world (yes that includes china who still use it today)

Wow, I never even knew the M68 was the L7! but it makes sense.

What about the M85 MG, what kind of ammo did that use? I thought it used different ammo opposed to the .50BMG rounds of the M2.

The key to any tubed weapon is not it's caliber (especially when firing subcaliber darts) but it's operating pressure.

In this, the M68, with the right munitions, is still the equal of the bigger bore guns at all but extended ranges above 1,500m.

The way you judge the quality of a tanks main armament is by the LENGTH of the barrel caliber for it's equivalent muzzle diameter because short bores don't bang and crunch in maneuver (losing collimation true with sights and stabs) and they don't /droop/ with heat of use. OTOH, a tank with a short gun in the same caliber must either accept a lower operating pressure (lower MV and lower MJ impact force) or work at a -higher- operating /pressure/ (more work, short run).

And our steels, thanks to techniques we've taken from Krupp and the Bessingham (our nominal 'allies' now), have always been superior to the Russians, even as we gave Stalin some of our own licensed forging technology to them in WWII to help offset the crudity of the T-34's basic design.

For armor not guns. An irony indeed given the direction the Soviet tank design ultimately took.

That said, nothing stands still and the Russians are not incapable of deriving wisdom from observing the success of others as well as developing their own new methodologies in dealing with it.

Which means that direct fires are more or less equal now for penetration and lethality and all that is left are the /brains/ of sensing and distribution of platforms which we allocate kills.

Which is why, potentially, 105mm and even 75mm may make a comeback as we switch to a force designed to deploy directly into battle on less than a weeks notice (what the RDF/CentCom was always supposed to do but never could).

Because a tank is still worthless if an opponent can marshal more shooters than a limited number of allied shooters can kill _before_ they reach a lethal weapons engagement zone.

And where armor is too heavy to deploy, the only hope is not to be shot with weapons of more than 5-10MJ.

Which is why there is no reason not to believe that the 'best way thru' is not from the top. Where the enemy is equally weak.

These-

www.fas.org...
www.fas.org...

Give cause to hope that smaller tubes (or mortarlike low pressure ones) can be used to lob rounds without ever crossing the 3-4km LOS point for which 'laser flat' high velocity rounds are worthwhile.

Of course then you have to deal with reactives and APS systems like these-

www.defense-update.com...
www.defense-update.com...
www.defense-update.com...

So the problem becomes one of onset rate vs. saturation and /cost/.

Still, all things being equal, a 25mm Bushmaster can drill a T-55 from the side. And a 35-45mm upgun of same should be able to do for a T-90 or better.

Which, along with CKEM (son-of-LOSAT) -

www.missilesandfirecontrol.com...

Should be capable of mastering the direct fire battle sufficiently to trap the enemy in place for the ranged fires to work.

Because as is shown, the best LOS battle platform is a robotic dunebuggy with just enough sensorization and armor to navigate and make it to lethal distance (which should be well beyond even a 120mm's 3km) so that it can volley fire ROCKET based (light tube, heavy missile) weapons which can be guided in by UGS unattendeds or FCS masted sights.

That's the nice thing about rockets. They never lose their MV and they can be guided after launch (even if it's nothing more than a coordinate memory plus drift rate on target precess) so that you can fire 4 or 8 in a single volley rather than having to aim them individually. And they will _hit_ with the same energy as they had leaving the launcher.

Indeed, when Shaliksvelli I think it was was holding his armor mafia's toes to the fire over the so-called 'medium' or 'objective' brigades, one of the tools he used to hostage their old-school ideas was a video which showed a LOSAT going in the front glacis of an M1A1HA.

And coming out the rear engine grill.

Even with so called carbon nanotube 'super armor' there is no point in putting a man behind the plating on that kind of impact energy. If only because HIS volume 'thins the skin' of said protection while increasing the target silouhette size.

In this, as well as the vast majority of combat environments we are seeing today (where Armor people are _saying_ they wished they didn't have to worry about mile-per-second overreach and 3-houses-down overpen) the legacy weapons are less examples of how good we once were. Than how long our doctrine has stagnated unaware of the changes that MUST come.

If we are to continue our warlike adventurism.


KPl.

Thats very VERY true and something that most people don`t actually realise when they say `Abrams is best` , is the massive over penetraion of the main gun - yes it can kill everything out there, but blowing its way through a tank , then on through the hospital , church and orphanage behind isn`t exactly the best thing for public relations - and thats what wars are all about , the people at home watching on cnn.

yeah that T-98 cooked up but wait , those 40 nuns and 200 kids are all burning in the du round fire that has just burnt there orphanage down.


some will say oops , but that is what happens in the urban environment with open plains maneuverable heavy armour - the A2 urban package IMO is a waste of time , its simpler not to send the heavy armour in and use other resources.


Just my 2 cents


what i want to know is ; why did they regun it with the german gun and not use the brit gun? why the big change from rifled to smoothbore?

[edit on 11-12-2005 by Harlequin]

Originally posted by Harlequin

what i want to know is ; why did they regun it with the german gun and not use the brit gun? why the big change from rifled to smoothbore?

Well it is easier to make a sabot ( sabot's don't like to be spun ) for a smoothbore gun. Also, HEAT projectiles are far more effective from a smoothbore gun as it doesn't impart spin on the projectile. When using HEAT with rifled guns, the penetration jet is dissipated due to the projectile spin.

or , if enginered then the spin could actually enhance the penatration


`sabots don`t like to be spun`

CHARM round seems to be effective

Originally posted by Harlequin
or , if enginered then the spin could actually enhance the penatration

nope, any spin degrades a shaped charge jet. The more the spin the more the jet will be disrupted.

`sabots don`t like to be spun`
CHARM round seems to be effective

I think you'll find that the CHARM-3 round has some type of anti-spin collar. The CHRAM is classed as an APFSDS, meaning that it's fin stabilised and not spin stabilised

yes its an APFSDS round not an APDS round


if you take away DU from the rounds (which is a possibility since its being banned around the world) , then penatration for main guns hasn`t actually increased a huge amount

That is wrong. The german DM53 for the Rheinmetall 120mm/L55 cannon has a penetration power compaarable and sometimes even exceeding that of contemporary DU rounds. The reason: it has a V0 of about 2000 m/s. The usual V0 for 120mm AP rounds however is 1600-1750 m/s.

I would just like to add that the LOSAT Is overly hyped, I heard it's penetration is only around 900mm RHAe and that's not even behind ERA I think since it's not a shaped charge.

Originally posted by GrOuNd_ZeRo
I would just like to add that the LOSAT Is overly hyped, I heard it's penetration is only around 900mm RHAe and that's not even behind ERA I think since it's not a shaped charge.

A LOSAT is basically a tank sabot encased inside a rocket. I wonder if LOSAT uses DU or Tungsten for its penetrator. NOt sure how ERA would affect a LOSAT, current day ERA isn't that effective against kinetic energy penetrators though.

That is wrong. The german DM53 for the Rheinmetall 120mm/L55 cannon has a penetration power compaarable and sometimes even exceeding that of contemporary DU rounds. The reason: it has a V0 of about 2000 m/s. The usual V0 for 120mm AP rounds however is 1600-1750 m/s.

That is a high velocity out of a gun. DO you hvae any more information on the L55 ? I'd apreciate it.

Apologies,

But since there seems to be a time limit in place for editing and I was in a bit of a rush-

>>
OTOH, a tank with a short gun in the same caliber must either accept a lower operating pressure (lower MV and lower MJ impact force) or work at a -higher- operating /pressure/ (more work, short run).
>>

Should read 'lower impact energy' or work at a -higher- operating /pressure/ (more work, shorter run). Implying the need for HESH/HEP/HEAT alternatives, especially at extended range, for lower MV weapons. These being potentially vulnerable to reactives and themselves working better only at large-caliber diameters.

>>
Which means that direct fires are more or less equal now for penetration and lethality and all that is left are the /brains/ of sensing and distribution of platforms which we allocate kills.
>>

/By/ which we allocate kills.

>>
And where armor is too heavy to deploy, the only hope is not to be shot with weapons of more than 5-10MJ.

Which is why there is no reason not to believe that the 'best way thru' is not from the top. Where the enemy is equally weak.
>>

Which is why there is no reason not to believe that the best way through _IS_ from the top. Where the enemy is equally weak compared to U.S. AFV, thus making it a game of not being hit rather than surviving through massive front-sector armor protection.

Again, sorry to waste a post but I needed to correct those statements at least.

In terms of efficiency-


>>
At the ranges that are possible, the CKEM is capable of delivering devastating destructive effects at sea level speeds of approximately Mach 6.

“To put this in perspective, the 120 mm tank round has about 8 megajoules of energy, a megajoule being a unit of measurement of energy,” Thrasher said. “The CKEM delivers in excess of 35 megajoules of energy, so when it hits a target it’s definitely going to defeat it.”
>>

www.ausa.org...

>>
"[It] is a system that absolutely overwhelms any known or projected armors out through the foreseeable time frame," he continues. "The momentum and the energy it imparts onto its targets are so overwhelming that it just overmatches anything that you can pile onto a vehicle to keep it out. It moves so fast that the computing capability of the active protection systems that are out there can’t keep up with it. And it has a large mass with the long rod penetrator, not to mention the large rocket engine that’s wrapped around it. We say that LOSAT puts 40 + megajoules of energy onto a target. Contrast that with an M829 tank sabot round that puts somewhere between seven and 10 megajoules of rod energy onto a target. This will be a pretty devastating capability in the hands of the soldiers who truly need it."
>>

www.ausa.org...

>>
RE:Impact Energy in Megajoules L55 DM63 CKEM LOSAT etc 2/9/2005 9:45:49 PM
Hey Folks,

The M1 tanks original British L7 gun was 7.9MJ it was replaced by the 120mm RHEINMETTTEL which came in at 9-10MJ but that was in the early 80's

Sincerely,

Keith
>>

www.strategypage.com...

>>
''Estimated muzzle kinetic energy, firing the APFSDS DM 53 (LKE II) round, is around 18-20 megajoules (MJ). The 120 mm L55 weapon is compatible with the current MBT-types in service throughout NATO, as they can easily be retrofitted.''
FROM: www.fprado.com...

Not exactly what you asked, but hey, I'm trying (very?).
>>

www.strategypage.com...

So my 50MJ was off for the gun _at muzzle_ energy by half. But not for the LOSAT/CKEM which are taking that energy out to 6km or more (assuming LOS is permissive).

Again, at these kinds of energy-for-range distances, time of flight and autopilot stabilization/guidance correction makes the notion of 'missing' (Iraqi 'homemade' penetrators splashing in the dirt about 500m short because of poor longrod quality control and absent fire control compensation vs. the intended original Russian ones) realtively unlikely.

And they hit with /so much/ energy that you might as well not even try to armor your vehicle but simply take a Goliath 21 type approach wherein you put your SMALLEST POSSIBLE chassis (something that can duck between the most minor of terrain folds or behind vegetation/structural LOS blocks).

And shoot the enemy anywhere from in-the-face to as-they-drive-by.

Indeed, IMO, you are _better off_ going with light tanks along the lines of robotic Wiesels which put these kinds of weapons systems, along with a light cannon, a little higher off the ground so that you can also take out the (by far more common) RPG shooter threat by firing /over/ obstacles and into defilades.

While abandoning the high energy weapons to move towards 120-240mm range lobshot mortars that can 'soft loft' (low-acceleration G tolerance) rounds like the Merlin and Stryx.

Or even (should firefinder and DEW weapons become common) going with a netfires LAM/LOCAAS type system which comes in under the horizon in swarms to defeat APS while keeping subsonic seeker footprint processing and hunting-datalink target sharing algorithms relatively cheap and simple.

In any case, with the baseline technology behind the Abrahms now well known and the Germans, French, Italians and Brits all whoring world wide their equivalents, there is _NO WAY_ to justify sending in 1 MBT per C-5 or C-17 load. As a kind of forced-entry means of rapidly engaging a threat with a minimum 200 of his own tanks.

Because all he has to do to keep morale high through devastating attrition is break those tanks into 10-12 vehicle Team composites (IFV/ADV/MBT). And they will get past the airpower slinging SFW. To overrun the landing area.

CONCLUSION:
I find it ironic that we first invented 'high technology' warfare as a blood-for-treasure excuse to enrich our arms industry. And now are faced with the proliferation of arms as the only means to prop up a faltering economy while losing 'definitive access' to foreign resources. And now must invest such /huge/ numbers of these systems (and hundreds of billions of dollars) in dealing with insurgent type 'primitive' threat lockdown. That we must start to think outside the box in terms of Mechwarrior/Clan like bidded contracts by which MTW/MRC conventional blowups are /prevented/. At the lowest=lightest=earliest possible intervention.

We just don't have the money, political will or force structure to support more while tied down and bleeding from every orifice in Iraq. And those who like to envision themselves as 'sitting in a cockpit or tank turret hair on fire, drool streaming in the breeze' of a conventional (knights at war) maneuver conflict are the ones who must be dinosaured /first/. Because that is the type of battle which is easiest to win with robots and long range standoff weapons that need no human in the loop. And the kind of opfor which is the most dangerous to deal with 'as equals' (1v.1) in a forced entry situation where you are trying to decapitate or otherwise head off a fight that you cannot spend half a trillion dollars and six months playing invasion-prep for.

If I can put a 20, 1 million dollar, robo-dunebuggies-

www.missilesandfirecontrol.com...

(probably stacked on pallets) on a Globemaster III and each is armed with 4 CKEM equivalent weapons with 6km reach. Killing 3 tanks before they themselves die as virtually 'unarmored' targets. They will hold the line against the first 5 rushes of that 200 tank enemy armor force while I get my AMS team unloaded and my hummer infantry AWAY.

Which should be enough to leverage the rest of the war as we play fire and fade 40mph ambush tactics to nullify any main force action from further offensive ground taking ('mechanized insurgency' assymetry).

With a force construct that has perhaps 1/4 the manpower in it. 1/10th the maneuver logistic (ton mile) footprint in gas and munitions. And costs out at a 6:1 improvement (6 robodobies per Abrahms equivalency) in fixed acquisition cost-per-asset replaced vs. the current, bloated and overweight, 'armor uber alles' structure.


KPl.

Originally posted by mad scientist

That is wrong. The german DM53 for the Rheinmetall 120mm/L55 cannon has a penetration power compaarable and sometimes even exceeding that of contemporary DU rounds. The reason: it has a V0 of about 2000 m/s. The usual V0 for 120mm AP rounds however is 1600-1750 m/s.

That is a high velocity out of a gun. DO you hvae any more information on the L55 ? I'd apreciate it.

Yes it is a good deal above standard. The problem is that the real statistics of the weapon are confidential. My number is 2nd hand knowledge of tank crewmembers I have discussed about this. They actually werent told the real numbers themselves, so they measured some training shots manually. Thats why I cannot give a definitive figure, and mine are in no way scientifically proven.

The funny thing is that if you go to Rheinmetalls site it only states that the DM53 velocity shot from the L55 cannon is "more than 1750 m/s". That however is only a minimal improvement to the older DM43 round (less than 80 m/s V0 improvement). Additionally the new shell has a 9kg propellant charge while the DM43 only has 7.6kg; the new Pentrator weighs only 5kg while the DM43 penetrator weighs 7.2kg. Both are made of Tungsten.

So we have:
A considerably higher (and more modern) propellant load;
A redesigned and 30% lighter penetrator;
A weapon that is remodelled to handle higher working pressures;
An official claim that muzzle energy is 15% higher when shot from the L44, and 30% higher when shot from the L55 (compared to a DM43 from L44 cannon)

So logical deduction+manual (+ "inofficial") measurements leads me to the assumption of a real V0 of no less than 1850 m/s up to 2000 m/s /under ideal temperature and air pressure conditions - there is likely to come a DM53A1 improvement with a more temperature resistant and less eroding propellant which is already introduced in the DM63 - a round which otherwise is similar to the DM43)

[edit on 12/12/2005 by Lonestar24]

Problem is that the Americans can't build a gun to save them selves. Every time the start it gets over engineered to the point where if fails due to complexity or cost etc etc....kind of like the Nazis from WW-II. They could build great weapons like the tiger tank or jets and guided missiles years ahead of their competitors. But they could never build enough tanks to allow their troops to fight with armor and face down the enemy armor.

The USA have to rely on their allies to build the guns for them.LOSAT fits right into that same dialema...hugh massive super missile to kill some 1950s tank????

There is nothing wrong with Russian /Soviet armor or gun technologies. They are compariable or better than contemporary western systems. Were they fall down is in not being able to afford costly inserts for the armor or costly high quality APFSDS rounds for their guns.

I'm sure if the Russians sunk as much into R&D as the Americans their tanks and guns would be better...but their were traditionally after quantity not quality.

[edit on 12-12-2005 by psteel]

PSteel,

>>
The USA have to rely on their allies to build the guns for them.LOSAT fits right into that same dialema...huge massive super missile to kill some 1950s tank????
>>

Don't kid yourself. A tank main tube, it's turret mantlet and stabilized mount hardware weighs thousands of pounds. A LOSAT weighs 177lbs. A CKEM weighs about 100.

astronautix.com...
www.designation-systems.net...

What's more, the HVM concept (which goes back to the 1980's and included both air and surface launch variants and sizes) _utterly obsolesces all known armor types_.

So that you no longer have to pay the penalty for a 35 ton Bradley or 70 ton Abrahms. Since they are just as dead as the Hummer which would engage them (11,683lbs= 5 tons).

The difference being that:

1. The Hummer could engage from 6-8km, LOS permitting. This is a full 1-1.5 km further than the vaunted M1 nominally can and might in fact be enough to let one vehicle shoot and the other guide in a rapid displacement mode of fire and maneuver that could defeat (drive out from under) inbound smart-HEAT rounds fuzing window on a long loft arc of what, 7-10 seconds, minimum?

2. There is only one set of sighting optics required and this system can track and classify targets while the gunner sight and CITV are little more than magnified IR optics with absolutely NO ability to track targets or to pull them (in clusters no less) from the background.

3. Every rocket onboard can engage in a streaming salvo mode, killing all targets in the effectively the same 5.5second maximum time of flight, plus one second for each weapon to clear downrange from the launch tube. That's 9 seconds to absolutely /obliterate/ four vehicles.

It should also be noted that the /original/ LOSAT vehicle was a Bradley chassis with the turret removed. This lowered the profile back towards what the original _scout_ system spec of the early 1970's was supposed to be and increased armor protection to levels approaching that required to survive the LIC 'insurgent = point blank' types of heavy MG, LAW and Mines. Yielding, in effect, modern equivalent to the M901 Hammerhead TOW.

It was the freaking ARMY and it's automotive command who chose the Hummer chassis. Because that way they could kill it when the issue of survivability came up.

>>
There is nothing wrong with Russian /Soviet armor or gun technologies. They are compariable or better than contemporary western systems. Were they fall down is in not being able to afford costly inserts for the armor or costly high quality APFSDS rounds for their guns.
>>

Bullcrap. Your technology is only as good as you choose to integrate it on a platform. And so long as the Russians choose to build 35-40 ton MBTs, their client states will run screaming to the West because they know that their /tank crews/ will bail at the first sign of trouble. Namely the first 10-20 vehicles at the front of the column blowing up in rapid fire sequence.

Add to this the fact that, excepting the religious nutbars of the ME, increasing economic wealth and some hope for the future in countries around the world is making people less and less Pro Patria Moria interested in dying for nationalist/philosophic reasons (especially against a proven war-winner in the U.S. force model) and you end up with an empty _economic_ case for tanks that die too easy to win a slugging match.

>>
I'm sure if the Russians sunk as much into R&D as the Americans their tanks and guns would be better...but their were traditionally after quantity not quality.
>>

More dated excuses for why the Russians are backward. 'We yield the skies to you because tanks won our last war!' And 'we yield the open field battle to you because our tanks are not built for winning except in a nuclear scenario at very short LOS ranges.

Tell me, WHEN are the Russians simply going to sit down and say "_Hell No_, THIS warfare modus we are simply going to win outright, across the board!"

They could do it, easily, with armor, if they just thought about it.

Because, ironically, my own preference for _robotic_ vehicles fits the Russian penchant for sacrificial numeric forces far more readily than the American elitist warrior crap. So much so that I'm frankly surprised that systems like Krzantema and Vikhr and the like (automated, dual-target, beamriding ATGW) have not gone HV atop existing AFV chassis in replacement for the existing CLGP's of the Songster and onwards.

THE KEY to defeating any human enemy is in the will. And if one tank can live long enough to provide a 'pitched battle' example of enemy vulnerability inherent to 4 kills before it dies. Even the stupidest Monkey Force will slaughter themselves trying to 'outgame' an Ami tank force to a finish, no matter how bad the odds.

It's when they 'bounce', making no kills for total loss that the cheap-ass warriors run screaming back into the hills.

And 'to get there' (towards a real ability to kill multiple Western styled targets) all's a SINGLE _truly smart_ Russian would have to do would be to say "Screw the turret, drop the moronic idiocy of sending driver control across the length of the tank, /forward/ from the engine/transmission compartment. And stick a block of 1.5meter thick equivalent steel in the void of his prior occupation."

And in doing so, you would have the ability to send that self-same 35 ton class system (lightweight = rail friendly) into battle with a block of steel 2,500mm RHA equivalency across a 2m tall hullfront target silouhette. With a 'paper' (tearaway remote firing post) turret which needed to survive _just long enough_ to get those required four kills. Say 15 seconds in a LOS war. Or perhaps 2-3 minutes if you loft the rounds ballistically.

If THINKING THROUGH their options as a function of choosing to take a different rev-not-ev olutionary route out from the shadow of Western doctrine is beyond the Russian's ability. Then then their inability to redefine the paradigm of what armor is _to them_ means that they are technologically **backwards** at the conceptual as much as implementation level.

And _will always be so_.

So long as they tail chase dated Western armor equivalents which themselves choose the 'incremental evolutionary approach' in keeping men inside conventional turrets with ever heavier system penalties in weight and complexity of design.

Of course, the real dancing-bear stupidity of this purile penile envy by the Eastern block is a failure to recognize that their 'slavically slavish' copying of our tactical methodology has NOTHING whatsoever to do with it being a superior warfighter.

For WE chose our own path _solely_ to keep the ruling elite /in business/ as much as power within both the military hierarchy (generals command men, corporals control machines) and the industrial base (startup companies have less existing overhead capitalization to amortize and a 'new' stockholder base which does not expect continuation of level profit margins as a function of staticism in risk based investment in new ideas).

CONCLUSION:
The 'funny thing' about the entire world's 'oppressed by the West' attitude is that they endlessly prove their lack of social confidence as much as technical retardation. By copying our overconfidence in our own dated doctrine. And then wondering why they lose to a more established system.


KPl.

You know what most tanks are scarred of? its not soviet armour , its not the warthog


its the jeep behind a tree with an ATGM on the back


they can shoot and scoot to anywhere and hide again to kill plink a tank km`s down range , and move off PDQ.

and they don`t cost millions of $`s each.

Originally posted by Harlequin
You know what most tanks are scarred of? its not soviet armour , its not the warthog


its the jeep behind a tree with an ATGM on the back


they can shoot and scoot to anywhere and hide again to kill plink a tank km`s down range , and move off PDQ.

and they don`t cost millions of $`s each.

I would be more afraid of a soldier with a Javelin type fire and forget anti-tank weapon. My friend use to be on a anti-tank infrantry squad in the marines and he said any of the TOW systems leave you as a sitting duck as the missile flys to the target. He said a good Tank crew could have more then enough time to see the flash of the missile launch and put a round on target.

They all loved the Javelin anti-tank missile as you could fire it and get the heck out of dodge, then a few seconds later Boom a missile right through the weakest armoured part of a tank the top of the turret.

Heh, the moment a ATGM is fired the first thing the tank crew will do is get the hell out of the tank or if the driver is brave step on the gas, fat chance you will not get hit...unless it's not a guided weapon like a RPG or LAW.