Timeline for Is the A-10's cannon effective against tanks?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
17 events
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| Mar 15, 2022 at 20:50 | comment | added | Romeo_4808N | @Jpe61 The angle of impact as well as the section of the tank that we’re talking about. You can’t apply armor plating the same thickness all over the tank as it would probably be too heavy to effectively maneuver in combat, so the armor protection has to be optimized for areas on the tank. Most tanks I believe were built for primary protection against other tank primary weapons. Undoubtedly improvements to armor have been made to counteract airborne and missile threats with pop-up maneuver capabilities. | |
| Mar 15, 2022 at 19:28 | comment | added | Jpe61 | Well that is technically true if we take into account the angle of impact, but it's still not the same. | |
| Mar 15, 2022 at 16:03 | comment | added | Romeo_4808N | @Jpe61 it depends on the area of the tank we’re talking about. | |
| Mar 15, 2022 at 7:46 | comment | added | Jpe61 | As for the main battle tank's armour: it definitely is not 350mm. That is more than one foot of steel... | |
| Jun 17, 2020 at 8:28 | history | edited | CommunityBot |
Commonmark migration
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| Jul 17, 2019 at 21:05 | comment | added | rclocher3 | @ChrisW A "mil" is a milliradian, of which there are approximately 6,283 in a circle. 1° ≈ 17.5 mil. 1 minute of angle ("moa") ≈ 3.44 mil. | |
| Jul 17, 2019 at 20:42 | comment | added | Vikki | "While it might not be able to penetrate the chobham hull of an M1A2, it can certainly take out fuel tanks, destroy the engine, etc." - don't most modern tanks have the fuel tanks, engine, etc., inside the armoured hull, for precisely this reason? | |
| Mar 7, 2019 at 16:49 | comment | added | Romeo_4808N | It effective against certain kinds of main battle tanks - whole lotta Iraqi T-72s got cut to ribbons with that thing. But times, tank designs and armor changes. Then again so do ammunition types, etc. | |
| Mar 7, 2019 at 16:25 | vote | accept | ChrisW | ||
| Mar 7, 2019 at 16:25 | comment | added | ChrisW | Yes, Wikipedia's articles say that the A-10 killed 900 tanks during the Gulf War, and that the Maverick was used 5000 times against armoured targets -- that's compatible with the answer's suggesting that the Maverick is the principle anti-tank weapon. The A-10 was designed in the 1970s, I'm guessing the cannon might be effective against any target possibly except a "main battle tank". | |
| Mar 7, 2019 at 15:17 | comment | added | FreeMan | @ChrisW consider that splitting the armor and blowing up/killing the crew isn't the only method for disabling a tank. Destroying a tread, jamming the turret rotation mechanism or gun elevation mechanism will effectively render the tank useless until repaired. The crew will not want to be outside the tank fixing a tread while there are a pack of A-10s circling, especially if those A-10s are providing cover for nearby ground troops. | |
| Mar 7, 2019 at 9:33 | comment | added | ChrisW | I see -- "5-mil" is presumably a (small) unit of angle, meant to measure the scatter. | |
| Mar 7, 2019 at 9:04 | comment | added | ChrisW | Thank you -- I hadn't noticed that in Wikipedia. What's a "5-mil" circle? The article you quoted says that the precision is such that "80% of rounds fired at 4,000 feet (1,200 m) range hit within a 40-foot (12 m) diameter circle". That's about 1 round per 2 square metres per second, unlikely to hit the same bit of armour twice. Also I think of main tank armour as being, like, 350 mm; and from videos I thought it would be not nearly as vertical as "30 degrees from vertical". I guess that answers my question though, thanks again. | |
| Mar 7, 2019 at 6:26 | history | edited | user14897 | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
link; bullets =D
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| Mar 7, 2019 at 6:16 | comment | added | user14897 | One could also say modern tanks don't do toe-to-toe combat, but engage much farther than a blink-and-you'd-miss-it A-10 would. | |
| Mar 7, 2019 at 4:35 | history | edited | Romeo_4808N | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Mar 7, 2019 at 4:28 | history | answered | Romeo_4808N | CC BY-SA 4.0 |