Targetting individuals with explosive weapons is against the laws of war.
In order to claim either way on cost effectiveness one needs to know the cost of a human life? Also what is the cost of winning or losing? Also who paid for the Hezbollah ATGMs? This is only the tip of the list of why bringing up cost effeciveness in this context is so completely wrong.
Was that the engagement that started with a single Challenger cresting a dune and running into a dug in company of T-72's? The story I was told had the driver chucking it into reverse as the turret crew ran their drills, almost on auto pilot, engaging and destroying tank after tank as they withdraw to a better position. During the action they heard ricochets off their turret thinking themselves lucky the Iraqis had only managed to bring HMGs to bear only to discover deep gouges in their armour from deflected 125mm SABOT rounds post action.
Two questions come to mind here.
No it's not. Not even close.
Mmmm.... valid point, it would effectively outlaw the use of HE against infantry when in actual fact HE rounds have been specifically depolyed / developed to give armoured vehicles an anti infantry capability.
This one was a troop of CR2 during "Operation Panzer" which was an op to reach a cut off unit of 40 Commando and was actually fought while 'galloping' (is the word they use) down a road.
Doubt it, due to the high emphasis put on ROI currently in Afghan - as i'm sure you know - that anything remotely close to a warcrime would be 'shot down' instantly. Otherwise UK Apache crews have been committing warcrimes almost on a daily basis with those rockets, personally the flechette rockets seem worse than the HEISAP or however it's spelt rockets.
Definitely, e.g for the CR2 it's APFSDS for heavy amour and HESH for lightly armoured + soft targets but that's not always the case. In a case in a book i'm reading (Main Battle Tank - Niall Edworthy) a crew has a 'FIN' up the barrel and they're forced to use it against an enemy soldier, the description is mortifying.
Plus 84mm HEDP, 66s, 40mm gold tops, hand grenades, claymores, air delivered rockets and bombs, Excalibur rounds etc. Its a long list.
Read a book on the Royal Scots in Granby, they were supported by a Sqn of Challengers from the Life Guards. One of the Annexes lists enemy casaulties, the weapon that killed them and the effect the weapon had on them, one was hit in the torso by a 120mm round (I can't recall which type) the resulting wound was "torso not found", or to that effect.
Rate of fire can also be an issue of target acquisition and engagement. So the half trained Iraqi gunner using an analogue system from the 1960s is going to take a lot longer to get the gun onto the target.
Not planned for the M1A3 which will remain a four crew tank.
Before they realised how much it was going to cost and how little money they had the Brits were planning on rebuilding the CR2 with fixed ammunition. It was a key reason in the Australian Army ruling out the CR2 for LAND907. Because the available tank configuration and ammunition didn’t (in 2004/05) appear to have a future).
Yee gads Abe you are human after all. I'll let you off on the basis I regularly make a total goose out of myself through, misreading, misinterpreting, misremembering, making unfounded assumptions and being in general ignorant, leaving you in comparison, pure as the driven snow.
Another advantage that could be realised with an autoloader update to a western tank is, assuming it doesn't infringe upon turret space, it could free up a crewman to operate postulated ISR and defencive systems that such an upgraded vehicle could be expected to be fitted with.
The Australian gun det in Helmand had a few stories like this with the 105s. There was one example where they had the gun laid on a door they knew an insurgent was in, he appeared, they pulled the tit, and the round hit the dude direct. They never found him.
30mm gun on an Apache is an area fire weapon. It isn’t accurate enough to put a cross hairs on someone and have the bullet follow right on and hit. Now Apache gunners may target individuals when they fire a burst but the rounds are going to land around the target and any that hit directly are just statistical chance. Plus of course the laws of war only apply by most jurisdictions to wars between legitimate combatants. Since the Taliban aren’t following the laws of war you don’t have to treat them as POWs and not use explosive bullets, etc. If you were to use a 30x113mm sniper rifle against another army you’d be committing a warcrime.
Wasn't there a multi-barrel pre-machinegun design that had the option of firing square section bullets for use on "infidels"? On the sniper rifle bit are militaries still restriced to using FMJ ammo against human targets?
I was commenting more on the Apache's CRV-7 rockets as STURM directly asked about them really because we were talking about HE weapons in general
Very true, no matter what anyone says about autoloaders the key is consistency in loading rate.
I know
just thought i'd have a crack at nipping the issue in the bud.As far as rifled ammunition goes, personally I reckon the CR2 is the end of the line. IIRC they had a crack at installing a smoothbore L55 in a CR2 and did a study to see if it was financially worthwhile changing to it. Turns out they could only store ~6 single piece ammunition in the tank so without a fairly substantial redesign of the turret it wouldn't be worthwhile as the costs of doing so would negate any potential savings in smoothbore ammo.
I've seen it kicked around the block a few times and the opinion appears to be that for the size of tank fleet we're running it'd be cheaper to buy some second hand Leo2's.