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Jeebo -> RE: In 1980, the US Army feared Russian tanks were invincible (7/12/2023 2:09:25 PM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: mmacguinness
Selected quotations and related charts from the 1980 intelligence assessment:
Chart: Tank Quality: The AMSAA View
In brief, the United States is now behind, tank for tank, and even when our developmental XM-833 depleted-uranium round for the 105-mm cannon becomes available, the XM-1 is likely to be no more than an even match for the T-80.
Charts: Probability of Kill given Hit:
As may be seen, while all weapons have provided high assurance of kill against the T-62, the M735 - planned to be the most numerous round aboard US tanks - is impotent against the T-72. Our two most powerful ATGM are marginal in a frontal attack against the lower bound-best case T-72, and virtually useless against the upper bound-worst case T-72.
Chart: US ATGM vs. Soviet Tank
Our ATGM clearly can defeat the T-62, but the T-72 - and the like armored T-64 - could be largely invulnerable to them. In facvt, chances are better than 50-50 that either TOW or DRAGON would explode without effect against the nmose of the T-72, even if that tank's armor is onlt of "lower bound, best case"toughness.
To be expected, USSR was investing mad amounts of money into their military complex, basically always expecting a war to start. Still pretty interesting that M735 wasn't enough for the T-72 armor. Showed this article to a few folks that I've been getting used guns(https://gritrsports.com/shooting/firearms/used-guns/ if it's beater stuff I'm usually getting from this store though) from and they really liked it!
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