"What will kill an Abrams ?" Topic

QUOTE: I would suggest that it is of MAJOR importance. If you may only suffer an immobilisation hit, then you will take a tactical risk fairly easily. If you are likely to suffer an agonising death in flames if it goes wrong, that same tactical risk might look a trifle less inviting, no?

Try comparing playing paint ball and playing bullet ball with the same nominal objectives. Do you seriously think that the same decisions would be made? [END QUOTE]

I think we are talking about different things. I tried to make clear the situation I was referring to was after a tank suffers a major penetration from an AT projectile. No tank crew is going to be adventurous if they believe they are in a situation where they face enemy weapons likely to penetrate their armour. A high velocity jet of molten plasma reaching into the crew compartment or spalling flying about is, I submit, a prospect that is not going to enthuse any tank crew. Whether the tank 'brews up' subsequent to that is, I would suggest, of secondary importance, and of little importance in a tactical wargame.

On the other hand, any tank crew will likely be bolder if they think their vehicle offers them armour protection likely to overmatch most AT threats they face. This strikes me as a separate issue from whether that vehicle 'brews up' with regularity in a situation where it is overmatched by AT threats. I'd speculate that a T-72 crew confident that they face a limited AT threat incapable of penetrating their armour would be more likely to be bold than an M1 crew in a situation where they knew they faced AT weapons likely to penetrate their armour – notwithstanding the M1's 'better' ammo storage, etc.

From my experience operating with M1s, they are generally mechically reliable, fairly easy to repair, unless there is a complete catastrophic destruction, like some discribed above. However, I believe as someone also mentioned previously … government budget cuts … is a real killer … Also as a point of interest, I heard on the news we are selling M1s to the Iraqi Army … interesting …

Do tanks catch fire? I would expect so -- cars catch fire easily enough. Several hundred a day in the UK quite apart from the ones which are actually torched deliberately. That's cars which are driving down the road when they suddenly start gushing flames.

And that's without people banging HE or supersonic rods into them…

hubris, or stupidity, will do it in every time.