[Baron Munchausen]

Oh, an armor piercing mortar round is certainly possible. At least the shaped-charge variety. I guess I should have been clearer. It would have to be reasonably accurate to be worthwhile. Mortars are highly inaccurate, and so they are almost always anti-personal (fragmentation) or plain high explosive warheads that can be made to explode above the target and cover a wide area. A shaped charge mortar round would just punch holes in the dirt 95 percent of the time. If you could make a 'smart' shaped-charge mortar that would 'look down' and guide itself to hit a tank it would be well worthwhile to produce and deploy because the Abrams is not the only tank with less armor on top. But this sort of technology is the hallmark of Western, especially US, military methods, not third-world militaries.

In fact, there is a weapon of this type in the works with the US military. A special artillery shell that would deploy a parachute and scan for tanks before firing a special weapon down on them. Not sure how far along that is.

Same for the RPG round. If you could make a 'smart' RPG that would seek out a tank you'd have something. As it is, yes, you'd just be firing off flares for the enemy to follow back to your position. The chance of hitting anything by shooting up and hoping it comes down at the right place would be pretty small.

That level of damage on the M1 does make more sense from a real 'anti-tank' missile, though.

[ April 05, 2003, 01:17: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ]