[Basileus]

thatguy96 said:

I think the bigger issue was hating the system and the vehicle it was attached to. The M551 Sheridan was in many ways too light to handle the power of the missile, and so were its systems. Launching the missile had a tendancy to shake things in the turret loose and/or outright damage sensitive components. Furthermore, because of the vehicles weight the 152mm conventional (non-missile) ammunition that was carried meant that the vehicle had a very large engagement blind spot between which it could not hit a target with its main gun, but before the missile's minimum range. Of course the M60A2 was said to have suffered from the same blind spot.

It wasn't the missile, it was the conventional rounds that broke the fire control system. Every time the main gun fired a conventional 152mm round (that's a howitzer-sized round coming out of a 15-ton light tank), the recoil would cause at least two or three roadwheels worth of track to completely leave the ground. The shock would usually result in something breaking. The missile itself imparted negligible recoil.

AFAIK the M60A2 didn't suffer this damage, but the overly complex combination of gun and missile fire control was a maintenance nightmare, the missile couldn't be tracked at night or in inclement weather, and such conditions also rendered the primitive laser rangefinder nearly worthless. Later, when the Tank Thermal Sight was mounted on the 82nd Airborne's Sheridans, there were no problems firing at night or in moderate weather.

According to a former Sheridan crewman, the dead range issue was ironed out. Conventional rounds had an effective range around 1,000 meters, well above the minimum range of the Shillelagh (about 730 meters). In WinSPMBT, the gun has a maximum range of 20, and the missile has a minimum range of 20, which works out.

Basileus