Aircraft weapons

[DRG]

Yes, strangly enough that is part of a quote I was about to post.....


How effective are DU shells anyway? Browsing through various literature about the Persian Gulf War one will encounter wonderful fairytales of British Challenger tanks penetrating Iraqi tanks with DU rounds at over five kilometers away and American Abrams tanks destroying two T-72s with one DU round at a distance of nearly 3 kilometers. One will also read stories of A-10s destroying scores of Iraqi tanks in one pass with their 30-mm DU shells. During the operation "Allied Force" against Yugoslavia stories of Serbian tanks being destroyed left and right attracted media attention just as well. After destroying hundreds of Serbian tanks in their own minds, NATO commanders were finally forced to admit the unimpressive reality.

Colorful folklore aside, in 1978 the US Army and the Air Force conducted a test in which an A-10 Thunderbolt ground attack aircraft engaged a pair of stationary Soviet-made T-62 tanks. The overall effectiveness of A-10s and their DU rounds did not exceed 2 percent:

"In this test an A-10 aircraft attacked two combat-loaded individual Soviet T-62 tanks in five missions totaling seven passes; technicians rehabilitated the two vehicles after each pass. The aircraft were seldom higher than 200 feet in altitude; firings were initiated between 2768 and 4402 feet and terminated at ranges of 1587 to 3055 feet at dive angles of 1.8 to 4.4 degrees. The bursts ranged from 120 to 165 rounds.

Altogether 93 DU rounds struck the tanks during the seven passes, including no impacts in one pass. The ratio of impacts to rounds fired was 0.10. Of the 93 impacts, 17 penetrated the armored envelopes for a ratio of penetrations to impacts of 0.18. The report noted many of the side or rear impacts that did not penetrate the armor nonetheless extensively damaged the tanks' exterior suspension components, whereas all the rounds that hit the tanks' front caused minimal damage. The results reinforced the strategy of attacking tanks from the side or rear to optimize damage potential." 12

The result of this exercise was fully confirmed during the operation "Allied Force" despite the upgrades of the A-10 and its weaponry. For tens of kilograms of DU introduced into the environment an A-10 has a slight chance of making a hole in a tank, which may or may not destroy it.