Are Tanks Obsolete?: YouTube Video Makes The Case For Active Protection Systems

Dan Goure

Security,

Unless another path is chosen, the main battle tank may be rendered obsolete.

A picture may be worth a thousand words but a YouTube video could actually be worth a lot of lives, if the U.S. Army responds in an appropriate and timely manner.  I am referring specifically to a recent YouTube video (see video below) that shows the destruction of an Iraqi M-1 Abrams, basically the same kind operated by the U.S. military, by an ISIS fired, Russian-made Kornet anti-tank guided missile (ATGM).  Like something out of a video game, you can watch as the missile homes in on the tank. When it hits, the M-1 explodes in a display of pyrotechnics. Unquestionably, the five-man crew was killed.

The M-1 Abrams is without doubt the best main battle tank in the world. It is protected by specially designed armor to withstand cannon rounds and ATGMs. The coalition campaigns in Iraq in 1991 and 2003 resulted in so few U.S. tank losses that they may have created the illusion that the M-1 was essentially invulnerable. Such is not the case. In fact, several Abrams were disabled but not totally destroyed by Kornet missiles during Operation Iraqi Freedom. The same missile was employed successfully by Hezbollah in the 2006 Lebanon War to destroy a number of Israeli Merkava tanks. Since 2003, the U.S. military and its coalition allies have lost lots of vehicles of all kinds to rocket propelled grenades (RPGs).

The Kornet was first produced for the Red Army in 1998. Since then, the KBP Instrument Design Bureau has worked to improve the system’s performance. The introduction of ATGMs like the first generation Kornet was one of the reasons that the U.S. military upgraded its M-1s to the A2 configuration which included both specially designed composite or Chobham armor and explosive reactive tiles. The current missile version, the Kornet-EM, has a range of nearly five miles, an automatic target tracker with five times the accuracy of earlier variants and a “fire and forget” capability. It is reported to carry a so-called tandem warhead consisting of two explosive charges, one to defeat reactive armor and the second to penetrate the vehicle’s hull.