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Old 02-22-2015, 07:54 AM
dragoon500ly dragoon500ly is offline
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Join Date: Oct 2010
Location: East Tennessee, USA
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The problem with tanks is that sooner or later they are going to go up against the other guys tanks. In order to beat the other guys, you have to able to shoot first, hit first and kill or disable with that shot. The atgm had a narrow engagement window at best, you might get one or maybe two missiles off before you had to switch to conventional rounds, then your maximum possible rate of fire was two rounds per minute. Shoot and scoot is your mantra.

The drawbacks of the Sheridan restricted it the role of infantry support vehicle, in a single battalion, in a single division. It was kept in that role because it was the only tank that could be air dropped. Even that division depended on regimental antitank companies equipped with TOW for its primary antitank defense.

The only combat test of Sheridan in a traditional tank role was in Vietnam. It was easy to knock out with RPGs. It's armor protection was so bad, that if the crew was not killed immediately, they had to bail out before the ammo fire finished the job.

In Desert Storm, the Sheridan was used as a bunker buster and was never used against Iraqi armor.

When it was first introduced, it was a gee-whiz tech solution and it didn't work. It is to the eternal credit of its crews that they were able to perform their missions in spite of its drawbacks, but there are good and sound reasons why the decision was made to remove it from service. I find it hard to come up with any reason why scarce resources would have been wasted in trying to bring the Sheridan back into operational service.
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