Soviet Missile Tanks

[Tegyrius]

This is gonna be a good ride.

Were the Soviet missile tank projects influences on the American thinking that led to the M60A2 and M551?

- C.

[Vespers War]

Originally Posted by Tegyrius

This is gonna be a good ride.

Were the Soviet missile tank projects influences on the American thinking that led to the M60A2 and M551?

- C.

I don't think so, because the development of the Shillelagh started at pretty much the same time as Object 757 was being developed, with the original designs being submitted to the US Army in June 1959. Both sides seem to have been driven by the development of shaped-charge technology in the 1940s and the realization that armor was developing to the point where KE penetrators would need very large, heavy guns in order to be effective at any range beyond a knife fight. Shaped charges needed a large diameter but not a high velocity to penetrate armor, so a low velocity launch was acceptable. However, since that made it inaccurate at long range, guidance became a priority, hence guided missiles being looked at in lieu of simpler unguided rockets.

[Vespers War]

Our next vehicle is Object 282, another late-1950s tank destroyer, where a decent bit is known about the vehicle but the missile is rather more speculative because NII-48 never actually finished making one. The Salamandra (Salamander) was intended to be a 1.55 meter long missile with a 170mm warhead diameter, with a SACLOS guidance system that used radio signals and a small radar system to maneuver the missile to the gunner's aiming point, rather than the manual guidance with automatic terminal attack of the Sprut.

Like Object 757, Object 282 is said to have been built onto a lightened T-10M chassis. This is almost certainly not the same chassis, since Object 757 will reappear in a few years. It mounted a 1000 horsepower engine, which gave it a quite high power to weight ratio. A pair of pop-up launchers were fitted in the rear corners where the original tank had fuel containers. The right-hand launcher was a rail, while the left-hand launcher was a tube, as part of the test was seeing which launch system performed better. I haven't found any mention of secondary armament, which is plausible if this was solely a technology test bed with no intent to enter serial production.

Road speed was claimed to be 55 km/h, which was used with the P/W ratio to estimate off-road speed. Fuel capacity and consumption are estimates (I used the base fuel number for the T-10M from Paul's site, excluding the additional fuel). The missile's maximum range is the program goal and damage is based on a TL-6 HEAT warhead of 170mm, with everything else being a guess.

Object 282
Fire Control: 0
Armament: Salamandra ATGM
Ammunition: 16 missiles (some sources say 20-24)
Fuel Type: D, A
Veh Wt: 44 tonnes
Crew: 2 (commander/gunner, driver)
Mnt: 15
Night Vision: Active IR (G)
Tr Mov: 154/123
Com Mov: 25/20
Fuel Cap: 600
Fuel Cons: 400
Config: Veh
Susp: T:6
HF: 90, HS: 22, HR: 19

Salamandra
Missile caliber: 170mm
Guidance: Radio SACLOS
Missile speed: 300 (? - estimate because missile was never completed)
Reload 2, HEAT warhead, Min Range 500, Max Range 3000, Damage C24 B34, Pen 95C, Difficulty DIFF

[LoneCollector1987]

Where they able to fire more than one missile at a time?

(I ask because last night I rewatched an episode of Robotech and then its missile time, you know 1.000 missiles - and at least one will hit.)

[Vespers War]

Originally Posted by LoneCollector1987

Where they able to fire more than one missile at a time?

(I ask because last night I rewatched an episode of Robotech and then its missile time, you know 1.000 missiles - and at least one will hit.)

I haven't seen anything about that, but I suspect the answer is no. Since it was a SACLOS system using radar to detect the missile and radio commands to steer it to the target, having two missiles in the air at the same time would mean sending the same command to both missiles and I'm not sure how good the sensors were, so it might not be able to tell the missiles apart. The only reason it had two launchers was because the Soviets wanted to test a rail system against a tube system, and the T-10M chassis had enough space to fit both on one vehicle.

[Ursus Maior]

Multi-missile sprays aren't a thing (yet) with ATGM systems. As Vespers War already stated, SACLOS (and MACLOS of course, too) systems don't support this. You would either need multiple transmitters or wires to guide multiple missiles, or support commanding several missiles at once in a different way, e. g. frequency hopping, digital commands with each missile owning a different address etc.

Fire and forget missiles make this easier, but you still need to make sure all missiles know their intended target. Otherwise, you might waste multiple missiles on the same target with other targets "going empty".

Also, until so far, ATGM designers focussed on getting target acquisition right as this basically meant safe kills. Why shoot twice or more often, if one hit guarantees the kill? Only with (hard-kill) active protection systems on targets might saturation attacks prove an effective and efficient vector.

With the borders between ATGM, armed drones and loitering munitions or even active mines blurring, swarm/saturating attacks will become a thing. This has already started. For T2K that's still scifi, though.

[LoneCollector1987]

Thanks for your answers.

You see, I had a nagging thought and remembered something and looked it up:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AN/AWG-9
The AN/AWG-9 and AN/APG-71 radars are all-weather, multi-mode X band pulse-Doppler radar systems used in the F-14 Tomcat, and also tested on TA-3B.[1] It is a very long-range air-to-air system with the capability of guiding several AIM-54 Phoenix or AIM-120 AMRAAM missiles at the same time using its track while scan mode.

So, the AirForce can employ multiple missiles in the air at the same time, while ground forces cannot.
Ok, on the other hand, the Air Force has no trees, hills, etc in 5000 meter height. ;-)