Rpg/law effectiveness

[GRRhhg 0]

Abrams uses Chobham armor reinforced with a layer of uranium. Chobham armor is supposedly steel with ceramic plates in layers held together by resin, and it's highly resistant to even armor piercing rounds from the front and ceramics are virtually immune to high explosives since they don't melt. You can take out the engine or treads with an RPG and stop it, but the crew is almost invulnerable unless you get really lucky and really good, like multiple shots on the hatches or at close range and a good angle, or if you happen to have a bigass artillery gun to hit it with.

Almost all M2 and M3 Bradleys are equipped with explosive reactive armor since it works pretty well against RPGs, and Bradleys are built to take hits, too. The ERA covers the firing ports but works well, and the vehicles are already very tough. Supposedly, Bradleys have taken tank rounds and stayed alive, according to one M2 commander's account I heard, and I know they've been whacked with RPGs all over Iraq, but they're all very solid. Even the humvees in Iraq are often up-armored with steel turret shielding and armor on the chassis, and it's not just for show. It takes a nice chunk of explosive or a good shot to do much damage to modern armored vehicles like those, but that sometimes happens. Although, you never hear when a tank is hit by a rocket and shrugs it off, or takes minor damage but survives: it is only reported when something bad happens, and then it is always reported by the nincompoop reporters that a tank was destroyed without giving any specifics, or defining "destroyed."

That being said, I don't think any Abrams tanks have really been totaled by enemy fire. Stuff on the tank catches fire, the engine gets blown out, or the treads or whatever get knocked off, and then the media report it as destroyed since they know diddly-sqaut about the military stuff they're covering. Do you really want to be told by some goofy reporter what damage is, or a specialist who, regrettably, doesn't get to explain to the people how it is? For that matter, the media tend to sensationalize lots of stuff: they're usually a bunch of guys who haven't ever seen combat before and want to get some good stories in, so...

Anyway, I think that damage should be handled in OFP to be a bit more detailed to more closely mimick real armor. In the current system, when an APC gets hit, it takes damage until it hits the maximum amount of damage it can have before it just gives in and pops, killing everyone aboard instantly. Much to my annoyance when I'm in charge of one, that is always when you get hit anywhere on the vehicle with a single anti-tank weapon, and the only way to get around it is to maneuver and do some unusual squad tactics so that you can make some use of it without getting everyone killed.

Perhaps by dividing layers of armor over the chassis and making the APC chassis itself highly resistant to exploding unless the armor is completely penetrated, say by a 120mm sabot or TOW missile, the APC won't always go up in a puff of smoke; instead, the damage would be generally localized to the part that got hit and absorb some of the damage of the weapon. That way, you can take a hit on the front, for example, and the damage is absorbed by a plate of armor on the front of the vehicle, but some damage might still bleed through and injure certain occupants or cause damage to the vehicle. I don't know if this is even possible though, I don't recall seeing it on any vehicle I've used in OFP.

I'm not a mod developer, but I think the best way to deal with the way the vehicle handles the armor-penetrating damage is to give the vehicles more complex ways of handling damage, like how some choppers have system failures. Make APCs tougher, but let the vehicle and the crew feel it when they get hammered with a rocket- stuff breaking, wounding damage, smoke and fire, engine failure, etc., just give the crew a chance- unless you're in something really volatile like a vehicle loaded with ammunition, or perhaps a BTR-80, which, I've heard, has gas tanks on the rear doors (which is a really crappy way for a soldier to die).

[Rishon 0]

GRRhhg, I'd like to thank you for actually knowing what your talking about, and saying exactly what i was going to say.

Quote[/b] ]

Sorry, but there is no tank in existence today that can survive a hellfire missile. I don't mean to prove you wrong or anything, but I must stand up for the main weapon of my beloved (AH-64 Apache).

Right......Try looking stuff up, and knowing what your talking about. A T98 can take a hellfire, an T-10(VERY,VERY new russian tank) can take a hellfire. Hellfires are old news and most Ceramic/DU armor can either take on one, or deflect it.

[LizardX 0]

Vhoah, do you have some verified info (links, movies, anything) about these new Russian stuff? I don't really believe in Ruskie propaganda bullsh*t so I'd like to see a video for xpl in wich those tanks take hit from real Hellfires and then leave the field in one piece... Thx!

[Rishon 0]

Well, there is no video about this, not to mention this tank is mostly classified, so the Chinese can't use it (note the Chinese T-series). This Tank has also not been fielded yet, look it up on google and all you'll find is the old T-10. This tank has Ceramic/DU armor that has a steel/titanium alloy undercasing, A Javelin would only piss this thing off, it's safe to also assume the Hellfire.

[GanjaSmuggler 0]

I also would have to say OFp rpg/law damge is a little bit wierd. I don't like seeing 1 rpg or law hit destroy a bmp and everyone dies. It should blow it up but make the crew survive or atleast some of it.

Also has any one ever expericed this when in a Bradle or abrams in ofp, when your totaly destroyed some times you are still alive??

They should do that for both russian and Americna tanks in ofp

Also I would like to add that NO tank is inviciable not even the mighty Abrams or the T-90. All tansk can easily be destroyed by a couple of well placed RPG's or even those Iraqi IED(improvised explosive device??). I remember on cnn.com seeing a bradly ripped apart from one fo those IEDs.

The russians are also taking hell in Chyenia(spelt it wrong). I have seen pictures of t-72's and T-80's being ripped aprt from RPG-7's or something like that.

So in conclusion no tank is inviciable and POLAND IS #1!

[Rishon 0]

No Tank IS invincible, yet you must remember if you hit a tank in the Treads, Engine or Underbelly, OF COURSE it's going to get Severly damaged, and also, these IEDs cannot kill the men inside an Armored HWMMV, let alone a Bradley and that the only reason the Tanks in Chechnya are destroyed is that they are hit with 5-10 RPG's and a few hit their engines and/or Ammunition storage.

[Cpt. FrostBite 0]

actually I've recenty seen a vid of a bradley blow to bits by a IED. No word on casualties, but part were blown of and the vehicle was on fire almost immediately (and I mean completely on fire).

[Rishon 0]

Well, I to get back on subject and quell this theory of "if IEDs can kill an APC why can't RPG'S?", an IED generally contains a CRAP LOAD more explosive than even an RPG-7VL. our APC's were not ment to protect against these threats, hence the new LAV's which have more Armor on the Undercarrage and have easier to replace wheels. APC's are protected against more....conventional methods, hence why RPG effectiveness should be lowered.

[Finnish soldier 0]

Has then ECP made crew survive more easily. Because when I tested BTR-T with M113 and fired BTR-T's AT missile to M113 I saw one man running away burning from that M113.

And other was with little mission which I made with M3A2 where that M3A2 was hit by rpg and two crew members survived and one died when he was running burning.

[Gollum1 0]

Has then ECP made crew survive more easily. Because when I tested BTR-T with M113 and fired BTR-T's AT missile to M113 I saw one man running away burning from that M113.

He's = dead, it's just a fancy effect that he runs away from the tank, he's still killed by the fire a few seconds later.

I've got to agree with someone else here, has anyone noticed that the M2A2 crew in OFP often survive even though the vehicle is exploded? It happens all the time, very good IMO, this should be implemented into addons.

[AdmiralKarlDonuts 0]

How often do tanks and other vehicles actually explode, anyway?

I don't think they do very often - from what I understand, they burn, break, have pieces fall off and holes blown in them, but they don't explode and become the "deflated" model that we're all so used to in OFP.

All the tank wrecks I've seen have been burned-out and more or less in one piece, whether they were Shermans blasted with 88s or Abrams pummelled with RPG-16s.  Droopy gun barrels, holes, and broken tracks, sure, but the hulls looked mostly intact.

Though I did see that video of a T-72 disintegrating after getting hit with a Javelin

[Rishon 0]

Javelins are hell to tanks, almost the equivelent of Hellfires. Tanks actually do explode though, when you hit the Ammo Depot or Hit the Fuel or Engines, the turrets fly off and it all goes to hell for the crew. Thats why we have ERA armor and Ceramics with Steel plating. A Hellfire to a T-80 will send the turret at least 10 meters away from the body of the tank.

[Cpt. FrostBite 0]

This fly effect on the russian tanks is a result of the auto-loading system which means life ammo laying in the turret ready to be loaded. An abrams tank is not likely to explode. It has the ammo in a seperate compartment and that will blow out. There are actually two nice examples;

-baghdad early in the war; An abrams was destroyed and the commander killed. The ammo-compartment was blown up, but the loader, gunner and driver made it out. The tank burned out.

-unknown place and time; An abrams tank was lost in action. Tracks blown off, ect. The rest of the tank was more or less intact. Because the equipment must not fall in the hands of the enemy the US decided to destroy their own tank.

Quote[/b] ]Took one thermite grenade, one sabot in turret ammunition compartment, and two Maverick missiles to finally destroy the tank

[HellToupee 0]

what so the abrams loader dosnt have a shell in the turrent readly to be loaded to?

[Cpt. FrostBite 0]

no, the gunner needs to open the armored hatch (by pushing a button) and than he can take the shell and load it. Since US crews are trained very well, I don't think this will be different in a real fight.

[baff 0]

couple of notes.

am i seriously expected to believe the abrahms tank has uranium armour?

i thought uranium was radioctive?

geiger guided missiles?  infertile mutant tank drivers?

is this really true?

LAWs

law's are not "light" in weight. they are light as in made for use against "light armour".

soldiers do not carry three Laws. they could, they could also carry a bag of cement. but they don't.

they weigh between 11 and 14 kg depending on which version you have, so three of them could be as heavy as 42 kg, which is the same weight as me. does this 3 law rocket man also carry a pack and a rifle?

if an rpg 7 can take out an abrahms (najaf, fallujah) it can take out an APC (Humvee is for the scrapper it's proved so pathetic, they are redeploying M113 to see if thats any better). Laws standardly have bigger warheads than rpg 7 (i am told) and T series tanks have less armour than abrahms. so if an rpg 7 can do it to an abrahms, a LAW can definitely do it to a T80.

the pictures i saw of that m1 in fallujah was clearly only disabled. the commander was covered in blood from his arm, one of the crew was removed on a stretcher. he looked all over charred. and there was no sign of a third so he could be anything from perfectly fine to dead. the tank was burning.

niether of the two crewmen i saw where capable of putting up a fight (unarmed for a start). and that tank was full of explosives and burning.

so yeah it was only disabled. disabled permanently.

[aj_addons 0]

the abrams has delpleted uranium mesh in its chobham armour it wont kill you from radiation posinoning but it there concerns if it gets turned to dust ie if the thing gets hit and the the armour is penetrated breathing in the dust could casue porblems (same goes for delepted uranium sabots) it is also thought that you might have less of a chance of having kids

[AdmiralKarlDonuts 0]

LAWs

law's are not "light" in weight. they are light as in made for use against "light armour".

soldiers do not carry three Laws. they could, they could also carry a bag of cement. but they don't.

they weigh between 11 and 14 kg depending on which version you have, so three of them could be as heavy as 42 kg, which is the same weight as me. does this 3 law rocket man also carry a pack and a rifle?

I know a guy who was in the Army back in the mid-80s...

Said that on one road march he packed 2 LAWS, a Dragon AT missile, 6 grenades, an M16A1 and 8 mags, plus a ruck and all the usual stuff on his LBE - and a steel helmet, for these were the days before Kevlar.

He had his hands free and didn't have any problems carrying it all.  According to fas.org, a complete M72A2 LAW weighs in at a whopping 2.3kg / 5.1 pounds.

Furthermore, the LAW was NOT to be used as an AT weapon - that's what the Dragon and the modern Javelin are for. The LAW was for jeeps, trucks, houses, and general bunker busting. Firing a LAW at a T-72 (to say nothing of a T-80) would just make it mad.

LAWs were skipping off the armor of T-55s back in the early days of Vietnam - they're little more than "feel-good" or "sure, you have a fighting chance" weapons for infantrymen.

[baff 0]

Quote[/b] ]He had his hands free and didn't have any problems carrying it all.  According to fas.org, a complete M72A2 LAW weighs in at a whopping 2.3kg / 5.1 pounds.

yes. but how much does a loaded one weigh?

according to fas.org the rocket is another 1.8 kg.

still, doesn't tally with the search results i got last night.

i never played with a loaded one. i have messed with a few laws and rpg 7 launchers, they don't weigh all that much.

i've never had a loaded one so i can't verify.

third hand shaggy dog stories about war heroes, don't really intrest me. the internet is full of them. i'm perfectly capable of walking down the road with a couple of bags of cement, and i've seen a 55 year old man push start a loaded 40 ton lorry.

(your aware that the m16 a1 was replaced by the a2 at the end of the seventies, maybe 1978. right?  i'll stick with my google results for the time being) i never listen to that kind of story point blank.

i'm still of the impression that law rockets are better/heavier than rpg 7. and that rpg 7 is known to do the job.

you may well be right about the actual weights.

on t.v. i see unarmoured rpg men carrying a loaded launcher and three spares on their back. consequently this strikes me as the optimum load. those guys on t.v. are invariably locals and don't carry packs or body armour, or extra weapons.

again i wasn't in Nam so i can't corroborate your stories of laws and t55's. they maybe correct they may not.

[AdmiralKarlDonuts 0]

One would assume that "complete M72A2" would already factor in the weight of the rocket, since it is a one-shot weapon and to not have the rocket inside would mean that it's now a non-functioning weapon and you might as well throw it away.

Even if your figures are right, it totals to 4.1kg for one of them, and that's a far cry from your numbers.

I am quite aware when the M16A2 was introduced, but that doesn't change the fact that his unit (1st Armored Division) was still wearing OD greens, steel helmets and lugging -A1s and Colt 1911's until the late 80s.

The units stateside got all the new stuff before those deployed in Germany did, for whatever reason.  Only when he rotated back to the states did he get the new gear (save for the BDUs, which they ended up getting in Germany).  Nobody waved a magic wand in 1978 and gave everyone brand-new rifles.

I apologize that this pic is kind of crappy but it's the result of a quick search:

Armor, AK, RPG, LBE, helmet...admittedly I can't tell if he's carrying extra rockets but he's already got some of the gear you say RPG gunners don't carry.  Most of the time locals, guerrillas, militia, etc, don't have all the extra gear to lug around - it's got nothing to do with any sort of "optimum load."

Anyway, it should be fairly obvious that if a LAW can't take out a T-55, it isn't going to take out anything tougher.  BTW, that's a from a book, not some fantastic claim I made up

*EDIT AGAIN* - alright, I'm done....not going to fan the flames anymore...seems like it might get a little hot in here, so I apologize Let's all be friends

[GanjaSmuggler 0]

You guys have a lot of goo comments, And Finish Soldier it wa sme that said that. I also would like to see this implamented in addons. It is not fun seeing a rpg-7v hit your t-90 and you dieing.

My other point is that tanks now a days are vulnerable but tanks do not go on operations alone. They have infantry support they go in with air power and AA. so it is rare to see a full tank battalion lose half its tank. Even the russians did not lose alot of their tanks in Afganistain(except the crapy T-55). I still think the T-90 and The abrams are the best tanks out there for protection.

[Rishon 0]

I'll tell you right now, IF we go to proper war, AT missles like the AT-4 or RPG-16's will only piss a tank off, at least thats what they said in Basic.

[Rune 0]

Realism discussions always drift into these childish 'fact'-dropping sessions. Why do people insist on writing things like 'my ÃœBER-tank can take a hit from your KABAAM-missile and keep on going, check for yourself by looking at this picture' - truth is it is all about luck and you cannot make statistics on a single or very few cases.

There is a very small chance that the biggest missile will not seriously damage a lightly armoured vehicle and there will be a small chance for even fairly weak anti-armour weapons to kill the mightiest tank. The discussion cannot be about that(please please), so it is really all about what people believe to be a reasonable chance.

Personally I find the OFP armour/anti-armour system very very annoying, because unlike most other things about the game, it does not make sense to use real world solutions. Why in OFP would I ever bother to try and shoot a tank from above or behind when it does not help my chances?

Also the fact that OFP armour 'wears down' like in a health-bar-shooter or Command and Conquer game is annoying. It is only a matter of how many shots to finish a vehicle regardless of the weapon. In real life you would have to hit the same small spot again to get any improvement in your chances of destroying an armoured vehicle with following shots.

I agree with Heatseaker that people tend not to use APCs because you and everyone with you die too easily. If the wounerability of APCs in OFP is realistic then all armies who use them are stupid... Eizei's point about the vehicles blowing up killing everybody nearby only makes this worse, but that is caused by something else and is not really related to armour. Most OFP explosions kill outright from too far away in my opinion. Small explosions in particular are too lethal - possibly caused by someone knowing their stated 'kill radius' as Xm and OFP then being made to kill everybody inside that radius, whereas the intended meaning could be more like 'man sized target will get hit, on average, by one dangerous fragment at that range' or something like that.

To be fair the game works very well for fighting on foot 75% of the time or more, which is what people generally do in my experience. We might loose players to other games if a LAW/Carl Gustaf would sometimes do nothing more than give your position away even when aimed perfectly.

...and aj_addons, thanks for pointing out that uranium MESH thing, using plate uranium makes no sense.

[InqWiper 0]

Quote[/b] ]law's are not "light" in weight. they are light as in made for use against "light armour".

And NLAW (Next generation Light Anti-tank Weapon) wich can take out MBTs is ofcourse not light either, its used to take out light armour wich is why its also called MBT LAW.

The LAW is light compared to heavier AT weapons like TOWs and stuff. I belive the LAW is light but I do also belive it should only be used against light armour.

[somebloke 0]

Light anti tank, is basically a rocket launcher designed to be carried by a small platoon/group of soldiers and used in defense against lightly armoured vehicles, e.g brdm's and maybe the odd bmp.