Lives of a crew of the T-72 shielded tank have been saved in a fighting near Damascus thanks to its latticed screens and additional armor.
Photo: twitter.com / syrianmilitary
The T-72 shielded tank saved lives of its crew in a fighting near the Syrian city of Damascus, while it was struck with the Malyutka upgraded anti-tank guided missile, equipped with a tandem warhead, the Vestnik Mordovii information website reported. The tank was hit because its crew made a mistake and chose a dangerous position.
The Syrian Army actively uses the T-72 and the ZSU-23-4 ‘Shilka’ tanks, which were modernized, in the fighting near Damascus. The armored vehicles received latticed screens and additional armor. These improvements have sharply increased protection of the tanks. As result, the T-72 tanks withstood even strikes of rocket-propelled grenades with a tandem warhead. However, during the recent fighting near Damascus, one of such screened tanks was unlucky.
crew mistake parked in a dangerous position , this was the second hit ,crew left after the first hit ,all safe
mostly improved Malutka pic.twitter.com/bO5mCPWdBd— SyrianMilitaryCap. (@syrianmilitary) October 8, 2016
The Malyutka anti-tank guided weapon, which is used by Syrian terrorists, is manufactured without a license in several countries, in particular, in China, Iran and Serbia. Arabian states purchased such weapons in Serbia and then transported it to terrorists in Syria. Terrorists also managed to seize such weapons from The Syrian army.
Syrian soldiers on their own equip their tanks with slat armour. These simple protective elements have more than once saved lives of Syrian crews. An engine smoke generating system, installed on the T-72, fighting in Syria, has also made a good showing. About a month ago, an aerosol ‘camouflage’ saved a tank of the Syrian Army from a rocket hit at the last moment.
Photo: twitter.com / syrianmilitary
Photo: twitter.com / syrianmilitary
Photo: vestnik-rm.ru
May be others more knowledgeable than myself could comment on this. The use of lattice shielding has always seemed like a good idea to me and I don’t understand why it is not used more. Weight wise it would not add much to the tank. To my view it would also seem the perfect solution to causing any charge to detonate prematurely. What is the expert opinion?
You are correct in all accounts…is a matter of desition frim commanders, in a particular area,to put “lattice” armor or not, since is a great expense of time and effort. Welding and shop facilities may not be available, etc. etc. “Lattice”, as well as “active” (exploding) armor reinforcement, iare defeated by tandem (“Monroe”) hollow charges but, when used together, work against these, tandem charge rocket and missiles. Finally, the enemy may use other weapos like top attacking misssiles (Javelins and others). Anti Armor and Tank Warfare is a bit complicated now a days but be at ease, the good guys of Bashar al Assad are winning !!
Many thanks for taking the time to explain these things.
Very nice reply by opereta, but I would like to add: for now a simple and robust would be a smoke screen dispenser and 360 directional laser warning. This will warn the crew of most ATGMs being aimed at the tank and give them precise bearing to the jihadi John trying to fry their tank….
Unfortunately, a lot of ATGMs (especially Soviet-RUssian ones) cannot be detected and or jammer because they simply are controlled by a wire, and they lack laser rangefinders. Also jihadists have been thought by their “US” advisors not to aim the laser rangefinder and guidance beam at the tank at all: they fire the missile somewhere lower or higher (for example at a building). A second guy is using a high zoom ration binoculars to warn the operator when the misile is very close to the tank (less than 500 meters) and the operator moves the laser beam on top of the tank. This is extremely effective at long ranges ( at the edge of the weapon’s operational range) since the rocket engine has already burned its fuel and the missile is decelerating. Lower speed means more time for the operator and his buddy to observer the flightpath and guide the missile on top of the tank in the last seconds before impact. This leaves almost no time for tanks automatics/crew to react.
Of course with the introduction of Armata the game will change since all missile will be automaticall y tracked down and shot by the automated active protection system without the crew even having to bother knowing. After that the system will just give the direction from which the missile was fired an it takes less than 2 seconds for the crew to OBLITERATE the jihadist scum with a HE shell. And even if he is running down stairs, with the autoloader they will be able to bring down the whole building to give them a proper burial……