The Army's latest field manual for tank operations is loaded with new tactics and procedures for drone warfare.
But the best tactic, the manual says, is to shoot them with a tank. Army photo by Sgt. 1st Class Christopher Hoffert.
Not quite, but that describes some of the reaction after the service released its latest update to its “Tank Platoon” manual, known as ATP 3-20.15, late last week, and a set of diagrams deep in the appendix caught the eye of many online. It’s not hard to see why.
Taken by themselves, the diagrams do come across as a bit… optimistic. They present an extremely simplified vision of a hypothetical tank-vs-drone encounter, a subject that combat in Ukraine has proven is neither simple nor hypothetical for armor formations.
In the diagrams, a squad of M1 Abrams main battle tanks aim at a passing drone — which the Army calls an unmanned aircraft system or UAS — and shoot it down with fire from their main 120mm cannon.
The course of action instructions alongside the diagram suggest that crews employ the M1028 120mm canister rounds for the takedown.
The M1028 is a fairly awful weapon to contemplate, a 120mm shell stuffed with over 1000 tungsten projectiles designed to scatter like grapeshot and mow through dismounted infantry or,
in this case, clip a fragile drone in its wide field of disbursement. At least that seems to be the thinking here.
Gunners should lead a straight-flying UAS, the manual says, by that most All-American of distance estimates, “one-half football field.”
A second diagram addresses the quadcopter variety of drone, which are rarely seen flying straight and narrow but instead loop and dive directly at their targets. For those, the diagrams say, aim “slightly above helicopter body.”
No comments:
Post a Comment