Russian Tanks Got a Taste of U.S. TOW Missiles in Syria

[rangerrebew]

 July 23, 2021

Russian Tanks Got a Taste of U.S. TOW Missiles in Syria

In February 2016, Syrian rebels filmed a video of a TOW missile streaking towards a T-90 tank in northeast Aleppo.
by Sebastien Roblin

Here's What You Need to Remember: When Moscow intervened in Syria in 2015 on behalf the beleaguered regime of Bashar al-Assad, it also transferred around thirty T-90As to the Syrian Arab Army, as well as upgraded T-62Ms and T-72s. The Syrian military could desperately use this armored infusion, as it had lost over two thousand armored vehicles in the preceding years—especially after Syrian rebels began receiving American TOW-2A missiles in 2014.

The interconnected conflicts raging across the Middle East today have amounted to a dreadful human catastrophe with spiraling global consequence. One of their lesser effects has been to deflate the reputations of Western main battle tanks mistakenly thought to be night-invulnerable in the popular imagination.

Iraqi M1 Abrams tanks not only failed to prevent he capture of Mosul in 2014, but they were captured and turned against their owners. In Yemen, numerous Saudi M1s were knocked out by Houthi rebels. Turkey, which had lost a number of M60 Pattons and upgrade M60T Sabra tanks to Kurdish and ISIS fighters eventually deployed its fearsome German-built Leopard 2A4 tanks. ISIS destroyed eight to ten in a matter of days.

https://nationalinterest.org/blog/reboot/russian-tanks-got-taste-us-tow-missiles-syria-190381

[rangerrebew]

To me, it seems a bit cumbersome for one person to lug around.

[AARguy]

TOW is a "smart" weapon. It is wire guided. The gunner must keep tracking the enemy tank until the missile impacts. This keeps the gunner occupied and vulnerable to enemy fire from trigger pull to impact. This 1970's technology is truly obsolete. Now we have "brilliant" anti tank weapons like LONGBOW HELLFIRE (from Apache mainly) and the Infantry-borne JAVELIN. These weapons have all the "smarts" in the round itself. The gunner puts crosshirs on the target, pulls the trigger and leaves. The rounds guide themselves to a moving target by identifying a straight line, right angle, etc (something not in nature but in man-made objects), locking on and tracking itself to the target.

In Desert Storm, six guys with three pickup truck loads of Javelin defeated an entire Iraqi tank Battalion. Tank usefulness and deployment must be rethought. Too soon to tell yet, ut hings are changing. Throw in CHAMP technology, which would disable tank fire control computers, lasers, communications and more... and no one really knows how important tanks will be in the future.