How to defeat an APC

[Isaac]

UUUUUUUMMMMMMM ...........

BTRs aren't just wandering around out there by themselves.
That BTR is part of a company (more BTRs) that is part of a battalion that is part of a .....

And as for hitting it with pot-shots while staying out of range, etc .... the scenario is supposed to be a group armed with our normal compliment.
I dunno what the heck you carry around, but I won't be humping anything that can outrange a mounted 14.5mm machinegun.

You have to present it with obstacles, and they aren't obstacles unless you can concentrate fire on them.
Your main problem isn't it's armor; the problem is it's radio.

For a storyline ...
Take a cast iron drain pipe (they are leaded together in older houses), close one end, pack it with a blasting cap and black powder, insert wooden dowel (turned down 4x4).
A couple of these buried in the road, bordered with obstacles could potentially be used to flip a BTR.
In the confusion, your geurillas could descend on the wreck to dispatch the occupants.
Heck, the vehicle may still be okay when uprighted, and the story could get better when they use it to sneak attack the rest of the company.

[RT]

If you guys do not have something that can outrange the 14.5mm cupola gun, then you need to be saving your pennies for a .50 cal of some sort. I am not in a militia, but in my loosely associated circle of survivalists, there are plenty of .50 caliber rifles with scopes. Mine is something of a quasi-improvised piece, and the guys who are better funded (eg, regularly employed in real jobs) have higher grade stuff.

While the cartridge is the same as a regular .50 cal (we don't favor the match chambers), the scoped .50 caliber rifles can operate efficiently out to the longer ranges where the mounted weapons simply cannot relialbly hit a point target. The big guns are made to aim for a vehicle or building not a precision shot, let alone the lack of optics means he is not going to be spotting even a casually hidden shooter. Out past 500 yards, he will not be seeing a muzzle flash either.

It would take a stabilized thermal tracking gun system on a vehicle to take down a single man at long range unless you are talking about someone standing out in the open in the desert. For now at least, those types of targeting systems are only available in top of the line western main battle tanks like the M1 Abrams series.

Another thing to keep in mind, all armored vehicles are a pain in the ass to drive while buttoned down. A lot of operators are not really all that good at it since even doing it in training is not very safe. If you pepper the vehicles with small arms fire and the terrain starts getting rough, it is not out of the realm of reality that the guy could drive off a cliff or into a building, then the building collapse on the vehicle. No joke.

One thing I have noticed about the old Soviet APCs is that unlike our M113 and Bradley series, they are not easy to unass in a hurry. A guy wearing full gear and hauling a weapon is not going to get in and out of the thing in a hurry. I know on the BTR-60, they can only get out one or two at a time. The way the BTR-60 looked to me, you could nail some guy while he is halfway out the hatch, and then the hatch would be stuck open and the guys inside having a hell of a time either trying to pull the body back in or stuff it out the hatch, but with the guy being all deadweight with belts and straps all over him, they would be having a real hard time of it. You could keep dumping rounds into the open hatch and the guys inside would be pretty much screwed. Note, however, the Russian stuff was made usually so that you can't get a clear shot at the driver through any of the troop hatches from the outside. The guy would be alive, but he would be driving a hearse with a very messy interior.

As for the numbers of opposition you would be dealing with in a particular engagement, that is going to vary widely. It would depend a lot on how thin they spread themselves.

[wvmtnbiker]

my .02 cents for the novel.

Have the charaters make short cannon from 2 inch water pipe that has been reienforced with extra metal welded at the "chamber" end. For ammo use long pices of harded rod, put into some kind of simple sabot or spacer. Bury teh cannon in a hill side or road side debre.

Activate remotely by rc or simple electical switch.

Use multiple ones near the expected front and back of convoy.

Cheap, easy to make by the dozen. Will at least disable a few of the APC's.

Once they are stationary, the guy that fired the cannons from his concealed position, helps guild teh fire from the guys that are over the horizon with homemade mortars.

If used in the book, please mail 2 cents to . . .


Good luck with the book!

[simon jester]

That means your average reasonably well prepared military force has a lot of spare tires around in bulk cargo. It takes a lot of ordnance to destroy that bulk cargo, all the while it does little to affect enemy fighting forces at the moment.

This is true,but,combat troops more often than not, get the bit between their teeth and out distance their supply line, leaving what they require to sustain fighting behind, and have to stop somewhere and set up a static defense until the supplies catch up.

Good luck on the book.

[sons of liberty]

if your serious email me i am currently in and am assigned to an anti armor platoon. some of this stuff is too "macgyver-ish" for me to read any more. i got down as far as the guy with spikes in the road! wow whoever claims that one what does he do in your milita "reloader" i mean common? the cupola gun idea is sorta right. to go into further details ask and i will post but if not needed then its cool but, if you want right now real world input ask.

[Hard Rock]

Personally, I'd just have one of the guys be an NFA nut with a Lahti anti tank cannon (20x138b mm) with some old Nazi AP rounds. They'll slice through most APC's and light armor with no problems. It won't do much against a tank or other harder armor though. Plus, the Lahti's are out there though the ammo is scarce and you can play up the fact that the 130 pound gun isn't easy to move or carry.

Mike

[HoboWithAK]

Lets hope they are plain old BTR-80s.

From Army Technology-

"On the BTR-80A (in service since 1994) and BTR-80S, the standard BTR-80 turret is replaced with a modular armaments system. The BTR-80A is fitted with a 30mm 2A72 automatic gun and 7.62mm PKT coaxial machine gun. The 30mm gun has a maximum firing rate of 330 rounds per minute and can fire AP-T (Armour Piercing - Tracer), HEF-I (High Explosive Fragmentation - Incendiary) and HE-T (High Explosve - Tracer) rounds. The BTR-80S is equipped with 14mm KPVT machine gun and 7.62mm PKT coaxial machine gun. For both these modifications, the armament system can be altered to fit customer requirements. The armament sighting system is manual.The fire control system includes a dual magnification day sight and x5.5 night sight."

Sorta screwed there.

First, break down a BTR-80. 3 crew, 7 troops in back. It's amphibious. Does 80kph on the road and 8 in the water. Liquid cooled diesel engine. Can't go up terrain more than 30 degrees and can withstand tilted terrain up to 25 degrees. One KVPT and one PKT coax with a 360 traverse and can elevate 60 degrees up and 4 down. It has 2 NODs. Has tubes for 6 smoke grenades on each side. It has 4 gunports on each side for those commies to shoot you. It has a 4x4 drivetrain toating 8 low pressure all terrain run flats. It sits 475 mm above the ground.

So that is your BTR-80. Can't attack it high, at night, or from close range without getting shot at. It can run away and you can't sink it.

Now, look at it's weaknesses. It's engine is liquid cooled. Find a way to break a coolant line, and you just might get lucky. It can float, but only at 8KPH, so if I tries to swim away you can still get in some shots. Very light armor, get anything (according to this source) bigger than a .338 on the sides or back and you have punctured it's skin.

So, you have to think ahead. Remote mines (be it radio or wire detonated, it will do the trick) will easily blow up through the undercarrage and atleast disable it. They are probably your best choice, if you know he is coming. If the troops inside aren't dead, you can bet they are determined to first try and get the vehicle moving. If it is disabled, which it probably is, they might start shooting at you and pouring out the hatches. You know what to do from there.

A road-side car bomb might kill a few, but I doubt it would stop the guys in the BTR-80.

If you get suprised by one, you are going to have a hard time getting rid of it. It has a couple guns to keep you under cover, and if it doesn't deploy it's 7 troops while you are keeping your head down, they will probably open a few gunports and shoot back. In few minutes it will use it's radios to call you in and support will probably be sent. Now you have some more people rushing to your position. Reinforcements could be there in minutes, so you have to get away from the situation quick and get the hell out of there. Unless you have some explosives, a high powered rifle, or something anti-tank like, your best chance is probably to run.

Probably a little late and not helpful, but it's midnight, Jay Lenno is his usual boring self, and I need something to do or i'll lose it.

[Ought Six]

- Dig a BTR-sized rectangular pit at a terrain choke point the vehicle must pass through
- Put a number of 5-gallon glass water bottles in the bottom, filled with gas & diesel mixed with battery acid, and with potassium chlorate-soaked rags taped to the outside
- Cover it with a layer of ~5" logs, then a layer of brush, then a layer of dirt

Lead vehicle will fall through the pit cover, smashing the bottles. Battery acid will come in contact with the chlorate-soaked rags, causing combustion of gas & diesel. The resulting open-pit barbeque will block the head of the vehicle column. This is a signal for a hidden squad toward the rear of the column to attack the last vehicle with molotovs and fire from .30-06 'black tip' AP rounds (will penetrate side armor of BTR) or .50 cal rounds. If this is done where the vehicles are confined by the terrain (road carved into a mountain side, at the bottom of a canyon, a cut through higher terrain), the rest of the column will be trapped between the two disabled BTRs. The attackers can then take them under fire, roll boulders down on them, throw molotovs, and/or dynamite the hillsides above.

Ragnar Benson, in his book Mantrapping, has a boobytrap called the Cuban Water Trap. The trick is to find the right piece of terrain. You need a place where a road or trail runs up a canyon or ravine, with a good-sized stream running in the bottom. Near the head of the canyon, you set up a log dam arrainged so that one log prop is the key structural support for the other logs. If you put a lot of brush & branches behind the logs, it will leak a lot but still work, just like a beaver dam. You either yank out the prop log with a heavy rope, log A-frame & large falling weight, or attach a small charge to cut the prop log. Then, the dam collapses and all the water & logs flow down and wipe out whatever is in the canyon. If you had a big enough pond behind your log dam, I would think this should work.

[dogsoldier308]

If it's Militia, wouldn't it be more appropriate for them to be facing Bradley's and Abrams. I didn't see too many Soviet vehicles outside Waco.

[PaulSV650]

I don't know much about this, but how about a character who was into hunting and had a dangerous game rifle? Maybe .458 solids would do the trick....

[Efraim]

Try an Organic Tactical Mine......




Drop one of these on it from a bridge. My sergeant related an incident where one of the guys in a 113 column sliced a hive with an antenna and shut down the whole column due to some guys needing medevac.

[Absolom_Absolom]

Alma the Younger,

Why are you having the bad guys drive foreign vehicles anyway. If you want to make your novel more realist, and more compelling then go with something that is more likely to be the case. Have your invading force driving U.S. made Bradleys. Also if we ever do see 'UN blue helments' trodding upon our soil, they either will be, or will be accompanied by, troops dressed in a familar camouflage pattern, and wearing I.D. tags on those uniforms that read "U.S. Army". After all, in the entirity of its history, U.S. FedGov has never needed the assistance of outside forces when it came to the problem of intruding upon the rights (and lives) of 'We the people'.

I am YOUR servant and compatriot,

A_A

GOD SAVE THE SOUTH! (AND YOUR NEXK OF THE WOODS TOO!)
NO KING BUT JESUS!
NO WORLD ORDER BUT THE KINGDOM OF GOD!
DEO VINDICE!

[Irish survivor]

Used in Northern ireland.Culvert bombs.Pack old milk churns or 55 gallon drums with Anfo and Semtex as initaor[Sic].detonate with a radar detector and a speed detector gun.No wires,no signals to jam etc.Totally destroyed landrovers and saracens[urban 6wd APC].
Other idea,two men teams on dirt bikes armed with large molotovs,IEDs ,whatever zip in and out of the armourd coloums,chucking IEDs on the engine bays or any open trucks or hatches.Apprently used by the Isrealis and Plastine[sic] fighters respectivly,with great sucess.

[MET1]

I don't know how to blow them up, but here is what it looks like when it happens..
Chechen anti armor video

[Prometheus]

Originally posted by MET1:
I don't know how to blow them up, but here is what it looks like when it happens..
Chechen anti armor video

Wow, interesting video.... I really liked the two guys with belt fed's shooting into the transport truck behind them (car w/ tinted windows... back two passengers shoot thru the tinted window... The guy driving that mother musta craped his pants [I wonder if it was before or after he was wasted])