How to defeat an APC

[Soda]

Originally posted by Efraim:
stufff, call up the construction battalion, other stuff

Soda turns the sarCHASM on:
What is wrong with you!!!!!!
Have you forgotten our good ole' friends the "Lemmings"



They'll build you a bridge in no time

[ironjaw83]

you may want to check this out.
http://www.zerorisk-international.com/WORD%20DOCUMENTS/IED's%20August%202006.doc

also, i like the idea of using radar detectors. you may not even need to activate them(they are always going off with any kind of EM backround noise i.e. IR sensors for automatic doors and such). just watch as the target drives over the device and start peppering them with small arms fire (not for effect) when they get frustrated and call reinforcements to try to find who is pissing them off, their radio may activate the device.

[clever]

I wonder how heavy equipment could be used. Theres a lot of d8 cats and bigger sitting around the country. At close range they should be able to take out all sorts of armoured vehicles. The catch is exactly how does one sneak up on a armoured vehicle with something like that. A d8 cat is big and slow, well compared to a armoured personel carrier. Guess one could be hidden in brush but shouldn't thermal equipment spot it easy?

I wonder if some sort of giant grappling hooks could be welded togeather then attached to a D8 or D10 cat a few hundred feet away. Keep the whole set up covered up with brush etc. Then when the time is right start it all up. The hook catches the APC and takes it for a ride, hopefully knocking it over or at least tearing it up good.
If one were to go really primitive and had a lot of time I figure avalanches could be set up in advance. Take a real big log, rig it to slide down a hill, at the right time just cut the rope. heck if you had the time build the thing inside a building. Reinforce the frame, build the equivalent of a giant cement log inside of it. If a apc ever shows up at the door of the building cut the rope and a big 20 ton cement block comes craching out of the buildinga few stories up, that should have a effect. Sad though if the apc isn't right where its supposed to be.

Heck rig overpasses to blow and land on them.

Make anti-tank obstacles and rig it to look like brush. When the tank just tries to drive through it it gets stuck. Someone once took a tank on a joy ride in florida, he got stuck on one of the cement thinsg that seperate traffic. Tanks can't drive over everything, just most things.

Theres something I wonder about. Remeber those strange bullets that have a plastic frame around a metal core to get high speeds out of big guns. Basically turns a .308 into a super fast 22. Well what about that in a old civil war cannon? Civil war cannons can't take the high pressures needed for high velocities firing the cannon ball their meant for. Now lets say they had a small steel projectile surround by a sabot. Theres a lot less weight to the projectile so the pressure doesn't build up. The projectile can build up to very high speeds and greater range. Just make the sabot out of wood. Wouldn't take much technology to make one. Now if your going to make one accurate for long ranges, that takes knowledge. A old civil war cannon could theoretically be turned into some kind of anti apc weapon in theory. Of course since I never tried it I really don't know.
Thats the problem with a lot of these ideas. Some could really work, its the "you don't know till you tried" which could get you killed. Of course if some one is going to face a apc in battle without any modern weapons meant for dealing with that threat, its better to come up with something instead of just dying. Thats probably how the old molotiv cocktail that worked on the old tanks got started.

[clever]

Thought I would add, Iraq wouldn't have a lot of heavy machinery or know how. What they have is a lot of old explosives laying around. So some of their ideas could be used here, but I think Americans could think up something better. Theres a lot of little machine shops and all sorts of interesting equipment out there.

[TP]

Originally posted by clever:
Heck rig overpasses to blow and land on them.

?????

If you've got the material and explosives to attack a concrete and reinforced steel structure, you have WAY more than enough to directly attack an armored vehicle (or four).

Grappling hooks with tines that could drag a 13-tonne (minimum) vehicle?

20-ton cement logs suspended inside a building? Attached to what? Maybe the gantry crane the buildings forgot and left hidden inside one of the walls?

I wish the badguys overseas would try some of the ideas that have been kicked around on here. It would be a lot less effective than the real-world techniques that make sense and are actually used.

[clever]

D8 weighs 26 tons, D9 48 tons, D10 85 tons, D11 (which are rare) 111 tons. A apc engine is a much smaller proportionally then the engine for large earth moving equipment of the same size. The only problem is getting to the apc into a postion where it can't get to the earth moving equipment before the apc is squashed. Theres some very heavy cables out there that can take a lot more then some 13 ton object.

Maybe just have a radio spotter. Theres a apc on the other side of a house, drive through the house and squash it.
How about the apc is driving around a mountain road. One side is to steep, the otherside is a cliff. Around the turn the apc runs head on into a d9 cat. The front blade on a d8 cat gets a foot thick. So good odds this particular apc might just not have something that can take out a d9 head on. So best odds for the apc is just to back up. Unless of course the d9 cat pushes the apc off the edge first.

The problem with using explosives against an apc is getting the thing to drive dirtectly over the explosive. So a overpass solves that problem.

Remember these are suppossed to be ideas of how someone who isn't supplied with military equipment can defeat a apc. Of course there not something some group thats well supplied will do. Its something someone desperate could do.

Heres the local police in florida versus a tank. A tank can get stuck on a concrete medium.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shawn_Nelson

[LAWCOP]

STEAL A tank.
WHen you say "stop" are you saying to halt its progress or
blow it up.
there is a difference.
seriously you don't need explosives to stop an apc,
A good heavy cable with good anchors will drive one into a ditch and roll it if the ditch is deep enough and steep enough.

A tree will stop it if the road is tight and the tree is big. It is not a tank. A chainsaw will make any wheeled vehicles life miserable if the forest is tight. Drop several trees across each other and they don't even have to be that big.


once stopped the troops either have to leave or deal with the obstruction,
what you do after that is your call.

[TP]

Originally posted by clever:
Theres some very heavy cables out there that can take a lot more then some 13 ton object.

Of course, but the issue is not load-bearing capacity or crude weight. It is applying that against an enemy who doesn't want you to.

The limit on cabling a hostile isn't the capacity of the cables- its attaching them.

The best use a cable would be indeed the one last mentioned- diagonally across a road to veer the APC into a natural cable or ditch. Without getting into details, I'm sure everyone here has seen news reports of our guys overseas in armored vehicles drowning after their track went into a canal or something similar.

And perhaps the biggest thing to remember is that APCs don't operate on their own. At least not if their leaders are anything other than grossly incompetent.

[cardcamo]

a malatov is a big target on your ass sayin look here..a 50 has a chance..shadow it..wait for it to unload..or ied it..
unless yourein the mountains and Jesus loves you, you better hystgr...sorry...

[ironjaw83]

the army seems actually has a manual regarding this exact topic (really its an appendix to a manual)

http://www.globalsecurity.org/milita...21-75/Apph.htm

some of these suggestions have been kicked around here and some havent. some of you talk about explosive like they are hard to get your hands on. well maybe you have to be someone famous like timothy mcveigh to get your hands on large quantities of that kind of material.

[ISC]

lets take a step back from the tactics part of this discussion (which has been very good BTW) and add a strategic diminsion.

Tracked vehicles require an enormous amount of maintenence. LAV do too, but to a lesser extent. If one is interested in stopping enemy armored vehicles then taking out their support personel will strangle the logistics tail of that entire unit and gradually make them combat ineffective. contaminating fuel supplies, eliminating supplies of spare parts, sabotaging key tools and equipment etc all would further that goal.

Additionally, it may be hard to take out an armored vehicle on the tactical level when it is advancing on you in a firefight, but taking out a key bridge with the vehicle on it will take it out of the fight if it is an anticipated part of a QRF.

Even something as simple as weakening structural supports on a bridge so that it can't support a 5 or 10 ton vehicle but still be able to support car and light truck traffic would yield the desired results if one could entice the targets into travelling down that route.

[ironjaw83]

Originally posted by ISC:
lets take a step back from the tactics part of this discussion (which has been very good BTW) and add a strategic diminsion.

Tracked vehicles require an enormous amount of maintenence. LAV do too, but to a lesser extent. If one is interested in stopping enemy armored vehicles then taking out their support personel will strangle the logistics tail of that entire unit and gradually make them combat ineffective. contaminating fuel supplies, eliminating supplies of spare parts, sabotaging key tools and equipment etc all would further that goal.

Additionally, it may be hard to take out an armored vehicle on the tactical level when it is advancing on you in a firefight, but taking out a key bridge with the vehicle on it will take it out of the fight if it is an anticipated part of a QRF.

Even something as simple as weakening structural supports on a bridge so that it can't support a 5 or 10 ton vehicle but still be able to support car and light truck traffic would yield the desired results if one could entice the targets into travelling down that route.

thats a good point. i just saw a documentary on the military channel that talked about the the demise of the main battle tank. it said that on average, a main battle tank requires maintenence every four hours to continue at maximum effectiveness and that if an underpowered enemy wanted to take out the heavy armor all they would need to do is wait four hours after one passed and take out the support vehicles. its a lot easier to take out a truck than a heavily armored vehicle. it was exactly what you are talking about.

[TP]

There you go, injecting some reality into this.

And I was looking forward to the giant swinging tank-smoosher devices and other silliness. [img]smile.gif[/img]

The same applies for defeating drones and aircraft- you can't and won't in the air, but you can and should on the ground, via their log and C2 networks.

[Topper]

Re: How to defeat an APC

thats a good point. i just saw a documentary on the military channel that talked about the the demise of the main battle tank. it said that on average, a main battle tank requires maintenence every four hours to continue at maximum effectiveness and that if an underpowered enemy wanted to take out the heavy armor all they would need to do is wait four hours after one passed and take out the support vehicles. its a lot easier to take out a truck than a heavily armored vehicle. it was exactly what you are talking about.

I spent three years in an Armor unit and the support vehicles are a great target. Ammo carriers just don't have sufficient armor and lets not forget 5 tons and other support vehicles that don't really have any protection at all. Support elements also don't have the training and weapons that maneuver elements have, so yes they really make a great targets...

[goose19726]

Re: How to defeat an APC

I cannot add anything as to how to disable the vehicle in question, but please let me know when your book is published, I would love to read it