![]() ![]() The Americans are fielding a new mobile gun, the 38-ton Mobile Protected Firepower vehicle, that looks a lot like a tank but packs-you guessed it-a 105-millimeter gun. Army’s recently retired Mobile Gun System. In that role, the M-55S is less a tank than it is a “mobile gun” in the class of the French army’s AMX-10RC, the Italian army’s Centauro or the U.S. When the infantry run into a bunker or fortified building they can’t defeat, they would call in an M-55S to put a few cannon rounds into it. The brigade’s M-55Ss could function as infantry support vehicles while the M-2s are busy fighting tanks. After, of course, the M-2s drop off their infantry squads. So the brigade could deploy its 28-ton, three-crew M-2s to fight Russian tanks. Those M-2s the 47th Assault Brigade is getting? They pack dual TOW launchers on their turrets. This exceeds the effective range of many tank guns, including the M-55S’s gun. It’s worth noting that the American Tube-Launched Optically-Tracked Wire-Guided missile can deliver a downward-blasting warhead as far as 2.8 miles. A modern anti-tank missile “allows a single soldier to target and destroy even the most heavily-armored main battle tank with an almost guaranteed kill-rate, at great range and with minimal risk,” Vincent Delany wrote for the U.S. Owen isn’t the only observer to make this claim. His conclusion: IFVs can replace tanks- if they’re armed with anti-tank missiles. ![]() ![]() So how does a mechanized brigade with no real tanks, but lots of IFVs, fight an enemy brigade that might have scores of tanks of its own? William Owen at the Royal United Services Institute in London has mulled it over. ![]()
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