What do you think the outcome of the tank battles would have been in this alternate scenario?

3 factors.
a. gun-still ineffective.

b. ammunition-Russian ammunition would be a problem, but not that serious a problem. Iraqi [export] ammunition will still shatter on American plate.

c. Iraqi crew training and armor tactics-still ineffective.

No difference.

 

Herald

What about the gun launched ATGMs?

If your forces are caught flat footed while armed with ATGMs as opposed to being caught flat footed while armed only with guns they are still going to get wiped out before they get their act together.

 

The Iraqis biggest problem was lack of training and lousy leadership. Their technological inferiority just made the consequences of those problems far starker. If the Iraqis had been armed with M1s and the US had been armed with T72s the results would have been largely the same, albiet with higher casualty counts for the US.

Was the Refleks available for '91?

The wreckage left strewn about in the desert would have just been more expensive.....It wasn't TECHNICAL inferiority that defeated the Iraqi's.  As someone else has written had the US had T-72's and the Iraqi's the M-1's the end result would have been the same, only the US cost would have changed.

4) Iraq's training doctrine (Unified Training, not Stove-Piped Training, with realistic simulated combat a la NTC);

 

5) Iraq's training budget

 

6) Iraq's Equipment (Western designed for moderate to heavy use, rather than short-term war usage).

 

Simply giving the Iraqi Army better "toys" was not going to produce a better outcome.  The Iraqi Army was a sub-optimal grouping of individuals and units, from 1980 until 2003 that was not going to be improved without drastic SOFTWARE changes, not hardware patches.

 

what was that saying?

Men Matter Most

 

myself Id have played decoys, a LOT

id have had my guys polled for proper nutjobs, and had them drive old cars, modded up to look like tanks.

 

look how well the serbians did  under the nato bombardment

they lost 9 tanks

and hundreds of decoys

each was as expensive to destroy

Russian Fanboy could not come on SP and other boards and say GW1 doesn't count because the monkey model got beat, not the real thing.  Instead of Massive number: zero kill ratio M1 has massive number: single digit number kill ratio.

Had the Soviets field the versions with tandem warheads yet?  Or did this only happen after they saw the results in Iraq?

 

If not, then they would not have pieced the front armor of the M1A1's anyway.

The difference between a gun fired ATGM and a HEAT round is performance at long range. Any performance at long range requires being able to aquire your target at long range. Considering how often tactical suprise was achieved by the attacking coalition forces (the fact that the Iraqis were often suprised--in a desert--should give you an idea how incopetent they were) you cannot expect the Iraqis to have been doing a lot of long range target aquisition. Technology is not a substitute for training--it just increases the edge posessed by well trained forces. Bolos are still bolos, regardless of what whizbang toys they may pack.

the Iraqi equipment was designed by the soviets for 500m or less engagements which was deemed long enough. the M1 had 3000m capability when matched in an open desert it became a strategic fault that costed allot of Iraqi lives for very little US

 

Sincerely,

 

Keith

There were also numerous training and leadership issues which were frequently encountered which made the technology discrepancy more devastating, such as:

 

Terrible sentry procedures which resulted in dug in units with sentry outposts placed not being alerted when the centrys were engaged, allowing them to be caught completely off guard.

 

Tanks that were dug in by having loose sand--which provides no protection against APFSDS penetrators--mounded in front of them instead of below-grade positions being dug with both hull down and turret down positions--note that this would have greatly reduced, perhaps even nullified the engagement range advantage if the Iraqi tanks had been in turret down positions and only driven up to hull down when their commanders spotted targets to engage.

 

Vehicle crews that sheltered in air-raid trenches instead of mounting their vehicles when they started hearing vehicles exploding because there was no system in place to alert them that they were receiving a ground attack rather than an air attack, so many Iraqi tanks weren't even crewed, and other crews were just scrambling into their vehicles when they were attacked.