Greek Tank Trials

[Damian90]

OTShU-1-7 IR emitters indeed produce very bright IR light, from ATGM operators point of view, or rather the system point of view, IR strobe on ATGM is then completely non visible by the launcher system, thus guidance is immposible.

There are several variants of TShU-1-7 Shtora-1 system, I think the newest is codenamed Shtora-2, and there is also Ukrainian variant codenamed Varta.

[Eisenschwein]

Sorry I did not get it:

How can a IR Light effect a Wire guided Missile ?

[12Alfa]

I don't think the dazzlers in Shtora and similar systems use lasers; I think they use some kind of IR strobe light which creates confusion for the TOW guidance unit in trying to track the IR beacon on the rear of the missile. The Shtora suite does include an array of laser warning receivers to identify when the vehicle has been lased and orient the turret in the direction of the laser.

You are correct on these systems.

However other systems are out there, ie:

AN/AAQ-24 Nemesis

The AN/AAQ-24 system is a directional infrared countermeasure (DIRCM) system. It consists of a missile warning system (AN/AAR-54), an integration unit, a processor, and laser turrets (Small Laser Transmitter Assembly, SLTA). Early versions used an arc lamp to generate the jamming signal. Newer versions produced by NGC use diode-based pump systems are known by the GUARDIAN name, and could be fitted to many commercial carriers in the near future pending the completion of many tests on the viability of such options.

It will be installed on C-17 Globemaster III, MC-130, CV-22, and the CH-53E Super Stallion. The system is also the basis for the Northrop Grumman Guardian system marketed for commercial aircraft.

Large Aircraft Infrared Counter-Measure system (LAIRCM) was a requirement for protecting Large Aircraft from infrared-guided missiles. The solution for this requirement is the AN/AAQ-24 Nemesis system. Also, LAIRCM-Lite is a C-17 program that uses a combination of laser jammers and flares due to the limited availability of LAIRCM components

[Grenny]

Sorry I did not get it:

How can a IR Light effect a Wire guided Missile ?

commes from the semi automatisation with the SACLOS system. (Deshalb gibt es z.B. die 40" regel beim milan schießen.)

The steering system constantly measures the distance between missile and aim-line and tries to minimize that.

"Fool" the system in regards to that distance and the missile will miss.

But most ATGM have countermeasures nowadays anyway...

[Jartsev]

Sorry I did not get it:

How can a IR Light effect a Wire guided Missile ?

IR emitters(dazzlers) are designed to simulate beacons used to track missiles. Since dazzlers are usually placed with offset from vehicle`s center of mass, guidance system will generate wrong steering commands for the missile.

E.g. guidance system of SACLOS ATGW will see one or two fakes in addition to original tracer, or original missile tracer will be completly expelled by fakes.

[Eisenschwein]

Ähh. I think you don´t understand the working Procedure of a optical wire guided Missile....

You can hold your ass out of the Turret, or make a dance around your Tank or set your "OTShU-1-7 IR" to work.

This Missile is optical guided, so if you don´t kill the Gunner, he will kill you.

[Jartsev]

Ähh. I think you don´t understand the working Procedure of a optical wire guided Missile....

You can hold your ass out of the Turret, or make a dance around your Tank or set your "OTShU-1-7 IR" to work.

This Missile is optical guided, so if you don´t kill the Gunner, he will kill you.

So, with this logic AN/VLQ-6 and AN/VLQ-8 are useless too, right? Basic principle of operation is the same as for OTShu-1-7. :bigsmile:

[Companion]

Well, what does "TOW" stand for?

Ähh. I think you don´t understand the working Procedure of a optical wire guided Missile....

You can hold your ass out of the Turret, or make a dance around your Tank or set your "OTShU-1-7 IR" to work.

This Missile is optical guided, so if you don´t kill the Gunner, he will kill you.

SACLOS missile guidance system "talks" to the missile through wire, but it need to "see" the missile's IR beacon to talk proper guidance into it.

IR dazzlers try to create ghosts for the guidance system to see and botch up the flight correction

[Froggy]

Ähh. I think you don´t understand the working Procedure of a optical wire guided Missile....

You can hold your ass out of the Turret, or make a dance around your Tank or set your "OTShU-1-7 IR" to work.

This Missile is optical guided, so if you don´t kill the Gunner, he will kill you.

It's right if you use old optical only missile (MCLOS, Manual command to line of sight) like ANTAC or SS11 or early AT3 . The operator must track the missile and the target simultaneously and guide the missile to the target. Typically the missile is steered with a joystick, and its path is observed through a periscope-type telescopic sight. The missiles are usually equipped with a magnesium flare in the base that automatically ignites upon launch and allows the gunner to visually track the fast-moving missile in a manner similar in concept to a tracer bullet.

But with newer missile (SACLOS,Semi-automatic command to line of sight)

the sighting device can calculate the angular difference in direction from the missile position to the target location. It can then give electronic instructions to the missile that correct its flight path so it is flying along a straight line from the sighting device to the target. Most of antitank SACLOS systems such as Milan and TOW use a strobe or flare (visible, infrared (IR) or ultraviolet (UV) light) in the tail of the missile with an appropriate sensor on the firing post, to track the missile's flight path. The launching station incorporates a tracking camera with two lenses. A wide field of view lens that locates and "gathers" the missile near the center of the gunners line of sight immediately after launch, and a narrow view lens with automatic zoom that accomplishes the fine tracking adjustments. In most configurations, the narrow field camera utilizes electronics that translate the brightest spot in the view - the flare or strobe of the missile - into an electrical impulse. This impulse changes as the missile leaves the center of the field of view, and the electronics automatically apply a correction instruction in the opposite direction of the change to re-center the missile.

[Eisenschwein]

Merci Froggy !

Thx to the other, sorry I´m not a "Rocket-Man" ;-)

[Invader ZIM]

It gets even more complicated actually when you get into optical countermeasures to minimize the impact the IR dazzlers could have on the system.

For thermal imagers this usually involves a lot of scene sampling, known signature of your systems signature vs. anything outside that range. And also using anti-blooming technologies so that each IR pixel doesn't "bleed" into the others near it, spoiling the image.

Here's a Russian Thermal imaging example. Notice the lack of contrast with sky and ground, and when the weapon hits, the large amount of IR blooms the image. Our systems typcially did this in 1991.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6SeXOCWJvzM&index=47&list=FLUbMa9kEYoLP3_Zlc2nzVPA

Skip to 1:20 to see the thermal view as they guide their round to the tank target.

They haven't quite caught up with the West with the supporting electronics to make a thermal system usable over a wider variety of temperature differences.

Here's some thermal images of TOW shots, please pardon the music, but you'll notice when the round impacts there's no real loss of image or scene contrast. It's far harder to fool a more advanced sight than an earlier generation one.

Frankly, if you turned on the dazzler's they'd only attract my attention and possibly help identify the threat easier with a later generation sight. You can also get into bandpass filters, once you know the wavelenths of the jamming system, or create a narrow band of light frequency of your tracking system, and only allowing that one frequency to be seen by your system when guiding the weapon.

Here's a video of Shtora working against legacy Russian ATGM's. Skip to :38 and again at :57

Notice the nice bright red signature of IR dazzler's on the targeted tank in the background. The large heat sinks around the lights speak volumes about it's heat signature.

Another example of two thermal images side by side. Imagine the fire in the image being the Shtora system working. The thermal imager on the left has anti-blooming technology, but does not have supporting electronics to enhance the background image because of the large temperature difference between the fire, and the people and terrain behind it. The system on the right is the same thermal camera, but with the added electronic wizbang to allow you to see all images in the scene. This system on the right more accurately represents Western 2nd and 3rd gen thermal systems.

F-117 using 1st gen sight in 1991 war. :55 seconds in is where you want to take notice. Blooming shows itself in this case a vertical obscuration of the scene when the bomb impacts. Sometimes it's horizontal though.

And everything you probably wanted to know about TOW: https://www.militaryperiscope.com/mdb-smpl/weapons/missrock/antitank/w0003228.shtml

The missile is fitted with a high-intensity thermal beacon, which provides a long-wave infrared tracking source and a xenon beacon for short-wave tracking. This dual-tracking system provides increased resistance to electro-optical and infrared countermeasures.

This is a modified TOW 2 with a wireless command-guidance link. It has a range of 2.8 miles (4.5 km). The guidance system is immune to infrared countermeasures. The Army has funded the procurement of the wireless TOW 2B through fiscal years 2007 to 2009. The missile can be fired from all standard TOW launchers because the wireless system is built into the missile and missile case. An RF transmitter is integrated into the missile case and an RF receiver is fitted into the aft end of the missile.

Production for the U.S. Army began in 2006.

Considering how the TOW system used at the start two widely separated wavelengths at opposite ends of the spectrum to guide the missile and compare with, an IR jamming source alone seems dubious in being able to defeat it. Except when the TOW system is using the 1st gen thermal sight. Shtora could easily create the blooming problem as illustrated in the above examples making it difficult for the person looking through the thermal site to accurately guide it.

By contrast, do Russian ATGM's only use the single flare for their guidance? Didn't they use a secondary source to prevent countermeasures from working against it like TOW does? If not, then the video above of the Russian ATGM's flying wildly up over the Shtora tanks is the expected result. And systems like the AN/VLQ-6 and -8 would be more effective against such simple guidance methods if they didn't have a secondary system to help guide it under jamming.

More public info I found:

http://www.google.com/patents/US5332176

For this purpose, the missile includes a xenon beacon B located on the tail portion of the missile. The beacon emits radiation in the infrared portion of the light spectrum, for example, between 0.6 microns and 2.0 microns. In addition, the beacon's radiation includes a modulation frequency which is classified for security reasons. The system further includes a xenon beacon tracker (not shown) responsive to this modulated infrared radiation to produce an indication on the display of the position of the beacon, and hence the missile. The display must include both the missile and the target. Because beacon B emits light outside the visible portion of the spectrum, an ancillary device such as a television camera, or FLIR, is used obtain an image of the target in the visible portion of the spectrum. The target image is also displayed. For tracking system accuracy, the xenon beacon tracker and camera or FLIR, are boresighted together.

For missile detection, for example, it is known that the xenon beacon carried by the missile is modulated at a certain frequency. As shown in FIG. 5, this modulation is represented as a sinusoid S. It will be understood that while the modulation may be other than sinusoidal, so long as it is repetitive, it constitutes a characteristic signature by which the beacon is identifiable.

It's a constant ongoing process, TOW isn't as simple as many probably thought.

Edited April 1, 2014 by Invader ZIM

[Elfa]

On 3/18/2014 at 2:26 PM, lavictoireestlavie said:

Does any of you have any additional reliable data concerning the performance of the individual contenders in the Hellenic Tank Trials ? Any information would be appreciated! Thank you !

This is known:

The tanks compared included the M1A2 Abrams, Leopard 2A5, Leclerc, T-80UE and T-84.

Of these six vehicles, out of a maximum possible operational and technical score of 100%, best performing were: Leopard 2A5, 78.65%; M1A2 Abrams, 72.21%; Leclerc, 72.03%; and Challenger 2E, 69.19%. Next was the T-84 and last the T-80UE.

The Leopard 2A5 was the only one with a demonstrated deep fording capability, while the M1A2 had the best firing results during hunter/killer target engagements.

The German 1,500hp MTU EuroPowerPack was fitted in both the Leclerc and the Challenger 2E and these two vehicles had the best cruising range and lower fuel consumption.

The T-80U had the best mobility and reliability.

Some shooting results:

Leopard 2A5: ~80%

Leclerc: 65% targets hit

T-84: 47 % targets hit

Challenger-2: 40 % targets hit

No data for the T-80UE and M1A2. The Challenger-II did not use proper ammo, while the T-80UE and T-84 used practice rounds 3P31, which corresponds to BM15 at below 1.5 km but become unpredictable after 2 kms. The Abrams could not fire practice ammo and had to wait for 3 days before real ones were brought.

The T-80UE had an experimental T type transmission.

The T-84 was considered to be somewhat inmature and had few problems: smoke grenades failing to work.

 

 

 

 

On 3/18/2014 at 2:26 PM, lavictoireestlavie said:

Does any of you have any additional reliable data concerning the performance of the individual contenders in the Hellenic Tank Trials ? Any information would be appreciated! Thank you !

This is known:

The tanks compared included the M1A2 Abrams, Leopard 2A5, Leclerc, T-80UE and T-84.

Of these six vehicles, out of a maximum possible operational and technical score of 100%, best performing were: Leopard 2A5, 78.65%; M1A2 Abrams, 72.21%; Leclerc, 72.03%; and Challenger 2E, 69.19%. Next was the T-84 and last the T-80UE.

The Leopard 2A5 was the only one with a demonstrated deep fording capability, while the M1A2 had the best firing results during hunter/killer target engagements.

The German 1,500hp MTU EuroPowerPack was fitted in both the Leclerc and the Challenger 2E and these two vehicles had the best cruising range and lower fuel consumption.

The T-80U had the best mobility and reliability.

Some shooting results:

Leopard 2A5: ~80%

Leclerc: 65% targets hit

T-84: 47 % targets hit

Challenger-2: 40 % targets hit

No data for the T-80UE and M1A2. The Challenger-II did not use proper ammo, while the T-80UE and T-84 used practice rounds 3P31, which corresponds to BM15 at below 1.5 km but become unpredictable after 2 kms. The Abrams could not fire practice ammo and had to wait for 3 days before real ones were brought.

The T-80UE had an experimental T type transmission.

The T-84 was considered to be somewhat inmature and had few problems: smoke grenades failing to work.

 

 

 

Hi,
Can I have the PDF on the greek tank trials please