Word: antitank
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Even Congress, which is usually tolerant of procurement high jinks, was appalled by the Viper debacle. So the lawmakers cut the program last year. But is it dead? Buried in the 1983 Defense budget is $10 million for testing a light antitank system. The 1985 budget authorizes $122 million to purchase the first weapons. Like many discredited weapons
...hunting tanks, five times as many A-10 planes could be bought for the same money as F-15Es. For ground-to-air defense, the same outlay would buy 30 Oerlikon 35-mm guns for every DIVAD, the new and troubled computer-guided artillery. For antitank warfare, 30 times as many 106-mm recoilless rifles could be bought as TOW missiles. A comparison of antitank ammunition shows that the unproven Maverick, an air-to-ground missile with heat-seeking sensors, is 75 times as expensive as reliable 30-mm shells...
...weapon is handled by the same Pentagon brass and bureaucrats who are responsible for its research and development and who are likely to be the most anxious to see that it is funded and produced. This leads to field-testing standards that bear little resemblance to combat. The Maverick antitank missile, for example, is being tested by pilots who know both the terrain and target locations ahead of time. The expensive ($1 billion apiece) Ticonderoga-class guided-missile cruisers equipped with the AEGIS air-defense system have never been pitted in simulated combat situations against low-flying missiles like...
...protection, but on the battlefield, critics charge, the vehicle would be a death trap. Its width and excessive height (10 ft.) offer an inviting target to enemy gunners. At times it even has to be a stationary target: the Bradley must come to a complete stop to fire its antitank missile. Its 25-mm gun also has a problem: it is said to be highly inaccurate...
Hand-carried, cheap (average cost: $150) antitank rockets, which are now standard equipment for every infantry squad in the Warsaw Pact armies, rip through the Bradley's aluminum armor like a welder's torch. Unlike steel, the aluminum vaporizes and burns, adding immense heat to the explosion inside and producing a fireball. That is not a theoretical danger. The M113 also is made of aluminum, and M113s carrying Israeli troops went up in flames in Lebanon. During the invasion, Israeli troops rode on the exposed areas of the M113-not inside it. Since the Bradley is designed...