Word: armorers
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...trade and protect trade." Indeed, he points out, the stakes could be high. "I can remember some people claiming that rock-bit drilling technology was of no conceivable military use to the Soviets," he says. "Yet we now know that technology has been used by the Russians to develop armor-piercing shells. I sure wouldn't want my son to be in a tank facing Soviet-supplied artillery that had benefited from access to American technology...
...Bradley is a behemoth, so wide that it cannot readily fit into the standard C-141 military transport plane; it has to be partially disassembled. Its 5½-in.-thick armor adds some 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...
...relatively slow A-10 Thunderbolt is a "close-support" aircraft, intended to swoop in low over a battlefield and savage the enemy's infantry and armor. When the prototype jets started flying in 1975, some Air Force brass were worried that its GAU8 antitank cannon was not up to snuff. The nose-mounted, 30-mm weapon was like a Gatling gun, with seven rotating barrels. And like a Gatling gun, it seemed a little oldfashioned, unworthy of a state-of-the-art Air Force. Colonel Bob Dilger was ordered to Dayton to take over the GAU8 program...
Dilger set himself a second challenge: getting down the price of the armor-piercing ammunition. Pentagon accountants figured it would cost as much as $83 per round, which the Air Force was prepared to pay. Dilger decided not to impose any product specifications, telling the two manufacturers, Aerojet Ordnance Co. in Downey, Calif., and Honeywell's defense systems division in Minneapolis, that he simply wanted 30-mm ammo that worked, for the lowest possible price. The companies still compete hard, improving efficiency and cutting prices to win the major share of each year's production contract. Average cost...