The Death March of Technology!

Mohan Guruswamy

Tanks and anti-tank weapons are very much in the news. The Indian Army has just begun inducting the Arjun MBT which the DRDO claims is the best tank in the world. We also have a big deal with the Russians manufacturing the T-90 MBT. Then there was the incident when a Milan wire-guided anti-tank missile (ATM) was “accidentally” fired within the precincts of the MoD’s Bharat Dynamics Ltd., and with quite unintended irony killed a quality control inspector, and created a huge scare that the missile making complex may go up in a bang. At the same time there is the controversy on the high incidence of cancers like leukemia among those exposed to depleted uranium (DU) projectiles fired by NATO warplanes to blast Yugoslav tanks during the course of the air-war due to the Kosovo crisis.

Yesterday the MoD announced a major procurement of a new generation of anti-tank missiles manufactured by Israel’s Rafael Advanced Defense Systems called the Spike. The Spike is a man portable “fire and forget” missile that can lock on to its target even before firing. The Indian order is said to be for 8000 missiles and several hundred launchers. The spike will be a long overdue replacement of the age old Milan ATM being produced under license at BDL, Hyderabad. The Milan ATM is of quite an old design and long obsolete. Nevertheless we still manufacture them under license from the French, many years after DRDO has claimed the development of state-of-art missiles like the Nag. The Milan was developed by the French for use against Warsaw Pact armored forces and as a counterpart to the Soviet Sagger missile which made a dramatic entrance into public consciousness during the Arab-Israel “Yom Kippur” war of 1973.

The Sagger made its battlefield debut when an Israeli armored counter-attack was mounted on Egyptian forces under Gen. Saaduddin Shazli, which having successfully breached the Israeli fortified defensive perimeter, the Bar-lev line, had crossed the Suez Canal and established bridgeheads on the Sinai peninsula. As the Israeli 190th Armored Brigade made a late afternoon counter-attack on October 9 on the Egyptian bridgeheads, scores of Egyptian troopers dramatically confronted them, standing on the crest of sand dunes silhouetted against the afternoon sun carrying what appeared to be small suitcases.

The Egyptian soldiers then opened their suitcases to unsheathe their lethal contents, a wire-guided missile perched on a small stand, which is why it was also known as the suitcase missile! As the charging tanks closed in dozens of missiles were launched and were guided on to their targets by just aligning its bright taillight with the target. The operator kept the Sagger on course by manipulating the joystick like a model plane. This made evasive measures extremely difficult for the reaction time often was just a few seconds. Each Sagger carried a two-kilo high explosive anti-tank (HEAT) charge. By sundown the Israeli counter-attack was smashed and as many as 160 Israeli tanks were destroyed, and for the second day in succession the Israelis had suffered an unaccustomed defeat. This defeat has been so painful that till this day the Israelis have not released anything on this battle.

The Milan’s are one step ahead of the Sagger's as just keeping the optical sights crosshairs on the target maneuvers them to the tank. The optical system is electronically configured to continuously relay instructions to the missiles guidance system through the trailing wires. ATM’s fly a speeds ranging from 75-100 meters per second, which means that a tank, say a kilometer away, has just 10-15 seconds to react before impact. Soon ATM’s became more complex and sophisticated increasing the kill probabilities dramatically. The American TOW (target optically wire-guided) with the Pakistan Army is a two-man system with a much greater range than the Milan.

The Soviet Union’s other match-winning weapon was also revealed in this engagement. As Israeli Skyhawk and Phantom jets swept overhead to provide cover to their armor, they were met, not by Egyptian fighters, but by two-stage Surface to Air missiles (SAM). The SAM’s first stage was radar guided to it close to the target, while the in the terminal phase its heat-seeking device latched on to the jets hot engine exhaust. These missiles were used in conjunction with the smaller shoulder fired heat-seeking missiles (Strella), also known as fire-and-forget missiles, to hit low flying aircraft. Nearly thirty Israeli fighters were knocked out of the skies just that day. That the Egyptians still managed to snatch a final defeat from the jaws of victory is another story and is not relevant for now. What was relevant was that much cheaper weapons with high kill probabilities were able to comprehensively engage and destroy costly and sophisticated tanks and fighters, leaving military leaders with yet another dilemma about what technology to place their bets on?

Before the battlefield debut of the Sagger missile, anti-tank weapons were essentially direct firing guns, either on the tanks or mounted on fast moving vehicles like jeeps that fired a variety of projectiles. Before the advent of HEAT charges ATM’s armor piercing shots generally relied on kinetic energy (KE), which were really sabots made of specially hardened metals which would puncture through the tanks armor and cause mayhem within. There were many combinations available. Initially there were just sabots. Later on you could have an armor piercing fin-stabilized sabot (APFSD), or a sabot stabilized by imparting a spin by rifled barrels. Then came the combination rounds, which were APFSD’s with HEAT, where the high heat generating charge in the initial microseconds after impact would soften the armor making it easier for the sabot to pierce the tank.

Tanks emerged as battlefield weapons in Europe during WWI in a bid to break the stalemate as a result of the widespread deployment of machineguns along-with barbed wire fortifications. The loss of life during the stalemate was enormous as generals on both sides launched senseless and futile massed infantry attacks on each other. This situation demanded a weapons system that could weather the withering fire of machineguns, roll over barbed wires and other obstacles, and open up pathways to the trenches. The ever-innovative merchants of death at Vickers obliged with the worlds first tanks.

In the interregnum between the two world wars, tanks and fighter aircraft became central to offensive and even defensive strategy. The British may not have taken their strategist, Capt. Basil Liddell Hart, very seriously but the German Wehrmacht studied his formulations intently. The massed attacks of swiftly advancing German panzers in conjunction with Stuka dive-bombers perfected by its great generals Guderian, von Manstein and Rommel were the result. With the emergence of the battle-tank as a battle-winning weapon during WWII, both in the plains of Europe and the deserts of North Africa, weapon designers were hard at work to create weapons to stop the tanks in their tracks. Hence the phrase: “stopped in its tracks!”

Initially the forces confronting tanks innovated with nothing more than anti-aircraft guns firing directly into the tanks. Soon the bazooka made its appearance, and as a single infantryman could fire it, it conferred on the infantry a lethality that it long missed. To blunt them tank designers became generous with armor plating which got thicker and thicker till the tanks were barely able to move. Then came improvements in metal hardening technology leading to the development of rolled homogenous armor (RHA). By the early sixties tank designers had evolved composite armor consisting of different material like ceramics and steel bonded into a sandwich to disperse KE. The best known of these is the UK’s Chobham armor, though the DRDO claims its Kanchan armor has better specifications.

Just as tanks seemed to be becoming impregnable, weapons designers came up the ATM. An ATM with a HESH warhead weighing a few kilograms was quite enough to burn a hole in most kinds of composite armor. But a wire-guided missile is not an easy weapon to use for the simple reason that the soldier has to stay exposed from 30-60 seconds while choosing a target and guiding the missile with the line-of-sight control mechanism. Those who have been under hostile fire will tell you that under fire even ten seconds can be very long time! Logically the next step was to have missiles that could be fired from greater distances and from helicopters. Then came missiles that rode on a laser beam, and later came missiles that homed-in after acquiring targets with their inbuilt TV cameras. Unfortunately for the taxpayers the story does not end here.

Once again the Soviets provided the break-through. It was both neat and simple. Tanks were now decked with “explosive” armor, which was nothing but a covering with packets of small explosive charges stitched together. As the missile warhead or sabot came into contact with the “explosive” armor, the small charge detonated with a bang just enough to deflect the warhead from the job it was supposed to do. This innovation improved to “reactive” armor where the charge went off in anticipation of the soon to arrive projectile. The death march of technology has not ended, and weapons designers and manufacturers are, constantly developing newer guns and missiles, as well as tanks. Except perhaps in Bharat Dynamics which seems to be more caught up with its internal politics, and the DRDO whose Arjun Main Battle Tank (MBT) is still evolving.

As tanks became more invulnerable, tank-busting weapons were required to pack more wallop while warhead sizes had to be compact and configurable with existing systems. Thus came the depleted uranium (DU) projectile. With reactive armor coming into vogue, tank killing required warheads that could shrug away the small explosions of the reactive armor and still do the job. DU is twice as heavy as lead and can pierce just about any armor. Wallop is nothing but momentum, which in turn, is the product of mass and the square of velocity or “mue is equal to emvee squared.” DU was widely used in the Gulf war against Iraqi tank forces and likewise in Yugoslavia. In both wars, US A-10 “Warthog” jets pulverized tanks with DU cannon-fire. And what’s so good against tanks is even better on less thick-skinned targets like sensitive buildings, oil installations and communication nerve centers. Naturally the generals love it.

DU is a waste product from nuclear reactors and is only half as radioactive as natural uranium, which in turn is not particularly radioactive. When the depleted uranium warhead impacts with the target, it also ignites and combines with oxygen in the atmosphere to form a toxic cloud of uranium dust. Solid uranium is not harmful, unless ingested. Thus when a depleted uranium round is expended a certain amount of uranium dust is released into the air and ground for whence it poses risks to those who may ingest it. Now not only Kosovo refugees returning to their abandoned homes that were in the battle zone, as well some NATO aircraft weapons crew are claiming that they have been exposed to this uranium dust and have developed health problems attributable to this. Having bombarded Yugoslav tanks, many real but many more imaginary, with 31000 rounds or about 12 tons of DU, the West is now saddled with the expensive job of cleaning up Kosovo! But that’s small change when compared to the 300,000 tons used in the Gulf War. When peace happens with Iraq, it’s obviously going to be even more expensive!