For anyone who doesn't get the significance, these crazy cats took out a modern main battle tank with an armored personnel carrier. That's like if the Bismark was sunk by the Titanic.

[–] ours 27 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Infantry Fighting Vehicle not APC.

Still impressive since they liked with the autocannon instead of the anti tank missiles M2 can be equiped for that purpose.

[–] c0c0c0 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Yeah, that's the official name, but I'll stick to the APC designation. It carries troops. It's armored. It does not have a tank-level main gun. It's an armored personnel carrier. A good one, but an APC, none the less.

[–] ours 6 points 10 months ago

I disagree. APCs and IFVs have different roles. APCs are just troop taxis. IFVs carry troops and fight alongside them or can do scouting actions like this one.

[–] dragontamer 9 points 10 months ago (1 children)

With the chaingun, nonetheless.

You'd think they'd use the anti-tank rocket to kill the tank. Not the chaingun.

[–] Bernie_Sandals 6 points 10 months ago (3 children)

Wait they killed it with the gun? I saw the video but assumed they had used one of the rockets. I had no clue it was even possible to make a T-90 (or any MBT) explode like that from the gun alone.

[–] dragontamer 18 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

The M2 Bradley still fires depleted uranium rounds, albeit "little ones" (not like a real tank gun).

But given how close the two vehicles were, the Chaingun was possibly the better choice, and you can see the results. The issue with the chaingun is that you need to be very close before that weapon is effective, because drag on the bullets slows them down dramatically (meanwhile, the tank's bigger gun has more range and power due to the shear size + mass + momentum, so tanks can shoot depleted uranium rounds much further and more effectively). Its just simple physics, the smaller gun and bullets from the M2 puts them at a severe disadvantage in this fight.

This combat footage is exceptionally rare. Not only is it a M2 vs T90 (a fight the M2 was supposed to run away from), its an incredibly rare situation where the chaingun was the right choice to use.

I don't think the M2 Crew were necessarily going for a tank kill. The T90 is theoretically supposed to have armor that protects it from these shots. But even if you can't break the T90's armor, you can damage the main-gun, the treads, the cameras, the sensors, the infrared, and other equipment that's "outside the tank".

I'm sure the big explosion where the M2 Chaingun destroys the whole thing was as much a surprise to the M2 crew as it was to the rest of us (and the internet).

[–] littlebluespark 2 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

To be fair, I'd like to see the evidence of this "kill", as the facts I currently have in front of me lean toward mostly blinding it, instead.

edit: as an ex-artillery commander friend of mine pointed out, why is the 25cal gun that fired those rounds missing from this photo?

Hmm...

[–] Brainsploosh 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Wasn't the story that the light gun set off the explosive armor attachments to blind it?

[–] littlebluespark 0 points 10 months ago

No, the tank's smoke grenades cooked off, that's all. The consistent fire chewed up the sensors on the exterior, for sure, but that's not a "catastrophic kill", the tanks just blind (which is a completely shit place to be, sure, but not a kill in and of itself).

[–] CptEnder 6 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Yeah they downed it with the Bushmaster APFSDS rounds. Took like A LOT of rounds though haha.

[–] littlebluespark 0 points 10 months ago

They didn't down it. 🤦🏼‍♂️

[–] littlebluespark 0 points 10 months ago

Not a kill.