the Steel Beasts Anti- Frustration Kit. - The 29th Armored Regiment

1. Installation 2. Finding online games 3. Tactics 4. Sharpening your skills 5. Goodies 6. Etiquette 7. Credits
A Thousand Bee-Stings - Anti-Tank Missiles and what you can do about them
They're everywhere. Infantry have them, APCs and scout vehicles have them, so does some Soviet armor.
They're anti-tank guided missiles (ATGM). As an aside, technically every anti-tank missile is not an anti-tank
guided missile, but since their behaviors are closely similar, and since they can both be defeated in about the
same manner, let's call them the same thing for the sake of argument. Fine. What are they? ATGMs are
shoulder-, or vehicle-launched missiles equipped with HEAT warheads, whose function is to penetrate tank
armor, destroying the vehicle.
What they can do to you
Individually, ATGMs might not pierce the armor of your tank, at least not from the front. This doesn't mean a hit
won't hurt. An ATGM will almost certainly damage something; often it will damage a two or three somethings at
a time. An ATGM hit might not kill you outright, but it will break something and make you easier to kill, thereby.
Lose stabilization for your main gun, and you lose the ability to hit a target while on the move. Stabilization loss
also affects accuracy, it has some effect on how fast you can pull the trigger, and that affects how many times
you might get to shoot at a target before it gets to shoot back. Coupled with the degradation in accuracy, loss of
stabilization can put you at enough of a disadvantage that you might not recover before the other guy gets you.
A non-fatal hit from an ATGM can do other things, too. A hit from an ATGM can take out your radio, your TIS,
your GPS, etc. You can lose a track, and thereby lose the ability to move anywhere but in a circle. A tank
immobilized by an ATGM is effectively out of the action, and therefore out of the game. Your immobilized state
also makes you a lot easier to hit, and this time the shot might come from the rear. Lose a track and someone
will come along to turn your immobilized state into something a lot more permanent, and smoking. That's the
real danger that ATGMs pose. There are so many of them that even if the first few don't kill you, the next one
will. Individually they might be no more annoying than a bee-sting, but there are a lot of bees on the battlefield,
and they can sting you in places that can be fatal. Tangling with ATGM-equipped infantry and APCs is
potentially more hazardous than dealing with tanks. Why?
A quick example. You have just run across a platoon (say three) BMPs, each equipped with a squad of infantry.
Each squad has dismounted. There are now six potential sources for ATGM fire. They can attack from any
direction, and they can be very hard to hit. A comparable platoon of Soviet MBTs will probably attack from one
direction, represents three sources of gunfire, and are easier to hit. The hits you take from the MBTs will maybe
disable something, but you'll probably get all of them before they destroy you. The same is not true for infantry
and the PCs they rode to battle in. If dismounted the infantry and/or their rides might get you before you get all,
or even any, of them. ATGMs are everywhere, and can attack from anywhere. It's also a lot easier to ambush
tanks with infantry than with other tanks. Try the scenario Blind Elephants; you'll see what I mean.
What you can do about them
The good news is that as a tank, you're still a lot less vulnerable than either an APC or a squad. A squad could
shoot at you with rifles and machine guns all the live-long day without doing more than scratching the paint,
maybe. You, shooting back with just your machine guns, would take down the squad before they could do more
than scratch the paint. Hit the APC before its dismounts dismount. There, you've just killed two sources of
missile fire with one shell. Lighter APCs can be taken out with an M1's .50 cal, and BRDMs are vulnerable to
coax fire from the side or rear.