Quote:
Originally Posted by Strettger
Just a thought but could Knightmares be considered the successors to tank destroyers in terms of their role as opposed to a replacement for the tank in general?
In the siege of the Embassy I note the prescence of numerous large tanks, the heavy weapons with high recoil, flanked by KMF, agile, lighter guns.
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I don't think that the knightmare frames really work as tank destroyers - this combat niche has been largely replaced in modern inventories with either multi-purpose IFVs or main battle tanks because the tank destroyer has lots of disadvantages compared to either. Instead, they are more of a multi-purpose do-it-all kind of unit. The more they are depicted, the more it seems as if the creators have decided to use them to replace just about every other combat arm.
Quote:
Originally Posted by JMvS
Aircrafts non efective against armored units!? Here are historical examples of very effective armor killers:
Ilyushin Il-2 for WWII
A 10 Thunderbolt II for Gulf War
Armor are weak against air to ground attack (diving bomb, missile, 30+mm shells and other clever weapon) as their armor are mainly designed against ground to ground weapons (landmines, bazooka, canons).
That's why large armored formations include anti aircraft vehicles. |
Close air support like the Il-2 and the A-10 are very effective aircraft, but they are predominantly effective against soft vehicles, not enemy armor. In general, massed armor formations do have to take countermeasures against air attack, but these countermeasures also tend to be quite successful in limiting the losses from that source until they've been overrun by the enemy ground forces. The Gulf War is an excellent case in point: while the continual Coalition air attacks whittled down the Iraqi morale, their top ground formations were still quite capable of fighting until they were broken by the ground offensive.
The top armor of even the heaviest main battle tank isn't very thick, and it doesn't provide much protection against direct hits, but that's not entirely the reason why they stand against air attack fairly well. but that's not where all of their protection comes from. In order to defeat prepared enemy armor, attack craft have to first evade enemy air defences, then find the target tanks, and then score direct hits (near misses are all but useless against heavy armor) with an effective weapon. This is all but impossible to do at 3000+m altitude, and without sufficient time over the target, so it comes back to my previous point about employing aircraft that loiter over enemy territory for long periods of time and at low altitudes.
The one time that aircraft
can be fairly effective against tanks is when those tanks are on the offensive, and can't utilize proper countermeasures. But that's akin to saying that it's effective when the enemy make a mistake.