D-Scythe

The glacis of the M1 is a normal steel plate a couple inches thick. It does not incorporate any kind of exotic armor that I know of. If you wanna get a more definitive answer on the M1's armor scheme, you should hit the Tanknet forums.

Actually, in general, ceramic materials are more effective when it is NOT applied to slope armor. Though their armor applications are formidable, ceramics tend to crack when hit - a result of it's extreme hardness, which is desirable. Unfortunately, the cracking of ceramic armor after the first hit degrades its ability to protect against subsequent hits. Thus, often, ceramics are applied as tiles in tank armor - by using many smaller plates of ceramics as armor instead of one big plate, you enhance multi-hit protection because only a couple of the smaller tiles will crack, as opposed to the entire thing. Slope armor works by putting more armor in front of an incoming projectile, through geometry. Unfortunately, this means that a LOT more tiles will be exposed to a kinetic impact, resulting in a larger "area" of cracked tiles. This may lead the vehicle vulnerable to subsequent attacks, due to the degradation in the quality of the ceramic plates.

He was talking LB2. Though AFAIK Kiowas have been taking a beating in Iraq as well.

Um...the FCS of tank guns can blow up moving helicopters. It doesn't matter if a light tank can go 100 kmph - even an M60 forty years ago would've been able to put a SABOT through its turret easily. The speed in tanks is used for maneuver warfare, not for dodging SABOTs.

I somehow doubt it. AESA radars require a lot of cooling and other support hardware that would also have to fit into the missile body. Plus, it seems sorta expensive, wasting an AESA radar on a one-way trip to Explosion Land.

WHITE SANDS MISSILE RANGE, N.M., March 27, 2008 /PRNewswire/ -- A Raytheon Company (NYSE: RTN) AIM-120D Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missile successfully destroyed its target Feb. 13 in a test engagement of the newest variant of the combat-proven missile. The AIM-120D AMRAAM was fired by a U.S. Navy F/A-18E/F Super Hornet fighter aircraft from the Navy's VX-31 squadron against a QF-4 target drone. The missile guided to a direct hit, destroying the drone and meeting all primary test objectives. "By putting the AIM-120 through these rigorous tests, the U.S. government and Raytheon are ensuring the warfighter receives a state-of-the art weapon system unparalleled in performance and reliability," said Brock McCaman, vice president of Raytheon Missile Systems' Air-to-Air product line. The AMRAAM missile has been developed through the combined efforts of the U.S. Air Force's Air Armament Center, the U.S. Navy, and Raytheon. The AIM- 120D is currently in the system design and development phase. "The AIM-120D builds on the combat proven AMRAAM by adding an enhanced electronic protection suite, two-way data link, and GPS-aided navigation," said Judy Stokley, U.S. Air Force deputy program executive officer for Weapons. "When the missile reaches initial operating capability, our warfighters will have a beyond visual range missile with unparalleled capability in our quest for air dominance." http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/micro_stories.pl?ACCT=149999&TICK=RTN&STORY=/www/story/03-27-2008/0004781180&EDATE=Mar+27,+2008

Lock On only uses one "radar model" - this model is tweaked differently for the different fighters, so that explains why there are some minor differences between them. But to say that the F-15 radar is more "realistic" than the Russian ones is laughable - right off the top of my head, I know the avionics for the Su and MiG got a bit of a realism touch-up in V1.1. Furthermore, the F-15's APG-63/70 radar uses a different type of antenna and is a generation ahead in terms of technology and user-friendliness. The planar antennas used by the West physically has numerous advantages over the cassegrain ones found in the MiG and Su. In fact, pilots who have flown with both radar type sets state that in terms of capability the MiG-29 radar is more comparable to an F-4. Ergo, you can see why, ideally, the same radar model shouldn't have been applied to both the F-15 and it's Russian counterparts.

I'd imagine there'd be no difference. I was just pointing out the fact that it was the co-pilot, not the pilot, landing the thing. She just happened to have been female.

Only because the crew were idiots for trying to land in such conditions in the first place. And it was a woman co-pilot who tried to land the thing, not the pilot.

Beyond the fact that it was WVR? Clearly not stated in the book ;) However, a lot of famous F-15 pilots are interviewed - basically anyone who got kills in Desert Storm: Kelk, Graeter, Rodriguez, Pitts...You could try contacting them and asking, if you'd like.

Well, it was fun. Your turn.

Technically, it's a missile target drone...;)

In the book, Wings of Fury: From Vietnam to the Gulf War-The Astonishing True Stories of America's Elite Fighter Pilots, it's been described that in the high profile AIM-ACEVAL exercises, F-5 pilots were consistently able to break the lock of the F-14A's AWG-9 by notching (AIM-ACEVAL is actually where the tactic of notching was born), but the same tactic didn't work on F-15As. Mind you, this was all WVR fighting - BVR wasn't allowed. The book brings up this topic again, when MiG-25s broke the lock of two F-15Cs by beaming BVR, but when the Eagles reacquired at closer range and the MiGs tried to beam them again, it didn't work.

What GG said. Some accounts by F-15 and F-5E Aggressor pilots state that within a certain range the APG-63/70 will hold the lock even if the target notches.

Didn't know there were APG-77V3 and V4 variants. Thanks for the info. BTW, I do remember hearing that some AESA radars do rely exclusively on interleaving between targets, and actually don't come with a capability to generate multiple beams (at least in their baseline version)...but clearly you're the Poobah bear here. Hey Mugey, I bolded the part of interest in Rhen's post, you know, just in case you missed the big caps.

Post as many pictures as you like :)

...And once again, the fact that AESA's do time-share/interleave does not mean that it cannot generate multiple beams. They're 2 completely different techniques - there's no reason why the APG-77 or any other AESA can't have both agile beam steering and multiple radar beam generation.

I'm sorta looking for facts, theories, concepts...anything really, just not irrelevant semantics. Though if you wanna play that game, technically, you brought up "specific examples" first when you linked to the Northrop-Grumman website.

Why? Does it disclose any classified information? So...now you admit that it can be done, just that there's no point in doing it. Luckily, I don't need to change my position - again, the capability to generate multiple beams simultaneously may give rise to some interesting ECCM techniques. Or not - from this point on, it's clearly conjecture, but from what we know publicly, an AESA can generate multiple beams from its array, so it's bad science to automatically assume that none of them do on the premise of "what's the point?" Um, the burden of proof rests with you guys because you are challenging the pre-established notion that AESA can generate multiple beams. We actually know that an AESA is physically capable of doing so. Which was specifically the point of contention. Specifically Post#30 of this thread - you said that AESA radars "don't divide the beam," in response to a post Alfa made earlier. Oh, and you made another post, #44, that contradicted my "broad" assertion that a (generic) "AESA antennae can generate multiple beams." Now, you're asking for specific confirmation of whether the APG-77 array can generate multiple beams? Doesn't seem fair, does it?

Thank you for proving my point. Despite having numerous opportunities to do so, the only thing you've come up with is that in your opinions "it's too difficult" for an AESA to generate multiple radar beams by dividing its antennae into smaller sub-arrays. Despite you guys having the burden of proof, I've decided to accept it and post this, an excerpt from Stimson's Introduction to Airborne Radar (finally managed to get hold of a copy). I suppose a knock out in the 6th round/page of posts is better than nothing.

I was thinking more along the lines of potential ECCM applications. Generating multiple, different radar beams might have some useful applications in a heavy jamming environment.

Obviously with more T/R modules to play with the more powerful the radar becomes, and the more things it can do. My position is that it's entirely possible that an AESA radar be capable of dividing its whole array into several smaller sub-arrays dedicated to transmitting and steering it's own radar beam. Having more T/R modules in this case means either more powerful sub-arrays or quantitatively more sub-arrays. EDIT: I'm only talking about transmission here. Reception of reflected radar waves can easily be done with the entire array acting as a unit. The physics behind *that* seem to be pretty obvious too.

I don't know what you're arguing. You have provided no evidence that the APG-77 cannot dedicate one group of AESA tiles to transmit in one direction and another group to transmit in another. Also, the SPY-1 isn't even an AESA array - it's PESA. I'm talking about the SPY-3. And yes, it's like to be set up using multiple arrays, just like the SPY-1 - however, this STILL does not disprove the fact that one array can generate many radar beams simultaneously.

Just parroting what I've heard about U.S. AESA radars. Generating multiple radar beams and directing them in different directions seems to be considered standard feature for American AESA sets.