Follow-up on the Abrams

Gary Brecher reported -- in 2004, actually -- that the Abrams isn't quite invincible against an RPG: if you can hit it right on the joint between the turret and the hull -- the tank's "armpit" -- you can knock it out. However, as he says in more or less as many words in the column, boo hoo. His analogy that a tank is an internal-combustion knight is spot-on, at least as far as I can tell; and in fact, even the best knightly armor also had a weakness -- in three hundred years of trying, not even the best German engineers in the world ever found a really satisfactory way to armor a knight's armpit, either. The closest they got was a sort of dome over the front of the armpit that slid downwards as the knight raised his arm, while a plate fell down from the arm armor at the same time. It was still possible to bypass the armor if you were able to stab straight up from underneath the knight's arm, parallel with his torso -- which is in the realm of trick shots, not things it's seriously worth planning to defend against, the same category as hitting an M1 just underneath the turret.

And yes, believe it or not (since most popular historical truisms aren't worth the electrons they're printed on), it really was firearms that made plate armor obsolete. Eventually (around the early 16th century, I think), heavy firearms were developed that could defeat medieval-thickness plate armor (and the Swiss). This meant thicker plate armor which could defeat a musket; but when you're building up ridiculously heavy armor for the front of the torso, plus perhaps lighter armor for the arms, legs and head (although steel and labor were expensive, the human neck is only so strong, and limb wounds can be survived in a way that torso wounds can't), all-around coverage optimized for single combat with swords is suddenly a lot less appealing. That, and knights were obsolete by this time; the early-modern cavalrymen were paid by the state (well, supposed to be paid by the state) as mercenaries or regulars, lived in barracks (or rather, again, that was the theory), and fought as a massed force rather than as individuals. So they did an awful lot less single combat, and sword-proof armor is a lot less necessary when there's someone nearby to watch your back.

Also, cavalry had largely given up on swords by this point, in favor of hammers, picks and small maces -- weapons that could break through armor, even musketry-proof. Between that, the weight and discomfort of armor, and the very low deadliness of early modern musketry (especially if you were riding towards the musketeers at a trot rather than standing still to receive and return fire), the French were issuing orders to their cuirassier officers to wear their armor instead of leather jackets like their men's as early as the late Thirty Years' War. (Meanwhile, England was a backwards country militarily; in the English Civil War of the 1640s-50s, only one regiment of cuirassiers fought at all, on the Royalist side. After one battle, a wag observed of their commander that had he been as well provisioned as he was fortified, he could have withstood a siege of eight weeks.)

So, what's the armored analogy to a cavalry hammer? Pete Takeshi reminded me that the Abrams uses ceramic armor, so there's nothing for a DU sabot round to spall through -- so that option's out. My theory is a battlefield laser; an early form is currently under development, designed to swat artillery projectiles out of the sky, but I think that this could be a second 88 Flak, with a dual hatting more valuable than its original role. I know Boeing's not reading this, but I hope they keep that in mind.

Also mentioned on Wired: the American approach to commando operations...

Also, I forgot to mention: the verdict's in, Gary Brecher is fictitious; someone checked the Fresno phone book, and found no Brechers at all, Gary or otherwise. Apparently Richard Ames, the Exile webmagazine's founder and a really, really obvious KGB agentsomehow capable of surviving multiple run-ins with enraged Russian authorities, has a history of making up characters like this. And regardless of whether he has KGB connections or not, he burned down Victor Davis Hanson's vineyard! Then again, if you keep saying stupid things about the classical Greeks, you can expect these kinds of things sooner or later.

The War Nerd also likes the Sikhs. So we have that much in common.