Once General's dream can become General's horror. History have a lot of examples. Here are two of them
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Those are good points. I think alot of it would change if america was in the position of having to fight on our own soil. For most americans there is always the feeling of fighting someone else's war. Its hard to believe in a war if its faught 20,000 Km from home. In some ways it might be good for the mind set of many americans if we were faced with that kind of reality, but I'll gladly take it as a blessing we have not and carry on.
If you put T72 and M1A2 facing each other and shooting each other then everything will depend on experience of tankeers. Task of M1A2 crew is only to hit T-72. After 1-2 hits it will be definetly destroyed. Task of T-72 crew is more difficult. They should hit weakened areas of Abrams. 1-2 hits into will be enough too. Also there are some tricks. T-72 can fire HE shell and all Abrams crew will be contused and will not able to do anything during some minutes. This time will be enough to aim properly and destroy Abrams.
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I can't speak for the armor alone, or the vertues of russian tanks (never been in one
, but I do know one of the most amazing diferences between an M1-A1 and an M1-A2 is the sensors package, targeting systems, stabalizers, and Depleted Uranium armor and shells. Even while moving the turret is kept very stable, and a GOOD loader can out pace an auto loader, but only for a short while (a couple minutes at most) one very nice feature is the Tank commander can designate several targets in a 360 camera and as eash target is destroyed the turret can automaticly swing to target the next. The sensors package has NV, thermal and other toys.
the HE trick works both ways
Also, there is quite the variety of armor piercing shells. the standard are bad enough, but the Depleted Uranium shells are pretty terrifying. (so is the DU armor)
I've also seen shells that barley break the armor of the enemy tank and shoot it full of boiling steel. The heat and fumes are very leathal to crew.
I know Iraq had up to T-72 and T-80 tanks. (1st and second war) I also no the USA lost NO tanks in tank vs tank combat. in the first gulf war there was one significant tank battle, the majoraty of the battle was resolved in USA favor before the older tanks could return fire.