News and discussion related to Ukraine
πΊπ¦ Sympathy for enemy combatants is prohibited.
π»π€’No content depicting extreme violence or gore.
π₯Posts containing combat footage should include [Combat] in title
π·Combat videos containing any footage of a visible human involved must be flagged NSFW
β Server Rules
π³π₯ Donate to support Ukraine's Defense
π³βοΈβοΈ Donate to support Humanitarian Aid
πͺ π«‘ Volunteer with the International Legionnaires
We all saw the video in which a M2A2 Bradley destroyed a T-90M in Stepove, north of Avdiivka.
These are the soldiers that took out the T-90M. Serhii on the left and Oleksandr on the right. One used to be a teacher, the other a mechanic.
Now they defend Ukraine. Balls of steel! β
For anyone who doesn't get the significance, these crazy cats took out a modern main battle tank with an armored personnel carrier. That's like if the Bismark was sunk by the Titanic.
Infantry Fighting Vehicle not APC.
Still impressive since they liked with the autocannon instead of the anti tank missiles M2 can be equiped for that purpose.
Yeah, that's the official name, but I'll stick to the APC designation. It carries troops. It's armored. It does not have a tank-level main gun. It's an armored personnel carrier. A good one, but an APC, none the less.
I disagree. APCs and IFVs have different roles. APCs are just troop taxis. IFVs carry troops and fight alongside them or can do scouting actions like this one.
With the chaingun, nonetheless.
You'd think they'd use the anti-tank rocket to kill the tank. Not the chaingun.
Wait they killed it with the gun? I saw the video but assumed they had used one of the rockets. I had no clue it was even possible to make a T-90 (or any MBT) explode like that from the gun alone.
The M2 Bradley still fires depleted uranium rounds, albeit "little ones" (not like a real tank gun).
But given how close the two vehicles were, the Chaingun was possibly the better choice, and you can see the results. The issue with the chaingun is that you need to be very close before that weapon is effective, because drag on the bullets slows them down dramatically (meanwhile, the tank's bigger gun has more range and power due to the shear size + mass + momentum, so tanks can shoot depleted uranium rounds much further and more effectively). Its just simple physics, the smaller gun and bullets from the M2 puts them at a severe disadvantage in this fight.
This combat footage is exceptionally rare. Not only is it a M2 vs T90 (a fight the M2 was supposed to run away from), its an incredibly rare situation where the chaingun was the right choice to use.
I don't think the M2 Crew were necessarily going for a tank kill. The T90 is theoretically supposed to have armor that protects it from these shots. But even if you can't break the T90's armor, you can damage the main-gun, the treads, the cameras, the sensors, the infrared, and other equipment that's "outside the tank".
I'm sure the big explosion where the M2 Chaingun destroys the whole thing was as much a surprise to the M2 crew as it was to the rest of us (and the internet).
Yeah they downed it with the Bushmaster APFSDS rounds. Took like A LOT of rounds though haha.
Legends
Bring out the paint and get that silhouette on that bad boy.
@Wilshire Bradley destroying T-90M, Humvee being struck by a tank but with crew surviving, can we actually declare Russian tanks just done for already? All the US and allies need to do is to simply supply Ukraine with more of what was already sent, and combined with the F-16s they could start a new counteroffensive successfully.
Well, they have a lot of tanks, for once. What's more, there is no 'simply' when it comes to multinational procurements, or else Ukraine would already have received F-16s & friends.
But yeah, when you look at it from the outside, it's hard not to feel aghast at how seemingly close Ukraine could be to winning this, if only their partners did these few things.