"John" wrote in message
...
"Peter Stickney" wrote...
Actually, John, you don't seem to have much of an understanding of how
tanks work, or what the typical engangement ranges are.
Five miles is right out.
Got to agree with the above statements.
I can only go by what I read. On sedcond thoughts, that does sound a bit
far
though....
Also consider that your millimeter-wave emitting SUV is ligking itself
up like a neon sign in a part of the radio spectrum that nothing else
is on. A couple of sinple horn antannae on the turret sides (Sort of
like the old coincidence rangefinder ears) for DFing, and an
omnidirectional antenna up with the Wind Sensor on the turret roof for
general detection, and you won't, say, be able to hide your
Tank-Killer SUV in Madman Morris's SUV Dealership's parking lot.
On the other hand five miles is about the right range for AT-missiles. So
if
The US ARMY fact file
http://www.army.mil/fact_files_site/tow/ gives
TOW a max range of 3750m. 3750m is less than half of five miles and
TOW is one of the longer ranged anti-tank missiles.
your tanks want to get to point blank range they'll still need to drive
through a kill-zone. At 40mph that'll take seven and a half minutes. How
many tanks will die in that time before they even get off a single shot?
Not as many as you might think.
First, vision is going to be obscured over much of that distance by trees,
buildings, fences, haze, etc. Heck, at 2000m on perfectly flat & open
ground I'm not sure that a SUV & tank would be over the horizon from
each other yet. You are going to need altitude for those long shots.
Sure, there are places where this can done (I can think of a couple of
places out west that could conceivably hit 35 miles) but they are rare
and they will be heavily scouted before they are entered.
Of course helicopters would be sent first, but you can buy 100 SUVs for
the
cost of a single tank. The helicopters may simply run out of missiles.
Unlike tanks the SUVs may well be able to see as well as they can. And
unlike tanks, the SUVs can fire-back.
Of course, if they run out of missiles they may simply go back for more,
use the chain gun on the soft targets like SUVs with missile launchers,
call in an Air Force strike or even an artillery strike.
What makes you think that tanks can neither see nor shoot-back?
Time of Flight of IRBM, 30 minutes. Speed of CVBG, 25 kts. Detection
of launch, instantaneous. DSP Sats, y'know. Radius of circle that
could contain the target - 12.5 Nautical Miles.
35 knots (let's be generous) and half an hour means a ship or convoy could
get 32410m away from the target point. This gives an area of
3,299,954,370m2. UK trident-II missiles can 8 475kT warheads which will
Oh, not only are you figuring on nuclear missiles but thermonuclear
missiles.
Kind of getting away from the original character of your hypothetical
country
aren't you?
start fires at 9km, meaning they'll make the fuel onboard a carrier
explode
within an area of 254,469,005m2.
Gee, you think it just might be a little harder to light off the jet fuel in
a carrier's bunkers than, say, a dry field of brush or an exposed wood
timber framed home? I suspect you'll have to get significantly closer
than 9km to a carrier to kill it and it won't be by igniting the jet fuel.
So you need a total of 12 warheads (or two
missiles) to kill the convoy. This assumes the US has perfect reaction
times, and can instantly guess the target at the moment of launch, which
it
can't. As I said, nuclear buckshot will kill most things. 
Na, no point getting into the geometry.
Time of arrival of U.S. ICBM ('cause we're Nice Guys, and aren't going
to unleacsh somethig on the order of 10 Trident MIRVs on your country,
and only take out single targets, roughtly 1.0-1.5 hours after launch.
Your Command Centers and missile bases, or Missile Sub ports don't
move, and you made the mistake of going Nuclear first.
Attacking a military convoy (particularly of an agressor) is very
different
from attacking a civilian or semi-civilian target. Particularly when the
I would not count on the nation who's convoy you just nuked thinking
that way.
fall-out will drift over large parts of europe, who will not exactly thank
you in exchange. Again, there is no international law that says, "Thou
shalt
not attack the US." The US would also *not* launch against the british
islands without making damn sure they'd knocked out our ballistic
submarines
first. Otherwise a single sub can destroy america. MAD remember?
Besiodes which we have no silos or command centers! Have you seen the
state
of London traffic? There's be no way the PM could get out in time! ^.^