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Originally Posted by Coys1882
Crunch - what about land mines? Would those only serve to immobilize it or is the armour on the bottom thin enough to be penetrated?
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Depends on the mines. most of the standard mines are designed with mobility kills in mind as oppossed to a catostrophic kill.
However with IED's that goes out the window as they are pretty much wiring anything they can find together and triggering them electronically.
a lot of IED are built around things like artillary shells wired together and command detonated, wire enough together and it doesn't matter how heavily armored you are.
The thinnest armor on the tanks are located underneath and on top of a tank, that's why missiles tend to be so effective, and that's why a lot of the U.S. strategy around anti tank warefare is based around precise submunitions that can be fired from artillary or dropped from airplanes.
Now there was a rumor that a M1A! was significantly damaged by an RPG 29 which is a duel warhead anti tank weapon that the American's refused to let the Iraqi military buy because they were afraid that it would fall into insurgent hands.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RPG-29
There's an old saying that warheads will always defeat armor . . . eventually, there will be more effective counters created to deal with the M1A1's chobham armor.
The next generation tanks will probably be fitted with electronic reactive armor. a advancement on the current explosive reactive armor on the 1-90 tank.
You'd still need heavy armor to deal with projectiles but electric armor would be really effective in dealing with things like FPG's and missile penatrator warheads
http://www.wired.com/science/discove...urrentPage=all