World of Tanks is a free-to-play online game featuring a huge arsenal of historically authentic tanks that you can modify, upgrade, and take command of in massive battles. You can rush aggressively, hang back and support your team, or pick off enemies from afar; each tank has their own unique set of characteristics. Its attention has now been diverted towards the total evisceration of your computer from existence. The main battle tank shows up at your door step within seconds and is now surveying your computer for structural weaknesses to exploit.
What do you do in this situation? Do you call 112? Do you get the Chobham composite reactive armor from the basement and prepare for the worst? Do you run away with your computer and enact a scorched earth policy? Don’t be foolish. In this situation, there is no time to worry. Look into the abyss of those cruel, spiteful eyes. The Leclerc knows no fear. It can only see fear. It can smell your hesitation. It can hear your anxiety. It can taste the fight or flight response happening inside you, and it’s beginning to look more like flight than fight.
This is the malicious face of one who demands absolutely no association with any concept of morals. For him, the Geneva Convention is simply the Geneva proposal. What he will do next is unknown. Who knows what dirty tricks he has up his sleeve? Trenching tools? Mustard gas? A bottle of poison around his neck in case he gets caught? A plan to split and destroy your army in one decisive cavalry charge? All we know is that it will stop at nothing to facilitate the faithful reunion between your computer and a seven kilogram two-stage long-rod tungsten kinetic penetrator.
Indeed, this is the descendant of Emperor Napoleon himself, and it will launch an offensive campaign against your computer with the speed, efficiency, and military prowess that the Blitzkrieg has wet dreams about. Does this sound like someone who has mercy? Do you think this will give you a centimeter of respite? No. Our only hope of surviving is to rely on our sharp wits to quickly survey the situation and accordingly formulate a plan. So let’s get to it. I hope you’ve kept up with your main battle tanks reading, because there are several critical pieces of information we should be able to identify from this menacing silhouette alone.
We know that the Leclerc is armed with an auto-loading 120mm model F1 GIAT CN120-26/52 smooth bore gun firing DM43 armor piercing fin stabilized discarding sabot rounds, which can penetrate more than 560mm of rolled homogenous armor at a range of 2000 meters, at a velocity of 1740 meters per second. Your computer, on the other hand, has no armament of any kind, and its thin “armor” can only protect against limited small arms fire at best: not a 120mm APFSDS round to the face, which is a problem. So, what if we up armored it?
True, your computer has an armor profile that forces the perpendicular projectile impact optimal for ceramic armor, but your computer would probably punch a hole in the ground due to the weight of eight inches of steel welded to it. Also, the sheer kinetic energy of a seven-kilogram tungsten projectile moving at almost two thousand meters per second impacting your computer would most likely cause it to simply cease to exist. So this is out of the question.
The Leclerc is propelled by an eight-cylinder diesel engine producing 1,500 horsepower, allowing it to reach cross-country speeds of 55 kilometers per hour, and can track your computer over a range of 650 kilometers with the use of external fuel tanks. So taking your computer and running also won’t work. You are not William Sherman. Do not attempt any scorched earth tactics. You would probably burn down your own computer in the process. Given this information, we realize that defensive tactics are impractical. We will thus take an offensive position and eliminate the enemy ourselves.
The Leclerc was designed to withstand multiple impacts by various weaponry over a sixty-degree frontal arc. Therefore, as long as the Leclerc is facing you (which it will be), in order to theoretically penetrate this armor, we must use the proper ordnance. These include the most modern iterations of long-rod APFSDS rounds, which use a kinetic energy penetrator rod made of depleted uranium and can penetrate over seven hundred millimeters of rolled homogenous armor, or even tandem-charge anti-tank guided missiles, which detonate in two stages and can penetrate more than one thousand. Almost enough to get something through your thick skull.
The only problem with these proposed solutions is that most people do not just leave tandem charge warheads and depleted uranium rods lying around the house. Without these necessities, those layers of composite ceramic armor plates and reactive modules make the Leclerc virtually invulnerable—unless...we found a way to bypass them altogether. I can already identify a weakness. Can you? Of course. Most modern main battle tanks lack protection in the roof area. It just so happens that the Leclerc fits this exact description.
The roof does not have the raw armor thickness of other more critical areas such as around the cannon breech and gunner’s sights. Due to its extreme slope, any shots that land there will certainly ricochet regardless of nominal thickness. Thus, the roof armor of the tank is made relatively thin to save weight. This will be the Leclerc’s fatal flaw and ultimate undoing. So how do we exploit this weakness? Do we climb up there and hit it with a hammer with speed and power? We have a more sophisticated solution up our sleeves: HESH ammunition.
Unlike conventional kinetic energy penetrators, high explosive squash head shells rely on a malleable warhead that deforms upon impact, creating a pat of plastic explosive that spreads across the surface. The base fuse then detonates this pat, causing internal spalling across a large area. On the same slope that would cause APFSDS rounds to ricochet or shatter like its fragile ego, HESH shells will successfully detonate and cause a shockwave of destruction out of the sheer energy of how based it is in not giving a single toss about armor slope.
So how do we acquire HESH ammunition? Most people don’t just keep random tank shells lying around. Don’t worry if this is you. We will now put your baguette stash to good use. The oblong shape, soft, sensual texture, and delicate crust of a pristine baguette resembles the components of a HESH shell. All that is missing is the shell filling. If we were to somehow give our baguette explosive properties, we would have ourselves une magnified high explosive squash head round. We will now do exactly this. Hollow out the baguette then insert a delayed action base fuse.
Next, fill the rest of the space with plastic explosive, leaving room at the top for the inert filling cap. Then cut the baguette in two pieces to separate the shell and shell casing. For legal reasons, I have to tell you not to do what I just did. But it is up to you to decide whether or not you want to follow that advice when there is a Leclerc waiting at your front door. We now have one HESH shell that is ready to fire. Since barrel rifling allows the shell to spin and disperse the plastic explosive filling over a greater area, we will retrieve the Royal Ordnance L30A1 120mm rifled gun emplacement we have conveniently stored in the basement. Now observe as the HESH round detonates on the Leclerc and liberates our computer from harm.
0 Comments
Post a Comment