Hacker News Reader

Comment by AussieWog93 | Hacker News Reader

https://www.forbes.com/sites/sebastienroblin/2022/03/31/anal...

The only thing I've seen about the NLAW is a direct hit on the top turret of a Russian tank doing absolutely nothing.

> The NLAW may have a maximum range of 600 or even 800 meters, but it also has a minimum range of 20 meters. Below that range its fuse isn’t meant to go off.

> So most likely, the lucky tank was actually too close for the NLAW to work as intended.

NLAW direct attack mode is intended for soft targets. Its shaped charge warhead points down at a 90 degree angle from the direction of flight. It is intended to detonate while the missile flies over the top of the tank shooting a jet hypersonic molten metal down into the most lightly armored part of the tank. If you use the direct attack mode against a tank it's probably not going to work much better than just throwing an equivalent amount of high explosive at the tank which usually won't do shit.

I hope users know that mode as "Unarmored target mode". Knowing nothing about this I can imagine non-professional soldiers selecting "direct attack" because that sounds intuitively like a thing that would work against a tank.

I'd like to think each missile comes with an instruction booklet illustrated in the same style as the pamphlets airlines have for evacuations.

The NLAW has a single warhead, while the Javelin and Stugna have a tandem warhead designed to deactivate ERA first.

Who knows how it works in practice.

NLAW - 40k Javelin - 80k missile + 140k launcher Stugna - 20k missile

Reply on news.ycombinator.com