T-90 Tank Appears to Have Survived TOW Missile Hit

For all the videos coming out of the Syrian civil war, a one minute, 31-second clip of a U.S.-made TOW missile slamming into a T-90 tank got more attention than most. In the video uploaded in February, Russia’s most advanced operational battle tank met one of the United States’ main tank killers on the battlefield.

The T-90 was Russian made, but likely crewed by Syrian troops. The missile was supplied by the United States — most likely via Saudi Arabia or the CIA — to the Hawks Mountain Brigade fighting near Aleppo.

For the participants, the whole experience might have been terrifiying. For most of the rest of the world, it was a chance to see what happens when state-of-the-art hardware from two major world powers violently collide in the Middle East.

The only good news is that nobody appeared to get killed. What happened to the tank … well, no one who watched the video was exactly sure.

We saw the wire-guided missile bob toward the T-90, which was parked on a crest between two low-slung buildings. Then the missile hit the tank’s turret with a tremendous flash which sent up a cloud of smoke. One of the crew members bailed and the video ended.

There was no fire and the tank didn’t “brew up,” meaning the fuel tank didn’t ignite and burn the crew to death. (The Syrian army has lost thousands of tanks since the war began in 2011.) This one, it seemed, survived.

A recent photograph circulated on Russian military forums shows what the tank looked like after impact. Sure enough, the T-90’s Kontakt-5 reactive armor appeared to save it. Reactive armor explodes outwards and stops incoming missiles from penetrating into the tank and killing the crew.

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US Army's new Precision Shoulder Launched Missile Program to Attempt Anti Tank AND Anti Personnel Roles in one Cheap Missile

In more than a decade of fighting Afghanistan, American troops have become painfully aware of how hard it can be to uproot an enemy hiding behind rocks, in buildings or other cover, especially over long distances.

Mostly armed with M-16 rifles and M-249 machine guns firing small .223-caliber bullets, troops regularly found themselves outgunned by the Taliban and other militants. With few other options, many units turned to the FGM-148 Javelin anti-tank missile launcher.

Laser guided and with a range of more than 2,700 yards, the Javelin could get at deeply dug-in opponents and avoid hitting unintended buildings nearby. The missiles can fly in a straight line – and into narrow spaces like windows – or shoot up to a higher altitude and drop down on targets behind obstacles.

But despite these qualities, co-designers Texas Instruments and Martin Marietta had not crafted the missile with these sorts of targets in mind. That’s why the Army announced Nov. 24 that it’s looking for new super missile that can blow up armored vehicles and kill enemy soldiers equally.

Blandly titled the Precision Shoulder Launched Missile, the ground combat branch wants a single weapon that can meet five different “lethality” goals and hit its mark more than 1,000 yards away, according to the official notice.

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