Tank Busting, How to do it on a budget Options

[weblife]

Its quite easy really. Using nothing but the SR3 rulebook.

If you toss a grenade at someone, it goes off at the end of the round. - Too inaccurate unless the vehicle is immobile.

Best solution is an underslung grenadelauncher on a shotgun or other rifletype. Fit it with a rangefinder and smartlink. Now it detonates in the air, where you aim it.

Now, aim BELOW the vehicle, the grenade must explode UNDER the vehicle.

The grenade Power will now reflect off the ground and the bottom of the vehicle, until the Power is high enough to either rip the vehicle or flip it away from the blast. (Or plow a hole in the ground, if there is a cavity below).

Setting distance between ground and vehicle to half a meter, the Power will be:

10+9+8+7+6+5+4+3+2+1 = 55S, modded to vehicle damage, its 22M - Enough to damage a tank.

Where I play, we have a houserule that means that the secondary waves also get a seperate damage check, so the grenade also does:

9+8+7+6+5+4+3+2+1 = 45S

8+7+6+5+4+3+2+1 = 37S

...30S, 24S, 19S, 15S, 12S, 10S

[Austere Emancipa...]

Try this.

A sane GM will, of course, just laugh at you if you try that, but the rules certainly do allow for it. An insane but rules-lawyery GM might well rule (and would definitely be justified by the rules in doing so) that the rebounding stops the moment the armor is breached, and thus all you'll ever really get out of this is a 2M attack.

This post has been edited by Austere Emancipator: Apr 13 2005, 10:32 AM

[weblife]

Hehe, its the same mechanic, and its even sort of realistic.

However.. That box.. Who is holding it? - Its gonna have the worst sort of recoil imaginable.

The power going out the front will also kick the entire box backwards.

I've been trying to figure out how to blow doorlock using a pressureplace over the explosive charge, but I've not found a way to affix my plate firmly enough to beat the barrier of the target.

Well, I suppose drilling holes would do it, and then use screws into the plate and door. As long as the plate and screws are minimum of the same hardness as the target, they should both give in at the same time.

Drilling holes is just not feasible when in a hurry. How to slap-attach a bomb and enhancing casing firmly enough to break barriers?

[Austere Emancipa...]

[The Grifter]

Let me lend my tanker knowledge and combat experience here. In OIF, we had muliple mines, grenades, and RPG's go off under our tank, and the worse we ever suffered was getting some track links blown off. A grenade will NOT kill a tank from underneath.

[Edward]

I believe the way the SR rules work throws a slight kink in the plan.

When you have your modified grenade damage of 55S you roll half the power in dice, target 4 to stage up the damage. That is 27 dice to stage up averaging 13 successes making 55D+5 or 27D+4 against vehicle armour

When interacting with vehicles you could instead take the vehicle code of 27M and role 13 dice target 4 giving 6 successes and a damage code of 27D+1 against vehicle armour.

The main battle tanks in SOTA63 will survive but nothing else will.

As to slap on dor busters they should be doable. I have seed footage of blasting cord in contact with steal plate and blasting cord between steal plate and a centimetre of water, the former made a minor dent, the later shredded the mettle.

I believe a package consisting of an adhesive pad, a small amount of C12 and a gel pad about 2CM thick would be able to open any door not designed specifically to withstand explosives. The package would way at most 500 grams

Edward

[Austere Emancipa...]

The Grifter: Looking back, I think I wasn't emphatic enough at first. I'd say I absolutely, 100% degree that a (hand) grenade beneath a tank won't penetrate the bottom armor, except that it's so obvious it shouldn't need any agreeing. You want to inflict critical damage to an MBT with anything less than a 1kg shaped charge, you'll have to get the explosive inside the tank.

Edward: Like I said, the rules could just as well be read so that the moment you do damage through vehicle armor the "barrier" is breached and thus the damage stops accumulating. So even if you use the optional rules you mentioned (and I suggest everyone does), you're basically going to end up with something like 2S or 2D.

[Edward]

But if your have shredded the tanks lower armour have you not already delivered a deadly wound to the tank with the bits of armour going threw critical electrical and fuel systems.

If not why only power 2 and not the grenades base power.

As to the experiment. It was difficult to see the exact thickness of the plate, probably 2-3mm thick and 50cm square defiantly more solid than any door I have ever seen (excluding the bank vault).

the detcord was a single length of about 30cm in a strait line

the water was in a thin plastic tube and sticky taped over the detcord

Edward

[Austere Emancipa...]

[Edward]

If you look at the SR rules for damage to barriers the grenade would shred the bottom armour. I’m not saying its realistic but that is what the system shows.

As to the detcord you mention

[lorthazar]

Tank busting for cheap LOX and anything. You just need enough LOX.

[Austere Emancipa...]

[The Grifter]

As a side note, the Iraqi's would use Cold War era SABOT or HEAT rounds taken from the Soviets, and would place them beneath the surface to act as a limited AV mine, though it required wiring and a man to ignite the charges. Still, reasonably effective gainst the Bradley's and such. Not so much our M1A1s.

[Austere Emancipa...]

[The Grifter]

Yeah, I shit you negative. Engineers must have pulled a hundred of those things outta the ground. I don't think they used the Sabots for dedicated tank killing, more for personell or mobility kills against soft skin vehicles. The round really couldn't reach enough velocity from that short of a distance to penetrate tank armor.

[Austere Emancipa...]

Without a barrel, I'd be surprised if the projectile itself would reach enough of a velocity to penetrate an up-armored HMMWV at 5 meters. I'd think the propelling charge would be doing more damage at that point.

[ES_Riddle]

I think there is a rule-based answer to disable the ridiculousness of an antipersonel grenade destroying a tank. Correct me if I'm wrong (I seem to have misplaced my SR3), but from a strict reading of the rules, blasts only reflect off barriers. A tank is not a barrier, but rather a vehicle. It has a vehicular armor rating rather than a barrier rating, so it won't reflect the blast. If you had a grenade go off between two runners, you wouldn't expect shrapnel to reflect back and forth between them until they are reduced to chunky salsa, so why should tank armor be different?

[The Grifter]

Good point, Riddle.

AE-I agree with you theoretically, but I have seen some Hummers get jacked up from them.

[Austere Emancipa...]

Yes, you can also read the rule like that. The section in question only mentions to "barriers" (though with a lower-case b, so it's not that obvious), and refers to the Blasts against Barriers section.

I forgot to mention that SR3 does, sort of, have rules for directing explosives, in the form of the Demolitions check for normal (instead of double) BR and +1 Power/success against TN 2. This is hardly sufficient, however, since plus 3-6 Power is insignificant when dealing with large amounts of powerful explosives.

[Cain]

Don't forget, vehicle armor goes against the *base* rating of the attack. So the rebound value may not do anything to the tank.

[Sandoval Smith]

Just out of curiosity, what is the general barrier rating of ground surfaces? I would expect that dirt, concrete, or asphalt would break well before the tank would.

[Edward]

There is somewhere a listing of barrier ratings for vehicles to facilitate gaining entry to a vehicle rather than its simple destruction.

@ Austere Emancipator

thank you for that description of backing materials. It dose seem that a modest package including a high density jell backing, a modest quantity of explosives and a adhesive would be producible but I think the best way to blow open a door in SR is still to choose a shotgun as your primary weapon and carry a case of shock lock rounds. Especially fun if you cast stealth on the gun and the door before firing.

Edward

[Tarantula]

I think sidewalk concrete is listed at a barrier rating 10.

[Jari_Kafghan]

If sidewalk is 10, then asphalt is no more then 6 and "dirt" could be anything from 1 (topsoil) to 20(this odd stuff I run into once in a while that isn't quite rock but its close)

[Austere Emancipa...]

If you assume that the blast will still rebound off the vehicle, but that dirt has a BR of something like 1-5, then a single "Offensive" hand grenade under an MBT could produce a hole in the ground several meters deep. Although that's no more insane than having a hand grenade knock out said MBT.