NATO tank gun accuracy / effectiveness

[SchDerGrosse]

Iam just going to copy and paste ChatGPT Pro's assessment of scen 5 of the big red one campaign.

Yes—the numbers are genuinely extreme. From the beginning of the scenario through 16:56, your Abrams fired 527 M256 main-gun rounds. At least 394 rounds—74.8%—failed to destroy or cause the fall-out of a single enemy runner.

Your American ATGM units fired 122 missiles, of which at least 67—54.9%—produced no runner loss.

Complete count
Weapon Fired Maximum possible losses caused Minimum non-killing shots Minimum non-killing rate
Abrams M256 main gun 527 133 394 74.8%
TOW-2A 91 38 53 58.2%
TOW-2 15 8 7 46.7%
Dragon II 16 9 7 43.8%
All ATGMs 122 55 67 54.9%
Main guns + ATGMs 649 188 461 71.0%

This is deliberately generous to your weapons. Whenever an engagement included M256 fire plus machine guns or other weapons, I credited every possible target loss to the M256. Consequently, actual main-gun effectiveness could be worse.

Abrams results by range
Engagement range M256 rounds Maximum possible losses Minimum non-killing rate
≤1,333 m 109 45 58.7%
1,334–1,667 m 62 14 77.4%
1,668–2,000 m 77 22 71.4%
2,001–2,500 m 147 29 80.3%
>2,500 m 127 20 84.3%

Range is clearly hurting you: beyond 2 km, roughly four out of every five M256 rounds produce no loss. But range does not explain everything. Even within 1,333 metres, nearly 59% of the rounds were non-killing.

By target class

The results are not solely caused by T-72B armour:

Target M256 rounds Maximum losses Minimum non-killing rate
Tanks 198 41 79.3%
APCs 96 27 71.9%
Infantry-class contacts 69 18 73.9%
Self-propelled AT units 25 8 68.0%
Headquarters 42 4 90.5%

The poor results against APCs, headquarters and SP AT vehicles cannot simply be blamed on T-72B protection.

What “miss” means here

The save records ammunition fired and destroyed/fallen-out runners, but it does not give a dependable per-projectile flag for:

clean miss;
hit stopped by armour;
hit defeated by cover;
non-lethal damage;
loss of guidance;
projectile wasted in a multi-round salvo after another round killed the target.

Therefore 394 is not an exact clean-miss count. It is the hard minimum number of M256 rounds that caused no runner loss. Of those, 288 rounds occurred in engagements producing absolutely no target loss at all. The remaining minimum 106 were surplus/non-killing rounds in engagements where some other round obtained a loss.

For ATGMs, 45 missiles were fired in completely unsuccessful engagements, with another minimum 22 non-killing missiles contained in partially successful salvos.

Verdict

Your impression is supported by the save: the Abrams are producing extraordinarily poor combat results.

[SgtZdog]

It's difficult to draw any firm conclusions from this summary, but for consideration:
Due to the combat evaluation before firing, tanks were quite possibly engaging enemy tanks first (being greater threats), which means a shot could only result in a single platform kill. By contrast, ATGM fire was quite possibly considering loaded IFV just as dangerous and more likely to result in a kill and so was primarily engaging enemy IFV. Being loaded IFVs this means that a single shot often generates 2+ platform kills (the vehicle and its passengers). This is supported by the data available, the M256 has no dedicated anti-infantry ammo, all of its shots will be against vehicles and we can cleanly see that there are more shots against enemy Tanks than against IFVs. Adding those Infantry kills to the IFV kills gives us a kill rate closer to that generated by the ATGMs.

We can also see the difference in kill rate between IFV/SP(X) and tanks is going to roughly correspond to the value of armor and the common miss chance is going to be misses from cover/concealment/accuracy/etc. Looking at Dragons with their much shorter range and higher likelihood to fire within their effective range we can see the accuracy of these systems is roughly on par and within the error rate of the data (Dragons are infantry carried and more likely to be used in ambush while TOW and Cannon are vehicle mounted on the cavalry and set up for longer range fires). (Note especially the Abrams results by range which shows how big a difference range can make. It's also worth noting that the exact ranges in the Radio Log are just a flavorful fuzzied value of the range between hexes. It is the range between hexes that is actually relevant here, not the value reported in the radio log.)

It would be interesting to see it do the breakdown of ATGM fire if infantry losses are removed and do that comparison. I expect the values come pretty close to each other then.

[SchDerGrosse]

It's difficult to draw any firm conclusions from this summary, but for consideration:
Due to the combat evaluation before firing, tanks were quite possibly engaging enemy tanks first (being greater threats), which means a shot could only result in a single platform kill. By contrast, ATGM fire was quite possibly considering loaded IFV just as dangerous and more likely to result in a kill and so was primarily engaging enemy IFV. Being loaded IFVs this means that a single shot often generates 2+ platform kills (the vehicle and its passengers). This is supported by the data available, the M256 has no dedicated anti-infantry ammo, all of its shots will be against vehicles and we can cleanly see that there are more shots against enemy Tanks than against IFVs. Adding those Infantry kills to the IFV kills gives us a kill rate closer to that generated by the ATGMs.

We can also see the difference in kill rate between IFV/SP(X) and tanks is going to roughly correspond to the value of armor and the common miss chance is going to be misses from cover/concealment/accuracy/etc. Looking at Dragons with their much shorter range and higher likelihood to fire within their effective range we can see the accuracy of these systems is roughly on par and within the error rate of the data (Dragons are infantry carried and more likely to be used in ambush while TOW and Cannon are vehicle mounted on the cavalry and set up for longer range fires). (Note especially the Abrams results by range which shows how big a difference range can make. It's also worth noting that the exact ranges in the Radio Log are just a flavorful fuzzied value of the range between hexes. It is the range between hexes that is actually relevant here, not the value reported in the radio log.)

It would be interesting to see it do the breakdown of ATGM fire if infantry losses are removed and do that comparison. I expect the values come pretty close to each other then.

Thank you for your feedback.

I migh not have been able to wholly comprehend your point, but from what I understand what your wrote does not address the possible serious concern as seen in the statistics extracted from the save file.

ie. the Abrams, with:

a) [allegedly] superior accuracy and optics,
b) superior AP and HEAT pen,
c) in stationary and dug in position

"Missed" (nonpen etc.) 75% of their shots throught the entire battle.


Mind you the targets varied between inf, bmps, btrs, t 55s (!) and oc some T80s. The point being it wasnt a showdown between state of the art soviet armor and the abrams. It was really painful to watch dug in veteran platoons plinking away from 1-2-3-4 hexes at t55 that were casually strolling down towards the objective.

The problem is further compounded by range brekdown:
≤1,333 m 109 45 58.7%
1,334–1,667 m 62 14 77.4%
1,668–2,000 m 77 22 71.4%
2,001–2,500 m 147 29 80.3%
>2,500 m 127 20 84.3%

Meaning that NATO's intended doctrine, get the first shot, and shoot from as far as possible then relocate cannot be consistently replicated ingame due to the fact that, as seen above, Abrams cant hit/pen targets beyond 3 hexes with.

I know a single piece of date is woefully insufficient to draw any serious conclusion from, but I have had the "feeling" mission after mission that med and long range tank fire does nothing. WP is only in a better position because they have more pieces firing, increasing the chance of inflicting casualties.