GEC-Marconi Dynamics TAMS

lastdingo

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Well, this was an early Western hard kill APS of the most obvious kind.
A remotely controlled (twin) machinegun turret on top of the tank turret roof with its own sensor, shooting at incoming missiles.
A kind of Vulcan Phalanx CIWS for tanks.

I understand that a millimetric radar would cost a lot, the turret of TAMS would restrict the TC's field of view and many incoming ATGMs fly in spirals, which makes them difficult to hit without a huge output of bullets.

I have quetions
[list type=decimal]
[*]why did this kind of APS not have a breakthrough (nowadays we have CITVs and RCWS on tanks anyway, Armata combined these two - so an ATGM hard kill should be feasible with existing hardware, but I never read about such applications)?

[*]why no higher rate of fire machineguns than twin chainguns in TAMS? Is any reasoning behind this obvious to anyone?
[/list]
 

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Thanks for finding this. i knew I'd seen such a system, but hadn't been able to track it down.

I think turreted hard-kill APS like this never really caught on because it takes too long and requires too much complexity to rapidly lay onto inbound missiles, especially at short range.

As for ROF, they were looking at 20-round bursts at 1200 rpm, which means roughly one-second bursts. A 7.62mm Gatling takes about a half-second to spin up to 3,000 rpm, so its effective ROF may not be much higher than the two Chain Guns, which should be at full speed more or less instantaneously and should be less prone to jamming (the M-134 was kind of notorious for feed issues). Plus, having two guns means you might have some capability if one fails.
 
Was the system also intended to provide direct fire? If not a quartet (or sextet) of redesigned American-180s would've provided a higher rate of fire for terminal intercept with a similar amount of weight...

Anyway, my guess is that increasing missile velocity might have undermined such efforts:

1963-1964:
9M14 Malyutka - 30 seconds to maximum range at 115 m/s (257 mph) - 26 seconds to 3 km
9M17 Fleyta - 17 seconds to maximum range at 160 m/s (360 mph) - 18.75 seconds to 3 km

1976:
9K114 Shturm - 14.5 seconds to maximum range 345 m/s (772 mph) - 8.7 seconds to 3 km

1985:
9M120 - 11 seconds to maximum range at 550 m/s (1230 mph) - 5.5 seconds to 3 km
9K121 - 13 seconds to maximum range at 600 m/s (1342 mph) - 5 seconds to 3 km.
 
I remember seeing drawings of a tank mounted CIWS system on the turret of a theoretical tank back in the late 1980s. It had four MGs and four Short Range SAMs either side of a central radar systems. It made sense then for tanks to take on their own defence IMO. APS systems have largely replaced that sort of thinking. What I never understood was how the commander of the tank was to be able to "see around" the CIWS turret to the rear of the tank. Nowadays, remote sensing systems using cameras would take care of that.
 
A quick bit of google book searching reveals that Diehl explored a similar concept in the early 1990s using a 27mm cannon though didn't even get as far as TAMS did.

More interesting is that in 1990 UK industry produced the "Firmguard" consortium that included the entities that had worked on TAMS in addition to Vickers (and a few others) that were offering an AFV DAS. Vickers was also working on armour packages under the name ROMOR with ROMOR-D intended to be active.

Also, I note the elevation for TAMS is 90 degrees; I wonder if they had top-attack missiles in mind?
 
JFC Fuller said:
Also, I note the elevation for TAMS is 90 degrees; I wonder if they had top-attack missiles in mind?

A top attack ATGM you're engaging at 90 degrees is already over the vehicle and in the process of firing. The intended target at that elevation seems more likely to be top attack sub-munitions of the Skeet type, which can be directly overhead, but not yet in range to fire.
 
A quick bit of google book searching reveals that Diehl explored a similar concept in the early 1990s using a 27mm cannon though didn't even get as far as TAMS did.

More interesting is that in 1990 UK industry produced the "Firmguard" consortium that included the entities that had worked on TAMS in addition to Vickers (and a few others) that were offering an AFV DAS. Vickers was also working on armour packages under the name ROMOR with ROMOR-D intended to be active.

Also, I note the elevation for TAMS is 90 degrees; I wonder if they had top-attack missiles in mind?
I recently stumbled across this German-made Active Protection System profile on twitter.here are imagines:
 

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