22 Jul 2009
A Stryker vehicle crew belonging to the 4th Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division, fires a TOW missile during the brigade's rotation through Fort Polk's, Joint Readiness Training Center.
22 Jul 2009
A Stryker vehicle crew belonging to the 4th Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division, fires a TOW missile during the brigade's rotation through Fort Polk's, Joint Readiness Training Center.
July 22nd, 2009 at 9:32 am
I didn’t know TOWs were even still fielded.
Googling…
…
Huh, and the wiki sez it’s the most common ATGM in the world. Now how about that?
July 22nd, 2009 at 12:07 pm
They work great against insurgents & IED teams.
From 3 clicks away, you put a missile on a couple of IED emplacers and they turn to goo before they know the missile is inbound.
July 22nd, 2009 at 11:33 pm
Wow, that’s a blast from the past!
That’s a great picture, because you can see the control wires spooling out of the back of the missile.
I had an engineering job about 20 years ago where I worked on improving the machines that wound the spools for those wires.
That was around Dessert Storm. Hard to believe that was so long ago….But damn, that was a fun job.
It was ancient technology even back then. But it still seemed a bit unbelievable that you could control a missile with wires that follow it everywhere it goes.
But you can! And I’m sure it still works.
July 23rd, 2009 at 12:16 am
The thing is reliable because those wires form a secure communication link that is not susceptible to jamming and other countermeasures, however, the gunner does have to track the target for the entire flight.
July 24th, 2009 at 9:15 pm
If it ain’t broke…