- WASHINGTON -- Army munitions
experts at the Detroit Arsenal in Warren, Mich., are investigating a mysterious
new weapon that fires a projectile the size of a pencil eraser that was
used by Iraqi insurgents to knock out an M1 Abrams main battle tank in
Baghdad.
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- The yellow metal round penetrated the tank's armored
skirting and hull, tore through a gunner's seat back and flak jacket and
then took out vital equipment, disabling the tank before burying itself
in the opposite wall in a hole nearly two inches deep.
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- The four-member crew of the 69-ton, $4.3 million Abrams
survived the hit, although the gunner and the tank commander were hit by
flying bits of metal.
-
- According to Don Jarosz, spokesman for the Army's Program
Evaluation Office for Ground Combat Systems, the incident happened Aug.
28, while the tank was on patrol in Baghdad.
- The investigation into what weapon was used in the attack
is not yet complete, he said.
-
- Only one other Abrams tank has been disabled by enemy
fire since the U.S.-led war in Iraq began last March, and that incident
involved an ordinary rocket-propelled grenade.
-
- There have been no reports of any other mystery projectile
being fired at U.S. equipment before or since the Aug. 28 incident, but
there are fears that Iraqi insurgents may possess some kind of secret weapon.
- The Army Tank-automotive and Armaments Command, which
is conducting the investigation, is withholding all information concerning
it, including what progress has been made, Jarosz said.
-
- However, in unclassified excerpts of a preliminary report
published in the Army Times newspaper, Rock Island (Ill.) Arsenal technical
representative Terry Hughes described the munition as made of yellow metal.
- "It seems clear that a penetrator of a yellow molten
metal is what caused the damage," he wrote after examining the tank
in Baghdad, "but what weapon fires such a round and precisely what
sort of round is it?"
-
- A hollow-charge penetrator round works by melting the
metal it strikes and pushing a stream of molten metal ahead of it as it
passes through armor plating.
-
- According to the Army Times excerpts, the round struck
a vulnerable spot in the Abrams body structure between the top of the tread
and the base of the turret.
-
- Current-day Abrams tanks carry armor made of steel casing
filled with depleted uranium, which has more than twice the strength of
steel.
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