Abrams Destroying IED by Driving Over It

Posted on by

Hello everyone,

not sure how “approved” this method of IED destruction is, but it seems to be effective, if dangerous. In this video, US Abrams tank destroys the terrorist IED hidden in a car wreck by driving over it, while a soldier behind protective glass makes a video of the whole thing.

I am really not sure how “safe” that is (even to the tank), because massive IED’s were known to destroy tanks – American, Israeli, Syrian – you name it. Regardless of the armor upgrades, no matter how much additional armor you have, you don’t survive a ton of explosives going off next to your tank.

56 thoughts on “Abrams Destroying IED by Driving Over It”

    • Either its a staged event with a chosen size of charge for dimwit “murica” propaganda, or it’s a lucky fuckup: they thought they were just crushing a car, like a rite of passage for a new driver.

      If it was a genuine IED and they knew it, someone needs to be disciplined.

      • The explosion itself doesn’t look that massive.
        So yeah, it’s most likely a staged event.

        • Staged or not; I’m not convinced those are US tanks. Something just doesn’t look quite right but it’s hard to tell with the video quality. And yes, they are Abrams, doesn’t make them US.

      • Jesus with your naked anti-American sentiment.

        This is REALLY old footage from the occupation of Iraq.
        Like late 2003 or 2004 when IED’s where nascent and not-at all a threat to any AFV. Thin-skinned humvee’s and Soldiers on foot, certainly, but not a tank.

        The entire complex of mega-FOB’s, (forward operating base) huge EOD (explosive ordinance disposal) presence and advisers teams (American servicemembers embedded into Iraqi units to train the Army & Police and used also to work with the population) didn’t exist yet, nor did MRAP’s. (12-25 ton, IED-proof, armored cars on steroids)

        This (OLD!) video represents an ad hoc, field-expedient solution to a then-growing problem of “booby traps” which was only THEN recently getting the monikor “IED.” This didn’t didn’t pose a threat to a tank. Daisy chains of 155′s — 155′s period — were still a few months to a solid year away at this time, in prevalence.

        This is WAY WAY WAY before EFP’s. (explosively formed penetrators; 2008 at the earliest probably and only really prevalent past 2009; we left in 2011)

        This entire thread is lamentable and sensational, devoid of valuable context.

        • Those who base all comments using knowledge gleaned from video games should read this. 100% right on man. I just wanted to add, unlike in a more “realistic” FPS, say Battlefield. An RPG-7 won’t do jack shit to an Abrams. Earlier versions the only plane it could be damaged was by blowing off the read drive wheel which had no armor over it. Now they do and are completely impervious to them. This information coming from a gunner who served with these vehicles, also happens to be my WoT clan leader. Current IEDs may be able to do harm, no idea how much force the belly of it could take. There was a video of T-55s engaging insurgents and one of them drove over a shaped charge which killed the crew. The explosion was was also very small, not even half the size of this one.

  3. ‘Guess they did not have enough firecrackers on New Years Eve and searched for alternatives.

  4. I’m sure they had a bomb technician look at the bomb first to determine the size of the possible explosion before they drove over it. Most of em are made out of “duds” they find scattered around town form bomb drops etc that have been rewired. Or unused ordinance. So in most cases they can determine it. I’m sure he would not allow it unless he knew it was safe. Maybe it was easier or even saver to do it this way then to have him fiddle with it. Who knows. I’m sure this was not decided by the “marine mind” alone.

  5. Depends on what the IED was made of. Mostly they are artillery or mortar shells, ranging from 60 to 152mm. They most likely inspected it, deemed it too small or dangerous to defuse and simply ran over it. The exposion wasnt really big, so it was probably only a small mortar shell.

  6. Hmmm… why didn’t they just throw another explosive on the IED? Sounds still more reasonable then driving a multimillion dollar tank with several soldiers over it.

      • Which you absolutely don’t already have, if it explodes anyways by driving a tank over it, hm? You create a blast channel which accelerates shrapnels even more, if you put a massive tank above the explosion.

        Destroying explosive hazards with targeted detonations is quite common. They do it several times a year in my city.

        • I wanted to say ‘where the hell do you live’
          But then I remembered that here we pick up the old shells from the field and put it next to the lamps in the street. With a bit of luck you see 30 of them in a single street, and they get picked up once a month. And thats in Belgium xD

          • I live in Lower-Saxon, Germany. Ha! You didn’t expect that, didn’t you? :D

            In WW2 the allies throw an insane amount of bombs on our cities freight yard. Many of them didn’t explode because of the mud soil in this area and sunk underground. Nobody took care of it and now 70 years later our city decided we need more housing space. Someone came to the wise idea to use the old freight yard and the surrounding area and now they dig out a bomb every few weeks/months, while they build there. Than they inspect the bomb, evacuate several thousand citizens of the surrounding are, throw several tons of sand and an explosive on it and BÄNG!

    • Because the explosion won’t do shit to the tank. No grenade wasted. Plus most of the explosion was contained (under the tank).

  7. The M1 Abrams can be disabled by a .50cal so I’m surprised they would risk doing something like this

      • Disabled… I guess a belt might come lose or a temporary knocked out vision – But disabled by a .50 cal might be a a bit exaggerated

        Tbh the safest way to do it is as someone said drop some plastic explosives around the IED and blow it up…
        Maybe they used it as a training for the tank crew so they have a small taste of how it feels to drive over an explosion?

        • A large caliber round is capable of penetrating and destroying an ‘unprotected’ compressor assembly which severs the power to the turret, as thus turns the Abrams into a heavily armored tractor.

          There is a full report on the findings of the M1A1 from the gulf war that has it in… can’t find the link to hand. There are no examples of the above happening in combat but there is record of an Abrams knocked out because an auxilary unit on the back of the tank was hit by a large caliber round (50 cal) and leaked on to the engine causing a fire that couldn’t be extinguished – ergo – knocked out

          I’d consider knocking out the turret as disabling ;)

    • Yeah man, I hate when those .50cals go through my 1000+mm of effective armor and kill my driver, bounce kill my gunner, bounce again, kill my commander, bounce again, kill the other guy, bounce again and go straight into the ammo rack, detonating it, send the turret flying where it lands on the button that self destructs the entire U.S. military

    • What the fuck are you smoking? You do realize how tank armor works right, especially modern day tank armor? (Usually 1000mm+ effective thickness). The M1A2 is completely impervious to a RPG-7, let alone a measly .50. When did the taliban start using a .50 round anyways? Aren’t all their DsHk HMGs 7.62?

        • Who told you that? ISIS? haha
          No M1A2s have ever been knock out, damaged yes, but not destroyed. Which is easy when you’re only facing Russian crap.
          On top of that, the Challenger II has only suffered two destroyed units. And it is often said to be a better all round tank (not saying it isn’t I don’t know, don’t kill me Brits!) than the Abrams

  10. small mortal/arty shell , or similiar charge from home made explosives …..i see IRL 152 mm (from czech DANAs) and 120 mm mortars explosions and both are MUCH bigger

    and as i see at least one guy in hatch survive so ……isnt fully knocked out

    but why someone do something dumb like drive over old wreckage ?

    • Because they are in a TANK! If I had a tank I would fucking drive over shit like that.

  12. Well, normally you would trigger this IED by another explosive charge while beeing in cover.. just driving over it, is a bit silly.. but probably they were sure with what amount of explosives they were dealing

    “We lost a Track – we cant move!” 5 – 5

  13. They surely inspected size of IED before attempting this. You probably need many kilograms of explosives to even damage a tank (not to mention car wreck between it and IED).

  15. You can see the tank bounce up a bit when the IED goes off so it’s not a small bomb. However I don’t think they’d send in a tank to destroy it if it wasn’t safe for the crew and the crew of the (Rhino?) that the cameraman was in. On the other hand, that tank was probable removed for repairs regardless.

  17. I will join internet group of geniuses and i will add that some black powder with low expansion velocity can do shit to tank , just like anti-personnel mine.
    And bomb is in the trunk of car , tank didn’t went over it. Just passed on side.
    So you would need like 10kg TNT to even damage Abram. 2-3 kg can destroy humvee or personal carriers (it was probably set to detonate when rammed by car). But ofc it’s just pure bullshit from man who only thinks he knows stuff.

  18. They didn’t run over an IED on purpose, that’s idiotic. They ran over the car, and didn’t expect an IED.

    At the time of invasion, most IEDs were daisy-chained ARTILLERY shells :D

  21. This is an older video, and has nothing to do with “‘Murica”. This is an Iraqi Abrams (export version of the Abrams, part of the 220 or so sold to the Iraqis), crewed by Iraqis.

    And yes, the crew knew there was an IED and ran over it on purpose. Showing their lack of training, the Iraqis like to abuse their Abrams like this and used to use them to detonate IEDs (and probably still do).

    • ^^^^ What this guy said is spot on.

      That’s not an American Abrams. It’s missing the TUSK kit as well as a few small upgrades. It looks identical to the export version of the Abrams though.

      The Iraqis have a culture of what I would call running equipment into the ground. It goes hand in hand with their mentality of steadfastly sticking with the “spray and pray” method of fighting using small arms. Even after months of trying to get them to use the sights on their rifles and shoot in bursts to stay on target, they’d go right back to just pointing the gun and emptying the clip in a little over 2 seconds almost immediately.

  23. Alright, people here seem to be in a ramble about the subject and as someone being ‘well informed’ about the the vehicle seen in this video (M1A2 SEP), I figured I could shed some light on the subject.

    First off, anyone who has any experience in the thing would know that the crew can get pretty cockey when driving it around. It’s 68.5 imperial tons of the best the U.S. (and other countries; german gun, british chobham) has to offer in armor and technology. The tracks are WELL constructed and have been know to run over anti-personnel mines just to see if there are actually any there to begin with. I kid you not, the tank has been used to check for mines by simply driving over them.

    Second. The commander had his head well out of the hatch for visibility reasons which would signify that they had no idea what was about to happen. I know a guy who thought it would be a great idea to pop his fully protected head (Helmet and noise canceling headset) out of the hatch when the main gun was fired. He described the results as “2 minutes of nothing but ears ringing”. So any part of yourself is not going to be beyond the armor if you know shit is about to go down, especially explosives. As for the driver, loader, and gunner, I bet they were aware that it happened but were rather unimpressed by the volume and shock of the explosion from inside the hull.

    Third, as the the survivability of the tank. I found a video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sHJgfco6VNY

    By the looks of it, the worst done to the tank was a gun hydraulics failure and MAYBE damage to the suspension. As for the crew, bruised badly as there are no seat belts so they definitely felt that one. Nothing that can’t be repaired in under a week. What you witnessed was said 68 friggen TONS of armor flying 10 or more feet off the ground by an explosive simply going off near it. If that doesn’t make you question the doubt some have of the vehicle, nothing will.

    Anyway, I hope this has helped the subject come to a conclusion.