Defender advantage is substantial in situations like that. Moving targets are a lot harder than stationary ones. Ukraine armor is concentrated around the main cities instead of strung out in long vulnerable stationary lines.

Ukraine also has javelins and other shoulder fired anti tank weapons

Anything you hit with those is pure luck.

Source: experience.

Edit: I was thinking of what we had in the Army, which was definitely not guided.

> Anything you hit with those is pure luck.

I've never seen a Javelin miss in my entire life. They've got like 5,000 recorded successful engagements.

> Source: experience.

Are you firing them before they've got a chance to get the sensor down to temperature?

Er, no. Javelin is guided. They are videos of them doing some really amazing long-range shots.

For example https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sah9nbGQLFY

> For example https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sah9nbGQLFY

I guess you posted that for the compiled footage, but Lord do I hate voice synthesized narration.

From my armchair, it seems totally practical to hit-and-run attack the convoy on foot using fire-and-forget Javelins from 1.5-2 miles away. If the terrain is impassible to vehicles, the attacker can just shoot from the top of a hill and run away down the other side (maybe without even being seen).

Also, it strikes me that there are only 1000 tanks in the force. It seems like such a small number contrasted against 100,000 soldiers. That seems like a tractable number of tanks to destroy.

1000 tanks are quite a lot. I think future wars will feature less of them aside from power projection. But for occupations they are pretty vulnerable targets despite their armor.

54 down, still a ways to go:

https://www.oryxspioenkop.com/2022/02/attack-on-europe-docum...

Note that that is a lower bound.

Tabks are hard to use unless the terrain is ideal. Maybe great for driving across dry countryside and lifht rubble and mowing down infantry, but not for occupying a city you don't want to flatten.

That's interesting. I didn't even notice that! I suppose I found the footage sufficiently compelling to distract me.

Might the javelin fail to hit the tank, by accidentally homing in on one of the trucks next to it instead?

From what I've read, they have too few javelins already

You lock the missile on a target while aiming it. The seeker will remain locked to exactly that target until it hits. Only way it's hitting a neighbouring truck instead is if that's what you aimed at when you pressed fire.

Ok. I suppose this works also if the tank moves -- but if it gets out of sight, let's say a truck drives in front of the tank, then might the javelin miss?

Or is the javelin so high up in the air, so it could typically see the tank anyway?

Yes, in principle, obstructions could make it miss. But also yes, Javelins fly lofted arc trajectories, unless you take the shot a half a second before the target is obstructed, the missile will almost certainly be able to maintain lock even if something obstructs your view of the target.

I too sucked at CoD.

We aren't talking about RPG-7 here, but ATGM (which, as the name imply, are guided missiles).

In close quarters and urban environments, I would think that it would be hard to miss

Saint Javelin never misses.