Extract
US anti-tank missile developments.
US Anti-Tank Missile Developments
Going for the Kill against new Armour The first major infantry anti-tank battle of the 1990s is raging as these lines are written. In Angola, Jonas Savimbi's UNITA guerillas have been struggling since December to preserve their forward base at Mavinga against a heavily armoured offensive launched, under Soviet direction, by troops of the rigidly Marxist MPLA regime in Luanda. Using the Hughes TOW and Euro-missile Milan missiles, the unguided Matra APILAS, MBB Armbrust and widely-produced 66 mm LAW anti-tank rockets, plus captured Soviet weapons, the guerrillas had (by end-January) already knocked out at least 50 of the MPLA forces' T-55 and T-62 tanks, together with dozens of BMPs and BTRs. Despite their losses, the MPLA's troops - for the first time - are continuing to press forward, at least for the present. It seems probable that this is an act of desperation on the part of the Castro-style Luanda regime. Following the pull-back of the 50 000 Cubans who have done much of their previous fighting for them, the MPLA hard-liners must be dreading an imminent withdrawal of the 2 500 Soviet and 600 East German military advisers on whom they now depend. The wind of change in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union has not yet reached Angola. But the chances are that it soon will, just as it is likely to reach other "clients" for military advisers from the crumbling Eastern Block. Does this mean that Soviet battle-tanks and other weapons will cease to be made available to totalitarian regimes in the Third World? Hardly. For as long as manufacturers in the West and in the developing nations are willing to export modern weapons systems, the flow of Soviet arms is likely to continue. Indeed, as Russia moves towards a market economy, the foreign exchange earned by arms exports, including battle-tanks, could become increasingly important to Moscow. The US Army has most recently experienced action - of sorts - in Panama and, before that, Grenada. In future, it expects to orient a greater percentage o...See the full content of this document
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