During the 1st Gulf War there were several verified 4000m one-shot kills by M-1's against T-72's. The fire control system on most western tanks is good enough to get about a 50% hit ratio while moving over rough terrain out to maximum effective range.
Almost all modern ATGM's will destroy any tank, as, for the most part, they use top attack.
Here's the problem with the Russian tank launched ATGM's...
The weapon is a beam riding laser guided missle. To guide the missle the gunner must put the sights on the target, activate the laser, and hold it on target for the entire time of flight. At 4000m you're talking almost 12 seconds of flight. All the while, in the target tank, the laser detection alarm would be screaming in everyone's headsets. If there was any terrain, if the target poped smoke, if the shooter was hit, or if the gunner was unable to track the target for any reason (trees, terrain) the missle would miss. It takes twice as long to load the missle as a shell (two parts), they are expensive (so there's less of them put into the regular load out), and the gun cannot shoot while the missle is in flight (earlier wire guided missles could not even open the breach while missle in flight to start the reloading).
By comparison, it takes about 3 seconds for a Sabot to cover the same ground, the shooter only needs to see the target for 2-3 seconds, and there would only be a single beep of the laser detector to warn the target. An auto-loading tank would be able to fire 3 sabots back at the missle firing tank in that time.
77SiCaRiO77, the info I got on the Russian gun says its max range for Sabot's is 2000m on the "Sprout" gun (which is the wheeled version of the 2A45 used in the T-72 and T-80).
LINK The 2A46 is a longer barrel version of the same weapon, uses the same ammo, Metis-M has that link.
Metis-M, thank you for that link, I've been looking for a good table to compair the 2A46 on, the 4000M is the
maximum range, not max effective, which is listed as 2000m. Another website I found listed it at 2130m. Max effective is a function of KE left in the projectile and accuracy of the gun.
Oh, BTW, while we are talking silly range weapon system, in works for the L-44/55 is the XM1111 MRM-KE, a guided, rocket assisted KE penetrator with a 12,000m range.
I do have a question, if anyone can say for sure, but from the research I've done, it looks like the Russians have trended away from the DU Sabots back to Tungsen. Anyone verify this one way or the other?