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The TOW-2B fires a slug of extremely fast moving copper down the turret of a tank. Conveniently, T-72s often have their ammo at the bottom of the turret.

For MBTs I would be perfectly okay if RPG-7s required a hit to the top of the turret for a kill in two shots or a hit to the engine deck for tracking.

For 30 ton IFVs, LATs should probably only be stopped by frontal armor, sides should have less resistance, but rear and top shots should down the vehicle in two shots.

Hunt3r wrote:The TOW-2B fires a slug of extremely fast moving copper down the turret of a tank.

That's what a general shaped charge does.

They have a copper cone in the front of the projectile, that gets turned inside-out (from a '--<' shape to a '>--' shape) upon detonation of the explosives behind it. The cone turns into a super-heated squirt of copper that easily burns through 300-500mm of armour (if we're speaking about an RPG-7. Modern shaped charges can burn through more than 700mm, like the TOW can). If the squirt of copper enters the tank/APC, it will super-heat the air inside, which causes some very unpleasant things to the crew and will ignite the ammunition stored inside which then goes boom.

To defend against this, the ERA (Explosive Reactive Armour) was invented. This is the outer layer of the tank, which is basically a couple of millimeters of armour with some pressure-detonated explosives underneath it, pasted on top of the armour of the vehicle itself. If the shaped charge (RPG round for example) hits the tank, it activates the ERA which blows the layer of armour in front of it forward, increasing the distance between the squirt of super-heated copper and the actual armour of the tank, thus reducing the chance the copper will melt through all the layers of armour the first hit.

This stuff usually isn't on the top of the turret though, hence the top-assault missiles such as the TOW 2B and the Javelin work so well. There armour is very thin and there's barely any ERA.

At least, I think I got my story right this way?

I agree,
The armour is too weak!

The TOW easily has around 1400mm of RHAe penetration, in the 2A variant. The RPG-29 has around 750mm penetration in a 105mm warhead after going though ERA.