A European/Polish tank destroyer could very well become the deadliest weapon system on a future battlefield.

The tank destroyer packs up to 24 Brimstone anti-tank missiles, each of which uses radar to search for and destroy enemy armor.

A single vehicle could cripple enemy tank columns, rendering them incapable of attacking and stopping an invasion dead in its tracks.

A new tank destroyer concept, built for the Polish Army, could become the most effective tank killer in any army. The unnamed vehicle is armed with up to 24 Brimstone anti-tank missiles and can unleash a salvo of tank-hunting missiles, knocking out enemy tank units it can’t actually see.

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Poland is a country sandwiched between military giants. In World War II, the country was invaded by both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, and was pushed into joining the Warsaw Pact for the duration of the Cold War. Today Poland forms a major part of NATO’s eastern flank and is vulnerable to Russia’s ground forces, particularly Moscow’s large fleet of main battle tanks.

Recently, Poland issued a requirement for a new tank destroyer vehicle. Tank destroyers are armored vehicles designed with firepower and mobility in mind, meant to quickly take up positions ahead of enemy tank columns and decimate them with long-range guns or missiles. Although sometimes similar to tanks in appearance, tank destroyers sacrifice armor for the ability to quickly plug holes in friendly anti-tank defenses.

Polish Tank Destroyer concept on a BMP-1 chassis. MBDA

The new Polish tank killer is a collaboration between Polish PZG Companies and European (mostly UK) MBDA. Concept art shows the system mounted on a Cold War-era BMP-1 infantry fighting vehicle chassis with a box launcher holding 12 Brimstone missiles. The vehicle is also equipped with an American .50-caliber heavy machine gun mounted in a remote weapons turret.

Another depiction shows the system mounted on an unidentified armored vehicle chassis. This shows the system mounted in three boxes of eight missiles each, for a total of 24 Brimstone missiles.

A Brimstone missile about to be loaded on a Tornado attack aircraft during 2015 air strikes on Islamic State forces. PHILIP COBURN Getty Images

Brimstone is a medium range air-to-surface missile system developed by the U.K. The missile looks similar to the American Hellfire anti-tank missile but differs in key ways. Like Hellfire, Brimstone uses a millimetric wave radar seeker to locate and identify armor. This gives the new Polish tank destroyer the ability to engage enemy tanks at ranges of up to 12 kilometers (or about 7.45 miles).

Unlike Hellfire, Brimstone has an even more interesting indirect fire capability. Brimstone can be launched towards a defined target area and will then locate and attack any enemy tanks and armored vehicles it finds.

If Brimstone proves just 90 percent effective (MBDA itself claims 98.7 percent effectiveness in combat) a Brimstone strike could destroy 22 out of 50 tanks and armored fighting vehicles in a Russian battalion tactical group (BTG). That’s enough to render the unit combat ineffective. Two crippled BTGs will render the parent unit, a Russian tank brigade, incapable of offensive combat.



Russian T-90 tanks on exercise at Kubinka. AFP Contributor Getty Images

So far, no other country has a weapon such as the proposed Polish tank destroyer. The U.S. Army disbanded its tank destroyer units at the end of the Cold War, and even the AH-64 Apache attack helicopter can only carry a maximum of 16 Hellfire anti-tank missiles. Apache helicopters are also more or less limited to line of sight attacks.

The MBDA tank destroyer concept represents a powerful capability in which even a handful of armored vehicles could turn an advancing tank army into scrap in a matter of seconds.

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