Yemeni Forces’ Soviet-Era Missiles Hunting S. Arabia’s Abrams Tanks

Recent footage released on the web shows the Yemeni army and popular forces attack an Abrams tank with Konkurs missile which fully destroyed it instantly, of course to much surprise.

Although one of the tank’s crew manages to flee the scene, the footages show the tank is set ablaze and destroyed completely.

Konkurs is a SACLOS wire-guided anti-tank missile made by what was once known as the Soviet Union. Its NATO reporting name is AT-5 Spandrel. The missile entered service in 1974.

The Abrams is an American third-generation main battle tank produced by the United States. The M1 Abrams entered US service in 1980, replacing the M60 tank. After the start of the Saudi-led war against Yemen, two M1A2 (Abrams tanks) MBTs were deployed near the Saudi/Yemeni border.

Beginning in 1987, M1A1 tanks received improved armor packages that incorporated depleted uranium (DU) components in their armor at the front of the turret and the front of the hull. Armor reinforced in this manner offers significantly increased resistance towards all types of anti-tank weaponry, but at the expense of adding considerable weight to the tank, as depleted uranium is 1.7 times more dense than lead.

That’s why the US has been using Abrams only with this improved armor for two decades now.

But the US-made tanks sold to Saudi Arabia and used in Yemen war have no DU armor, meaning that the US has sold Riyadh nothing but a piece of junk which was once good for war in the 1980s.