BGM-71 TOW Current situation (title may be changed)

Machinery of War Discussion
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This discussion was opened to have the opportunity to talk about the status of the Tow missile, after the La Royale update, I realize that a lot of time has passed, but this gives us the opportunity to report on the situation of the aforementioned missile, as well as I would like to talk about some issues regarding its use in the game.

This discussion will be modified over time based on new information and needs, I’m just here to collect data and find a solution to related problems, let’s try to help each other.

At the end of the discussion, perhaps, there will be some polls.

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Brief Summary of the BGM-71 TOW

In practice, the TOW is an American anti-tank missile, produced in 1970, created to replace previous obsolete missiles, currently produced by Raytheon, previously produced by Hughes Aircraft.
I’m not here to talk about the history of the missile itself, but to focus on the state of the missile.
However, it is one of the most used missiles in the world, with different functions (anti-tank, bunker, etc.) and installed on different systems (tanks, helicopters, light vehicles, etc.).

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State of the missile in Game

What can I say, quite disastrous, at least from my personal point of view, compared to how it was before the update.

I realize and appreciate the developers’ effort to bring “Realism” into the game.
But according to the sources I have read and seen, the TOW is not as it should be in reality, at this point the missile should be defined as more imaginative, most of the time, when the missile is “fired” from the launcher, for some law of physics crashes into the ground a few meters (feet) away from the vehicle. Unlike the videos and photos that I will link below to make you understand what I mean.

With these images I want to point out that none of the launched missiles fall to the ground after launch

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But in addition to the force of gravity, we also have the very small amount of damage that the Tow causes, the Tow-2B should disintegrate a tank from above, but most of the time the “shot” does not penetrate or hits the optics, while the Tow-2A Tandem crashes onto the fantastic ERA, instead of penetrating through it and killing the crew members.

Note the destruction produced by the missiles

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E1VWPOpYbQI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urERJ4h7I2g

As icing on the cake, the maneuverability of the missile is painful, I read and reread the post where the new mechanics of missiles (New Atgm physics- Update La Royale) were written, but over long distances the missile goes where it wants in an all too accentuated way, it doesn’t follow the crosshair even if I am completely still with the mouse on a target, it continues to rotate around the pointer without ever stabilizing.
While if I move the mouse even a little, the missile completely loses “stability” and most of the time it hits 1 meter more to the left or right of where I was aiming.

Just type BGM-71 Tow Live Fire on YouTube and you will see tons of videos

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-WJKc46Zbo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SmhOxYmNsuc

What does this lead me to do? Completely forget about tanks with ATGMs, because so far, using a Tow-2A seems impossible to me.
To give you an example, out of 400 missiles launched, before the update at least 350 hit the target and 280 hit the critical point that I indicated.
After the update on 400 missiles launched, only a hundred hit the target, only 10/15 hit the critical point, but the way was quite random, even if maybe I was aiming at the engine or the turret, rather than the lateral center of the tank.

Before the update and after the update

Here too you can find a lot of videos on YouTube, but to be more correct, I would like you to watch the videos of users who complained about the missiles, as well as go and try the Tow yourself on vehicles such as: IFVs, Helicopters, all platforms launches Tow.

However, if necessary, I will attach the videos below.

In these videos you can see the Tow before the Royale update:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBr1AVqL5v8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=955wzcX2xow

In these videos you can see the Tow after the Royale update:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KIZB5sQeKws
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=weQy2i8n3_Y
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/YouV-kzGMRQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dm8EYDy8vTs

How to solve this problem?

In the meantime, let’s underline the problems or in any case what makes it difficult to use the Tow:

  1. The missiles don’t follow the pointer properly, even the muose is completely still (Although I’m pretty sure the missiles are automatically stabilized)
  2. They crash into the ground (Yet in the videos all missiles continue in a straight line, unless the gunner decides where the missile should go)
  3. The small amount of damage (I’m not asking for them to do a nuclear explosion, just the actual damage that we are all seeing, even from just the news)
  4. They are not very precise and very difficult to control (the main reason for using an Ifv with the Atgm is the Atgm, if you take away the fun of using their main purpose, I might as well remove the Tow directly from the game)

Personal thought/final comment

I totally understand that this is a game, but if you want to turn it into a realism simulator, at least do it right.
I know that there are various differences between missiles and missiles, but this does not mean that you should distort some types to favor others, also because at the moment the missiles seem more broken than functioning or performing as they should.
I’m not asking for the mechanics to be changed again, just that it be simplified a bit so that we users can also have fun and not just get pissed off at the heavy amount of problems that have plagued this game for years.

Give us a little breathing room for goodness sake, but as I said before, this is my personal thought, while this below is the thought of the users of the community.

Were the missiles better?
  • Before the La Royale update
  • After the La Royale update
0 voters
Here you will find some links that might help you understand Tow better

(BGM-71 TOW - Wikipedia)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uPYiYaFUPWU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u2_8DeFOzjU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ePvOFYOZAUA

6 Likes
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The damage Is produced by the missile hitting the ammo rack in the t72 video.
If you Watch the video you can notice the explosion being produced by the insides of the tank

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The 2B is still so sad.

Its only had one of it’s two warheads work since its introduction and still somehow penetrates less than is physically possible by a EFP, which is it’s warhead diameter. It should be penetrating a minimum of 127mm which is the diameter of the warhead, but instead it penetrates 100mm.

There was no basis given for the penetration change to occur either bar the massive amount of backlash and malding the missile was causing against it’s targets.

As it stands now it is still strictly worse than the 2A in almost most situations which is not at all how it is IRL, where the 2B is to be used in every situation against armor before the 2A per all modern manuals you will find on it’s use.

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Yeah, I loved getting hit on the track and getting retarded overpressures from it

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Thing is that penetration does not trigger that and thats what got nerfed into the ground.

Gaijin screwed up a lot of the internal values of the 2B and just chose to nuke all of them, thats why it has trouble overpressuring pretty much anything today, meanwhile base TOW-2 and 2A have no such issues because they have properly set up missile parameters.

Had gaijin just removed said weird file values and left the pen alone it would still be viable, as it stands its not.

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I notice what I see in the video, but in the game, even if I take the ammunition depot of a T-72 it doesn’t explode, even if I hit it with a 2B, in order to kill an enemy tank, unlike the videos, I literally have to crash the missile on the turret, because if it explodes 1 meter above the tank, it will not penetrate.

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Unlike the Tow 2A, the 2B can be maneuvered much better.

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Not like that helps much when one missile can kill things and the other cannot.

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I guess I can’t put up videos of tanks being hit with missiles, can I?
Because these are videos of the moment and everything that happens now, I say it in this very barbaric way, I don’t want the discussion to be closed for something I can’t say.

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I updated the discussion by attaching videos that show the “situation” of the missiles in battle, before and after the Royale update.

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Tow-2B does not have the new missile control scheme.

Anyhow i find ludicrous that it takes TOW-2/A fired from the M3 Bradley nearly 400m of flight to get stabilized on a aiming point.

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All NATO missiles have a crazy amount of drop on them for no real reason, including ones that have propelling charges like the shillelagh.

None of them should be dropping as hard as they do.

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And we all know the reason for this bullshit

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Bump for this, good OP post. Mainly speaking of US missiles, the TOW and MGM-51 Shillelagh, seem nearly useless. The M60A2 and Sheridan feel very sad right now…

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The 2B was somewhat fine until last update where gaijin finally “fixed” it. it had the old missile model which was very controllable, the damage was still crap, but it was easy to control (which made up for it in my view)

but now, in addition to bad damage, it’s horrible to control… Id risk saying that it’s the worst missile in the game, but gaijin doesn’t give a shit if the game is good or bad (if not, they would have fixed, again, the missiles mechanics a long time ago)

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To this, I would like to add that TOW variants have lower arming distances than they should have.

The wiki says that only the TOW-2B variant as an arming distance of 30 meters, all the other variants don’t have an arming distance at all and are live from the moment as they are fired. I was recently able to confirm that at least the TOW-2A is armed at around 40 meters.

However, this unrestricted, public manual for TOW missiles by the Department of the Army states in 1-1. a. (1) that

The ITOW missile can destroy targets at a minimum range of 65 meters and a maximum range of 3,750 meters. The TOW 2B missile can destroy targets at a minimum range of 288 meters when fired from the ground mount and 200 meters when fired from the HMMWV or BFV. The TOW 2B has a maximum range of 3,750 meters whether ground- or vehicle-mounted.

As it is to assume that no changes in arming distance have been made between the TOW, ITOW, TOW-2 and TOW-2A all these variants should have their arming distance increased to 65 meters and the TOW-2B should have its arming distance increased to 200 meters.

This change would severely limit the close quarters combat efficiency of vehicles equipped with the TOW launcher, especially those who are only armed with them aside from machine guns like the Wiesel 1A2 and CM25. I would see these changes as positive, as the TOW should function as a range extension for the four IFV that are equipped with it and the CM25 and Wiesel 1A2 should not be heavily involved in close quarter engagements to begin with.

I understand that this is not a change the op of this thread had in mind but given the name of the thread (BGM-71 TOW Current situation (title may be changed) as of writing this) I assume that this addition is appropriate.

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This doesn’t really make anything other than the TOW-2B worse - if anything it makes it clear that the non 2Bs should be able to actually hit a target where the crosshair is before 250m (which is not possible currently).

1 Like