ADATS (M113)
| This page is about the British SPAA ADATS (M113). For the US version, see ADATS. For other uses, see M113 (Family). |
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Contents
Description
The ADATS (M113) (Air Defence Anti-Tank System) is a variant of the ADATS complex for the Canadian army mounted on the M113A2 APC chassis. The installed missile system has a dual purpose: engagement of both high-speed (including low-flying) and slow-moving aircraft, helicopters, and UAVs, as well as armoured targets on the ground. The installation itself has a modular design, allowing it to be mounted on various armoured vehicles. The complex consists of 8 guided missiles in transport launch containers, a radar for target detection and missile guidance, a control computer, jam-resistant communications, and data transmission equipment to allow coordination between ADATS complexes and other equipment.
The ADATS (M113) was introduced in Update "Hot Tracks". Thanks to its versatility on the battlefield, it can often surprise enemy armour with its MIM146 guided missiles, which have a warhead equivalent to 7.86 kg of TNT, providing 900 mm of armour penetration, and good post-penetration damage to crew and internal modules. However, unlike the American version, the ADATS (M113) lacks a gun armament.
General info
Survivability and armour
The chassis is the infamous M113 which by this point should be enough to tell how fragile this carrier is. It is vulnerable to 12.7 MG fire within 800 m range when standing completely flat and anything bigger (almost everything, including coaxial weapons, at this point in time) will penetrate it without a failure. The hull can block overpressure damage if it was hit into the engine compartment, but will otherwise immediately fold.
The missiles can be ignited by any damage and will violently explode if actually destroyed, taking the carrier with them. The turret itself is empty and APFSDS or HEAT-based weaponry should only destroy the IRST or the radar if they hit high enough, allowing the carrier to trade shots with some tanks. Pure HE and artillery are likely to destroy the tank instantly.
To prevent self-guided ammunition of already dead aircraft from hitting the carrier, or to annoy pursuing tanks, aerosol smoke grenades can be used. They are located on the hull front.
Armour type:
- Aluminium alloy 7039 - Hull
- Aluminium alloy 7039 - Turret
| Armour | Front (Slope angle) | Sides | Rear | Roof |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hull | 38 mm (44°) Upper Plate 38 mm (27°) Lower Glacis |
44 mm Top 32 mm Bottom |
38 mm | 38 mm Roof 10 mm Radiator Vents |
| Turret | 12.7 mm Turret front + 19 mm Track IRST | 12.7 mm | 6.35 mm + 12.7 mm | 12.7 mm |
Notes:
Structural Steel Side plating - 10 mm
Mobility
| Game Mode | Max Speed (km/h) | Weight (tons) | Engine power (horsepower) | Power-to-weight ratio (hp/ton) | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Forward | Reverse | Stock | Upgraded | Stock | Upgraded | ||
| Arcade | 70 | 11 | 16.6 | 396 | 532 | 23.86 | 32.05 |
| Realistic | 65 | 11 | 247 | 279 | 14.88 | 16.81 | |
The carrier is painfully slow for rank VIII and is similar to every M113, if not worse.
It can drive -5 and then -10 km/h in reverse (-11 in AB), acceleration depends on driving crew skill. It will in general drive in range of 20-34 km/h and will slowly accelerate towards 60 km/h over flat terrain, but any turning or uphill will reduce the speed significantly. It isn't much better in AB, but it will store speed twice as fast.
Modifications and economy
| Mobility | Protection | Firepower | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
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Armaments
Main armament
The main weapon of this tank are MIM146 missiles. The missiles are multi-purpose and can snipe both tanks and planes alike.
Left launchers fire first, starting with the top left tube, tubes fire one after another with about 0.5 sec delay if "fire" button is held. The missiles are controlled by a laser beam, all missiles launched within the 3 seconds window are controllable at the same time and they can't be jammed. MIMs will fly at about 1 km/s even when forced to make a hard turn. They will very quickly adjust to wherever the operator is pointing at, but aiming too low on initial launch might cause the missile to hit the ground, particularly when fired from the bottom tubes.
Missiles deal heavy damage both with HE and HEAT aspects. Direct hit will penetrate 900 mm of flat armour, but this effect can be stopped by excessive ERA or NERA shielding of some tanks, although repeated hits in the same spot will obliterate any tank. The real power of this missile is in HE overpressure effect, as MIM146 has enough explosive mass to implode 35 mm of RHA on close hit, meaning that it can instantly destroy any NATO medium tank by hitting their turret neck, and may just randomly obliterate any other through their optics or other weakspots.
When used against air threats, proximity fuse will react to hostile missiles and rockets if radar is not locked and will ignore them if locked (unless locked onto them). This means that ADATS can protect itself while attacking, or just straight up disintegrate any aircraft (or multiple aircraft, if they are hovering at different distances).
When compared in anti-air role to the Starstreaks of the Stormer HVM, the MIM146 can maintain most of its speed while pulling off extreme turns, do not have the weird two-stage launch, have proximity fuse and have longer maximum range, so ADATS is in general easier to use and is more practical against jets.
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The missiles come in bundles of 8, which means that you do not get to reload until all of them are spent and rearmed (which takes about 30 seconds on a capture point and debilitating 120 seconds outside of a cap in AB), and the reload itself takes 20 seconds. Fortunately, the tank benefits from "SAM tank" rearm on a capture point, which means that it can rearm without reloading as long as the carrier didn't fire its last missile yet. This mechanic should be exploited every time it's feasible to do without dying to remain competetive, especially in AB, where you particularly want to fire off last missile while already rearming on a capture point and only then leave it (because if tank starts rearming outside of the point, the 120 second long rearm cannot be overruled by a quick rearm on a capture point, and the opposite is also true, allowing to speed up the rearm by 75% while running away). |
| MIM146 missile | Turret rotation speed (°/s) | Reloading rate (seconds) | |||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mode | Capacity | Vertical | Horizontal | Stabilizer | Stock | Upgraded | Full | Expert | Aced | Stock | Full | Expert | Aced |
| Arcade | 8 | -4°/+85° | ±180° | N/A | 61.6 | 85.3 | 103.6 | 114.6 | 121.9 | 19.50 | 17.25 | 15.90 | 15.00 |
| Realistic | 41.7 | 49.0 | 59.5 | 65.8 | 70.0 | ||||||||
Ammunition
| Penetration statistics | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ammunition | Type of warhead |
Penetration @ 0° Angle of Attack (mm) | |||||
| 10 m | 100 m | 500 m | 1,000 m | 1,500 m | 2,000 m | ||
| MIM146 | ATGM | 900 | 900 | 900 | 900 | 900 | 900 |
| Missile details | ||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ammunition | Type of warhead |
Velocity (m/s) |
Range (m) |
Projectile mass (kg) |
Fuse delay (m) |
Fuse sensitivity (mm) |
Arming distance (m) |
Trigger radius (m) |
Explosive mass (TNT equivalent) (kg) |
Ricochet | ||
| 0% | 50% | 100% | ||||||||||
| MIM146 | ATGM | 1,027 | 10,000 | 51 | 0 | 0.1 | 300 | 6 | 7.86 | 79° | 80° | 81° |
Ammo racks
| Full ammo |
Visual discrepancy |
|---|---|
| 8 | No |
Radars
To help ATGM carrier serve it's anti-air purpose, ADATS Search Radar and an electro-optical/infrared tracking system with TV and Forward Looking Infrared were installed. The search radar is mounted on top of the turret at the rear and the barrel-like tracking optics are located at the front of the turret.
The search radar has a decent 25 km of maximum detection range which it can switch to from the default 10 km (which is exactly the effective range of the MIM146). Radar will easily find any helicopter trying to sneak an ATGM into the carrier, but its vertical scanning elevation of 18 degrees is quite limited, making it difficult to randomly detect jets that chose to opt for "space bombing".
This carrier does not have automatic lock-on from 3rd person view like previous SPAAs and operators will have to go into sniper seat and heavily rely on thermal weapon sight to find the hostile aircraft or incoming TV bombs themselves. Lock from the electro-optical tracker shows the distance and the relative velocity of the target without triggering the LWS or RWR of the locked hostile aircraft which gives ADATS some advantage when fighting modern jets, much like with the Stormer HVM.
| ADATS - Target Detection Radar | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Maximum Detection Range |
Minimum Detection Range |
Max Azimuth Scan Angle |
Max Elevation Scan Angle |
Minimum relative speed |
| 25,000 m | __ m | 360° | 18° | __ m/s (__ km/h) |
| Electro-Optical Target Tracking Radar | ||||
| Maximum Tracking Range |
Minimum Tracking Range |
Azimuth Tracking Angle |
Elevation Tracking Angle |
Minimum target speed |
| 10,000 m | __ m | ±__ | -__°/+__° | __ m/s (__ km/h) |
Usage in battles
ADATS is a very infamous missile turret, and all enemies know what it looks like, which makes employing this carrier very difficult. This ADATS carrier also doesn't have an autocannon on top of the turret, so light tanks will chase you around without much fear.
This doesn't mean that people actually know better and many tank commanders make a lot of blunders when fighting it, such as shooting the empty turret of ADATS with APFSDS instead of just exploding the missiles.
Realistic battles
The goal is very simple - you sneak as close to the middle of the battlefield (or as far from it and the spawn) as you can, while avoiding the frontline, where people might find you by just looking around. From these positions, you countersnipe by hitting overconfident MBT snipers right into their throat (as their turret face armour means almost nothing to you when you can just overpressure them) and blast hostile helicopters and multi-purpose fighters when they inevitably try to bomb you (the launchers can aim higher up than on the American ADATS, so they might make a mistake thinking you can't shoot them). When you get low on ammunition, try to get onto a capture point to rearm, preferably before you actually ran out (so that you can avoid having to wait for a reload as well). If you are on a purely anti-air duty, you might as well just stand on a friendly capture point and fire at any incoming missile and bomb, but try to not expose yourself to tank fire.
People really hate ADATS and will try to murder you with almost religious zeal, which can be used against them, as kinetic shells do not really do anything important to the ADATS when they hit the turret head-on and/or when the missile racks are empty (the left one will be empty after 4 shots). You can also hide the radar by turning it off, just so it doesn't tick off every strike craft in the vicinity, but generally knowing where they are is more important than them not knowing that you exist (yet).
Sometimes enemy helicopters and bombers are just camping the spawn and you will have no choice but to launch half of your missiles to shoot their missiles and subsequently set them on fire. Some enemy helicopters can only guide two laser missiles, so you can get them with about three. Helicopters that have IR missiles might as well launch their entire arsenal at you while dying, but those are slower than MIMs, so using smoke to lose their missiles rather than trying to snipe them all out of the air is perfectly acceptable.
Arcade battles
In this mode ADATS is more of a throwaway wild card tank, for two reasons:
- Hiding in top tier with abysmal mobility of M113 is a sisyphean task. Even if you will personally obliterate every drone and every plane, you can't outrun any other tank once they will start looking for the noise source. You need to be very good at aiming the missiles onto tanks
- The ATGM reload outside of a capture point is 120 seconds + 20 seconds of reload, meaning if you ran out of ammunition outside of a capture point you should just leave the tank before the game ended with you doing absolutely nothing, or before someone found you 100 seconds later and brutally murdered you for trying to wait it out. However, if you run out of ATGM while ALREADY rearming on a capture point, you can drive out of it and you will rearm much faster without having to just stand there.
This means that in general you want to do either of these plans:
- Fatalist route: Find a place from where you can trash so many of enemy tanks that it will actually affect the game. Difficult to achieve at close range, considering they will all fire back at you once you start, so maybe look for a long range spot with good overwatch potential (you can snipe multiple tanks due to the ability to guide many missiles). Try to deal as much damage as fast as possible and then leave the carrier to avoid wasting time (or throw yourself onto the enemy so that they at least waste a shot on you and die to a teammate)
- Survivalist route: Fight for a capture point, capture it by slamming enemy tanks into their face, start the rearm on capture point then fire the last missiles off and run away before someone came back and torched you, proceed to destroy every aircraft that enemy team ace will spam out to try and completely wipe out your team and try to spam air attacks of your own until enemy folds and starts spamming SPAA. If someone comes after you, feel free to destroy them, but never fire 8th missile outside of a cap and try to stay close to your allies, at least initially.
Pros and cons
Pros:
- Has 8 multi purpose missiles that can destroy both tanks and aircraft and can be launched one after another without pause
- Laser-guided missiles can be launched and controlled all at once to overwhelm APS or smart opponents
- Missiles aren't affected by infrared APS such as on T-90A, M1A1 HC or AMX-30B2 BRENUS
- Unlike the Starstreak of the Stormer HVM, the MIM146 can maintain most of its speed while pulling off extreme turns. It also has proximity fuse in the case it misses, making it far more effective and easier to use in the AA role against jets
- Missiles can penetrate about 800 mm of composite armour at 30° angle and have nearly 8 kg of explosive mass which allows them to overpressure nearly anything through the weak spots, extremely lethal against NATO tank hull roof
- Missiles have a range of 10 km and are very fast from the start, with maximum speed of 1,000 m/s, which make them suitable for long range sniping
- Lower profile than the American XM1069, especially with the radar folded down and missile launchers can elevate higher than the ones on the American XM1069 due to a lack of autocannon
Cons:
- Really fragile, can be blown up by hitting the ammo rack, hull can be penetrated by autocannons and high-calibre machine guns
- Only 8 missiles with no partial reload. In AB, the ADATS (M113) will automatically rearm anywhere after using all of the missiles and it takes approximately 120 seconds, otherwise ADATS (M113) can rearm on a capture point at any time, which takes about 30 seconds. Even after rearming, if all missiles were spent the carrier must also be reloaded which takes another 20-15 seconds. All in all, it is almost guaranteed that you will be found and destroyed during that time, particularly if you trigger the long reload in AB before short one
- Due to a lack of the 25 mm gun found on the American XM1069, the Canadian ADATS is also incapable of self-defense during rearm once empty and is less flexible overall
- Missiles are not as effective against ERA tanks, which ADATS will have to constantly face, so if the operator does not aim perfectly and relies on brute force, they will only realistically take out 4 tanks instead of 8
- Long antennas might give out your position in RB/SB
- Just -4 degrees of launcher depression
- Smoke launchers are mounted on the front of the vehicle - hull must face the direction of smokescreen deployment, no ESS
- The M113 chassis has a low hp/ton ratio - mobility is severely reduced off-road, in mud, snow, and sand, overall has low reactive mobility
- Missiles need to travel a certain distance to arm the fuse - unable to engage enemy aerial vehicles at close range, except for a direct hit
- Since missiles have proximity fuse, they will react to hostile rockets and missiles, then explode mid-flight. This can be good (protects the carrier) or bad (wastes already limited ammunition). When ADATS is locked onto an aircraft, the missiles will try to ignore the ongoing traffic, which can also be good (less ammunition wasted) or bad (carrier might trade or just straight up lose the duel).
History
The ADATS (M113) was a Canadian-operated anti-aircraft and anti-tank missile carrier system, designed to engage both ground and air targets. Developed in the early 1970s by Oerlikon-Buhrle (now part of Rheinmetall), the AA system failed to see service with the countries it was intended for, namely the United States. However, the Canadian Armed Forces procured 36 ADATs vehicles based on the M113 chassis, which served with the Canadian army as anti-aircraft systems until their withdrawal in 2007.
Design and Development
In the early 1970s, Oerlikon-Buhrle began the process of developing a new vehicle, designed for both anti-tank and anti-aircraft defence. This vehicle would later become the ADATs. In 1979, Martin-Marietta joined the design process. The vehicle was designed to compete in the FAAD (Forward Area Air Defence) competition for the US Department of Defence, which wished to replace its interim M163/M167 Vulcan Anti-Aircraft guns and the MIM-72 Corporal anti-aircraft systems. The ADATS ended up winning the competition, beating out competitors including the Franco-German-designed Roland.
However, the ADATs encountered a number of critical issues with its operability. Namely, it had an extremely high mechanical failure rate resulting in a very low operational readiness. And, in 1990, the Cold War ended; that was the final straw for the ADATS. As a result, the US DoD cancelled the ADATS program, after almost five billion dollars of funding. Despite this, the Canadian government ordered the ADATS for their Low Level Air Defence (LLAD) program, spending 1.09 billion dollars to purchase 36 ADATS vehicles along with the necessary equipment.
The ADATS was highly unique in that it was designed for both anti-air and anti-ground defence. Based on the M113 APC chassis, the weapon system was composed of eight ADATS missiles, along with a search radar and laser missile director. The Canadian version was not fitted with the M242 Bushmaster cannon fitted to American ADATS SPAAs. The missiles themselves were laser-guided, and had a combined HEAT/HE-Frag warhead capable of penetrating 900 mm of armour. This system enabled the ADATS to destroy both tanks and helicopters from a maximum range of 10 km, or 7 km altitude.
Operational History
The ADATS entered service with the Canadian Armed Forces in 1989, and was built by Oerlikon Aerospace, based in Quebec. The ADATS was deployed by the Canadian Armed Forces during the Gulf War. However, it never actually saw combat, and never fired a shot in anger. The ADATS was unusually expensive for an anti-aircraft vehicle, due to its large design and development costs and small order in terms of vehicles. As a result, the Canadian Armed Forces announced that they would retire the ADATS in 2006. By 2007, all ADATS vehicles had been withdrawn from Canadian service.
Media
- Skins
See also
- Related development
- Other Canadian ground vehicles present in the game
External links
References
- Military Today. (2006). ADATS. Retrieved January 02, 2021, from http://www.military-today.com/missiles/adats.htm
- Sherman, R. (1999, July 3). ADATS. Retrieved January 02, 2021, from https://fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/land/adats.html
| Britain anti-aircraft vehicles | |
|---|---|
| Crusader AA | Crusader AA Mk I · Crusader AA Mk II |
| Wheeled | Staghound AA · AEC AA |
| Radar SPAAG | Chieftain Marksman |
| Missile SPAA | Stormer AD · Stormer HVM |
| Other | Light AA Mk I · Falcon |
| Canada | Skink · ADATS (M113) |
| South Africa | Ystervark · Bosvark · ZA-35 |
