Laser Range Finding: What everyone gets wrong

In this video we talk about laser range finding and what a lot of people get wrong. For this I interview a former Leopard 2 gunner.

Disclosure in 2018, 2019, 2020 & 2023 I was invited by the Panzermuseum Munster.

Cover design by vonKickass.

»» GET BOOKS & VIDEOS ««

»» SUPPORT MHV ««

»» MERCHANDISE ««

» SOURCES «

our brains

#laserrangefinding #laser #tankcombat #tanks #afv

00:00 Intro
00:21 A cone, not a beam
01:56 How to operate the range finger
03:20 Using different values
04:40 Laser warning systems
07:18 Laser for measuring terrain

[mensch]

"Baptizing" and "Naming" the terrain both make sense linguistically. Another word for baptizing a child in English is "christening". This word is often used for the ceremony naming a new ship (though in practice it involves all of the superstitious activities such as breaking a bottle of champagne when the ship is launched).

EDIT: Now that I think about it, "christening" is used in military accounts in English for when soldiers rename a landmark with a generic name like "Hill 372" into something more evocative like "Bloody Hill" (e.g. "After fighting for the hill for so many weeks, the weary soldiers christened it as 'Hamburger Hill'").

[thbloodandfire]

Former OR 8 German platoon leader here.
Sorry, I have to correct the gunner Tobias here. It is absolutely not depending of the TC to name to landmarks in the "Geländetaufe." That is up to the platoon leader in most of the cases! Every soldier of the platoon needs to know those names! This is to accelerate spotting, respectively firing times of the whole platoon.
Example: 4 tanks appear left side at "Kugelbaum" (ball tree). The TC of the tank immediatly airs that on radio: "Left side 4 tanks at Kugelbaum." If properly (which usually is done) tasked beforehand, the gunners of the other tanks leave their observation areas even without specific orders and (if permitted) can engage the targets, while the TC's with the periscope overtake the whole observation areas of their tanks. That is only possible if the whole platoon knows those landmarks. Imagine if that would be different for every tank ...

[LafayetteCCurtis]

The Chieftain made a video on this a couple of years ago and he mentioned that the Abrams' FCS allows the gunner to pick the average in addition the the first or last return. And there's always the option of manual typing/dialling as you brought up in the video.

[kenbb]

Tobias is a great resource, we are lucky to have him on these videos. Thank you Tobias!

[MBkufel]

In the M60 TTS, there was an option to choose between the first, the second and the last.

This is however nothing in comparison to the Polish Merida FCS which stored first TEN returns. It also had gating (you guesstimate a range, the returns that are more than 100 metres short of that or more than 200 metres long are discarded) and some ways to input lead without rotating the turret.
It wasn't a very good system XD

[stalkingtiger]

In the U.S. Army the terrain, range and major feature map was called a range card. You also draw assigned fields of fire for the whole platoon/company.

[sbreheny]

Even modern civilian laser rangefinders for rifle shooting offer the ability to select from different echos. I have a relatively inexpensive one and it allows first, last, or strongest.

[ERIK-]

I think we need optical rangefinders once again (as a secondary rangefinder), just of course with nowadays technology would be almost just like a slower but more precise and hidden laser rangefinder

[brennus]

Thanks! I feel like a portion of my ignorance has been diminished.

[absolutmauser]

I never understood it was a cone. I remeber as a kid playing M1 Tank Platoon not understanding how a laser warning sensor could tell some other oarr of rhe tank was being hit with a tiny laser dot. It makes a lot more sense if the cone of laser light is hitting a LOT of the tank!

[dukeofwar]

Terraintaufe has a really long and rich history. If you look at german documents of Stalingrad from WW2 for example, you may find names such as "Das Gelbe Haus" = "The yellow house" or "L-förmiges Haus" = "L-shaped house" or "Pavlov's Haus"
And yes, rather unserious names are often picked as they are way more easily memorized and can be way more distinctive than broad discriptors.
For example:
"Kleiner Schuppen mit grauem Wellblechdach" vs "Nilpferdgrill"
transl.: "Small shed with grey currogated iron roof" vs "Rhino-bbq"
These nicknames are also often far shorter and thus easier and faster recognizable, espescially on comms. This practice has also found its way into fast-pace shooters like Counter Strike, where players named specific parts of maps such as "Ramp" or "boiler"

[depleteduraniumcowboy]

In the US Army armored crewman training I went to we called them range cards.

[xxxlonewolf]

Yep. It made ranging things weird at times, never mind if you are ranging through trees.
LRFs, even hand helds, have settings for First/Last return.

[Thane]

I was just reading "Into the Storm" by Tom Clancy, about the 1991 Persian Gulf War. A few times they mentioned problems with the laser rangefinders. Much of the time during the ground war it was raining heavily and windy, yet still there was much dust in the air. Thermals could see through it, but the lasers were either cut short at longer ranges or the results were so scattered they were often not directly useful.

It said that they often had to take many rangings and use an average to enter into the computer, or make a guess based on the size of the target on thermal and enter that range. Even so, they were making hits over 2000 meters and a few at over 3000. It didn't directly note how many shots per hit, but based on ammo consumption later it wasn't always one shot one kill.

[xxxlonewolf]

Most modern tanks have LRF warning systems & good ones can auto slue the turret & aim with the press of a button.
Hence why ATGM sights have both laser & the bracket sight options still.

[Huwbacca]

Yeah that tree is called spread legs....

But yeah same for infantry. If you're in terrain, squad leader will set reference points. Then we have things like "3 knuckles left of spread legs"

[UJ-Lite]

Tbh I didn't know enough about it to get it wrong Bernhard! Thanks for the info. 🇦🇺

[radosaworman]

on the question of taking the avereage of two readings - that was moust important pet peev of polish crews of leo2a4 which lead to development of Leo2pl and next gen of polish FCS which we can find on IFV's with ZSSW-30 unmaned turret.

[MishaAmashukeli]

Very interesting. Some questions:
1. Why not use a tighter laser beam? I understand that there are physical limits but it should definitely be possible for the beam to be much smaller than a tank(at distances where shooting at the tank is possible).
2. There are time-fused shells that are supposed to explode in the air over trenches(by measuring the distance and programming the shells to explode at just the right time). If the range-finder beams are so wide, how would you measure the distance that precisely? I guess it's accepted that the first round may not hit directly over the trench?

[wernerviehhauser]

Pen and Paper are still deadly tools :-)