In Gurps, how powerful do you need to fight a tank?

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Anaraxes

The diameter of the steel pin holding track shoes together on the Abrams is 1.374 inches. If you can bend or break that, you can get an "M-kill" on the tank. (If the tank moves with "only" a bent track, it'll likely just tear its own track off.)

Such a bar has DR 30 and HP 60, per the tables on B558.

Supers rules for bending bars make it a Quick Contest of ST versus the higher of the object's HP or HT; DR subtracts from ST before the Contest. So, Lifting ST 90 gives you a 50-50 shot at breaking a track. That's ST 20 + 9 (Super-Effort). ST 20+10 gives you a value of 120, so 90 vs 60, guaranteed other than crits.

Breaking a tooth or three off the drive sprocket would be similar, as the teeth are individually about that same size. They poke between the gaps in the track shoes, so I wouldn't think they'd be particularly easy to get a hold on. But if you're imagining just grabbing the edge of the track and pulling it outward, you don't really care which part breaks.

Tracks are typically tensioned with a force equal to around 10% of the weight of the tank. They're not stretchy or loose (or at least they're not supposed to be), so you can't just slip the track off the wheels without physically breaking the track --or loosening the idler wheel so you can get the tension off the track with enough slack to just lift it over the retaining edge or sprocket teeth. Breaking a drive/idler/road wheel or axle would be harder than just breaking the track.

That is just a really cool bit of analysis.