What is the difference between IFV and APC?
- Thread starter Oversee
- Start date
Differences in the levels of protection are normally determined by whether an armoured vehicle is either wheeled or tracked. Wheeled vehicles, for military purposes at least, usually do not much exceed about twenty tons (there are a few exceptions); tracked vehicles can carry much more weight with their superior suspension, and can cross more difficult terrain due both to the proportionately lower (though not absolute) ground pressure and superior traction afforded by tracks.
This in turn allows tracked vehicles (usually) to carry much more armour protection, and heavier weapons, than wheeled vehicles (there are no true MBTs that are wheeled, for example). Wheeled APCs normally have to dismount their infantry well in front of the infantry's objective because of their light armour protection. IFVs in theory should be able to dismount their infantry directly onto or very near the objective, that is, if the infantry don't remain mounted and fight from inside the vehicle - but this concept has generally failed in practice.
The reason for this is that nothing short of a tracked MBT carries sufficient armour protection in order to move directly ONTO an enemy position. Most infantry anti-tank weapons are highly overrated; practically none will penetrate the composite armour along the frontal arc of many Western tanks, and attacking the more vulnerable areas of a any tank, composite armour or not, is very risky. Most infantrymen who live long enough to attack a tank don't live to tell the tale because either other tanks kill them, or accomaponying enemy infanry get them, and most of those attacks do little or nothing to a tank.
This is why IFVs need to have about the same level of protection as MBTs in order to dismount their infantry at or very near the objective - the main difference in armour protection between an MBT and an IFV in this case would be that it would be very difficult to fit 2 feet thick armour on an IFV turret, whereas the much larger MBT is much easier to so fit. Otherwise, the hull of an IFV and the MBT need to have the same amount of armour protection. Why this has not been done (with the partial exception of Israel and maybe one or two others) is a long story. Chinese IFVs do not even approach the protection levels of their MBTs.
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Soviet General
New Member
APC carrieds troop but does not stay and fight and an IFV stays and packs a big punch like the Bronovaia Meshina Pechota from the Soviet Union during the Cold War.