Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Any ideas for purpose designed melee weapons for vehicles. I know dozer blades (which are not the bet option) and rams (such as on Israeli tanks) I can see something link the sherman Crab's flail working quite well on a tank. But I'd like to hear about any considered ideas for designated melee weapons for vehicles, or vehicles that take a focus on melee combat.
Bonus if they are not a bipedal walker mech.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also I would like to hear how you'd emply them in concert with other units. If you wish.

First thing coming to my mind is the Aardvark JSFU or the German Keiler, which are similar to the Sherman Crab.

Maybe some corn harvester from a toy instead of a dozer blade could also mess up hordes.

There’s also deff rollers for orks - steamroller spiked wheels basically. I think there’s also an option that existed at one time that was equivalent to a militarized combine thresher.

Then there are wrecking balls, as seen on trukks.

Are we talking real life uses, or real life ideas transferable to 40k?

In the 40k universe any amount of Ork vehicles have melee weaponry, from rams to wrecking balls to anti gravity projectors.

I mean, part of the reason tanks haven't had melee weapons IRL is that they don't need them to kill stuff that gets in melee range. A tank in close assault, even without a gigantic power-hungry murderthresher, is still 70 tons of metal, and the treads are basically a steamroller crossed with a grinder. Look at some of the tactics used by Russian tank crews atop German trenches for example.

40k's abstractions don't really allow for this (except vehicles like the baneblade for some reason).

In terms of Imperial designs, isn't the Caestus Assault Ram and Mastodon arguably "melee" vehicles, by virtue of using the vehicle's mass itself as a weapon for breaching?

Dark eldar vehicles tend to have melee weapons if that's what you mean?

It's not a melee weapon in the classical kinetic sense, but I think for various imperial vehicles the option to put their hull under high voltage would make a lot of sense. If their power generators have enough performance to provide the energy for half a dozen lascannons or even a volcano cannon, it should sure be enough to electrocute some genestealers on their hull. Ans it should also not be too difficult to install.

Besides that I could see some kind of a long steel rope as a rotary whip. So a small, fast rotating turret on a low profile vehicle that slings around a rope with a weight at its end, that can be elongated. Driven into a mass of enemy infantry it could do some harm, cutting the rope loose when it gets entangled

In earlier editions Chaos destroyer blades worked as melee weapons. In 3rd Edition you could turn tanks into Daemon engines that would get a melee Profile iirc . Forgeworld hellforged tanks have rules to eat infantry models in melee, though they're not really modeled that way

Also if I ever get a Basilisk, I will get a large blade from somewhere and put it on the cannon like a bajonet, lol

 OldMate wrote:
Any ideas for purpose designed melee weapons for vehicles. I know dozer blades (which are not the bet option) and rams (such as on Israeli tanks) I can see something link the sherman Crab's flail working quite well on a tank. But I'd like to hear about any considered ideas for designated melee weapons for vehicles, or vehicles that take a focus on melee combat.
Bonus if they are not a bipedal walker mech.

Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also I would like to hear how you'd emply them in concert with other units. If you wish.

Just an FYI, those are not melee weapons at all, much less purpose designed melee weapons. In fact, most armored vehicles with them would be better "melee combatants" without them.

The bulldozer blade is for digging holes and clearing obstacles, the mine flails, rollers, and plows are for removing land mines in front of the tank, the blades you see on the front of some tanks are from cutting down hedgerows, and battering rams are for using the tank to knock down structures/open doors for infantry.


A purpose designed melee weapon for a tank would probably be... uh... Sorry, blanking here. 60 tons of armor at 42 miles per hour is enough of a melee weapon for a tank [and is yet another reason that leggy things suck]. There have been some weapons proposed and sometimes implemented for close-in defense against infantry, but they're not "melee weapons", they do stuff like toss grenades outside the tank or make shrapnel explosions.

As mentioned, most real life examples aren't actually weapons, such as the mineclearance flails and dozer blades, they won't really do anything that just hitting something with the tank won't do just as well when we're talking about usage as a weapon.

If we want to look at melee weapons for vehicles, most of what we see in 40k is stuff like Dreadnought Fists, Defiler Claws, etc, usually some sort of powerful mechanical manipulator.

Something in the more realistic type of vein but less in the classic melee sense would be explosive reactive armor and anti-personnel mines, where anything trying to physically engage the tank at close range would have to contend with getting through explosives. Perhaps more "anti-melee", but could be portrayed as a melee weapon of sorts.

Always wanted to sculpt a possessed tank with grasping daemons just breaking the plane of the metal with their bodies, leaving their reach mostly in the grasping arms themselves.

Kinda thought the ghoulish reaching/ grasping gesture would suit the tortured appearance, but you could put weapons in some of those grasping hands too.

Give pintle-mounted weapons the Pistol type?

howabout Canister Shot?

Why not just tank shock from days gone by but with extra mortal wounds?

Having done considerable research with a dottering old logic servitor it is safe to say actual melee weapons are not allowed to be added to the venerable Leeman Russ. The LR MBT is the ultimate war machine and needs no further melee weapons than its holy hull, blessed tracks and pious crew.

Sgt. Cortez wrote:
In earlier editions Chaos destroyer blades worked as melee weapons. In 3rd Edition you could turn tanks into Daemon engines that would get a melee Profile iirc . Forgeworld hellforged tanks have rules to eat infantry models in melee, though they're not really modeled that way

I always understood Machine Malifica represented hellforged vehicles eating their opponents souls and not physically eating them, and it works for everything, not just infantry. Though it's open to interpretation.

What melee weapons would you mount to a vehicle if you wanted it to be able to defend itself from the big nasty gribblies of the 41st millenia? Is this a better question?

Remember, you are also putting this between yourself and say an 60 ton carnifex that is trying to cleave it's way through your armour or a horde of genestealers with rending claws!

@Ork weapons: nice examples,

The Israeli tank ram concentrates power and momentum of the tank into a ram approximately 4x2ft which is braced against the front of the hull at 3 points. It's a lot of force on a small impact point. Can see it doing damage.

Flail- I imagine something like this (obviously beefed up a bit)on a baneblade(especially with 4x sponsoons) or command assault tank, drives into the breach against, say nids and mulches anything in front of itself.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Pyroalchi wrote:
It's not a melee weapon in the classical kinetic sense, but I think for various imperial vehicles the option to put their hull under high voltage would make a lot of sense. If their power generators have enough performance to provide the energy for half a dozen lascannons or even a volcano cannon, it should sure be enough to electrocute some genestealers on their hull. Ans it should also not be too difficult to install.

I forgot that's actually a thing in real life, the British Crossley armoured cars (used for policing in India) were lined with abspestos so that they could be electrified to deal with big, big crowds. With a tracked vehicle you may also be able to use fire in a similar method. If you are insane. Also I like the idea of the basilisk bayonet!


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I guess you could modify hydrolic arm mounts(such as on engineering vehicles) and arm them with all manner of weapons. Or strap a rack of chainswords to a boom on the front of your vehicle.

Anything nasty gets close, you press the button, lower the boom and mulch it.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Canister well it's hardly melee. But who doesn't love canister!

Explosive armour and anti-personnel systems(similar to a smoke discharger but armed with flechette or phosphorus, or something similar)
Are very promising options.

 OldMate wrote:
What melee weapons would you mount to a vehicle if you wanted it to be able to defend itself from the big nasty gribblies of the 41st millenia? Is this a better question?

Remember, you are also putting this between yourself and say an 60 ton carnifex that is trying to cleave it's way through your armour or a horde of genestealers with rending claws!

@Ork weapons: nice examples,

The Israeli tank ram concentrates power and momentum of the tank into a ram approximately 4x2ft which is braced against the front of the hull at 3 points. It's a lot of force on a small impact point. Can see it doing damage.

Flail- I imagine something like this (obviously beefed up a bit)on a baneblade(especially with 4x sponsoons) or command assault tank, drives into the breach against, say nids and mulches anything in front of itself.

And you would be wrong.

A chain flail on a tank would contribute nothing to it's close assault capability, because if they can get hit by the chain flail, they will also less than a second later also get run over by the tank, which is just as good or better at killing them. A chain flail is also much less sturdy than the glacis plate of the armored vehicle. Basically, if the chain fail will get you, so will being crushed underneath the tank, and crushing people under the tank also works of thing bigger than infantry.

And as for the tank ram, the ram isn't designed to penetrate armor, it's designed to give the tank control over it's mass and power, so that when using the tank as a door knocker it doesn't bring a house down on top of it self, or so that it can push a wrecked car out of the way to clear a barricade rather than driving over and crushing it. If you tried to hit a person with the tank ram, it once again wouldn't achieve anything that hitting them with the tank wouldn't.

Similar thing for cullen blades. They're not for chopping infantry, they're for chopping plants. Infantry will get crushed all the same beneath the tank blades or no blades.


The only real "melee upgrade" I could see being fitted would be to maybe have a loop of chain strung between your front clevises across your glacis to ensnare anybody trying to dive underneath it with a satchel of grenades.



Like, there's a couple of principles here, and that's that the tank itself is as or more deadly than anything you could fit to it, most of which would also hinder the tank if mounted. None of them actually improve the tank's ability to hit targets "in melee", which is really the major weakness of a tank in melee: if they're not directly in front of you, it'll be really hard to actually connect, but if you do connect and run them over, they're almost certainly dead.

Anti-close assault provisions have included pintle-mounted machineguns, crew weapons, pistol ports, and even devices which launched frag grenades onto the outside of the tank [on the principle that the grenade won't hurt the tank, but it'll mess up all the guys trying to climb onto it.] There's also active defense hard-kill systems and as mentioned ERA, which aren't intended for anti-infantry capability but it's advised that infantry not be near tanks using them, since blasts and shrapnel from them can present a serious hazard to friendly infantry. supporting the tank.



As for "what would I fit to a tank to protected against close assault by the nasties of the 41'st millenium?":
Infantry protection, tank desant troops.
Pintle-mounted machineguns. Maybe one like M4's often had where infantry riding on the back could use the M2.
A main tank gun that could actually kill the target in question instead of being literally worse than a lascannon because Armorbane no longer exists/S10 is no longer relevant because apparently vulnerability to small arms is what defines light vehicles from heavy vehicles and GW is afraid to give a 1 shot weapon damage higher than D6 when it's perfectly fine for a D6 or 2D6 shot weapon to do 2 or 3 or even more damage per hit so the premier tank breaking weapons of editions past just don't do anything anymore.

I cannot argue against what was said about tanks (and why would I), but as the topic speaks of vehicles in general: As hunting lances seem to make some kind of sense from an imperial point of view (they are still used on Rough- and Deathriders), these might be weapons of interest for various light vehicles. I could definitly see bikes and quads fitted out with those (maybe shorter versions that are a bit more easy to handle) or a light car/buggy with the co-driver handling such a lance. Maybe also with a meltacharge in front.

Again not necessarily a melee weapon in the classical sense, but as the 42nd millenium has things like tyranids I could also see some light support vehicle layer carpets of caltrops. One might argue that it could as well lay small anti personal mines when it's at it, but caltrops are cheaper and can be "produced" by feral worlds. It won't kill the enemy, but it might slow them down.

Good Point Lord Inquisitor Katherine. But the option to electrify the hull of your vehicle should not be overlooked, this is a historical example of crowd control, and if you have futuristic power generation installed in your tank you could make a real bug zapper... tesla tank would be a cool project.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Bulldozer blades were used in the gulf war to bury Iraqi soldiers alive in their trenches. So that is assault capacity I guess.

Saw Blades. Defensive, not on "arms". On, off switches to keep them from wearing themselves out, not too large to keep the engines spinning the axels efficient, several blades, parallel as they(blades) will dull and break. anticlimbing/assaulting mostly but positioned in different ways could allow a more aggressive use.

Otherwise two crushing rollers that pull objects in and a mechanical arm to feed it.
Think of the rollers that Hellboy used in the Golden Army movie to crush duder with the exteno arm. put that in front with an arm or two to feed it. claws/drills/saws/teeth... I like claws strong enough to hold or tear chunks out of what it's chasing or what's coming for it.

Perhaps you could mount chainswords or something similar to surfaces where you'd expect the enemy to try to clamber on. And have a centralised activation switch(I'd use the chainsword's own power source). Press the button and anyone jumping aboard suddenly finds rows of teeth.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Be a real pain mounting/dismounting and working on your tank. Would really not want to lose the sheaths you'd presumably fit on them.

How about that mad max vehicle with the excavator on the back.
Had a kill saw on the front.
Yeah its a bit orky, but nuffin rong wif dat.

Anything mounted on the front of a vehicle is just supplementing the natural capacity to ram. Not that that is a bad thing.

However, mounting things like servo-arms and mecha-dendrites over the sides and rear of the hull would provide additional melee options, along with simple things like reinforced poles and blades that could be extended to the sides to increase the zone of 'ramming' could be useful against human-sized opponents.

Killsaws and wrecking balls might also be useful for reaching areas you don’t want to take a vehicle - or if you don’t want to risk wrecking or sending your vehicle out of control by overrunning a massive or elusive foe. So long as blasting said obstacle with a gun won’t have the same end effect.

Example, you couldn’t effectively ram a squad on the second level of a building (without risking trapping the vehicle by ramming to collapse the building), but could swing a wrecking ball or extend a saw to reach them. Of course, you could also just blast the second story with a vindicator cannon or a HE battle cannon shell from a safe distance.

At least one of my ork tanks has a bayonet mounted on the main gun barrel. Because why not? Besides, any tank with a main gun mounted in a turret can sweep trespassing infantry off the deck with a bit of luck.

I'd have to disagree with the notion that chain flails for anti-mine use are less lethal than the tank itself, though it would depend on the speed of the tank. A man-sized target would be immediately disabled after contact with flails, while a vehicle moving at mine clearing speed (5 mph-ish) would have little effect on personnel unless they happened to fall under the tracks themselves.

All this reminds me of a concept my friend had for a vehicle: a tracked machine not only with a giant articulated hammer, but another arm with a massive chisel. It's something the orks might build for anti-tank work, lol!

The amount of energy you can get by mounting a ram or a spiked whatzit on a tank and hitting the gas is considerable...and utterly pathetic compared to the amount of energy you would get from a shell fired from the tank's main gun. And the main gun has the bonus of being usable from All the Way Over There, which is where you want your tank to be. Not flooring the gas and heading straight for the nearest tarpit of infantry. Never mind the capability of secondary machine guns, fully automatic grenade launchers, laser cannons, flamethrowers etc. Putting offensive melee equipment on a tank--as we and the Astra Militarum know them*--is wasting money and weight for the purpose of doing the wrong thing at the wrong time with a very valuable weapons system.

Okay, but we're talking 40k world, and our tank might have to deal with mobs of screaming orks trying to rip it open, or space bugs trying to eat it, or insane armored metahumans trying to smash it with a plasma wrecking ball or something. What we actually want to concern ourselves with is not helping the tank crew do a vehicular bayonet charge, but assist them in the event that things go wrong and they find themselves being assaulted by these particular threats. What you want is not something to sit in melee range and swing back, but something to dissuade these Enemies of Man while you put the vehicle into reverse and enable the secondary-weapon gunners to do their jobs.

The Tesla Bug-zapper is not a bad idea, though probably too complex and unwieldy a solution for what should be a rare event in the field. What you want are the equivalent of a bunch of claymore mines strapped to the hull, pointed outward. Or fragmentation grenades in a smoke-discharger type of launcher. Or a way to suddenly vent burning prometheum or reactor plasma outside the hull. (I think 7E had some kind of "incindiery barrels" upgrade for IG vehicles, at some point?). Note that this sort of weapon is Extremely Unpopular with infantry who might be fighting alongside your tankers. Yes, in the event this weapon was needed they would likely be dead or--far worse!--fleeing. But for some reason they tend not to see these weapons as trustworthy.

* Aside from xenos and heretics, the methods of the Adeptus Astartes do not correspond with rational methods of tactics or logistics, and must be disregarded. Perhaps they find some benefit to constructing their walking, "dreadnought" vehicles and sending them into hand to hand combat. But then they are just as likely to hack off the melee arm and turn their "venerable hero with ancient and invaluable battlefield wisdom" into a rear-echelon artillery platform. They are madmen.