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There are all sorts of ranges claimed for the various versions of the missile. These need documentation. As an example, the -8E is claimed to have a range of six kilometers in the article, while Jane's Armour and Artillery 2007-2008, p. 309, only credits it with a 4-km range. As well, sinodefence.com mentions the 4-km range for the -8E and -8L models and a 3-km range for -8A and -8C models. Cheers, W. B. Wilson (talk) 17:34, 19 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Range was the main reason the Israeli develop a laser beam riding version of the US TOW -- ie a massive increase in range. With wire guided missiles, you are pushing your luck beyond 4,000 meters due to the limitation of the guidance wires that spool out the rear in flight. The longer the range of a wire guided antitank missile, the more wire you need and the harder it is to design the system to where it will un-spool correctly in flight. That has always been the main reason the Germans and French gave as to why they had to replace the HOT instead of developing a follow on to the HOT-3 with longer range (ie the French with the US Hellfire laser homing antitank missile). They were unable get a wire guided HOT design which would perform reliably beyond 4,300 meters. Also the Chinese have the HJ-8 with a laser beam riding missile that looks very similar to the Israeli MAPTAS, which is a TOW where the wire guidance is replaced with laser beam riding. There were reports that the Pakistanis asked for a small lots of an improved version of the TOW, that Raytheon privately developed, where the wire guidance was replaced with a radio command link. I would bet we will soon see a longer range HJ-8 which replaces the wire guidance with a radio command link that that their engineers reverse engineered (ie copied) from the TOWs they obtained from Raytheon. JackJackehammond (talk) 18:59, 12 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]
