I’ve heard the rifle, the main battle instrument for centuries, will be relegated to a personal defense weapons by drones.
My niece says so who designs drones.
“ The Times published an extraordinarily candid probe into how militarised drones have irrevocably revolutionised warfare in the 21st century”
This is how to start an article.
It’s remarkable in that it seems most articles ramble about for 2 or 3 paragraphs before getting to the point they’re trying to make.
Large platforms will have to develop anti-drone measures. I suspect if sufficient power is available some form of ectronic deterrence can be achieved.
How many drones can a vulcan gun take out? Drones can’t move as fast as missiles, so there are options for deterrence not exactly the same as with anti-missile defense. Although I see obvious parallels.
Like back in the days when the ‘fearsome’ USSR held sway, it claimed it had invented most everything under the sun. So too with this claim that they revolutionized warfare with drones.
The credit goes 80% to Ukraine and 20% to Iran - and like the Soviets, Russia once again copied them, and now tries to take credit.
Russia revolutionized warfare by losing a huge chunk of conventional assets to a ragtag bunch of techies. The fact that Russia has been able to adapt to the nature of drone warfare in Ukraine is to their credit.
Better equipped and managed armies won’t be so easy.
We simply haven't faced off against a technologically advanced enemy.
We have been chasing rag-tag militias, guerrilla forces, using dated military hardware that do not have an industrial or technological base behind them.
We still need the “capability” of a tank.
But what we have isn't capable of doing that.
Some of the folks here laughed and mocked the Russians, saw it as incompetence and proof of inferior equipment, as the Russians got mauled by advanced ATGMS and drones in the beginning of this war.
Truth is, our tanks would not, and did not do any better even when we brought them into the fight later, and we had time to apply lessons learned.
Suddenly all the folks with their war erotica stressing the Russian schadenfreude to prove their genetic, moral, cultural superiority tried to somehow rationalize or even deny the fact that our M1s, Leo's, Challengers, were getting chewed up as well.
Here's the bottom line: no present day tank is built to be impenetrable from all aspects using armor. Such a machine is to heavy and bulky to be practical. These MBT’s merely have a very high level of protection usually in the frontal arc of the vehicle. But today, you have dive and top attack munitions with tandem warheads, even a precursor rocket (dealing with ERA that is intended to defeat a tandem warhead). You have drones where you can literally fly around the armored vehicle and hit it +/- a foot where ever you want, the top, rear, engine compartment, ammo bunker, fly it into an open hatch or ramp.
You can lie to people and tell them they are going to war in a steel beast that's impenetrable, but that bubble is going to burst really quick today against a threat like the Russians.
It is absolutely critical that we develop and field new armored vehicles to replace the M1 and M2.
These machines did awesome!
But they are like a P51 that was also awesome in WWII but would have been out of place in the jet-age and Cold War.
1.) The M1 was designed to operate on friendly terrain. The threat from bellow was limited. There are artillery dispensable mines etc. but generally speaking you didn't need to worry about a giant IED. So the belly is thin, flat and low. ALL WRONG when dealing with a modern threat.
2.) The M1 was designed for a defense of Western Europe and specifically Germany. The roads and bridges can sustain a 70 ton tank. The rivers are technically in some areas passable with some modifications (Snorkel / tower). We could preposition much of our equipment and wouldn't need to necessarily transport these tanks around the world via C17 or C5 which while possible is not ideal. Fuel is available, the temperatures are moderate, there are many and larger patches of forested areas, the terrain is rolling plains.
3.) These tanks were optimized to be highly effective against other tanks. Unlike its predecessor the M60 which laid an emphasis on infantry support, the M1 was more or less designed for tank on tank battles. Not really something that has happened much.
4.) The tech capabilities and it's availability are entirely different today. When the M1 was designed, top and dive attack munitions were not technologically feasible for threat nations, especially at a cost they were able to field them at. Likewise, the thermal sight was a novelty and most our threats at the time had “crappy” night vision intensifiers, with thermal sights only being realistic for nations like the US and later Germany etc. This matters because the M1 has a HUGE thermal signature thanks to a turbine.
The Western MBT is kept alive with Band-Aid fixes, applique solutions that do not work as well as they could if the platform were actually designed to incorporate these new technologies: new materials (newer aluminum, plastics and ceramics), digital systems and networks, sensors and sensor-fusion, drones, new advanced soft and hard kill defensive systems, signature reduction, selective or partial remote operation. Incorporating newer technologies combined with a platform which is designed around the types of threats we face and operate in the sort of terrain we operate in would make a big difference.
What we have today are impressive machines, lots of steel, loud, like a beast made out of steel. But we can also go to a local junk yard and make a 70 ton pile of cars and that too would be impressive to stand on.
I think it is more Ukraine than Russia that is causing the revolution in warfare.
At first during the second invasion of Ukraine by Russia when Russian troops tried to push to Kiev we saw how man pads destroyed tanks and convoys of vehicles. The Javelin, Karl Gustav and other hand held weapons proved Tanks were no longer invincible. The US Marine Corps recently abandoned its tanks.
Later in the war first Ukraine, then later Russia with more sophisticated (and foreign designed) drones started to use them as troop hunter/killer drones.
Then Ukraine has developed maritime drones to go after ships and bridges. This is not a Russian thing.
Russia has been working on long distance glide bombs that are changing air defense requirements.
The biggest change seems to be in the need for hunter killer drones that can bomb/mortar/grenade enemy troops and air defense weapons that can target and destroy such drones.
Battleships have been obsolete for 80 years.
“with Russia far at the forefront of this radical shakeup of how conflicts are waged. Meanwhile, there is little indication NATO members even vaguely comprehend this battlefield reality”
Oh, they will, if the Zeepers and Neocons get their way and get NATO into DIRECT COMBAT against Russia. Hell, Germany and UK have all but declared war on Russia and will be the first to learn the new reality, the HARD WAY.
There are no battleships in any Navy.