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.
“”””The present day MBT has been dead for a long time.””””
That isn’t the lesson the Russians and North Korea have taken from their war.
“Returning Tank Production to Soviet Era Levels: Russia Will Soon Be Building Over 3000 T-80s and T-90s Per Year”
Military Watch Magazine Editorial Staff
July-2nd-2025
https://militarywatchmagazine.com/article/returning-tank-production-soviet-era-levels-russia-over-3000
“Kim Jong Un calls for mass-producing newest tanks in visit to upgraded factory”
https://www.nknews.org/2025/05/kim-jong-un-calls-for-mass-producing-newest-tanks-in-visit-to-upgraded-factory/
A very good analysis.
Just because we spent a lot of money on something, and that something worked very well in its day, does not mean it is state of the art, or even useful, now.
And what do you think we should use? Bigger tanks? Jeeps?
To kill a tank requires a sizeable charge. Small quadcopters with 5 lb explosives have little use against a tank, unless you’re hitting Russians in the back of the turret and lighting up their autolaoder. But ours don’t have that vulnerability. You need a good sized drone payload to actually kill most Western tanks.
Anti-drone systems are going to come online quick, and it’ll likely end up as something organic to the line unit - either a system mounted to the tank/Brad, or on its own dedicated platform. EW system, kinetic defense, and likely a directed energy system as well once that’s fielded. And this’ll handle all the small drones that you see in the trenches now. Infantry won’t function without this umbrella of protection. Which will need tanks or sizeable systems to be mobile enough. Then big drones like the ones these US have had for decades, will be left to more dedicated ADA, but those are your actual tank killers.
But our doctrine doesn’t call for trench warfare. We aren’t sitting on hundreds of miles of front line, throwing pallets of drones back and forth. We won’t not have a significant air presence like both sides over there. What did we do in the Gulf War? We spent 40 days bombing Iraq before the ground went in and finished the fight in a week. By the time we would be landing in Russia, we’d have bombed everything for a week across 10,000 miles of their borders. They wouldn’t even know where to move defenses, much less have anything effective.
Ukraine has shown how weak Russia really is, and China is big but inexperienced and only has derivative, untested equipment. Both of them would suffer the same fate as Iraq, albeit maybe resist a bit longer, but that’s it.