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.
1.) A variable height tracked vehicle.
In an IED/mine threat area the vehicle is raised (1/r^3 means a small increase in distance makes a HUGE difference). Under belly armor added, and a V-shaped hull deflects the blast and causes the energy to be taken in over time vs. all at once with a flat bottom vehicle as today with an M1/2.
2.) Use of hybrid technology and massive power supply.
A sovereign dual drive system (diesel - electric) allows the vehicle to move even after the diesel or transmission have been shot out. But, these also significantly reduce the thermal and acoustic signature of the vehicle when operating in electric only. Furthermore, it allows for many hours of use without the need to start the vehicle because of batteries that are being drained. Finally, whether it is a soft kill defensive system for ATGMs (jamming SACLOS, a laser or mmWR false target generation), jamming for IEDs, or jamming the command loop of a drone, FBCB2/BFT, modern vehicles are hungry for electrical power, and the trend is only for more.
3.) Modular armor.
Instead of welded on armor boxes as with the M1 (turret front and sides, hull front), the vehicle can be used in its naked configuration where it is very light and easy to transport via air, rail, truck, or barge and is able to cross most bridges even in third world nations as well as squeeze through a 10 foot passage. In its light configuration you have STANAG level 3 on the sides, top, and rear, and level 4 on the frontal arc (30 degrees to each side). You're prioritizing mobility over surviveability, which sometimes is necessitated. In some cases the massive armor is irrelevant (i.e. there is no AT threat) so you're hauling a lot of steel around for nothing. But there are two more reasons why this is a good idea: First, this tank is easily repairable when damaged, i,e. the damaged armor panel is simply replaced. Secondly, as threats change and you need to tweak the armor to optimize if for the various AT threats HEAT, EFP, Sabot you don't need to pull this vehicle off the line, it can be done in their field, quickly and easily.
4.) Simply incorporate newer technologies and design features that were not even conceived when the M1/2 were designed.
For instance, the vehicle is built as a fully digital and network capable platform from the ground up. Give the vehicle 360 degree vision for all crew members from inside. Use newer 7075T6 Aluminum alloy which wasn't around in the 1970s when the M1/2 were designed (significantly stronger material = weight/thickness of material reduction). Switch to a diesel and retire the turbine. The turbine is far beyond its practical life and while turbines theoretically bring many advantages with them (weight savings being the primary one), today most threats have thermals and the turbine has a huge heat signature. Put the new diesel in transverse, saves space. Add external fire suppression capabilities so no crew member needs to expose themselves and a simple Molotov cocktail can't knock out an "invincible" M1/2. Design the turret to incorporate active hard and soft kill systems, which the M1/2 were not. That is why we have the impractical current design of how Trophy is mounted: https://breakingdefense.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2018/02/M1-Abrams-with-Trophy-APS-9ed777416ebc9fe34bed41b570f3b181-768x384.jpg
— Surround vision
— Fully digital and network capable vehicle
— Incorporate hard and soft kill defense systems in the design
— Switch to diesel
— Use newer materials
— External fire suppression
— Improved protective seating
Ukraine is a nation of 41,000,000 that had been militarily pumped up by us for 7 years before the war (not a weak or soft target).
NATO has been hemorrhaging money and equipment like never before in its entire history.
Ukraine relied on foreign fighters we are essentially paying for (thousands from around the world, but many from South America)
Russia has mostly met their political (stop NATO expansion) and military objectives (seize Eastern ethnic Russian areas). They have done so despite maintaining their presence in the Middle East, Armenia, and Africa and without a total population and economic mobilization for war (i.e. 7.1% GDP). Their economy is growing, despite our sanctions and this war.
You are making the typical assumption that it’s Russia’s goal to seize all of Ukraine, or keep advancing elsewhere. That is our “propaganda.” Junk, like WMD in Iraq, to get the masses behind this war.
I agree, we thought them to be weak, that is why we ignored them and just did whatever we wanted regards NATO East expansion, despite them consistently and very vocally saying this is a problem for them for the past 28 YEARS.
They are no match for us or NATO and all these talking heads discussing Russia rolling into Poland or the Baltic states a while back, are tools. They were discussing scenarios that are not even remotely possible but which get the people worried and supporting this war based on some fictional scenario that is about as likely as the “War of the Worlds.” It is funny though, how we want to talk about how Russia is weak, but then in the same breath talk about Russia rolling into NATO (which outnumbers them about 3:1, even now with Russian partial mobilization).
However, I do not think they are as weak as we thought.
I don’t think we expected them to stop us (why we made the gamble), and I do not think we expected them to hold out like they are (the long war).
This will end with no NATO for Ukraine, Ukraine losing a lot of real estate and population, a major port city, industrial area and being a total basket case for many years (debt, infrastructure, demographics, cripples, investors staying away/not like 2014).
We’ll be left making movies where we win the war with a duck lipped 120 lbs female action hero that single handily kills 100 Russians about to attack an orphanage with VX gas. Our experts will be talking about imaginary casualty reports where Russia lost 144 million people and not a single glorious Abrams tank was destroyed, no F16 was brought down, and Patriot had a 99.99% hit rate. It’s true - fact checked!
