Who’s air technology? Besides, any tank is aircraft fodder if you don’t have air superiority. Any army unit is toast if there is no air superiority.
“Whose air technology?”
Our air technology. An Army commander told me (paraphrased); “If I have to kill a target worthy of a tank I illuminate it, call it in, and it’s gone in seconds. I don’t know if it was killed by the Army, Air Force, Navy, Marines or an RPV. I don’t care. But the tank simply can’t go anywhere in Afghanistan without being attacked. There are only 160 miles of roads. The engagements are mostly at 50 yards with machine guns. Tanks are useless.”
The tank was designed to fight over tanks. The back of the tank is lightly armored and comparitivly easy to kill if you can get behind it. The old paradigm where tanks fought in a battle line are long gone. The battle is now wherever you are. There are no lines. The enemy doesn’t wear a uniform and they disappear after they’ve fired their round.
In addition, the battlefield is evolving with ever more sophisticated self-guided weapons. When you add in the logistics of getting a tank to the battle and then maintaining it and defending it and feeding it fuel the costs start to mount in comparison to competing systems. The tank has been comparatively useless in actual battle in Afghanistan. The Army much prefers the new 2-ton truck based weapons and took GD’s tank spares and upgrade money to buy those trucks. (This is why I got laid off in March.) The trucks can go places the tanks can’t. The trucks are specialized for the close-in machine gun engagements the Army is experiencing where the tank is comparatively helpless at short ranges. (Yes, I know it has a machine gun. But the tank is never where the enemy is attacking unless it is the focus of the attack.)