Posted on 03/29/2022 5:18:10 PM PDT by MinorityRepublican
After a Century, Has the Age of the Tank Passed? – As Russian losses in Ukraine mount, the main battle tank (MBT) could soon join the battleship in the boneyard of military history. While a true game changer when the first tanks rolled across the battlefields of Europe during World War I, these metal behemoths could be just the latest weapon from another era whose time has passed.
The truth is that from the introduction of the tanks at the Battle of the Somme in September 1916, enemies have looked at ways to counter the armored platforms. In the final years of the First World War, the German military simply adopted oversized bolt action rifle – the Mauser 13.2mm Tank Abwehr Gewehr Model 18, also known as the “Mauser 1918 T-Gewehr” – yet by the end of Second World War, a variety of anti-tank rockets had been developed.
Anti-tank weapons certainly improved in the years since, and now small man-portable weapons have tipped the scales considerably.
“An infantry that is determined to fight is now super-empowered by having things like a huge number of point-and-shoot disposable anti-tank rockets,” Edward Luttwak, a military strategist who consults for governments around the world, told Insider.
An Expensive Platform
Notably absent from Ukraine has been Russia’s state-of-the-art T-14 Armata – a tank that was touted for its advanced capabilities.
The Armata platform was developed to resist NATO anti-tank shells, including most armor-piercing fin-stabilized discarding-sabot (APFSDS) rounds; and it features an unmanned turret to help improve the “survivability” of its crew. The T-14 was designed to be equipped with multilayer reactive armor, which is reportedly able to intercept enemy munitions including sub-caliber rounds such as those from anti-tank guided missiles, rockets and RPGs.
(Excerpt) Read more at 19fortyfive.com ...
The major issue is that Armor needs air superiority and good intel, coordinated with mobile infantry, to be effective in the offense. In the defense it is about the same as artillery pieces only worse.
Yes so where are they?
Lack training, lack of spare parts and logistics and lack of precision weaponry have severely hampered Russia's assault. The war has also made it obvious how far corruption has rotted the Russian military from within. How many billions did Putin spend that were embezzled all the way from the top down to the depot commander selling optics and spare parts from mothballed tanks to the Ukrainians?
It also shows what a difference motivation can make.
Armor without infantry and logistics has always been vulnerable to infantry. It's just even more so now.
Armor and mech are “obsolete.”
So we’ll just use light infantry and drones against opponents that don’t do stupid stuff like this?
The primary role of Trophy is defence against missile strikes, particularly for lighter armored personnel carriers, which are very vulnerable to rocket attacks. Since 2011, the system has achieved 100% success in all low and high-intensity combat events, in diversified terrain (urban, open and foliage). The system has intercepted a variety of threats, including the Kornet ATGM, RPG-29, etc. the U.S Army has reported similar success in tests. “I tried to kill the Abrams tank with ATGM 48 times and failed, despite the fact that some of them were supersonic,” said US Army Col. Glenn Dean. According to Rafael, by 2017, Trophy has accrued over 50,000 operating hours in deployment, bringing the system to a maximum reliability level.
Another ‘battleship’ that will soon (it has already started, in fact), is the manned fighter jets and bombers.
It’s only a matter of time before drones of all types take over the roles of fighter jets and bombers.
Top gun is a bygone era, and “Tom Cruise” won’t be needed any more.
This showed you how impressive Hitler was able to rearm a defeated Germany after World War I (1919 - 1939).
Now compare it to Putin "modernizing" the Russian military. (2000 - 2022) and this is the result we got.
Putin did have small successes. Crimea. Syria. Special Forces and planes are legitimate. But they are in small numbers. You can't mass produce that to what Putin needed in a conventional war in Ukraine.
No matter what in the end infantry will have to take territory to win wars. Armor will be required to lead infantry.
We probably won’t know for sure until all this stuff gets analyzed. Only thing I can say is that the enemy can force you into employing a weapon tactically in a way that doesn’t make sense. A historical example might be the Israeli Air Force flying close air support against the Egyptians (1973) despite high losses because they had no choice. The Israeli army was weak in artillery and needed to cover for that weakness.
I’ve read that the Russian ground reconnaissance elements were heavily targeted with ATGM’s by the Ukies and that this may have resulted in Russian main force units getting surprised, surrounded & cut-off in a few instances. If that were true, then the Russians might be using their aviation assets in that “recon by fire” role. And they just aren’t suited for that.
Tanks always have and always will need effective infantry support in order to survive.
It’s not the tanks calling in indirect fire or air support - it’s grunts. Armor doesn’t capture and hold terrain, infantry does. Tanks are mobile direct fire artillery, and that’s still necessary - especially in MOUT environments.
Perhaps war will finally become obsolete.
A small group of A10 Warthogs would decimate the remaining russian ground military in under a weekend backed by only U.S. air superiority.
That leaves that pesky nuke problem though.
AT missiles are pretty expensive.
The problem with drones in that role is the communication system. The Russians and the Ukrainians have been using jamming systems with very good results. I really believe that we will come up with jamming systems which can knock an ICBM out of flight.
Very powerful jamming systems will send all this back down to the individual infantry soldier carrying their weapons on their backs to put boots on ground. (Kind of like the Apocalypse says that each man will be fighting with his own weapons in Armageddon.)
One thing we could have/should have learned (and maybe we, USA, did) is that ultimately you have to take the terrain. When Clinton bombed the hell out of Kosovo for 100 days they didn’t relent. Clinton didn’t want or couldn’t justify a ground invasion.
Opposite with Gulf War 1 Iraq and Kuwait. We had to ‘soften’ the resistance from the air first. But we only went to liberate Kuwait not to occupy Iraq at that time.
Putin may not have the capability to do it well so they went by ground. Or maybe it was a strategic blunder on his part. I did read that while they do have a decent air force considering their opponent, they don’t have the right munitions. Just a bunch of dumb bombs like WW2. Can’t hit targets with accuracy without flying low - making them vulnerable to anti-aircraft guns. So he’s bombing indiscriminately which is a horrible tragedy and war crime.
But in the end you can either destroy the place entirely, or you have to take the ground. Sort of depends on what your goal is. I do agree, robotics and the like can make a big difference in the future since you can be very selective about your targets and force change without having to occupy the ground.
What is the kill percentage on AT missiles, and how much do they cost relative to the cost of a tank?
Since the dawn of civilization infantry and a Calvary have struggled for dominance .
Example
Romans heavy infantry
Mongols light Calvary
Then back to infantry with rifles and MG
Then tanks (a heavy Calvary substitution)
Now looks like infantry is ascending to a new dominance. With smart missiles they might even topple the true masters of the battlefield, AirPower (light Calvary substitution).
Yes. Tanks are slow-moving and sitting ducks; easy targets for fast, programmable, computer, GPS-guided, missiles. Unless they can be protected by anti-missile weapons they're obsolete.
Being in a tank is death sentence. Maybe they can re-purposed as un-maned drones but even then they're still slow-moving and easy targets.
Seems to have something to do with shutting down the enemy's access to banking... :)
Thank you very much. I had no idea there was a system like the Trophy system. Another factoid for the trash can that is my mind.
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