When I was a baby Armor lieutenant studying where things were going back in the early ‘80’s, I realized that the idea of heavy armor was going to be obsolete unless it was a force field or something.
$100 man portable anti-armor vs $n million heavy platform is not a good tradeoff.
With modern equipment, if you can find it, you can see it, if you can see it, you can hit it, if you can hit it you WILL kill it.
There are times that heavy armor is the right weapon.
Stealth, speed, surprise.
Without those, with drones, missiles, new generations of explosives, computer control of systems which can be 10,000 x as fast as a human, you are liable to be the guest of honor at a bar-b-que.
Modern tanks are survivable.
That means you hose them out, replace the electronics and optics, and put in a new crew.
When there is heavy armor on the field, you have to have a counter. In the past that was your own armor.
The Russian stuff was no match for ours in Iraq. Ask H.R. McMaster.
But with the increasing availability of drones with missiles, I don’t want to be in a tank, a ship, an HQ area, etc.
Be a ghost or be a ghost.
That means you hose them out, replace the electronics and optics, and put in a new crew."
Sounds just like the old Shermans.
Do you think the we would have had the same luck against the Russian stuff had they been real Russian versions with real Russians inside? We defeated a third world army...be glad you were not fighting Russians or Koreans.