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You don't necessarily need to kill tanks, just make them hide. The NATO air mission against the Serbs [0] in 1999 only destroyed 93 out of 600 Serbian tanks but

You don't necessarily need to kill tanks, just make them hide. The NATO air mission against the Serbs [0] in 1999 only destroyed 93 out of 600 Serbian tanks but had the effect of preventing the Serbs from using them effectively. This helped level the playing field between the well-trained Serbian army and the Kosovo Liberation Army. After the surrender, when the Serbs drove their undamaged tanks home, the "look how many you missed" attitude missed the point. They were undamaged because they had effectively suppressed, and hidden in underground car parks, etc. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO_bombing_of_Yugoslavia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO_bombing_of_Yugoslavia

chrisseaton 7y ago
But a hidden tank becomes an armoured, sealed, high-endurance OP, with a hugely powerful sensor and comms suite. You think you're fixing them - but really are they fixing you?
- KineticLensman 7y ago
  Yes, although there's an old joke about how a modern tank that can't shoot is just a very heavy and incredibly expensive mobile phone. Also, it needs to keep an engine running to power its sensor and comms suite.
  - marktangotango 7y ago
    The engine is generally a auxillary power unit mounted in the bussel rack of an m1a2 for example. Some may assume parent is referring to the main engine which on m1's consume quite a lot of fuel.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
Marazan 7y ago
It did not destroy 93 tanks. The wiki page you link even spells it out. They air campaign destroyed an order of magnitude less, maybe even as few as 3 tanks. They hit decoys or fuck all. Far from levelli g the playing field ethinic cleansing rate increased as the air campaign was waged. The Kosovo air campaign was one of the most total an utter failures of recent times yet people still try and paint it as a success. Unbelievable.
- JumpCrisscross 7y ago
  > It did not destroy 93 tanks...the wiki page you link even spells it out The Wikipedia article [1] confirms the ninety-three figure. "When it came to alleged hits, 93 tanks...were believed to have been disabled or destroyed with certainty. The Department of Defence and Joint Chief of Staff had earlier provided a figure of 120 tanks...and a Newsweek piece published around a year later stated that only 14 tanks...had actually been obliterated...not that far from the Yugoslavs' own estimates of 13 tanks... However, this reporting was heavily criticised, as it was based on the number of vehicles found during the assessment of the Munitions Effectiveness Assessment Team, which wasn't interested in the effectiveness of anything but the ordnance, and surveyed sites that hadn't been visited in nearly three-months, at a time when the most recent of strikes were four-weeks old." [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO_bombing_of_Yugoslavia#Military_casualties https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO_bombing_of_Yugoslavia#Mil...
- anovikov 7y ago
  How can it be called a failure? It achieved it's goal: Serbs were on the brink of defeating Albanians and totally cleansing Kosovo before it started, and ended with Yugoslav defeat and Kosovar independence (and somewhat indirectly, Yugoslavia's final dissolution a year later). Without Americans ever needing to put any boots on the ground, only by air power. Winning a war isn't about killing your enemies... It's about achieving your goals. You can't deny they were fully achieved, solely with air power. To me it sounds like anything but a defeat.
  - EthanHeilman 7y ago
    I agree. It is often psychologically more appealing to win battles rather than achieve long term goals. For instance someone wants to get to work faster, but instead they get in a fist fight with the driver in the car ahead of them because the driver was driving too slow. Clausewitz hit the nail on the head when he said, "war is the continuation of policy by additional means". A rational strategy uses battles to achieve policy goals. Losing a battle by minimizing your own losses to win a war is rational with that context. - In German "Der Krieg ist eine bloße Fortsetzung der Politik mit anderen Mitteln" Politik with all its varied meaning: often translated into english as politics or policy or political.
gumby 7y ago
This was also the successful approach of the Royal Navy against the German Imperial Navy in WWI: one significant battle followed by the IN (surface fleet at least) no longer being an issue for the rest of the war.
- cryptonector 7y ago
  And in WWII. And in the Falklands war.
  - gumby 7y ago
    Was it? I’d be interested in learning more. As far as German navies go (perhaps you were thinking of a different example) the Kriegmarine switched pretty heavily to subsurface ships, even for resupply in the “field” (ocean in this case). Not sure the extent of ocean going surface vessels except in the Baltic. Their empire was land based. The UK never lost control of the Mediterranean which definitely ultimately blocked German African activity and kept them from repelling allied supply for the battles in Mediterranean fronts. But had they built much surface shipping? In japan the opposite was true: the IJN was dominant until at least late 1942 and as it was reduced it was less through this kind of battle and more due to losing ships and the reduction of manufacture of replacement due to bombing and supply line restrictions (my parents were both children in the middle of those “supply lines” in different areas of the pacific theatre during that war). Curious about the falklands!
    - greedo 7y ago
      The Kriegsmarine had quite a significant surface fleet that actually siphoned away men and resources from the much more effective U-boats. The most famous vessel would have to be the Bismarck, followed by the Tirpitz. Also notable are the Graf Spee. Most of these ships didn't do much over the course of the war, though they did tie up the Home Fleet, which was afraid of what would happen if they managed to break out into the North Sea and contest the supply convoys from the US. The Falklands War was similar in that the Argentine Navy had both a large cruiser (General Belgrano), as well as an aircraft carrier (Veinticinco de Mayo). The Belgrano was torpedoed with a large loss of life by HMS Conqueror, and after that the Argentine Navy stayed in port; though it's air wings fought well over the islands.
smacktoward 7y ago
It's easy to kill tanks when you have unchallenged air superiority. How to kill tanks when you don't, now that's a more interesting question.
- HenryBemis 7y ago
  I can say that a well trained artillery properly positioned and being able to move rapidly can take out tanks. Artillery can hit something they can't see. Tanks are not known for hiring targets 2 hills/5km away, Artillery is. A lot depends on the terrain and the intel available. By artillery I don't mean super ebganced guided missile systems by good old Howitzers 105, 155.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - sliken 7y ago
    Well trained tanks are quite familiar with dealing with artillery. They are highly mobile, can cross many kinds of terrain (not just roads), and are well aware of using terrain, random speed, and random directions to avoid artillery fire. Pretty impressive that the ground pressure of a M1 abrams tank is less than half of my mountain bike with 2.6" tires. On anywhere close to equal footing artillery is a pretty dangerous thing to shoot, as soon as your position is triangulated you'd best shut down and move. Sure direct fire from tanks is 2-4km, but there are tank fired indirect fire weapons as well. Like say the XM1007. On equal footing I'd rather be in a tank (moving at say 20 mph on an unpredictable course and speed) than hoping for the best with artillery. After all even if you get lucky with 1 tank, there's never just one tank. Even air superiority isn't as useful as it was. A drone up in the air for 5 minutes with a targeting laser can ruin your day. Seems pretty weird these days to be investing in tanks, but not investing in the A-10 Warthog.
    - andromeduck 7y ago
      Seems like drones would make artillery more deadly vs tanks as it'd make it easier to score indirect hits with fewer spotters and lower comminication latency vs radio. I imagine most tanks are big enough to allow a drone to spot one from outside the effective range of a regular machine gun.
Someone 7y ago
That’s true, but to make them hide, you have to be able to kill them. http://classics.mit.edu/Tzu/artwar.html http://classics.mit.edu/Tzu/artwar.html: ”the skillful leader subdues the enemy's troops without any fighting; he captures their cities without laying siege to them; he overthrows their kingdom without lengthy operations in the field”

chrisseaton 7y ago

But a hidden tank becomes an armoured, sealed, high-endurance OP, with a hugely powerful sensor and comms suite. You think you're fixing them - but really are they fixing you?

KineticLensman 7y ago
Yes, although there's an old joke about how a modern tank that can't shoot is just a very heavy and incredibly expensive mobile phone. Also, it needs to keep an engine running to power its sensor and comms suite.
- marktangotango 7y ago
  The engine is generally a auxillary power unit mounted in the bussel rack of an m1a2 for example. Some may assume parent is referring to the main engine which on m1's consume quite a lot of fuel.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

Marazan 7y ago

It did not destroy 93 tanks. The wiki page you link even spells it out. They air campaign destroyed an order of magnitude less, maybe even as few as 3 tanks. They hit decoys or fuck all. Far from levelli g the playing field ethinic cleansing rate increased as the air campaign was waged. The Kosovo air campaign was one of the most total an utter failures of recent times yet people still try and paint it as a success. Unbelievable.

JumpCrisscross 7y ago
> It did not destroy 93 tanks...the wiki page you link even spells it out The Wikipedia article [1] confirms the ninety-three figure. "When it came to alleged hits, 93 tanks...were believed to have been disabled or destroyed with certainty. The Department of Defence and Joint Chief of Staff had earlier provided a figure of 120 tanks...and a Newsweek piece published around a year later stated that only 14 tanks...had actually been obliterated...not that far from the Yugoslavs' own estimates of 13 tanks... However, this reporting was heavily criticised, as it was based on the number of vehicles found during the assessment of the Munitions Effectiveness Assessment Team, which wasn't interested in the effectiveness of anything but the ordnance, and surveyed sites that hadn't been visited in nearly three-months, at a time when the most recent of strikes were four-weeks old." [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO_bombing_of_Yugoslavia#Military_casualties https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO_bombing_of_Yugoslavia#Mil...
anovikov 7y ago
How can it be called a failure? It achieved it's goal: Serbs were on the brink of defeating Albanians and totally cleansing Kosovo before it started, and ended with Yugoslav defeat and Kosovar independence (and somewhat indirectly, Yugoslavia's final dissolution a year later). Without Americans ever needing to put any boots on the ground, only by air power. Winning a war isn't about killing your enemies... It's about achieving your goals. You can't deny they were fully achieved, solely with air power. To me it sounds like anything but a defeat.
- EthanHeilman 7y ago
  I agree. It is often psychologically more appealing to win battles rather than achieve long term goals. For instance someone wants to get to work faster, but instead they get in a fist fight with the driver in the car ahead of them because the driver was driving too slow. Clausewitz hit the nail on the head when he said, "war is the continuation of policy by additional means". A rational strategy uses battles to achieve policy goals. Losing a battle by minimizing your own losses to win a war is rational with that context. - In German "Der Krieg ist eine bloße Fortsetzung der Politik mit anderen Mitteln" Politik with all its varied meaning: often translated into english as politics or policy or political.

gumby 7y ago

This was also the successful approach of the Royal Navy against the German Imperial Navy in WWI: one significant battle followed by the IN (surface fleet at least) no longer being an issue for the rest of the war.

cryptonector 7y ago
And in WWII. And in the Falklands war.
- gumby 7y ago
  Was it? I’d be interested in learning more. As far as German navies go (perhaps you were thinking of a different example) the Kriegmarine switched pretty heavily to subsurface ships, even for resupply in the “field” (ocean in this case). Not sure the extent of ocean going surface vessels except in the Baltic. Their empire was land based. The UK never lost control of the Mediterranean which definitely ultimately blocked German African activity and kept them from repelling allied supply for the battles in Mediterranean fronts. But had they built much surface shipping? In japan the opposite was true: the IJN was dominant until at least late 1942 and as it was reduced it was less through this kind of battle and more due to losing ships and the reduction of manufacture of replacement due to bombing and supply line restrictions (my parents were both children in the middle of those “supply lines” in different areas of the pacific theatre during that war). Curious about the falklands!
  - greedo 7y ago
    The Kriegsmarine had quite a significant surface fleet that actually siphoned away men and resources from the much more effective U-boats. The most famous vessel would have to be the Bismarck, followed by the Tirpitz. Also notable are the Graf Spee. Most of these ships didn't do much over the course of the war, though they did tie up the Home Fleet, which was afraid of what would happen if they managed to break out into the North Sea and contest the supply convoys from the US. The Falklands War was similar in that the Argentine Navy had both a large cruiser (General Belgrano), as well as an aircraft carrier (Veinticinco de Mayo). The Belgrano was torpedoed with a large loss of life by HMS Conqueror, and after that the Argentine Navy stayed in port; though it's air wings fought well over the islands.

smacktoward 7y ago

It's easy to kill tanks when you have unchallenged air superiority. How to kill tanks when you don't, now that's a more interesting question.

HenryBemis 7y ago
I can say that a well trained artillery properly positioned and being able to move rapidly can take out tanks. Artillery can hit something they can't see. Tanks are not known for hiring targets 2 hills/5km away, Artillery is. A lot depends on the terrain and the intel available. By artillery I don't mean super ebganced guided missile systems by good old Howitzers 105, 155.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- sliken 7y ago
  Well trained tanks are quite familiar with dealing with artillery. They are highly mobile, can cross many kinds of terrain (not just roads), and are well aware of using terrain, random speed, and random directions to avoid artillery fire. Pretty impressive that the ground pressure of a M1 abrams tank is less than half of my mountain bike with 2.6" tires. On anywhere close to equal footing artillery is a pretty dangerous thing to shoot, as soon as your position is triangulated you'd best shut down and move. Sure direct fire from tanks is 2-4km, but there are tank fired indirect fire weapons as well. Like say the XM1007. On equal footing I'd rather be in a tank (moving at say 20 mph on an unpredictable course and speed) than hoping for the best with artillery. After all even if you get lucky with 1 tank, there's never just one tank. Even air superiority isn't as useful as it was. A drone up in the air for 5 minutes with a targeting laser can ruin your day. Seems pretty weird these days to be investing in tanks, but not investing in the A-10 Warthog.
  - andromeduck 7y ago
    Seems like drones would make artillery more deadly vs tanks as it'd make it easier to score indirect hits with fewer spotters and lower comminication latency vs radio. I imagine most tanks are big enough to allow a drone to spot one from outside the effective range of a regular machine gun.

Someone 7y ago

That’s true, but to make them hide, you have to be able to kill them. http://classics.mit.edu/Tzu/artwar.html http://classics.mit.edu/Tzu/artwar.html: ”the skillful leader subdues the enemy's troops without any fighting; he captures their cities without laying siege to them; he overthrows their kingdom without lengthy operations in the field”