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I find the asymmetry of force in vehicle combat very interesting. If a single foot soldier can take out a tank that costs millions of dollars, is it even worth

I find the asymmetry of force in vehicle combat very interesting. If a single foot soldier can take out a tank that costs millions of dollars, is it even worth using a tank? Obviously there are tactics to avoid this but I bet it's a pain in the ass to out-maneuver.

spacemanmatt 5y ago
Generally, yes, and tanks usually roll with air support if not also infantry. Russia's neglect of this armchair-strategist type knowledge is making headlines.
- hef19898 5y ago
  Tanks without infantry support are basically just targets. Especially in urban environments, the Turkish army showed that quite impressively in Syria (?) by loosing a couple of Leopard 2s.
- sofixa 5y ago
  The Russians supposedly had a tank chassis with soft weapons ( machine guns, small cannon, grenade launchers) on top, to accompany tanks in urban environments, specifically due to lessons from Checnhya about the vulnerability of tanks against infantry defenses, especially in urban environments - BMPT. Supposedly the idea was to have them accompany tanks and support them. In reality, they are nowhere to be seen
  - aerostable_slug 5y ago
    BMPTs were seen heading into theater on railcars. I've seen nothing since, but I suspect they're out there somewhere. I also suspect they would fare little better than a lone T-80 wandering around an urban environment without competent infantry support. Also, BMPT was designed around the Grozny threat environment: antiarmor teams on rooftops raining down RPGs and Molotov cocktails from above. The Ukrainians haven't been forced to resort to those tactics (yet) as they have advanced Western weapons to employ from greater distances and with greater lethality.
josefresco 5y ago
I'm no expert but ....I guess it's similar to an aircraft carrier. Alone it's massively vulnerable from asymmetric attacks, but when properly protected can be powerful and effective.
- liotier 5y ago
  Yes. As in paper/rock/scissors, vulnerability is only part of the story. Glass has huge compressive strength but fails under very low tensile stress, diamond is the hardest material but will shatter easily under a (large) hammer...
- cf141q5325 5y ago
  To be fair, the protection in this case is the threat of retaliation.
simmonmt 5y ago
The same argument applies to airplanes, but both airplanes and tanks have certain advantages that on balance exceed the risk of them getting blown up.
- cf141q5325 5y ago
  It doesnt. Modern military aircraft fly too high for MANPADs (shoulder fired ones like Stinger). You require actual air defense systems, and new ones at that. Extremely pricey, restricted and very big. I would also argue that the advantages of tanks no longer apply when you face anything but non state backed rebels, especially in urban environment. Syria showed it rather well with the few TOWs that the US provided to the rebels. With drones it became check mate. All they are are giant defenseless targets, just look at Azerbaijan. They are not much use for anything but crushing civilians.
  - sofixa 5y ago
    > Modern military aircraft fly too high for MANPADs (shoulder fired ones like Stinger) Not if they're doing combat air support they don't, unless they only use precision guided munitions or cruise missiles, which are expensive.
    - spywaregorilla 5y ago
      This is why Russia is losing so many planes. They ran out of the good weapons, and so now they need to fly dangerously low to attack ground targets.
    - cf141q5325 5y ago
      I really didnt think i would see this in in the current year. Jets arent cheap either after all. Thanks for the heads up.
jeffreyrogers 5y ago
One on one a single soldier can take a tank, but war isn't one on one. First there isn't going to be one tank. There's going to be a bunch. The tanks are basically immune to small arms fire. Not true of an infantryman who is vulnerable to pretty much everything. So the guy with the Javalin has to steel his nerves while he hears the tanks coming towards him, then he has to pop up to take his shot and hope no one sees him and kills him. Then, even if he's successful he still might get killed afterwards. The tanks usually have infantry support as well. The article talks about the Javelin having greater range than infantry, but I doubt that is true in an urban environment (too many buildings).
- spywaregorilla 5y ago
  The videos I've seen, which, probably do suffer from selection bias of what is filmable, show ukranians blasting tanks from extremely far away. Far away enough that I would reckon the tank drivers had no practical way to observe, or even counteract against the infantry,especially if they're under some amount of cover and hidden until they strike. The guidance on these weapons seem very impressive. Most attacks seem to be hitting the tanks while they're on a highway. The russian tanks are shitty, and have no infantry support. So its hard to draw conclusions about how his would work against a competent foe.
yyyk 5y ago
The soldier's anti-tank missile also has costs, and it usually misses or hits without destroying the tank (or taken out by anti-missile active defence). When you add all these up, it turns out the tank/missile cost equation is close to balanced. The tank's problem is less that it's vulnerable to anti-tank missile, but its high visibility, now relatively weak weapons and vulnerability to air assets (which is also high visibility again).
- hnaccy 5y ago
  The claimed kill rate for Javalin in practice is over 90%. NLAWs are even cheaper and easier to use but don't know their estimated kill rate.
  - yyyk 5y ago
    Against badly run T-72 tank divisions maybe. Against a modern tank with an active defence system and infantry cover? I strongly doubt it. There are more than a few known cases of tanks getting hit by Kornets and surviving and Javalin is contemporary.
- chipsa 5y ago
  Anti-missile active defense (Active Protection System) is still in it's infancy, especially with respect to tank based defenses. Many of them only work against direct attack, not top-attack missiles, and it's also common for them to effectively attack as giant shotguns to destroy the incoming target, which is bad for nearby infantry. They're also expensive, have sensors that must be maintained to be effective (which are sensors that can get shot at before the ATGM is launched), and can potentially be depleted in a specific sector of attack.
  - yyyk 5y ago
    Active defence has limits, sure. There's a long dance between attack and defence. My point was that the tank isn't doomed there - if vulnerability to anti-tank missiles was the only issue, armies would research and deploy active defences everywhere and the tank would be important as it was. I think the problems are elsewhere. When infantryman can deploy offensive power outranging the canon, one needs to ask why have the tank when the infantryman requires so much less logistics. If say, the tanks could use a heavy mobile laser, than the equation would be different.
R0b0t1 5y ago
Tanks help anchor infantry to the front line. They are mobile fortification. But they are more for open field combat than for urban combat. You're not the only one seeing tanks as partially obsolete. Force projection via planes is typically much more important.
weinzierl 5y ago
> If a single foot soldier can take out a tank that costs millions of dollars, is it even worth using a tank? A foot soldier with a weapon that costs a tenth of a million to fire. The asymmetry is given in Ukraine because they have enough Javelins but I doubt it exits to that degree in any conflict.
- spywaregorilla 5y ago
  Ehh I think that's not quite right. A javelin costs a tenth of a million to fire, but you can just hand a few shots to a guy and send him on its way. As I understand it, it's pretty easy to use. A russian T-90 costs ~$5M to buy, but also requires a crew of ~3 trained people, plus munitions, plus a good deal of fuel, and logistics support to move it around. The asymmetry in Ukraine is first and foremost Russia having way more troops to burn. Economic and manpower held equal, rocket infantry certainly seem like they have a higher return than tanks on total operating costs
  - weinzierl 5y ago
    Good point, I haven't thought about the personnel and operating costs of the tank.
ineedasername 5y ago
They are still effective if deployed correctly. That entails using a "combined arms" approach where the tank is supported by infantry, stationary artillery, advanced recon, etc. Aerial support from helicopters can be very useful in spotting and taking out tank killing teams, although they have their own vulnerabilities: if the opposition has javelins they also probably have some type of SAM. But that's where recon and good Intel along with infantry come in: address the threats to heavy hitters like tanks and air support so those heavy hitters can do their job. It's hard to know exactly what's gone wrong for Russia in Ukraine, but the reports we're getting point to a huge failure to properly implement combined arms & close support tactics. It seems Russia either didn't anticipate the need-- thought they'd flatten their way to Kyiv so fast it didn't matter-- or their forces consist too much of undertrained non-professional conscripts. The conscript tour of duty in Russia is really too short to hammer home complex tactics and discipline for this sort of thing. 12 months is just too little time to game out the variety of scenarios they might encounter, and so when the one they were (presumably) trained for in this invasion meets initial resistance they don't know how to react. And that's before the logistics issues enter into things... Unfortunately that means Russia may fall back to simply bombing things to rubble and picking up the pieces. It looks like their plan was to take the country & install a friendly government fast enough to keep infrastructure and cities mostly intact, but now that that has failed it looks like they're moving towards the "rubble" approach which does not require the same level of ground training and tactics. Air superiority and long range artillery by Russia can do that.

spacemanmatt 5y ago

Generally, yes, and tanks usually roll with air support if not also infantry. Russia's neglect of this armchair-strategist type knowledge is making headlines.

hef19898 5y ago
Tanks without infantry support are basically just targets. Especially in urban environments, the Turkish army showed that quite impressively in Syria (?) by loosing a couple of Leopard 2s.
sofixa 5y ago
The Russians supposedly had a tank chassis with soft weapons ( machine guns, small cannon, grenade launchers) on top, to accompany tanks in urban environments, specifically due to lessons from Checnhya about the vulnerability of tanks against infantry defenses, especially in urban environments - BMPT. Supposedly the idea was to have them accompany tanks and support them. In reality, they are nowhere to be seen
- aerostable_slug 5y ago
  BMPTs were seen heading into theater on railcars. I've seen nothing since, but I suspect they're out there somewhere. I also suspect they would fare little better than a lone T-80 wandering around an urban environment without competent infantry support. Also, BMPT was designed around the Grozny threat environment: antiarmor teams on rooftops raining down RPGs and Molotov cocktails from above. The Ukrainians haven't been forced to resort to those tactics (yet) as they have advanced Western weapons to employ from greater distances and with greater lethality.

josefresco 5y ago

I'm no expert but ....I guess it's similar to an aircraft carrier. Alone it's massively vulnerable from asymmetric attacks, but when properly protected can be powerful and effective.

liotier 5y ago
Yes. As in paper/rock/scissors, vulnerability is only part of the story. Glass has huge compressive strength but fails under very low tensile stress, diamond is the hardest material but will shatter easily under a (large) hammer...
cf141q5325 5y ago
To be fair, the protection in this case is the threat of retaliation.

simmonmt 5y ago

The same argument applies to airplanes, but both airplanes and tanks have certain advantages that on balance exceed the risk of them getting blown up.

cf141q5325 5y ago
It doesnt. Modern military aircraft fly too high for MANPADs (shoulder fired ones like Stinger). You require actual air defense systems, and new ones at that. Extremely pricey, restricted and very big. I would also argue that the advantages of tanks no longer apply when you face anything but non state backed rebels, especially in urban environment. Syria showed it rather well with the few TOWs that the US provided to the rebels. With drones it became check mate. All they are are giant defenseless targets, just look at Azerbaijan. They are not much use for anything but crushing civilians.
- sofixa 5y ago
  > Modern military aircraft fly too high for MANPADs (shoulder fired ones like Stinger) Not if they're doing combat air support they don't, unless they only use precision guided munitions or cruise missiles, which are expensive.
  - spywaregorilla 5y ago
    This is why Russia is losing so many planes. They ran out of the good weapons, and so now they need to fly dangerously low to attack ground targets.
  - cf141q5325 5y ago
    I really didnt think i would see this in in the current year. Jets arent cheap either after all. Thanks for the heads up.

jeffreyrogers 5y ago

One on one a single soldier can take a tank, but war isn't one on one. First there isn't going to be one tank. There's going to be a bunch. The tanks are basically immune to small arms fire. Not true of an infantryman who is vulnerable to pretty much everything. So the guy with the Javalin has to steel his nerves while he hears the tanks coming towards him, then he has to pop up to take his shot and hope no one sees him and kills him. Then, even if he's successful he still might get killed afterwards. The tanks usually have infantry support as well. The article talks about the Javelin having greater range than infantry, but I doubt that is true in an urban environment (too many buildings).

spywaregorilla 5y ago
The videos I've seen, which, probably do suffer from selection bias of what is filmable, show ukranians blasting tanks from extremely far away. Far away enough that I would reckon the tank drivers had no practical way to observe, or even counteract against the infantry,especially if they're under some amount of cover and hidden until they strike. The guidance on these weapons seem very impressive. Most attacks seem to be hitting the tanks while they're on a highway. The russian tanks are shitty, and have no infantry support. So its hard to draw conclusions about how his would work against a competent foe.

yyyk 5y ago

The soldier's anti-tank missile also has costs, and it usually misses or hits without destroying the tank (or taken out by anti-missile active defence). When you add all these up, it turns out the tank/missile cost equation is close to balanced. The tank's problem is less that it's vulnerable to anti-tank missile, but its high visibility, now relatively weak weapons and vulnerability to air assets (which is also high visibility again).

hnaccy 5y ago
The claimed kill rate for Javalin in practice is over 90%. NLAWs are even cheaper and easier to use but don't know their estimated kill rate.
- yyyk 5y ago
  Against badly run T-72 tank divisions maybe. Against a modern tank with an active defence system and infantry cover? I strongly doubt it. There are more than a few known cases of tanks getting hit by Kornets and surviving and Javalin is contemporary.
chipsa 5y ago
Anti-missile active defense (Active Protection System) is still in it's infancy, especially with respect to tank based defenses. Many of them only work against direct attack, not top-attack missiles, and it's also common for them to effectively attack as giant shotguns to destroy the incoming target, which is bad for nearby infantry. They're also expensive, have sensors that must be maintained to be effective (which are sensors that can get shot at before the ATGM is launched), and can potentially be depleted in a specific sector of attack.
- yyyk 5y ago
  Active defence has limits, sure. There's a long dance between attack and defence. My point was that the tank isn't doomed there - if vulnerability to anti-tank missiles was the only issue, armies would research and deploy active defences everywhere and the tank would be important as it was. I think the problems are elsewhere. When infantryman can deploy offensive power outranging the canon, one needs to ask why have the tank when the infantryman requires so much less logistics. If say, the tanks could use a heavy mobile laser, than the equation would be different.

R0b0t1 5y ago

Tanks help anchor infantry to the front line. They are mobile fortification. But they are more for open field combat than for urban combat. You're not the only one seeing tanks as partially obsolete. Force projection via planes is typically much more important.

weinzierl 5y ago

> If a single foot soldier can take out a tank that costs millions of dollars, is it even worth using a tank? A foot soldier with a weapon that costs a tenth of a million to fire. The asymmetry is given in Ukraine because they have enough Javelins but I doubt it exits to that degree in any conflict.

spywaregorilla 5y ago
Ehh I think that's not quite right. A javelin costs a tenth of a million to fire, but you can just hand a few shots to a guy and send him on its way. As I understand it, it's pretty easy to use. A russian T-90 costs ~$5M to buy, but also requires a crew of ~3 trained people, plus munitions, plus a good deal of fuel, and logistics support to move it around. The asymmetry in Ukraine is first and foremost Russia having way more troops to burn. Economic and manpower held equal, rocket infantry certainly seem like they have a higher return than tanks on total operating costs
- weinzierl 5y ago
  Good point, I haven't thought about the personnel and operating costs of the tank.

ineedasername 5y ago

They are still effective if deployed correctly. That entails using a "combined arms" approach where the tank is supported by infantry, stationary artillery, advanced recon, etc. Aerial support from helicopters can be very useful in spotting and taking out tank killing teams, although they have their own vulnerabilities: if the opposition has javelins they also probably have some type of SAM. But that's where recon and good Intel along with infantry come in: address the threats to heavy hitters like tanks and air support so those heavy hitters can do their job. It's hard to know exactly what's gone wrong for Russia in Ukraine, but the reports we're getting point to a huge failure to properly implement combined arms & close support tactics. It seems Russia either didn't anticipate the need-- thought they'd flatten their way to Kyiv so fast it didn't matter-- or their forces consist too much of undertrained non-professional conscripts. The conscript tour of duty in Russia is really too short to hammer home complex tactics and discipline for this sort of thing. 12 months is just too little time to game out the variety of scenarios they might encounter, and so when the one they were (presumably) trained for in this invasion meets initial resistance they don't know how to react. And that's before the logistics issues enter into things... Unfortunately that means Russia may fall back to simply bombing things to rubble and picking up the pieces. It looks like their plan was to take the country & install a friendly government fast enough to keep infrastructure and cities mostly intact, but now that that has failed it looks like they're moving towards the "rubble" approach which does not require the same level of ground training and tactics. Air superiority and long range artillery by Russia can do that.