5 ms·

The tank isn't dead because armies still need the capabilities the tank gives them. You need a long range direct fire weapon, capable of engaging armoured targe

by simonh 5y ago

The tank isn't dead because armies still need the capabilities the tank gives them. You need a long range direct fire weapon, capable of engaging armoured targets and infantry (canister or airburst rounds), with rapid engagement of multiple targets, low time to target, rapid reloads and follow up shots, and high survivability. Lighter wheeled gun armed vehicles can be cheaper, but they don't have the survivability. They also can't go everywhere a tracked tank can go, such as jungle busting or just driving right through many kinds of buildings or cover. Missile have much longer flight times to target than gun rounds. A tank can move into position, fire, destroy it's target and be back in cover before a missile gets anywhere near it's target. The missiles are also vastly more expensive than tank rounds. Yes tanks are vulnerable when not properly integrated with air support, artillery and infantry. They're still a lot more survivable than pretty much anything else that can provide the same capabilities though. One tank in the second Gulf War shrugged off 14 RPG hits, and overall tanks in that conflict amply proved their value, when used effectively.

irrational 5y ago
But, this doesn’t address his points from the end of the article about cheap drone swarm attacks on the top side of tanks.
- simonh 5y ago
  Or on the top side of infantry. I'd still rather be in a tank. What this tells me is we need better anti-drone air defences.
- nimbius 5y ago
  s/drones/air support/ imho the failures observed caused by manpad in the ukrane theatre were directly attributable to an almost comically poor systems integration on the part of the aggressor and an unwillingness to commit longer range artillery and missile strikes to soften what were hardened infantry targets equipped with sixth generation anti-air and anti-tank weaponry.
  - lumost 5y ago
    > an unwillingness to commit longer range artillery and missile strikes to soften what were hardened infantry targets Given the current state of cities such as Mariupol I don't believe you can attribute an unwillingness to use artillery to the Russian side.
    - ethbr0 5y ago
      Buildings don't move or require much intelligence to find.
  - ethbr0 5y ago
    > almost comically poor systems integration on [Russia's part] Russia's BTGs were explicitly designed to (a) consume minimal manpower (they were composed of non-coscript troops from their parent units), (b) consequently, to maximize lethality:person (tank co + 3x mech inf co + 2 AT co + artillery/anti-air), and (c) to minimize logistical support requirements (by deploying smaller units). Essentially, they were built to win small-scale conflicts at a price Russia could afford. Ukraine is not a small-scale conflict. Consequently, the following chain of events (predictably) occurred: (1) Putin proposes 2003 military reforms [0], (2) Serdyukov realizes many of these in 2008 reforms [1], (3) optimistic appraisal of capabilities vs Ukraine leads to Army grandstanding, little strategic integration with different branches (e.g. VVS, VMF), (4) utter failure of real political intelligence mistakenly assumes Ukrainian population (esp urban) will not support government & defense, (6) infantry-light, manuever-oriented assault predictable bogs down in urban areas, without necessary troop count in assaulting units, (7) strategic approach is locked in, as a consequence of previous choices, (8) everyone involved at a command level scrambles to cover their ass and blame others. If Russia had wanted to win the war they ended up getting, they should have never assaulted urban areas with BTGs. They would have manuevered south from western Belarus, bisecting the country, and forced Moldova to declare neutrality and forbid weapons shipments. Then pick key infrastructure apart at leisure. Because that's the sort of thing the BTGs were built to do. But presumably Russia didn't want to do that because it betrays the "this is all about Donbas (and the criminal Ukrainian government)" talking points, and it didn't think it would need to. Hindsight is 20/20. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Ground_Forces#Reforms_under_Putin https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Ground_Forces#Reform... [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Russian_military_reform https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Russian_military_reform
- raducu 5y ago
  Also remote controlled ATGMs and I'm sure remote controlled machine guns and other stuff (the israelis already have a lot of remote controlled machine guns afik). The tank may not be completely obsolete and indeed properly used like the US did and like Russia sadly probably re-learned it is a very useful tool. More defensive automation will put even that "properly used" to the test. I think we've just scratched the surface of what AI can do for defense; for offense also, but not as much. It's now in the realm of reality (think the mossad machine gun attack in Iran) to have systems that will autonomously attack any tank/vehicle/human, just waiting in ambush. It's orders of magnitued to have offensive AI driven tanks. Imagine 1000 Mariupols, all automated with automated machine guns, AT missiles, drones and so on. Those do not require food, no water, no sleep, are not afraid to die. Regardless, tanks are not what they used to be in WW2 -- modern tanks are extremely expensive and there are a lot of ways to kill tanks nowdays. The battle will go back and forth, the tanks will get active protection, the ATGMs will get a lot faster, will used efps like the NLAW, but I think the writing is on the wall. Yeah, it was said before, just like it was said about the missile making dogfights obsolete -- a little early, but true eventually.
  - hef19898 5y ago
    >> the missile making dogfights obsolete -- a little early, but true eventually. Not true so. The US thought that in Vietnam, the F-4 (?) didn't have an on-board canon for that very reason. All new planes again have one, because dog fights turned out to be very much a thing. The Phoenix missile, and the F-14, have been built around the beyond-visual range idea. Both are out of service now. Beyond visual range works when you see the enemy but the enemy doesn't see you. If both parties see each other, the first shot will be beyond visual range, any survivors will find themselves in dog fight after that. And if both side use stealthy fighters, they won't see each other, or be able to engage each other, at distances beyond a dog fight.
    - rtkwe 5y ago
      That's a question we won't really know the answer to until we get a nice big shooting war between peer air forces again. So hopefully not in my lifetime. I think what they really learned was dropping guns is a gamble and when you don't /really/ have to control costs that much it's safer to include a limited gun in case you need it. AFAIK the current doctrine thinks dog fights are going to be a small part of air to air combat as both the f22 and f35 have less than 5 seconds of ammo.
- coryfklein 5y ago
  The main reason cheap drones are effective is because they come from fast-moving consumer product lines instead of the slow-moving monolithic military industrial complex side. There is nothing fundamentally indefensible about drone swarms, the complex just hasn't had enough time to react. You can bet that, if it doesn't already exist in secret somewhere in the US, there are many teams actively working on tank-mounted drone laser defense systems. I suspect that drones have been hard to target until now because they have a unique air signature far different from all previous air targets, not because they are fundamentally more "invisible" than a Predator or a helicopter. Given their unique shape, movement, noise, and radio profile, a CS grad could certainly cobble together a drone target acquisition system using some consumer-level optic systems combined with a radio antenna, radar, and microphone array. And as we all know, quadcopter drones are exceedingly fragile and most of their profile is millimeter-thin plastic blades. Once you have the ability target them, you'd only need a moderately powered laser to completely disable them.
Narretz 5y ago
The second gulf war started almost 20 years ago. Surely you can't use it as an example when anti tank weapons have progressed so much in that time.
- inglor 5y ago
  The problem with this logic is both that Russia's tank building philosophy is very different than the US's (or Israel's) and that tanks and defensive systems have also improved (significantly) in the last 20 years but the article glosses over that and uses a conflict from 16 years ago and the Ukraine invasion as "proof" that Javelins can kill modern tanks.
  - jitl 5y ago
    I think the article is very measured about its approach to the purpose and continued value of tanks, and the specific failing of the Russian army in Ukraine: > The Russian Army has shown that it is not competent in combined arms fire and maneuver. Where is the accompanying infantry with the tank formations, who are supposed to bust the ambushes executed by Ukrainian forces? Where are the suppressive mortar, artillery, and close air support fires? If the Russian Army was tactically skilled, then the Javelin and other ATGMs would be suppressed by artillery or air support and their surviving crews would be swept up by Russian infantry. Thus far, these key competencies seem to be lacking and Russian soldiers are paying a high price for their unpreparedness.
- simonh 5y ago
  So has reactive armour and systems like Trophy. This argument has been made for many decades at this stage. This isn't just about vulnerability. Infantry are vulnerable to practically everything, sometimes they just drop dead all by themselves. It's also about capabilities. What are you going to use instead, and how is it better?
  - Pelic4n 5y ago
    Reported kill rate of javelins fired against tanks in Ukraine is 93%. Just saying.
Beltiras 5y ago
The survivability property is the one being questioned right now. If you can attack a tank from 5 clicks away with a high probability of success then air support and infantry have to cover a really wide perimeter inviting the question if the resources spent on the tank can give better capabilities in other form.
- hef19898 5y ago
  >> if the resources spent on the tank can give better capabilities in other form. That's the point so, there is no other system that can give those capabilities for now. Seriously read the article, it is pretty good on that topic. In terms of tank usage, they are also quite good in when directly engaging fortified positions, e.g. field bunkers and so on.
- throw1234651234 5y ago
  I am too lazy to write anything cohesive. Here is starting point on things that will make the tank more survivable and persist it as a heavy weapon platform. 1. Hard-kill APS - active protection systems - mm AESA (fast, high resolution) miniature radar detecting threats and sending munitions to intercept them. See Arena, Trophy. Eventually, laser counter-drone systems for small swarms (see Israeli developments) 2. Soft-kill APS - smarter/highly-automated smoke deployment, IR smoke, radar chaff. Directed radar / IR blinders. (See T-90 systems failing in Ukraine atm) 3. Passive - lower signatures. 4. Target detection and automatic turret queuing - tanks have a lot of space, they can have sophisticated optics and computers that find targets (including OTH data from tethered drones) or find launches against them and can fire on that launch. This is less effective against fire and forget systems ala Javelin or systems like Stunga where the launch platform is away from the guidance system. 5. Trench sweepers and coupled 30mm cannons - tanks can airburst and clear trenches / buildings better. 6. Operating in fully jammed environments. This has NOT happened in Ukraine at all. Wide-area signal suppression seems like a myth in the current war. Anyway, this is just basic stuff to look into. The tanks remains a "go fast, penetrate stuff, maneuver" platform. One thing most people also forget is the cost of the firepower that comes with the platform. Smart/loitering munitions are still expensive, and still have a high time-to-target than direct fire or dumb mortars.
lumost 5y ago
What we're seeing is that low cost precision guided munitions can engage tanks from beyond their direct fire range. Within direct fire range they can be engaged by even lower cost munitions fielded by light infantry and light vehicles. The tank also suffers from requiring large amounts of fuel, making supply line strikes more dangerous to armored advances. The first point is the big one, the future of ground forces may not be built around gunned vehicles. Drone swarms can threaten entrenched infantry, ATGMs can destroy tanks from a distance. A "dumb" artillery round costs $1,000 and is accurate to 20 meters, recent "smart" artillery rounds cost $140,000, a switchblade costs $6000.
- greedo 5y ago
  Armies will start deploying jamming effectively, cutting off the ability to control the drones. For some reason, the Russian army (which had a reputation for excellence in ECM/ECCM) has been completely ineffective in this area during it's invasion of Ukraine.
- ThrowawayR2 5y ago
  Then the drone swarm meets this and one or the other survives: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pb5_F4_Eod8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pb5_F4_Eod8 (As an aside, it always fascinates me that arms manufacturers not only create ads and brochures but that they're often done rather well.) A lot of the breathless enthusiasm for drones seems premature. SAMs didn't make aircraft obsolete, air to ground missiles from aircraft and helicopters didn't make tanks and other vehicles obsolete, and there's doesn't seem to be any reason to believe that adjustments won't be made by the various militaries to provide protection against drones.

by simonh 5y ago

irrational 5y ago

But, this doesn’t address his points from the end of the article about cheap drone swarm attacks on the top side of tanks.

simonh 5y ago
Or on the top side of infantry. I'd still rather be in a tank. What this tells me is we need better anti-drone air defences.
nimbius 5y ago
s/drones/air support/ imho the failures observed caused by manpad in the ukrane theatre were directly attributable to an almost comically poor systems integration on the part of the aggressor and an unwillingness to commit longer range artillery and missile strikes to soften what were hardened infantry targets equipped with sixth generation anti-air and anti-tank weaponry.
- lumost 5y ago
  > an unwillingness to commit longer range artillery and missile strikes to soften what were hardened infantry targets Given the current state of cities such as Mariupol I don't believe you can attribute an unwillingness to use artillery to the Russian side.
  - ethbr0 5y ago
    Buildings don't move or require much intelligence to find.
- ethbr0 5y ago
  > almost comically poor systems integration on [Russia's part] Russia's BTGs were explicitly designed to (a) consume minimal manpower (they were composed of non-coscript troops from their parent units), (b) consequently, to maximize lethality:person (tank co + 3x mech inf co + 2 AT co + artillery/anti-air), and (c) to minimize logistical support requirements (by deploying smaller units). Essentially, they were built to win small-scale conflicts at a price Russia could afford. Ukraine is not a small-scale conflict. Consequently, the following chain of events (predictably) occurred: (1) Putin proposes 2003 military reforms [0], (2) Serdyukov realizes many of these in 2008 reforms [1], (3) optimistic appraisal of capabilities vs Ukraine leads to Army grandstanding, little strategic integration with different branches (e.g. VVS, VMF), (4) utter failure of real political intelligence mistakenly assumes Ukrainian population (esp urban) will not support government & defense, (6) infantry-light, manuever-oriented assault predictable bogs down in urban areas, without necessary troop count in assaulting units, (7) strategic approach is locked in, as a consequence of previous choices, (8) everyone involved at a command level scrambles to cover their ass and blame others. If Russia had wanted to win the war they ended up getting, they should have never assaulted urban areas with BTGs. They would have manuevered south from western Belarus, bisecting the country, and forced Moldova to declare neutrality and forbid weapons shipments. Then pick key infrastructure apart at leisure. Because that's the sort of thing the BTGs were built to do. But presumably Russia didn't want to do that because it betrays the "this is all about Donbas (and the criminal Ukrainian government)" talking points, and it didn't think it would need to. Hindsight is 20/20. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Ground_Forces#Reforms_under_Putin https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Ground_Forces#Reform... [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Russian_military_reform https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Russian_military_reform
raducu 5y ago
Also remote controlled ATGMs and I'm sure remote controlled machine guns and other stuff (the israelis already have a lot of remote controlled machine guns afik). The tank may not be completely obsolete and indeed properly used like the US did and like Russia sadly probably re-learned it is a very useful tool. More defensive automation will put even that "properly used" to the test. I think we've just scratched the surface of what AI can do for defense; for offense also, but not as much. It's now in the realm of reality (think the mossad machine gun attack in Iran) to have systems that will autonomously attack any tank/vehicle/human, just waiting in ambush. It's orders of magnitued to have offensive AI driven tanks. Imagine 1000 Mariupols, all automated with automated machine guns, AT missiles, drones and so on. Those do not require food, no water, no sleep, are not afraid to die. Regardless, tanks are not what they used to be in WW2 -- modern tanks are extremely expensive and there are a lot of ways to kill tanks nowdays. The battle will go back and forth, the tanks will get active protection, the ATGMs will get a lot faster, will used efps like the NLAW, but I think the writing is on the wall. Yeah, it was said before, just like it was said about the missile making dogfights obsolete -- a little early, but true eventually.
- hef19898 5y ago
  >> the missile making dogfights obsolete -- a little early, but true eventually. Not true so. The US thought that in Vietnam, the F-4 (?) didn't have an on-board canon for that very reason. All new planes again have one, because dog fights turned out to be very much a thing. The Phoenix missile, and the F-14, have been built around the beyond-visual range idea. Both are out of service now. Beyond visual range works when you see the enemy but the enemy doesn't see you. If both parties see each other, the first shot will be beyond visual range, any survivors will find themselves in dog fight after that. And if both side use stealthy fighters, they won't see each other, or be able to engage each other, at distances beyond a dog fight.
  - rtkwe 5y ago
    That's a question we won't really know the answer to until we get a nice big shooting war between peer air forces again. So hopefully not in my lifetime. I think what they really learned was dropping guns is a gamble and when you don't /really/ have to control costs that much it's safer to include a limited gun in case you need it. AFAIK the current doctrine thinks dog fights are going to be a small part of air to air combat as both the f22 and f35 have less than 5 seconds of ammo.
coryfklein 5y ago
The main reason cheap drones are effective is because they come from fast-moving consumer product lines instead of the slow-moving monolithic military industrial complex side. There is nothing fundamentally indefensible about drone swarms, the complex just hasn't had enough time to react. You can bet that, if it doesn't already exist in secret somewhere in the US, there are many teams actively working on tank-mounted drone laser defense systems. I suspect that drones have been hard to target until now because they have a unique air signature far different from all previous air targets, not because they are fundamentally more "invisible" than a Predator or a helicopter. Given their unique shape, movement, noise, and radio profile, a CS grad could certainly cobble together a drone target acquisition system using some consumer-level optic systems combined with a radio antenna, radar, and microphone array. And as we all know, quadcopter drones are exceedingly fragile and most of their profile is millimeter-thin plastic blades. Once you have the ability target them, you'd only need a moderately powered laser to completely disable them.

Narretz 5y ago

The second gulf war started almost 20 years ago. Surely you can't use it as an example when anti tank weapons have progressed so much in that time.

inglor 5y ago
The problem with this logic is both that Russia's tank building philosophy is very different than the US's (or Israel's) and that tanks and defensive systems have also improved (significantly) in the last 20 years but the article glosses over that and uses a conflict from 16 years ago and the Ukraine invasion as "proof" that Javelins can kill modern tanks.
- jitl 5y ago
  I think the article is very measured about its approach to the purpose and continued value of tanks, and the specific failing of the Russian army in Ukraine: > The Russian Army has shown that it is not competent in combined arms fire and maneuver. Where is the accompanying infantry with the tank formations, who are supposed to bust the ambushes executed by Ukrainian forces? Where are the suppressive mortar, artillery, and close air support fires? If the Russian Army was tactically skilled, then the Javelin and other ATGMs would be suppressed by artillery or air support and their surviving crews would be swept up by Russian infantry. Thus far, these key competencies seem to be lacking and Russian soldiers are paying a high price for their unpreparedness.
simonh 5y ago
So has reactive armour and systems like Trophy. This argument has been made for many decades at this stage. This isn't just about vulnerability. Infantry are vulnerable to practically everything, sometimes they just drop dead all by themselves. It's also about capabilities. What are you going to use instead, and how is it better?
- Pelic4n 5y ago
  Reported kill rate of javelins fired against tanks in Ukraine is 93%. Just saying.

Beltiras 5y ago

The survivability property is the one being questioned right now. If you can attack a tank from 5 clicks away with a high probability of success then air support and infantry have to cover a really wide perimeter inviting the question if the resources spent on the tank can give better capabilities in other form.

hef19898 5y ago
>> if the resources spent on the tank can give better capabilities in other form. That's the point so, there is no other system that can give those capabilities for now. Seriously read the article, it is pretty good on that topic. In terms of tank usage, they are also quite good in when directly engaging fortified positions, e.g. field bunkers and so on.
throw1234651234 5y ago
I am too lazy to write anything cohesive. Here is starting point on things that will make the tank more survivable and persist it as a heavy weapon platform. 1. Hard-kill APS - active protection systems - mm AESA (fast, high resolution) miniature radar detecting threats and sending munitions to intercept them. See Arena, Trophy. Eventually, laser counter-drone systems for small swarms (see Israeli developments) 2. Soft-kill APS - smarter/highly-automated smoke deployment, IR smoke, radar chaff. Directed radar / IR blinders. (See T-90 systems failing in Ukraine atm) 3. Passive - lower signatures. 4. Target detection and automatic turret queuing - tanks have a lot of space, they can have sophisticated optics and computers that find targets (including OTH data from tethered drones) or find launches against them and can fire on that launch. This is less effective against fire and forget systems ala Javelin or systems like Stunga where the launch platform is away from the guidance system. 5. Trench sweepers and coupled 30mm cannons - tanks can airburst and clear trenches / buildings better. 6. Operating in fully jammed environments. This has NOT happened in Ukraine at all. Wide-area signal suppression seems like a myth in the current war. Anyway, this is just basic stuff to look into. The tanks remains a "go fast, penetrate stuff, maneuver" platform. One thing most people also forget is the cost of the firepower that comes with the platform. Smart/loitering munitions are still expensive, and still have a high time-to-target than direct fire or dumb mortars.

lumost 5y ago

What we're seeing is that low cost precision guided munitions can engage tanks from beyond their direct fire range. Within direct fire range they can be engaged by even lower cost munitions fielded by light infantry and light vehicles. The tank also suffers from requiring large amounts of fuel, making supply line strikes more dangerous to armored advances. The first point is the big one, the future of ground forces may not be built around gunned vehicles. Drone swarms can threaten entrenched infantry, ATGMs can destroy tanks from a distance. A "dumb" artillery round costs $1,000 and is accurate to 20 meters, recent "smart" artillery rounds cost $140,000, a switchblade costs $6000.

greedo 5y ago
Armies will start deploying jamming effectively, cutting off the ability to control the drones. For some reason, the Russian army (which had a reputation for excellence in ECM/ECCM) has been completely ineffective in this area during it's invasion of Ukraine.
ThrowawayR2 5y ago
Then the drone swarm meets this and one or the other survives: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pb5_F4_Eod8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pb5_F4_Eod8 (As an aside, it always fascinates me that arms manufacturers not only create ads and brochures but that they're often done rather well.) A lot of the breathless enthusiasm for drones seems premature. SAMs didn't make aircraft obsolete, air to ground missiles from aircraft and helicopters didn't make tanks and other vehicles obsolete, and there's doesn't seem to be any reason to believe that adjustments won't be made by the various militaries to provide protection against drones.