3 ms·

> The drone can just fly around the concrete wall and blow up the things on the other side, it doesn’t need to go through. Ukrainians are sitting inside of bun

> The drone can just fly around the concrete wall and blow up the things on the other side, it doesn’t need to go through. Ukrainians are sitting inside of bunkers with 8-inch concrete doors and 8-inch thick concrete all around. How exactly are you "flying around" that? Now sure, Russians are absolute crap with tactics and maybe drones are all you need to kill the Russians. But I'm looking at things from the Ukrainian side as well. Ukraine is defending so well that I'm not sure if anything *EXCEPT* a 120mm gun can push into their positions. That's the thing: Ukraine is forcing Russia to advance with tanks. But Ukraine has a solid anti-tank strategy, so we see a lot of dead Russian tanks. But the alternative (ie: assaulting those Ukrainian bunkers with lol no armor) is probably a worse idea! ------- Russian positions are just poorly dug dirt trenches right now. Of course tanks are unnecessary (for now). But if the Russians were actually as good as the Ukrainians (ie: bringing in that thick Concrete to reinforce their positions), then Ukraine would be forced to use tanks. Ukrainian positions in the Donbas region have so much concrete, that they ask for artillery support and shell *themselves*, confident that their bunkers can stand up to the abuse. (Air-burst artillery shot at your own bunkers will never harm the bunker, while unarmored enemies trying to storm the bunker would all die at the front-door.) This kind of defense practically requires a tank: you need the armor to protect yourself from airburst artillery, and you need the 120mm gun to punch through the 8-inches of concrete that the Ukrainians are hiding behind. Except Ukrainians __ALSO__ have anti-tank munitions, and just blow up the tank. Its not exactly easy to figure out how to push into the Ukrainian positions. But the tanks seem necessary (even though they take high casualties). Its not like drones have much armor. Airburst artillery would also destroy drones (airburst artillery covers something like 10,000 sq-meters in shrapnel per shot). Drones running into those positions would also be destroyed by this simple tactic.

lazide 5y ago
A drone shooting a missile at said bunker, or flying up to the bunker and detonating a HEAT warhead it is carrying, or flying a new drone in when the old one gets hit by shrapnel all work great in these examples by the way. Fabricating a kamikaze drone with HEAT warhead on it is a $10k or less affair. Tanks are expensive, heavy sitting ducks. The only reason they haven’t been completely obsoleted is manufacturing drones hasn’t caught up yet. They’re like horses in WW1 being used to charge machine guns in this fight. In most of these cases you don’t even need a drone to do the dirty work though. Just one to find the bunker or whatever and let artillery or a cruise middle do the rest. Those drones can be less than $5k, but they do get more expensive if you want to be able to pilot them from the other side of the planet or whatever.
- dragontamer 5y ago
  The Hellfire missile is a 100Lb bomb, HE type only. 2 tank rounds are already roughly the same power, except Hellfire missiles are $100,000+ each. HE is different from SABOT too. If the enemy is behind 2 walls (a bunker with multiple rooms inside), the SABOT would be better than pretty much any amount of HE type missile or round. Of course, bunker buster bombs exist, but those are way more expensive and require air superiority to use. ------ > Just one to find the bunker or whatever and let artillery or a cruise middle do the rest. Artillery can't shoot SABOT rounds either. Cruise missiles are $1+ million weapons. An enemy bunker is just the kind of situations where tanks are needed. With a good design, bunkers offer protection from above (artillery or even air force bombs), and force a direct fire engagement.
  - lazide 5y ago
    No one is getting near an enemy bunker with an intact tank unless they’ve already lost now. But keep believing tanks are relevant. It’ll be awhile before they get phased out regardless, same as a bunch of other kit.
    - dragontamer 5y ago
      Tanks easily and accurately fires from 3000+ meter distances (at least, HEAT rounds do). That's well in excess of even an advanced NLAW antitank missile, let alone AT4 or Panzerfaust 3. Only the Javelin missile has a similar standoff range. Tanks don't "get close" to the enemy, unless they want to. Tanks are full of advanced firing computers, thermal vision, and night vision suites. ------- I was somewhat hoping that in this Russia vs Ukraine war, we'd see more active-protection-systems, like the Israeli "Trophy" system. Except apparently neither Russia nor Ukraine has the tech. It turns out that CE-warheads (like the Javelin, NLAW, AT4, Panzerfaust, or maybe even HEAT warheads from an enemy tank) have a weakness to shotguns on an aimbot. That's all the "Trophy" system is: when they see a 500+ mph rocket or shell going towards the tank, they shoot a shotgun at the thing, which disables most CE-rounds. KE-warheads are traveling too fast with too much momentum. The shotgun may "deflect" the SABOT a little bit and might help, but I don't think there's much expectation for Israel's Trophy to kill SABOTs / KE-type projectiles. I'd expect that a drone, traveling at only 100mph (ex: Switchblade 600) would lose to a tweaked Trophy APS (designed to shoot a shotgun at also 100mph objects). After all, if its reliably destroying CE-rounds at 500mph, it almost certainly can track and destroy a 100mph object like Switchblade 600.

lazide 5y ago

A drone shooting a missile at said bunker, or flying up to the bunker and detonating a HEAT warhead it is carrying, or flying a new drone in when the old one gets hit by shrapnel all work great in these examples by the way. Fabricating a kamikaze drone with HEAT warhead on it is a $10k or less affair. Tanks are expensive, heavy sitting ducks. The only reason they haven’t been completely obsoleted is manufacturing drones hasn’t caught up yet. They’re like horses in WW1 being used to charge machine guns in this fight. In most of these cases you don’t even need a drone to do the dirty work though. Just one to find the bunker or whatever and let artillery or a cruise middle do the rest. Those drones can be less than $5k, but they do get more expensive if you want to be able to pilot them from the other side of the planet or whatever.

dragontamer 5y ago
The Hellfire missile is a 100Lb bomb, HE type only. 2 tank rounds are already roughly the same power, except Hellfire missiles are $100,000+ each. HE is different from SABOT too. If the enemy is behind 2 walls (a bunker with multiple rooms inside), the SABOT would be better than pretty much any amount of HE type missile or round. Of course, bunker buster bombs exist, but those are way more expensive and require air superiority to use. ------ > Just one to find the bunker or whatever and let artillery or a cruise middle do the rest. Artillery can't shoot SABOT rounds either. Cruise missiles are $1+ million weapons. An enemy bunker is just the kind of situations where tanks are needed. With a good design, bunkers offer protection from above (artillery or even air force bombs), and force a direct fire engagement.
- lazide 5y ago
  No one is getting near an enemy bunker with an intact tank unless they’ve already lost now. But keep believing tanks are relevant. It’ll be awhile before they get phased out regardless, same as a bunch of other kit.
  - dragontamer 5y ago
    Tanks easily and accurately fires from 3000+ meter distances (at least, HEAT rounds do). That's well in excess of even an advanced NLAW antitank missile, let alone AT4 or Panzerfaust 3. Only the Javelin missile has a similar standoff range. Tanks don't "get close" to the enemy, unless they want to. Tanks are full of advanced firing computers, thermal vision, and night vision suites. ------- I was somewhat hoping that in this Russia vs Ukraine war, we'd see more active-protection-systems, like the Israeli "Trophy" system. Except apparently neither Russia nor Ukraine has the tech. It turns out that CE-warheads (like the Javelin, NLAW, AT4, Panzerfaust, or maybe even HEAT warheads from an enemy tank) have a weakness to shotguns on an aimbot. That's all the "Trophy" system is: when they see a 500+ mph rocket or shell going towards the tank, they shoot a shotgun at the thing, which disables most CE-rounds. KE-warheads are traveling too fast with too much momentum. The shotgun may "deflect" the SABOT a little bit and might help, but I don't think there's much expectation for Israel's Trophy to kill SABOTs / KE-type projectiles. I'd expect that a drone, traveling at only 100mph (ex: Switchblade 600) would lose to a tweaked Trophy APS (designed to shoot a shotgun at also 100mph objects). After all, if its reliably destroying CE-rounds at 500mph, it almost certainly can track and destroy a 100mph object like Switchblade 600.