Why do we still use tanks in modern times?
They seem useless in anything urban. They are easy targets for aircraft and jawlines. They need support vehicles for fuel and ammo. The only positive thing I see is that they can traverse unpaved terrain.
Being so vulnerable why are they not remote controlled? Human lives cheaper than the tech required? They don't even need to be autonomous, just remote controlled.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lI7T650RTT8
If you're watching the videos from Ukraine - the Russians are pretty much doing it all wrong. You do not send tanks into cities unless they're following infantry who are clearing houses & rooftops. You do not leave your tanks parked in a nice neat line on a country road. When your unit comes under fire, you do not just sit there.
Why are the Russians doing these things when they know it's bad for their health? They don't have much of an NCO cadre. In a modern military, the NCOs have the experience and the authority to make sure stuff happens rapidly and correctly. They will have made sure the junior enlisted know how to operate and maintain their weapon & gear, and are able to do the mission without fucking up.
Putin is pulling Russian troops out of Syria[1], and obviously those troops are going to Ukraine. That's one of several signs that Russia is committed; they aren't going to stop. I expect to see large scale Russian mobilization soon, possibly starting in earnest on Monday with "victory" day.
It's going to take between 1-2 months for that mobilization to yield men in the lines. By then much of the advanced heavy weaponry that Ukraine is receiving will be operational with trained crews and ample ammunition. The scale of Russian casualties will be catastrophic.
[1] https://www.cnn.com/2016/03/14/world/russia-syria-withdrawal...
Ukraine is well dug in, and has been building out concrete-bunkers for the last 8 years (ever since Russia annexed Crimea and started to invade the Donbas region, Ukraine has been preparing). That's THICK concrete walls, well dug in sniper spots all over the place, underground networks, etc. etc.
Going into those areas without any armor will just get you sniped. Furthermore, going in by foot means walking and/or running, which is really slow.
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So you go in with say, an APC (20mm thick armor), right? Since APCs are vehicles, they can run at 30mph to 50mph, so they're actually fast enough to go in.
Well, wrong. Ukraine has 50-cal machine guns and 50-cal sniper-rifles that shreads right through that armor. So even with an armored personnel carrier, they just die. Cheaper anti-tank rounds (AT4) also blow them up no problem.
Well... how about going in with an IFV? (less armor than APC, but more gun). Still the same problem, IFVs lose to that heavy machine-gun fire, and the 30mm autocannon of IFVs (BMP-2 and other such platforms) isn't big enough to punch through the concrete-bunkers the Ukrainians are hiding behind.
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So what does Russia do? They send in the tanks. 200mm+ thick armor with advanced geometry and anti-CE protection systems (reactive armor). (A sideways shot against a tank needs 500+mm penetration to harm the tank, thanks to the "geometry" of the tank). That thick armor is immune to sniper-fire and enemy machine-guns, even large machine guns and even 30mm autocannons.
And that's when the Ukrainians pull out Javelins and NLAWs and then blow up the tank (tandem-charge, blowing up the reactive armor with a "fake explosion" and then hitting the tank with a 600mm+ penetrating shot near simultaneously)
But still, the tank at least has a 120mm cannon to blow up bunkers while they're on the frontlines, so the tank actually made progress against the enemy bunker.
https://www.marinecorpstimes.com/flashpoints/2020/03/26/the-...
Quite prescient considering what we are seeing in Ukraine a couple years later with tanks being vulnerable especially when deployed so haphazardly by Russian Federation.
Bottom line - war games in 2018 showed that tanks and other armored vehicles in-range of near-peer drones, Anti-tank guided missiles (ATGMs) and Precision Guided Munitions (PGMs) were quite vulnerable - exactly like we're seeing in Ukraine.
There were other factors but the top marine decided no more tank battalions and greatly reduced artillery (among other changes).
Instead, these divestitures will be replaced by:
1. Precision long range fires (Naval Strike Missile\Joint Strike Missile (NSM\JSM), and possibly Extended Range Cannon Artillery (ERCA))
2. Unmanned lethal air and ground systems.
That tells you what the war games revealed as being effective in future combat.
China vs Taiwan would be largely about establishing control of islands, and maybe a few beach-assaults.
Tanks don't work well on sand, and the 80-ton M1 Abrams is too heavy to fit on an assault-boat.
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US Army has constantly developed tanks (and anti-tank weapons) because the tank remains a major battlefield player in Europe (Hypothetical... no wait... the now real Russia vs Ukraine situation)
That sounds more to me like the US Military decided it'd be more cost-efficient to only have the Army be responsible for tanks, and have the Marines be more focused on an amphibious role.
Horses were made (mostly) superfluous by lorries because the latter proved more capable.
Humans are excessively vulnerable. Anything will put us out of action. And we’re expensive to replace too. But because there’s nothing more capable than a human at certain things, so we’re still expected to face flying pieces of metal.
So far nothing can project force and hold terrain on land quite like a tank does. Javelin teams in buggies can’t. Neither can a drone. But a fast and protected box with a fearsome boomstick on one end does. Especially when used by well trained personnel and employed in a sane manner.
Modern conventional warfare is extremely deadly: essentially, if a target can be seen it can be destroyed. Anything in the open will eventually be destroyed. Tanks are not especially more vulnerable to this danger than any other ground vehicle; they are larger, more visible targets, but that is somewhat offset by their armor. If you're looking at all the wrecked Russian T-72s in Ukraine and asking "why have tanks?" you could just as easily look at all the wrecked BMPs and BMDs and ask "why have infantry fighting vehicles?" or at all the wrecked supply convoys and ask "why have trucks?" The answer of course is because you need the mobility and firepower that vehicles provide, but the trade off is that the battlefield is very, very deadly for vehicles.
Tanks cannot take the lead in urban operations because the terrain is too restricted and their situational awareness too low. But, their direct firepower can be essential in urban operations: think of a rifle squad pinned down by sniper fire from the upper floors of a building at the end of the block, which is something a tank can easily destroy with minimal risk.
As the above point alludes to, tanks and infantry fight more effectively as a team than they can separately. Depending on the mission, terrain, and enemy disposition, a tank can be a more effective weapon than infantry, and vice-versa. But by having both working together, they are able to compensate for the others weaknesses. In the course of a battle, the more effective arm at a given moment is liable to change back and forth multiple times: sometimes the infantry will be making the main effort, sometimes the tanks; sometimes the infantry will be maneuvering while the tanks support by fire, sometimes the tanks maneuver while the infantry supports by fire.
The Russians have been particularly bad at this last point in Ukraine. Partly, this appears to a be a result of their infantry formations being significantly understrength; even if they were at full strength, their TOEs (Table of Organization and Equipment) for various infantry unit types suggest notably less strength than their western counterparts. The Battalion Tactical Group organization, as an ad hoc formation, also means that the infantry and armor in a given BTG have probably never trained to fight together as a team: it makes a big difference to go to war with people you've trained as a team with for months/years than with people you met two weeks ago.
I think the big takeaway from Ukraine is not that tanks are especially vulnerable on contemporary battlefield, but that unprepared and disorganized Russian tankers are going to die as quickly as the rest of the Russian army when confronting a tough, well-trained, determined opponent equipped with weapons specifically engineered to destroy their vehicles.
That sentiment has been popular since the Gulf War, at least. I think the public perception has been shaped by American doctrine. It emphasizes throwing massive amounts of money and technology at the enemy, in order to avoid casualties that could make the war unpopular at home. When the US goes to war, it tends to spend more money than the entire economy of the other side. If the war drags on, that level of spending may continue for years. Almost nobody else can afford that.
Cheap(ish) drones and missiles have worked great for Ukraine in defense. However, Ukrainian forces have not had similar success in offensive operations. Ukraine continues asking for boring old-fashioned tanks and artillery, probably because their generals believe that can help them take back lost territory. They could probably achieve similar results with aircraft and precision munitions, but that would require outspending Russia, which is not happening even with all the military aid from the West.
Tanks are still cost-effective, but they are also vulnerable. You can lower casualties by using less cost-effective weapons systems, but only if you are economically superior to the enemy and willing to spend the money. That option is out of the table if you are in an all-out war against an economic peer or a superior enemy.
Ukraine has explicitly asked for Western aircraft, F-15s and F-16s in particular, and UAVs such as Reapers. Those requests were public knowledge 5 weeks ago.
Ukraine's command believe tanks and artillery will conquer territory because that's actually happening on a daily basis, most recently around Kharkiv. They believe better artillery will enable offensive operations in late May or June, and they're correct. Right now Russia has an indirect firepower advantage they're using to advance slowly in Donbas. When that advantage vanishes because the enemy has longer range, more mobile and accurate weapons they will fold and territory will be ceded back to Ukraine.
Fossil fuels are particularly problematic. If Ukraine can't import energy from Russia, Belarus, or over the Black Sea, the only remaining choice is Europe. But Europe is facing a shortage of its own, because most countries are trying to phase out energy imports from Russia. If they can't buy enough for their own needs, they may not share enough with Ukraine.
Because a 120mm gun blows everything up. 120mm guns can do things such as:
1. High-explosive rounds (Chemical Energy, or CE) -- 50lbs of high-explosives delivered to a target will kill almost anything, even if that "thing" is hiding behind a tree, concrete, or even behind tank-armor.
2. Discarding Sabot / Kinetic Energy rounds (KE for short) -- 50 lbs of depleted-uranium darts flying at Mach 1.6 destroys a lot of things, in ways that are complementary to #1. You can shoot through entire houses with these darts.
3. Canister rounds -- 50lbs of "shotgun pellets" can clear 500+ meters. Yes, an entire-football field can be covered by a *SINGULAR* "tank shotgun" blast.
Kinetic-energy rounds travel faster but have higher-penetration at short-distances (because KE rounds have more room for explosives to "launch" the shell). However, KE-rounds are supersonic and therefore get hit by a lot of air-resistance/drag.
CE-rounds in contrast, travel much slower, but pack a lot of "explosives" at the end of their shot. As such, CE-rounds start off with much less penetration (bad at short-distances), but can be lobbed 3000 meters and still have just as much deadliness (since most of the "damage" of CE-rounds comes from the explosive, air-resistance literally doesn't matter aside from being computationally-difficult to aim. But modern computers can compensate easily these days)
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These are the three main-types of ammo that a 120mm gun uses (aka, a tank gun). Now some questions.
1. 120mm guns weigh something like 10-tons -- How do you move them? With a big engine.
2. But a big engine + the gun itself is a sitting duck against even a 50-cal sniper rifle. We should cover the engine + gun in armor, to protect the crew and equipment.
3. But armor weighs a lot (especially depleted uranium armor). So we need a *bigger* engine. But the bigger-engine needs more armor to protect it. Etc. etc. etc.
Eventually, we end up putting a LOT of armor, to cover the HUGE engine and the HUGE gun all together.
That's about it. You need tanks to destroy enemy bunkers (what else are you going to shoot? AT4 / Javelins? Those heavy and slow weapons only have 1 or 2 shots. Tanks have *40* shots, more than enough to overrun any bunker you come across).
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Tanks are your biggest gun on the battlefield. They have armor as minor amounts of protection, not to actually be immune to enemies (though in practice, the armor is so thick they're immune to many smaller weapons). But the #1 purpose of any tank is to fire its big 120mm gun as often as possible on the front lines.
Tank crews are __NOT__ used as "cover" or "shields" in the modern battlefield. They are just grounded large-gun platforms.
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> They seem useless in anything urban.
Wrong. Tanks are the only weapon large enough to damage enemy houses, bunkers, or other fortifications. If the enemy is hiding behind a concrete wall, the Tank-gun can shoot right *through* it and kill everyone on the other side.
Buttoned up tanks don't know where the enemy is however. (Tanks have night-vision and thermal-vision sensors, but can only focus those sights on a narrow line of vision) Tank crews rely upon friendly infantry to search for enemies. Tanks have awful visibility, but their big-gun is unparalleled on the battlefield.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U61Hrn1JZWQ
Turns out that in practical urban combat, a lot of enemies hide behind concrete walls. What exactly is your battle-plan for that?
Tanks can provide air-burst (shoot over the wall, explode, rain fragments DOWN upon the enemy), or *THROUGH* the wall. Tanks are exceptionally flexible weapons.
Er, they have a muzzle velocity in the range of 1.6 km/s or 1600 m/s, about Mach 5.
As an aside, AFAIK the Rheinmetall 120mm used on the M1 and Leo2 tanks only have sabots and HEAT shells, no canister rounds or plain HE.
There is no drone that carries the same level of explosiveness as a singular tank round.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U61Hrn1JZWQ
A tank can fire 40 of these at you in something like 5 minutes.
I'm not sure what kind of drone-platform exists to deliver 40x 50lb shells to the enemy 3000 meters at 500+ mph like a bunch of CE-rounds being fired from a tank-gun.
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Drones will change warfare. But drones are *NOT* a tank. They just don't have anything close to the destructive potential
You can't just "ignore" enemy concrete walls like a tank can. See this particular timestamp of the video: https://youtu.be/U61Hrn1JZWQ?t=67
Double-reinforced concrete walls / bunkers stand no chance against a typical tank round. What is a drone supposed to do against that?
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That above is a CE-round. Tanks can switch-it-up and shoot a SABOT round instead, if they need greater penetrating power (but less explosives): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GnWCLJXwtsE
As you can see, the "tank" is a platform for a tank-commander to sit and think about which round to use for any given situation. The tank isn't "just" a sabot gun or a HE-gun, its *BOTH*, with an intelligent tank-commander choosing their loadout and firepower for every target they come across.
If the enemy is hiding behind 4 concrete walls, Sabot round to punch through all of it. If the enemy is just behind one concrete wall (but is very far away, like 3km or longer), HE round.
How many concrete walls can one drone get through? https://youtu.be/GnWCLJXwtsE?t=76
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.
Drones aren’t going to change warfare. They already have. The ones who haven’t woken up to that are the charred bodies on the battlefield right now.
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!
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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.
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.
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.
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> 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.
But keep believing tanks are relevant. It’ll be awhile before they get phased out regardless, same as a bunch of other kit.
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.
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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.
Yes. That seems to be why Ukrainian drones and Javelin missiles are having such an easy go of popping the turrets off of Russian tanks. You need just a small explosion to get thing started, and then the tank's onboard supply of explosives does the rest of the job for you.
> A tank can fire 40 of these at you in something like 5 minutes.
Once it gets into position. The major limitations of tanks here are that they are direct-fire platforms, and that they are big and noisy and difficult to hide. That's a real problem if you're up against an enemy with modern indirect fire capabilities, or effective anti-tank small arms.
As mentioned in the article, the T-72/80/90 are uniquely vulnerable to this failure mode due to their carousel autoloader. Ammo cookoff in any MBT means you and your vehicle probably won't go to battle today, but at least it's not an immediate death sentence in most Western tanks.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ay7bOG2nD6k
You can see them purposefully light the tank's ammunition bay on fire. No damage to the internal components or the crew.
I'm sure the crew is sweating and feeling "a bit warm", but they'll survive. Its just that Russian tanks are hilariously vulnerable to this problem.
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Russia's doctrine / theory for their tanks is to make them *smaller* instead. Russian tanks weigh the same but have no compartmentalization. This means that Russian tanks can navigate smaller roads, and also that Russian tanks can hide in ditches (or other terrain) too small for M1 Abrams to hide in.
In effect, Russians "accepted" the cook-off problem, but hoped that a competent crew could hide from the enemy better. Hard to say if it works, because it looks like the Russian crews are horribly trained and have low morale in this fight.
I think I can agree with the theory, or at least see that there's a beneficial tradeoff here.
https://i.redd.it/mtwtamct1t821.jpg
That's a lot smaller for the T72 compared to the M1 Abrams. If the crew could take advantage of the T72's smaller size, the crew very well could be more survivable on the modern battlefield.
So the tank rounds are something like $500 each. In contrast, guided artillery shells are $100,000 or so each.
I mean, Tomahawk cruise missiles ($1+ million bucks) probably have more destructive potential and accuracy than anything discussed here. But they're just too expensive to really be used as a bread-and-butter tactic.
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The artillery game is important for sure. But there's advantages to a direct-fire system that directly engages with the enemy. Besides, artillery + tanks work together as a team, a force multiplier. Tanks can call for artillery support after all.
EDIT: Case in point, a tank can approach the front-lines, and use its thermal-imaging / night-vision to be an artillery-spotter from 3+km away from the target. The tank can also survive "closer" to the enemy (danger close, if you will).
I was surprised that the military could get anything for $500, so I looked up tank round prices. They are more like $5000-$10000 (M829A4).
That's using depleted uranium though, so I'm not surprised that's an expensive round.
I'm looking up the M830 (HEAT), which is "just" explosives (with a bit of electronics), and that's closer to $1000.
So my $500 estimate was definitely under the price of USA's ammo... but I'm pretty sure Russian ammo is cheaper.
I've been wondering what it will be like when the next big war hits and what are the technologies that will change the battle field that haven't been considered yet and drones are on of the biggest changes I think we'll see on the modern battlefield the next time two sizeable opponents go at it.
I think you've hit the nail on the head for part of it is the ability of drones to take out tanks is going to be huge, tanks are expensive, bulky and hard to conceal and have limited visibility and range. They are going to be sitting ducks for cheap drones.
As an aside everytime I read about the description of the battleships of WW1 I can't help but think of the fighter and stealth planes of our current era, massive expensive constructions who require a massive supply chain in terms of men and equipment to be effective, can only be deployed in specific situations and are championed by an officers core that doesn't realize their time has passed. After all what good does having general air superiority do for you if any random platoon can establish temporary tatical air superiority by hauling around a drone with em to complete their mission and bugger off while your Fighter is just taking off 500 miles away.
exactly https://youtu.be/BxaG4YdsHTg?t=31 - unspecialized small drone (22 V at 80 A) just dumping what seems to be like small mortar rounds onto the Russian tanks.
To the comment below - the upper armor is much thinner. You don't even need an RPG warhead here. Small mortar may do it if it hits over engine behind turret. It easily can also be just a small shaped charge bomblet from a disassembled cluster Smerch warhead for example. Such a bomblet pierces 5 inch RMA - well enough to take out the tank from the top.
This tank can kill you from 3km away. Frankly, I don't think you'd see them. This is called "turret down" position, the tank is purposefully hiding behind a hill, and only the tank-commander is sticking out the top to see you.
The tank-commander has thermal and night-vision binoculars. He absolutely can see you. Just like a deadly-sniper, except with a 120mm cannon.
The tank will drive up the hill to stick its turret out (going from "turret-down position" into "hull down position"), fire a shot with computerized accuracy. The bullet will travel at mach 5, hypersonic. The shell will hit you before you even hear it.
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And you're telling me, that your weapon of choice against this tactic is a drone that moves at 50mph? Even a 500mph+ anti-tank rocket / missile could have trouble hitting the tank if they're playing "peek-a-boo" behind hills like this, they may not give you enough time to even lock on to fire your missile.
Case in point: at 500mph, your missile will reach the 3km-away tank in 12-seconds. More than enough time for the tank-commander to retreat behind the hill.
That's if your missile even has that kind of range (NLAW only has 1000meter range)
Your 50mph drone btw, will take 2-minutes to reach the enemy tank. The battle is long over at that point. The tank probably isn't even in that hill anymore.
The recent events shows what the tanks is the urban warfare machine. It is only thing what can suppress and/or eliminate singular units operating from the high-rise apartments.
https://www.thedefensepost.com/2020/12/21/us-army-drone-tank...
This is why for many attacks, missiles or drones are more practical than tanks. Those are expensive per shot, but cheap to deploy and lose. In heavy fighting, the relative cheapness of individual shots makes a tank more affordable, but the deployment itself, especially if you want to give the tank the protection it needs, is quite expensive.
Also, every single piece of military equipment can be destroyed about as easily as a tank if it's not integrated within some sensible mission. Maybe the method is more expensive for aircraft and for ships, but so are those pieces of equipment.
They are working on that - remote controlled ground vehicle with customizable upper part, one option with a cannon turret, another option with launch tubes for suicide drones:
https://inf.news/en/military/c1587c15c63e5b9801ebb4e49a7fe2f...
Actually not clear that we should be. The Ukraine experience is raising a lot of questions about the survivability of tanks against modern anti-tank missiles.