Hacker News Reader

Comment by moffkalast | Hacker News Reader

I think the guy has a point in tanks being useful, but nobody's saying it can't be satelite controlled drone tanks.

Probably not with the current level of technology. Especially given that the lifetime of the tank is not only "drive forward and shoot" - it needs to be fueled, oiled, repaired, restocked, pulled out of the mud, etc. Fully automating this would be a very complex task. Especially achieving it on a battlefield where there are people who are present there, unlike the remote controller, and do their best to try and not let you do any of that.

Indeed. I am sure there are lots of things under development, I have little knowledge in the area but I ran across this video the other day which suggests refueling and rearming via drone: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hNLCa6isqJA

No idea how far between concept and reality that is and obviously this is a whole different class of vehicle than a tank.

I think that's a potentially useful idea. At this point, putting people in tanks is irresponsible. But that doesn't mean they couldn't be used as remotely-operated vehicles.

If it doesn't have to carry people, it can carry much less armor, which makes it more maneuverable; it might carry so much less mass that it doesn't need tracks to handle rough terrain. If it's light and nimble enough it doesn't need a turret to point the main weapon.

Is a remote-controlled dune buggy with a low-recoil rifle a tank?

You still need to protect the ammunition, otherwise a nearby explosion will set it off (this also happens at the moment but less so than I would expect it to happen with less armor, which also would make penetrating the wall much easier and which would make the tank a softer target altogether).

Sure, but you might not care as much because:

- you can airlift 25 2-ton dune-buggies instead of 1 50-ton tank

- you can buy 25 $2 million dune-buggies for the cost of 2 $25 million tanks

- if you sent 2 tanks, losing one is half of your force projection. If you sent 25 dune-buggies, losing one is 4% of your force.

- maintenance on an unmanned 2-ton dune-buggy has to be easier, faster and cheaper than maintenance on a tank. Tanks need dedicated recovery vehicles (or Ukrainian tractors) that cost nearly as much as another tank. Maintenance is going to be much, much easier without armor and the concomitant suspension for the armor getting in the way.

A hybrid powerplant is probably best -- a diesel motor-generator to charge batteries and run for distance, with an electric motor system and nice quiet relatively cool batteries for an hour or two of sneaking around at a time. Tanks don't sneak up on you, but a hybrid dune-buggy in battery mode can.

This also has knock-on effects for the civilian economy, because if the cool support weapon for the infantry is a quiet hybrid dune-buggy, the same thing with a crew cabin instead of a gun and ammo will be a smash hit.

The tank can carry a bigger gun, but that's about it. Most of it is armor that it has to haul for 100-300 miles at a time (before it runs out of fuel).

Also, lol at "Ukrainian tractors". Their biggest (only?) tractor plant was destroyed in Kharkiv. Most of their tractors are... John Deere. Probably why they got so good at modifying them that Americans are buying their software :D

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=TUv5xkY0wic

> If it doesn't have to carry people, it can carry much less armor, which makes it more maneuverable

But it will be vulnerable to smaller weapons on smaller cheaper vehicles.

But we already know that tanks are vulnerable to relatively cheap small vehicles, so this is not a comparative disadvantage.

Also consider that tanks are dispatched in small groups; they need to be able to defend themselves. But a swarm of buggies could have weapons optimized to defend each other -- a shotgun is pretty effective against small suicide drones, and nothing defends against a laser-guided bomb anyway.

How could you figure? How would they be controlled while under communication jamming? Until autonomous AI exists we'll need people on the ground.

The same way that airplane drones are controlled, from a satelite in orbit directly above. To jam that you'd need to get yourself above the tank, which to be fair is probably doable to some extent, so there would have to be countermeasures for it. But it's not exactly impossible.

Or you launch an anti-satellite missile.

Which is the reason why great-powers don't go to war with each other these days. Forget nukes, the first thing that will be destroyed is each other's satellite communication systems. That alone would devastate the world's economy.

Anti-satellite warfare is a huge reason why the Space Force (stupid name) came into existence.

Drones fly pretty high and usually avoid contact with the enemy, and if there's trouble, they can easily flee and come back later. For on-the-ground vehicle, one need to stay much closer to the enemy, and if something goes wrong, the opportunities for fleeing are much harder to come by. You certainly don't need to physically be on top of the tank to jam - there are military systems that can disrupt communications in a wide area. And, probably, just dumping something non-transparent on whatever it uses to acquire visual information would work too. There would be nobody to come out and clean it up - a trivial task for a human, much harder for the robotic drone. Humans are very flexible, robots aren't, at least not until we get some AI going. And tbh, if we have such an AI, I'm not sure we really want to give it a tank to drive around.

That's a problem, but it's one that exists already, in that a tank crew with a broken or jammed radio is pretty much useless.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com