Comment by 734129837261 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by 734129837261 | Hacker News Reader

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It's easier to make a weapon that takes out a tank, than it is to make a tank that can defend itself to it.

Javelin missiles are just one thing, but cheap drones with simple rockets on them should be able to take out a moving force of numerous tanks.

Imagine having an arsenal of 20 tanks storming your city.

Now imagine having about 100 drones ordered from Amazon, outfitted with RKG-3 anti-tank grenades. One each. You can fly low, you can fly through the woods, and you can fly each individually operated drone right up to the top part of a tank, and boom.

No clever software automation. Just a drone that can lift something like 1 kg worth of anti-tank grenade.

You have 20 drone operators. You'll have 5 drones per tank. One after the other. Skip the already defeated tanks. Attack the tanks that will create a barrier when destroyed first, take natural barriers into account.

Your tanks can have all the power and shock and awe you might think they have, but any 12-year old will be able to take you out as if they were playing a video game.

I think every half way capable military on the planet is seeing the news and videos coming out of Ukraine and thinking, hmm, must invest in anti-drone technology.

A decade from now what's happening in Ukraine won't work against most major military powers. The drones we're seeing are very slow and very low but modern anti-aircraft systems aren't optimised to detect things this small and low so are getting away mostly untouched, but there's no significant technological hurdle against modifying existing systems or developing new ones that work against this type of threat.

>It's easier to make a weapon that takes out a tank, than it is to make a tank that can defend itself to it.

This has been a fact of warfare for almost a century. in fact it was so easy the US Government published a warfighter training video on how to do it, and it didnt even fill 15 minutes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=taHFUKKKmJM

Tanks had shock and awe value in nineteen sixteen. for the first time on the battlefields you had an imposing, lumbering, seemingly unstoppable juggernaut of forged iron that if left to its means, could obliterate hard targets like buildings and bunkers without much effort and keep advancing seemingly endlessly. if you could reason to stop them, the thought was perished by the overwhelming terror alone they imposed.

by WWII most antitank technology had reached horrors unimaginable; being a tanker was objectively near suicide. the swedish bofors sabot rounds could not only pierce most german armor, but cook the occupants alive with a shower of boiling steel before they invariably detonated the ordinance on board. even smaller mines like the TM41 were enough to blow the road wheels through the driver and out the hatch. And if all that proves too technical, the Japanese tactic in WW2 was to simply hose tanks in petrol and light them ablaze.

the only shock and awe of a 21st century tank is watching your tax dollars propel something with 0.6mpg

Because solo tanks storming a city isn’t what tanks are for.

https://acoup.blog/2022/05/06/collections-when-is-a-tank-not...

edit: for example, I would not want to be a drone operator controlling a drone in real time anywhere near a modern army. RF direction finders are a thing.

Your broader point might be correct but an anti tank grenade would not be likely to knock out a modern tank.

Either you're kidding, or you're really ignoring the fact that "the enemy" will pursue the same? I'm slowly losing trust in humanity (ok, I'ma slow learner).

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