Ukrainian drones wipe out US tank brigade in live war game
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
> [About the real war in Ukraine] Meanwhile, armored tanks and vehicles have mostly become an endangered species on the frontlines. Russia has lost more than 14,000 tanks and armored vehicles of other types during the war, according to the Dutch open source intelligence tracking project Oryx, which only counted visually verified losses. Ukraine has lost over 6,000 armored combat vehicles.
Before concluding "Tank Is Dead", consider WWII - when vastly more tanks, armored cars, etc. were lost - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equipment_losses_in_World_War_... Yet every major power emerged believing both that tanks had grown even more critical, and that they needed to develop and deploy yet-better models of tanks ASAP.
Training pilots takes time and is expensive. Modern jets are also expensive.
After Ukraine, every country is going to build a UAV Air Force.”
This includes tanks and ships and bombers --- more a liability than an asset.
But cheap drones are not the only modern threat that ships face.
An effective defense again hypersonic missiles has yet to be deployed as far as anyone knows. Creating one will likely involve a directed energy weapon of some sort. Rocket interceptors are simply too slow and lack the required maneuverability.
Until then, large slow moving ships are sitting ducks against a capable adversary.