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Does the Tank Have a Future?

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Re: Does the Tank Have a Future?

#71

Post by brokencode »

kashkhan wrote: post #43
aetherson wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would your current advice be for the Ukraine?

Getting more tanks ain't it. More war also not it. Russian empire needs to be dismantled. But unlikely UKR waging war on russia will do it.

So basically you have put no thought into this except that you don’t like war.

I think most people will agree with you that war is bad. But if you get attacked, then all you can do is either give up or defend yourself.

Afghanistan chose to give up to the Taliban, and now their rights are being taken away.

Ukraine chose to defend themselves, and the jury is still out on whether they’ll be successful and what the cost will be.

But there is no third option where you simply will war out of existence.

Diplomacy works with certain enemies, and that will hopefully be the outcome in Ukraine too, but that too will come with a heavy price, such as giving up major amounts of territory.

Re: Does the Tank Have a Future?

#72

Post by the_af »

bombcar wrote: post #55
the_af wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In support of your statement, I'm impressed that Russian doctrine seems to rely so much on good ol' trusty massive artillery, of the dumb kind. I guess, if it works...

Puts the whole Seoul situation in a new light - there's something about just massive amounts of shells being thrown that's hard to deal with. And dumb is cheap. Cheap can be king, especially if you can keep making them. The US had the same thing in WWII, the Panzer tanks were better than the Shermans in nearly every way - except cost and repairability.

Yes. This is also a lesson the Red Army learned in WWII, and why not continue with it? Simple systems that can be mass produced are better than complex, harder to repair ones.

Re: Does the Tank Have a Future?

#73

Post by bombcar »

the_af wrote: post #72
bombcar wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Puts the whole Seoul situation in a new light - there's something about just massive amounts of shells being thrown that's hard to deal with. And dumb is cheap. Cheap can be king, especially if you can keep making them. The US had the same thing in WWII, the Panzer tanks were better than the Shermans in nearly every way - except cost and repairability.

Yes. This is also a lesson the Red Army learned in WWII, and why not continue with it? Simple systems that can be mass produced are better than complex, harder to repair ones.

The complex, hard to repair ones are great if:

1. You're selling them.

2. You have absolute complete superiority and are trying to minimize your casualties

There's a country that fits those parameters very well.

Re: Does the Tank Have a Future?

#74

Post by bnralt »

malwrar wrote: post #24
kashkhan wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe war shouldn't have a future and not a role. We've had enough of the european way of war.

What do you propose instead? A state is always going to need a military to defend its stability and continuity from existential threats. Despite what the internet would have you believe, the world is a massive place with a vast diaspora of peoples with tons of different contradictory policy preferences. I don’t think we could give up preparing for the next fight if we wanted to.

What was the last successful offensive war? When was the last time American tanks were successful in creating a positive outcome for United States citizens (which, theoretically, is the entire reason they're built)? You could make an argument for 30 years ago, but you'd need to go back closer to 70 years for a strong case.

The other poster raises a valid point that war, as it is typically been envisioned, might be far less prominent than people realize. The argument is that the tank has a task on the battlefield, but we should ask ourselves how much that battlefield matters in this day and age.

Re: Does the Tank Have a Future?

#75

Post by kashkhan »

brokencode wrote: post #71
kashkhan wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Getting more tanks ain't it. More war also not it. Russian empire needs to be dismantled. But unlikely UKR waging war on russia will do it.

So basically you have put no thought into this except that you don’t like war. I think most people will agree with you that war is bad. But if you get attacked, then all you can do is either give up or defend yourself. Afghanistan chose to give up to the Taliban, and now their rights are being taken away. Ukraine chose to defend themselves, and the jury is still out on whether they’ll be successful and what the cost…

Plenty of people have put thought into what to do to end war. You don't need original thoughts from me.

The natural corollary of someone attacking you is not to get into an arms race.

Afghanistan didn't choose Taliban. Pakistan and Saudi chose Taliban and armed them enough to take over. War obviously works.

What's going to happen in UKR is that the warlike will win and then naturally turn their guns towards the locals. Exactly like in Afghanistan. You can arm them as much as you like, but they will not turn into gandhis with an excess of guns.

My point is not that war doesn't work. My point is that we should all be fighting against war.

Re: Does the Tank Have a Future?

#76

Post by MezzoDelCammin »

echelon wrote: post #27
breadloaf wrote: post #16

Yes it does. See "The Chieftain: No, The Tank Is Not Dead" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lI7T650RTT8 TLDW: Tank has a task on a battlefield and fact that you can easily kill it won't take that task away. Same goes for infantry and they are not going away either. On the other hand we don't see battleships anymore, because big guns were replaced by precise missiles with much more range.

Is there a good rundown of every piece of weaponry and its corresponding utility and strategy somewhere? I'd love to update or correct my understanding of tanks, artillery, HIMARS, aircraft carriers, cruisers, littoral combat, submarine classes, F-22, F-35, AWACS, etc.

Single place? Probably no. But You can go branch by branch.

For armor, Chieftain is probably as good as it gets in English when it comes to universality (he's both a historian and an active service Lt.Col. in the US NG).

For further armor sources, I'd highly recommend the YT channel of Tank Museum Bovington: https://www.youtube.com/user/TheTankMuseum

The chap whose video Chieftain replies to ("Perun") is worth following in his own right for the modern take on Russian / Ukraine war. He's more of an economist / logistician, but well worth watching:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCC3ehuUksTyQ7bbjGntmx3Q

From Perun You'll often hear the name "Michael Kofman". He doesn't get one single place where you could find all of his stuff, but google him and go through the articles / videos he is in. He's often used as a source for quite a lot of commentary about Russian Army in the past 20 years or so. https://russianmilitaryanalysis.wordpress.com/

When it comes to general doctrine, it's sometimes useful to know the compositions of forces. This is a good starting point: https://www.youtube.com/c/BattleOrder

When it comes to modern navy, Jive Turkey (now called "SubBrief") is probably a cool starting point. Mainly submarines (he's an ex US Navy 688 sonar operator), but : https://www.youtube.com/c/SubBrief

Re: Does the Tank Have a Future?

#77

Post by dragontamer »

the_af wrote: post #47
dragontamer wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Small drone warfare? The Ukraine / Russian conflict has degenerated into trench warfare with thousands of 155mm / 152mm artillery being shot into each other's positions per day. These are the kinds of conditions where tanks excel. Humans who try to walk at 3km/hr get blown up by shrapnel, even 100m away is "close enough" to cause a significant injury and take a human out of a fight. Tanks? They pretty much ignore eve…

In support of your statement, I'm impressed that Russian doctrine seems to rely so much on good ol' trusty massive artillery, of the dumb kind. I guess, if it works...

Whenever people talked about "suicide drones", I felt like they haven't studied the history of warfare.

A surprising number of conflicts: WW1, WW2, Korea, Vietnam, degenerated into artillery slugfests. You can't get much cheaper, faster, or more effective than guns shooting dumb explosives 20km away.

Only when the opponents were stupidly overmatched by US Air Superiority (Afghanistan / Iraq) did things change. But even with Air Superiority over say, Vietnam, USA still degenerated into an artillery slugfest.

-------

Its hard to beat 100lb shrapnel bombs delivered 20km away. Logistics wise, trucks carrying shells is just far cheaper than any other delivery mechanism. This fact has been true since WW1, and no technology has ever really changed the calculus. (Adding li-ion batteries, cameras, remote-control and other features so that you can turn the delivery mechanism into a drone is just unnecessary chips in most cases)

Re: Does the Tank Have a Future?

#78

Post by topspin »

Tanks were created to cope with two dominant threats: small arms and artillery shrapnel; the WW1 battlefield of machine guns and massed artillery. They've been improved to cope with some new threats since, but the number of threats are multiplying rapidly. The cost and complexity of tanks is exploding trying to deal with all of militarized model airplanes (Bayraktar et al.), guided artillery rounds (BONUS), long range armor seeking missiles (Brimstone), guided mortar rounds (XM395), intelligent anti-armor mines (PTKM-1R), man portable antitank weapons (Javelin/NLAW/Stugna-P/...), improved RPGs, etc.

In a world where there is a Stugna-P "behind every blade of grass" tanks become a liability. I think they'll be scaled back to niches; there will probably always be a need for a big chunk of metal to push through and blow holes in things. Going forward though, the German Blitzkrieg model or Russia's Horde Of Armor doctrine is dead when the combatants are not greatly asymmetric.

Re: Does the Tank Have a Future?

#79

Post by namelessoracle »

secondcoming wrote: post #25
prometheus76 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could say it the other way around, but the complexity of the electronics in the anti-tank weapons have proven to be difficult to produce in large quantities because of the chip shortage, but also because of the high level of experience and knowledge required to continue to make them. Tanks are much less reliant on complex electronics and manufacturing capability in order to be effective on the battlefield. The US…

Have you watched any of the Ukraine footage? Tanks are being blown up from bombs dropped from COTS drones. Longer range semi-autonomous drones seem to be the future.

How well do long range drones work if the other side puts up a serious blockages of radio waves and decides that "no you dont get satellites anymore"?

Re: Does the Tank Have a Future?

#80

Post by kashkhan »

bnralt wrote: post #74
malwrar wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you propose instead? A state is always going to need a military to defend its stability and continuity from existential threats. Despite what the internet would have you believe, the world is a massive place with a vast diaspora of peoples with tons of different contradictory policy preferences. I don’t think we could give up preparing for the next fight if we wanted to.

What was the last successful offensive war? When was the last time American tanks were successful in creating a positive outcome for United States citizens (which, theoretically, is the entire reason they're built)? You could make an argument for 30 years ago, but you'd need to go back closer to 70 years for a strong case. The other poster raises a valid point that war, as it is typically been envisioned, might be fa…

Right. When did the US last win a war? Even with unlimited weapons, nobody wins any more. Sure you can destroy governments like Saddam and Gaddafi, but you don't win the hearts and minds, and eventually you lose.
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