241–250 of 490 posts
The USMC got rid of their tanks. The closest thing to a tank they still have is a Light Armored Vehicle.
How is that so hard to understand?
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Many of your statements are outright false.
Evidence beats a bare denial. (Of course, the original claim didn't have any evidence, either...) "Yes it is" "No it isn't" is a really uninteresting conversation. Somebody supply some evidence , not just claims.
The war in Ukraine doesn't provide sufficient evidence that modern combined arms operations are outdated. Russia deployed combat troops significantly short on man power, leading to a situation where attacks had far more armor than infantry. See https://warontherocks.com/2022/06/not-built-for-purpose-the-... for example. It's been known since the Spanish Civil War that tanks are vulnerable to anti-tank teams when not…
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Most of what you have mentioned are inherent shortcomings of tanks in a modern battlefield. They are fuel intensive. They need massive logistical support. They are vulnerable to targeted attacks, like from drones. None of this is unique to the Ukraine situation. It is very hard for tanks to be effective in the age of cheap UAVs.
Infantry are vulnerable to literally everything, and yet no one besides some dingbats that watched terminator too many times are suggesting the age of infantry is over. Aircraft are vulnerable to missiles. Is anyone suggesting the age of aircraft are over? Drones, particularly consumer quadcopter adopted out of convenience are vulnerable to missiles, autocannons, and electronic warfare. Does not the very same logic b…
Worth noting: The western-made MANPADs are designed to exploit a serious design flaw in Soviet-era tanks. The ammunition is stored in the turret where it is easy to ignite externally. That's why we have so much youtube of Russian tanks blowing their turret sky-high.
Long story short, design failure can't be remedied by anything they can put on the top of the tank unless it's another tank.
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Not sure what you think a screen is... but it doesn't hide anything. A screen is about finding, not hiding.
Yes, exactly. The infantry screen the tanks from enemy infantry ATGM groups. Everything that makes enemy infantry with ATGMs more effective tank hunters makes infantry screening the tanks more effective at countering them.
Then you mean the infantry screen the enemy infantry from the tanks. You screen the threat, not what you're protecting.
The war in Ukraine doesn't provide sufficient evidence that modern combined arms operations are outdated. Russia deployed combat troops significantly short on man power, leading to a situation where attacks had far more armor than infantry. See https://warontherocks.com/2022/06/not-built-for-purpose-the-... for example. It's been known since the Spanish Civil War that tanks are vulnerable to anti-tank teams when not…
1. When enemy has tons of artillery, and any light armour is doomed in open field
2. The only military unit capable of offensive operation during nuclear warfare
For as long as nuclear weapons are there, there will be a need for an all-terrain nuclear bunker with gun.
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I didn't say anything about wanting it to happen. But if it happens, does anyone seriously believe that US could avoid re-instituting the draft?
> But if it happens, does anyone seriously believe that US could avoid re-instituting the draft? The US no longer has a draft law because the US determined that the draft was bad both from a military manpower perspective and from a domestic politics perspective as to maintaining national will to continue a conflict. The US will not reauthorize a draft for an overseas war while the US remains a major power. If the US…
Nixon got rid of the draft for reasons that had to do with the unpopularity of the Vietnam War and his presidential election. The argument was that the AVF wouldn't negatively impact force readiness, not that the draft was "bad" from a military manpower perspective (I'm not sure what that means). There's some other reasons peppered in correspondence from that time, but I'm super skeptical of this argument for enough reasons to finish a PhD thesis. It's been a long time coming, but the conversation needs to be had about how even if the United States needed to institute a draft we may not actually be able to do so anymore because of the general decline in health and fitness of men in this country. More over, there are civ-mil relations considerations that aren't properly accounted for when you claim the AVF is superior - we have essentially a warrior caste now, that's in many ways sectioned off from the reset of the civilian population. Good? Bad? Exercise for the reader but you can probably guess my stance.
>The US will not reauthorize a draft for an overseas war while the US remains a major power.
I don't see how these are related. Plenty of non "major" powers have conscription (in some form or another), as do plenty of "major" powers. The US wasn't a "major" power before WWI, though it was certainly "a power", and yet my great grandfather was drafted. Maybe you mean the US won't get into an unwinnable and unpopular ground war in South East Asia and then re-institute the draft, but you may be underestimating the depth of ineptitude of the people who've been running the show the last 30ish years. Everyone I served with was a volunteer, obviously, but war necessitates a lot of things that people would otherwise consider impossible right up until they happen.
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Former US Army 19k here. Tanks are expensive to build, expensive to maintain, expensive to operate, hard to transport and require certain levels of infrastructure to operate in theater (bridges to support their weight). With current threats they are bound to become even heavier (and require more fuel). While I am all for seeing the rise of Bolo's, and I love shock effect as much as the next enthusiast, the ability of…
RPGs have existed for along time. How does using a drone to deliver the grenade instead of a rocket really change the scenario?
If you made a misstake in the first scenario, there is no second try. But if you have a second drone, there is.
(ukraine has more men than drones, though)
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Your comment is extremely misleading. Modern militaries are rapidly transforming into what was science fiction, say, 50 years ago: almost exclusively remote-controlled robots and primarily (or even exclusively) autonomous robots. If you call small, unmanned, armored vehicles "tanks" you are misleading people. In modern militaries, whether it be surface ships, submarines, airplanes, tanks, etc.... within another few d…
This is a complete misunderstanding of warfare. Drones cannot take and hold ground. Without infantry, an external power cannot exert influence over an area. Sure, they can wantonly kill civilians, but that doesn't mean they are in charge. Until and unless autonomous drones with general artificial intelligence can be mass-produced and deployed on the scale of infantry brigades, massed infantry will be required. Even t…
What we’ve seen in Ukraine is far from modern tanks fighting with modern tank doctrine. Yes, technically some of those tanks are ‘modern’, but many of them appear to have fake reactive armor, are poorly built, and they are being deployed without infantry, air, or logistical support. It’s the perfect recipe to lose all of your tanks.