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…
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?
The "shock" part of "shock effect" is kind of diminished if you can hide miles away from tanks, completely safe, and neuter them.
The Abrams A1 got like half a mile to the gallon didn't it? How many miles can they move before you have to park them next to a giant, unarmored gas can?
the abrams had a 500 gallon tank, so... pretty far?
Sounds like a pretty big explosive to carry on hand.
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…
Aircraft are fast, have actual deterrents against attacks and can fire from a distance. Tanks need to be close to attack, are slow and completely vulnerable to drone attacks.
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?
There are a lot of voices that seem to believe that isolationism is the way to go and that this will protect their 'lifestyle' from being impacted by the war in Ukraine. It's interesting how apparently some of history's lessons are impossible to learn, the exact same thing happened in 1938 and the end result was a much bigger war. Also, the degree to which the world economies are now interconnected make it next to im…
I'm not a fan of our (US + NATO) current Ukraine policy, but that isn't because I'm an isolationist. I think it's just dumb policy, on several different dimensions. The version of the criticism you're leveling right now can be inverted very easily. That the people arguing for escalation in Ukraine, that it's "the exact same thing [that] happened in 1938" (it isn't), and that unless we do things like a NFZ it leads to a larger war, have a cartoon version in their heads of war and geopolitical strategy. Where there's clear boundaries between the "good guys" and "bad guys", like this is some Marvel film where you don't really even need to watch it to know what happens (spoiler alert: the good guys win!). Perhaps they are the ones who have something, and some history, to chew on.
The only reason you'd use tanks or infantry in a modern war is that you don't have enough drones and missiles. Maybe you're willing to climb into a tank after what we've seen in Ukraine recently, but that's all you, pal.
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.
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.
Yup. The key point is, a weapon system becomes obsolete when something else does its job better, not when it becomes more vulnerable. When something valuable becomes more vulnerable, you protect it better. When it becomes less valuable because something else does the job better, then you get rid of it.
As of right now, nothing does a ground offensive like a few dozen tanks advancing at top speed with appropriate support. They'll blast anything in their path and charge right through all but the toughest and most concentrated defenses. As long as you can see those really concentrated defenses in advance and go around, they're pretty tough to stop.
> My point is that we should all be fighting against war. By what, asking nicely?
Yes. Be very persuasive. But restrict yourself to persuasion. The way is for the antiwar people to be more successful than warriors and turn war into the losers' choice. I refuse to arm myself, refuse to serve in militaries and refuse to support war as much as i am able. If antiwar people are successful, war will evolve out.
Do you think Ukraine can persuade Putin to call off the invasion? If they didn’t defend themselves, they’d be a Russian province or puppet state today.
That’s always the unfortunate downside of relying on only persuasion. Some people will just take what they want if you don’t force them to stop.
Just read about how well persuasion (aka “appeasement”) worked in the buildup to WW2. Spoiler: it didn’t.
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.
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.
Tanks are not going anywhere. Especially depending on your definition of "tank". The initial Russian push to Kiev was a disastrous blunder as they ran into unexpected resistance; no one just rolls unsupported tanks into a city they are expecting to have to fight for. But taking (and holding) a city means taking (and holding) the streets, which is impossible for the infantry alone without direct fire and armor support…
" With GPS guided artillery, and omnipresent drone threats, the days of infantrymen defending trench lines in the open are over."
But you aware, that there are currently many infantrymen digging and defending trenches in the ukraine?
(partly allmost equipped like in WW2)
What little russia has of precisiom ammunition is reserved for more valuable targets, than infantry. They just get shelled by dumb artillery. Lots of it.