Does the Tank Have a Future? • Hacker News Board

Re: Does the Tank Have a Future?

#471

Post by dodobirdlord » Fri, Jun 17, 2022, 4:32 AM UTC

rubinelli wrote: post #290

sixstringtheory wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is assuming there wouldn't be a swarm of drones deployed alongside the tanks. Tanks could be used analogously to aircraft carriers, which would be sitting ducks vs jets/subs/battleships, if it weren't for their own jets they're carrying, or the battleships sailing with them.

Aircraft carriers don't have the large cannons of a dreadnought. An armored car that served as launchpad and command center for drones could be drastically lighter, faster, cheaper, and with simpler logistics.

The main gun on a tank is actually a pretty cost effective weapon. Projectile weapons are a lot cheaper than missiles.

Re: Does the Tank Have a Future?

#472

Post by bergenty » Fri, Jun 17, 2022, 4:38 AM UTC

throwawaylinux wrote: post #385

bergenty wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it did pretty decisively in the war between Armenia and Azerbaijan.

In what way that missiles could not have?

They were extremely cheap, way more maneuverable and can be controlled right up to the moment of impact. A swarm of missiles can’t just hang around for something to happen.

Re: Does the Tank Have a Future?

#473

Post by dodobirdlord » Fri, Jun 17, 2022, 4:39 AM UTC

wyldfire wrote: post #212

yding wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're talking about DJI or equivalents they only have 30 minutes or so of flight time and can carry at most one bomb at a time. They can be useful in guerrilla situations but firepower wise it's not even in the same league as a tank with 40-60 cannon rounds and several thousand machine gun rounds.

What if the drone were so inexpensive and portable that you could consider it like you do ammunition? Then the flight time and payload is much less critical - it's just a pilot-able bomb.

This is called a guided missile, or a loitering munition, depending mostly on how quickly it gets to the target. They’ve been around for a while and are very useful but have not rendered tanks obsolete yet.

Re: Does the Tank Have a Future?

#474

Post by remarkEon » Fri, Jun 17, 2022, 4:49 AM UTC

tlear wrote: post #443

remarkEon wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think what you mean to say is that "NATO is the United States, the rest of the countries are just members". That's not to knock, necessarily, the rest of the members - they've all made choices and assumptions about their own security. I agree, this is a problem, for many more reasons than the fact that only a small percentage of Americans know which country Vilnius is in, let alone where it is on a map. >It is much…

Do they know that? Will Germany magically stop using Russian gas, reinstitute draft and manage to produce more than a dozen tanks a year? All the signals pre-invasion of Ukraine pointed to no. Unlike Ukraine right now Baltics CAN be taken by a surprise air mobile assault, some of those countries have 20%+ of population who subsist on healthy dose of RT and worship Putin the Tsar, they will serve as pawns we see now i…

Yeah, it’s fair to question the real commitment to Article 5 that some NATO members have given their entanglement in a number of other economic engagements. I tend to think that there’s kind of a priority list of NATO members in reality that differs from what’s on paper. Germany? Absolutely. France and the UK? Of course. But Lithuania and Turkey? Poland I still think is a red line since, well, it’s been a red line since 1945 I suppose.

I don’t know that I’m as confident as you are in the Russian VDV’s ability to competently conduct an airborne invasion given their, shall we say, clumsy implementation of combined arms war in Ukraine thus war. I’d also love to see a citation that 20% (really?) of the population in the Baltics wouldn’t freakout and instead either actively support or be indifferent to a Russian invasion.

Re: Does the Tank Have a Future?

#475

Post by dodobirdlord » Fri, Jun 17, 2022, 4:51 AM UTC

dolmen wrote: post #395

wyldfire wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if the drone were so inexpensive and portable that you could consider it like you do ammunition? Then the flight time and payload is much less critical - it's just a pilot-able bomb.

It's easier for infantry to carry one drone and ammunitions than a set of one-shot drones.

In practice it’s actually the opposite. A reusable drone has to have enough fuel to come back, which halves its range compared to a loitering munition that doesn’t come back. A reusable drone isn’t intended to collide with the target, and can’t be rocket-powered, so it will be much slower to reach and strike a target when the target is identified. It has to have the ability to land and to be rearmed, which adds complexity and thus expense.

Past a certain size a drone can fly high enough and far enough that it fills the combat role of an aircraft, but as far as man-portable systems go, well-resourced militaries demonstrate consistent preference for single-use guided explosives like the Javelin or Switchblade to maximize range and payload size and minimize time to impact.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AeroVironment_Switchblade

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/FGM-148_Javelin

Re: Does the Tank Have a Future?

#476

Post by dodobirdlord » Fri, Jun 17, 2022, 4:55 AM UTC

tonyhb wrote: post #252

stonemetal12 wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

A munition that doesn’t have to come back is always going to have more range and be able to carry more payload weight than one that does have to come back afterward.

Re: Does the Tank Have a Future?

#477

Post by brutusborn » Fri, Jun 17, 2022, 5:22 AM UTC

TulliusCicero wrote: post #456

brutusborn wrote: post #409

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The cost would be negligent compared to existing defence costs. World military budgets are on the order of trillions, so even a 1% spend on prevention would get you billions in funding. With that you could fund a research institution with thousands of people, and have billions left over to implement any policies they come up with.

What do you think existing diplomatic and political institutions are, at this point? There's no diplomacy hack that would've stopped Russia from invading Ukraine, and major projects that people thought would've stopped them -- including major trade infrastructure like Nordstream (2) -- were ineffective. On the other hand, if Ukraine had been part of NATO, there was no chance Russia would've invaded. Almost like havin…

Diplomatic and political institutions are currently designed for communication between polities, their fundamental mission isn't to promote peace unless that is in their national interest (which is most of the time- but not always). The UN now has departments with this task, but my point is they are barely funded. I'm not expecting any silver bullet, I just think having minimal people working on this problem is foolish.

I didn't say anything about stopping the Ukraine War, so I'm not sure how that relates.

Re: Does the Tank Have a Future?

#478

Post by throwawaylinux » Fri, Jun 17, 2022, 5:54 AM UTC

bergenty wrote: post #472

throwawaylinux wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In what way that missiles could not have?

They were extremely cheap, way more maneuverable and can be controlled right up to the moment of impact. A swarm of missiles can’t just hang around for something to happen.

And what did that change for tanks on the battlefield?

Re: Does the Tank Have a Future?

#479

Post by remarkEon » Fri, Jun 17, 2022, 6:06 AM UTC

int_19h wrote: post #468

remarkEon wrote: post #410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I appreciate the perspective. It does conflict a bit with that of Russian friends I have here in the US, but that's probably to be expected (no one familiar with this should assume that Russians have a uniform distribution of views on politics). I'd tell you that I've walked patrols in some of the same mountains that Soviet soldiers did in Afghanistan, and have read some (but obviously not all, who can) of the materi…

Putin did not expect it to be a fight at all. The most damning evidence of this is that those columns that were blitzing towards Kyiv early in the war had Rosgvardia units in them, the whole purpose of which is to suppress street protests etc - and they even packed their riot gear! This is the kind of thing you do if you expect the city to fall right away, and your sole problem then is simmering dissent. Comparison t…

A couple things. First, I agree, as an English-only (for the most part) speaking outsider it does seem that there's a strain of irredentism that exists in Russia, and in a couple other places in Europe to be honest, that's becoming more popular. I'm not yet convinced that this means an invasion of Latvia or Lithuania is imminent, which is related to my second point.

>Putin did not expect it to be a fight at all.

I genuinely don't get this, though I agree with you. Still, how could Putin possibly expect Ukraine to roll over after the Maidan Revolution, which had clear and obvious western support? Perhaps he was nervous and figured that event was an actual threat to him? Especially given the United States', shall we say, cavalier attitude in selling arms abroad it seems really really obvious that Ukraine would of course happen to find themselves in possession of the latest in battlefield tech. Surely a lesson has been learned here, especially given that Russia's most advanced combat power has been significantly depleted in this endeavor - and without those modern weapons NATO can mop the floor with them using F-18s built in the 1990s. Same with tanks, not to mention drones.

Third,

>Because Latvia is a NATO member? American isolationists will say that NATO isn't worth getting nuked over anymore so than Ukraine.

Agree. I said this in another comment but I think it's pretty obvious that, 30+ years after the Cold War ended and the Soviet Union ceased to exist it's probably a good idea to assume there is some kind of priority list within the NATO members for who actually matters. I would venture to guess that certain former-Soviet countries that were added after the fall of Soviet Union are at the bottom.

Finally,

>Adding to the problem is the overly rosy picture of Ukraine successes in this war so far.

Also agree. When I discuss this with my too-well educated and too-well traveled friends, they sound like they've spent too much time on reddit. If you actually pay attention the war has somewhat stalemated, with slight favor to Russia at this point as they repair and rearm for what I assume will be a push to the western edge of the Donbas. Despite all this, these friends still believe in these now debunked myths (the Ghost of Kiev for one).

All of this just makes me want us to try to figure out a diplomatic solution. I don't know that Putin or Zalenskyy are in a position, politically, to seek one, so you may end up being correct that a compromise in one conflict leads, for Putin, to the initiation of another. I hope you're wrong.

Re: Does the Tank Have a Future?

#480

Post by citizenpaul » Fri, Jun 17, 2022, 6:51 AM UTC

serf wrote: post #383

citizenpaul wrote: post #380

A comically silly question. I bet 99% of HN has played a game with Class called or refered to as "tank." Its not a matter of do tanks have a future just what the format will be. Even in a made up fantasy games the concept of a military unit with heavy armoring is always going to have a place. Same as real life.

fantasy worlds rarely have an equivalent of a 'rods from god' type weapon. the future of warfare , according to most of the RAND papers i've read, is in cheap/commodity available 'nodes' , part of a 'system of systems' that can all interconnect cheaply and provide good data without being valuable assets themselves. in a future where any group can destroy any one thing quickly and without hopes of defense (hypersonic…

>fantasy worlds rarely have an equivalent of a 'rods from god' type weapon.

I don't have a compendium of every game ever but they usually throw some OP weapon in. Doesn't invalidate the tanks. There is not in the game or real life an infinite supply of the god rod. On a side note I'm surprised there is no weapon called the god rod yet.

Heavy armor will always have a place in battle. What happens when someone makes a slightly better armored swarm and you have to make a more armored swarm to take out their more armored swarm? Yep, escalation leads to escalation and eventually you end up with a......tank. Then you use the god rod to take out the tank and start over again. Battle is not a fixed state.