Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Does the Tank Have a Future?

economist.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 490 posts

Re: Does the Tank Have a Future?

#11

Post by metabagel »

prometheus76 wrote: post #7

Judging by the current situation, it seems that there are more resources for building tanks than there are for building anti-tank weapons. Once the anti-tank weapon stocks have been depleted, tanks still play a devastating role in warfare. EDIT: I'm just relaying what I read in several articles about the difficulties in making anti-tank weapons because they rely on rare-earth minerals and because they rely on silicon…

You could say it the other way around - once the tank stocks are depleted, anti-tank weapons can still play a devastating role (against other armored or unarmored vehicles).

Re: Does the Tank Have a Future?

#12

Post by causi »

metabagel wrote: post #2

Fantastic visuals accompanying the article!

They're slick but not terribly accurate. For example, the top-attack angle for the Javelin is depicted as far more vertical than it actually is. It's actually only about 50 degrees, which means it doesn't perform as much better than the NLAW as the specs would suggest thanks to the NLAW's 90 degree top attack.

Re: Does the Tank Have a Future?

#13

Post by JumpCrisscross »

adolph wrote: post #10
ramesh31 wrote: post #3

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…

> no one just rolls unsupported tanks into a city they are expecting to have to fight for An example counterpoint is the Iraq war "Thunder Runs." Of course the US had air superiority, etc, etc. However, sometimes the resistance level cannot be known in ways other than getting out there and seeing if your unit draws fire. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Baghdad_(2003)#Thund...

> the US had air superiority, etc, etc.

Thunder runs were limited incursions designed to test Iraqi defenses. Beyond air superiority, which is huge, the American tanks also had active defenses and well-trained crew.

Re: Does the Tank Have a Future?

#14

Post by prometheus76 »

metabagel wrote: post #11
prometheus76 wrote: post #7

Judging by the current situation, it seems that there are more resources for building tanks than there are for building anti-tank weapons. Once the anti-tank weapon stocks have been depleted, tanks still play a devastating role in warfare. EDIT: I'm just relaying what I read in several articles about the difficulties in making anti-tank weapons because they rely on rare-earth minerals and because they rely on silicon…

You could say it the other way around - once the tank stocks are depleted, anti-tank weapons can still play a devastating role (against other armored or unarmored vehicles).

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 Defense Dept. has said it will take at least ten years to rebuild the stock of anti-tank weapons that have been used in Ukraine in the last five months.

Re: Does the Tank Have a Future?

#16

Post by breadloaf »

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.

Re: Does the Tank Have a Future?

#17

Post by dragontamer »

bpodgursky wrote: post #6

A lot of people are asking whether tanks are survivable anymore, but nobody is asking whether unarmored infantry are any more survivable in the era of small-drone warfare. It's all relative.

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 everything except a direct hit (within 2m) of the target. All that shrapnel just bounces off the tank. We've gone full circle back to WW1 trench/artillery warfare, where tanks were invented to break through the stalemate.

Other vehicles (even armored cars) don't have thick enough armor to survive the shrapnel reliably. APCs, IFVs, Humvees still get shredded by artillery and air-burst munitions.

-------

How do you beat artillery? You travel at 50km/hr, so you're hard to aim (a 20km shot takes 1.5 minutes to land. Easy to kill a human who can only travel a hundred meters in that timeframe, especially since its +/- 100m target size since the shrapnel blast is so huge).

Tanks / vehicles on the other hand, move too fast to be targeted by dumb artillery. Smart artillery still kills you, but its relatively rare on the battlefield (due to the high costs of computer parts needed to make a smart shell). The vast majority of these holes are dumb artillery.

---------

https://cdn.i-scmp.com/sites/default/files/d8/images/canvas/...

This isn't the landscape of "drone warfare". This is WW1 style dumb-artillery wars.

Re: Does the Tank Have a Future?

#18

Post by bpodgursky »

metabagel wrote: post #8
bpodgursky wrote: post #6

A lot of people are asking whether tanks are survivable anymore, but nobody is asking whether unarmored infantry are any more survivable in the era of small-drone warfare. It's all relative.

Infantry can more effectively hide, disperse, and bring down aerial drones.

This is very terrain-dependent.

It worked around Kyiv because it's forested and hilly, it works in cities with large soviet apartment blocks, but isn't working well at all in flat Donbas farmland.

It's also a 100% defensive strategy. Unsupported infantry have almost no ability to retake dug-in positions.

Re: Does the Tank Have a Future?

#19

Post by kashkhan »

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.

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