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

The tank is dead: Long live the javelin, the switchblade, the ... ?

warontherocks.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 282 posts

Re: The tank is dead: Long live the javelin, the switchblade, the ... ?

#101

Post by mcv »

zteppenwolf wrote: post #28
ajross wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are plenty of independent folks doing great work analyzing (and in many cases geolocating) photos of equipment losses. Oryx is great: https://www.oryxspioenkop.com/2022/02/attack-on-europe-docum... Basically yes: this war has been a disaster for Russian armor.

Quoted post unavailable.

> I'm quite sure they assessed the risks before engaging.

I think it's pretty clear they didn't. They went in poorly prepared, many soldiers thought they were on exercise and had no idea what they were even doing in Ukraine, and recently it turned out a lot of Russian soldiers have radiation poisoning because they were digging trenches in radioactive soil at Chernobyl, because they'd never even heard of the Chernobyl disaster.

It appears Putin has been thoroughly misinformed by his intelligence service, people lie to their superiors because they don't date to deliver bad news, and Russian supplies have been crippled by corruption.

Re: The tank is dead: Long live the javelin, the switchblade, the ... ?

#102

Post by Pelic4n »

simonh wrote: post #93
Narretz wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The second gulf war started almost 20 years ago. Surely you can't use it as an example when anti tank weapons have progressed so much in that time.

So has reactive armour and systems like Trophy. This argument has been made for many decades at this stage. This isn't just about vulnerability. Infantry are vulnerable to practically everything, sometimes they just drop dead all by themselves. It's also about capabilities. What are you going to use instead, and how is it better?

Reported kill rate of javelins fired against tanks in Ukraine is 93%. Just saying.

Re: The tank is dead: Long live the javelin, the switchblade, the ... ?

#103

Post by _kbh_ »

zteppenwolf wrote: post #28
ajross wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are plenty of independent folks doing great work analyzing (and in many cases geolocating) photos of equipment losses. Oryx is great: https://www.oryxspioenkop.com/2022/02/attack-on-europe-docum... Basically yes: this war has been a disaster for Russian armor.

Quoted post unavailable.

The largest exporter of arms to Ukraine at this point in time is likely Russia.

I fail to see how this isn't a disaster.

The Ukrainian tank divisions are likely better equipped than they where when the war started.

Re: The tank is dead: Long live the javelin, the switchblade, the ... ?

#104

Post by pjc50 »

zteppenwolf wrote: post #28
ajross wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are plenty of independent folks doing great work analyzing (and in many cases geolocating) photos of equipment losses. Oryx is great: https://www.oryxspioenkop.com/2022/02/attack-on-europe-docum... Basically yes: this war has been a disaster for Russian armor.

Quoted post unavailable.

They've unambiguously withdrawn from Kyiv, leaving behind a lot of dead as well as destroyed vehicles.

Re: The tank is dead: Long live the javelin, the switchblade, the ... ?

#105

Post by usrbinbash »

hef19898 wrote: post #29

>> The Russian Army has shown that it is not competent in combined arms fire and maneuver. Doctrine and training are paramount, together with command and control that's what enabled the early German successes in WW1. And in the case of France a ton of luck. The article asks the right question: is the role of the tank still needed? A Javelin neutralizes a tank, under the right conditions, it doesn't replace it.

But if a military investment worth several million dollars (a tank) can be neutralized by something that is an order of magnitude cheaper to produce (an ATGM), then how can it fulfill its intended role?

Re: The tank is dead: Long live the javelin, the switchblade, the ... ?

#107

Post by fork1 »

Pelic4n wrote: post #72
csours wrote: post #6

Perun https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUyAPQEb01Q Chieftain https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lI7T650RTT8 Bernard https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPth_xqBXGY Extreme summary, blame me if I missed something obviously important - unsupported tanks will die to infantry or artillery and have done so since shortly after the inception of the tank. Tanks are actually pretty cheap compared to replacing a human, it costs quite…

$4M tanks are defeated by a $40K NLAW. Much like cuirassiers cavalry who were rendered obsolete by muskets becoming rifles with increased penetration, it's not because tanks don't works, it's because it's so cheap to kill one and so expensive to make one. Until very recently, 2 guys hiding in a bush couldn't kill a tank, you needed a predator drone, an helicopter or some other advanced system requiring heavy logistic…

A guy hiding in a bush was able to defeat tanks since the invention of HEAT in WW2. Before that, they were other ways as well.

Re: The tank is dead: Long live the javelin, the switchblade, the ... ?

#108

Post by kitrose »

inglor_cz wrote: post #55
DarkWiiPlayer wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think people vastly underestimate the importance of infantry support. A single soldier with an ATGM can take out a tank, but a single soldier with a gun can take out that single soldier and their ATGM. It's easy to forget that reality isn't a third-person shooter. When you're sitting in a steel box with an engine in the back and a cannon on the top, situational awareness will inevitably suffer to some degree, and n…

The Javelin can kill tanks from what distance, up to four kilometers? (Officially, less so, but the Ukrainians seem to be pulling off more distant hits than what the vendor documentation says.) No realistic amount of infantry support can shield you against weapons with such a huge range. An entire army could, but that is obviously too much.

A tank can engage at similar distances.

Re: The tank is dead: Long live the javelin, the switchblade, the ... ?

#109

Post by Beltiras »

simonh wrote: post #63

The tank isn't dead because armies still need the capabilities the tank gives them. You need a long range direct fire weapon, capable of engaging armoured targets and infantry (canister or airburst rounds), with rapid engagement of multiple targets, low time to target, rapid reloads and follow up shots, and high survivability. Lighter wheeled gun armed vehicles can be cheaper, but they don't have the survivability. T…

The survivability property is the one being questioned right now. If you can attack a tank from 5 clicks away with a high probability of success then air support and infantry have to cover a really wide perimeter inviting the question if the resources spent on the tank can give better capabilities in other form.

Re: The tank is dead: Long live the javelin, the switchblade, the ... ?

#110

Post by greedo »

pirate787 wrote: post #13

The truly obsolete weapons platform is the $1.2 trillion manned F-35 program. A multi-role fighter that is too expensive to fly in this new combat space and cannot survive the multitude of anti-air missiles. The drone air war is a numbers game and unmanned fighters are both cheaper and have better operational specs.

And here come the F-35 haters...

The F-35 is fine. It's designed to be a replacement to the F-16 with a good level of stealth. NO fighter is 100% immune to SAMs, but the F-35 can survive on the modern battlefield against S300/S400 etc just fine. It would be cleaning up in Ukraine right now as long as the airbases it flew from were protected.

And what "unmanned fighters" are out there right now? Some low performance drones? Sure. But unmanned fighters that can engage in A2A combat are non-existent. Most current drones have the performance of a Cessna 172.

Post reply on HN