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

warontherocks.com

111–120 of 282 posts

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

#111

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.

The US wants 2,456 F-35s that’s just a lot of freaking aircraft. It’s actually extremely well designed for this kind of combat. Stealth alone is overrated, but these things get to fight back and they don’t fight alone. Sam sites, manned or unmanned aircraft etc are targets. It’s exactly the same stupid expensive avionics and training programs that make the F-35 so expensive that make it effective.

The US can soften things up with cruse missiles and the F-22 or it’s successors, the F-35’s job is to crush what remains and it does that very well. Difficult enough to fight that you need expensive and therefore difficult to replace weapons systems while still being affordable enough to be plentiful.

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

#112
post #8

It will be interesting times if all those weapons spill into the European Union.

Don't get why you're being downvoted - as a half-Croat I completely understand your point (for the non-Balkan people: former Yugoslavia is your to-go source if you need any kind of weapon if you can't get one legally, there is an enormous amount of stuff from the 90s wars floating around).

In the end we are at a trade-off situation: Either we don't send weapons to Ukraine and let Putin take over, raze the country and genocide off the population (they are already setting up "filtration camps" and forcibly relocating Ukrainians to Siberia [1]), and risk that the Baltic states or Poland becomes the next target for Putin. Or we send weapons to Ukraine, blow the invasion forces to pieces, and risk that the weapons will be sold off later on to the highest bidders.

Personally I prefer the latter: no one should be forced to live under Putin's dictatorship and the post-WW2 world order was explicitly created to condemn Nazi-style landgrab operations. If the price of that will be that some ammo gets diverted off to some other warlord, that's bad but acceptable because the alternative is so much worse.

[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/ukrainian-woman-gives-accoun...

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

#113
post #83

Lots of outdated information here. I served in the IDF on something related and (obviously) can't disclose anything of military importance but do you really think for the last 16 years tank armor hasn't gotten (much) better to deal with these threats? Do you (honestly) believe the US doesn't have tank armor that can withstand a (from the top) hit from a Javelin? The tank is not dead (well, not any more than large tan…

>Do you (honestly) believe the US doesn't have tank armor that can withstand a (from the top) hit from a Javelin?

If this exists, why did the USMC binned their tanks 2 years ago stating they weren't cost-effective anymore? I'll believe this exists when I'll see it, but so far we have seen $4M tanks defeated by $100K javelins with a 93% kill rate, and so far cope cages have done nothing against them.

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

#114

I think we will see the tanks in future battlefields still but rather than cannons they will be using more electronic warfare and will be providing indirect fire with "smart" weapons. Essentially they will be multi role armoured vehicles with high manoeuvrability e.g. (British Ajax Scout Vehicle) Or my sci-fi'ish theory of a "drone tank" Why? * Governments have high demands from defence and at the same time want low…

I'd imagine what you'll really have is a primary tank with a human "field support" technician/operator and a bunch of unnamed machines that are at the front doing most of the physical fighting. Humans are expensive and Russia (most Western countries really) was already suffering from a shortage of young workers.

I'd be shocked if canons went away though. The end goal of warfare is to cause enough chaos/destruction that your enemy's choices are constrained to what you want. Without physical violence there's no sense going out into the field in the first place.

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

#115
post #106
post #8

It will be interesting times if all those weapons spill into the European Union.

And how and why would that happen?

Look at the former Yugoslavian countries. The German right-wing terror group "NSU" is suspected to have used weapons from that area [1], the Charlie Hebdo and Paris terrorists did the same [2].

It is entirely reasonable that, similar to the aftermath of the 90s wars, weapons from Ukraine will turn up in every major conflict zone - especially because the current supply from the Balkan is all 30 years old decrepit shit, whereas Ukraine (rightfully) got the very best of the best of Western weaponry.

[1] https://www.nordbayern.de/region/nsu-prozess-gericht-will-he...

[2] https://www.dw.com/de/waffenlager-balkan-kalaschnikow-300-eu...

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

#116
post #100

Is it really though? There are some really good active protection systems like Israel's TROPHY which do a pretty good job taking out incoming sabot style (tank shell, javelin, RPG) warheads. The modern incarnation[1] (M1A2 SEPv2) of the US Abrams tanks all have it [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trophy_(countermeasure) [2] https://asc.army.mil/web/portfolio-item/abrams-main-battle-t...

No way it can take out sabot rounds. It's got to much kinetic energy and moves much faster than an ATGM

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

#117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If it knows what/where exactly to engage...

The point is that a soldier with a Javelin is a much less visible target than a big vehicle. Even if he runs just 40 meters away between the firing of the missile and its impact, any return fire aimed at the original site will likely miss him. And there can be a hundred of such Javelin-equipped soldiers in range.

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

#118
post #95
post #4

Something I've been thinking about is that with the emergence of weapons like the NLAW and Javelin, the Secret Service probably will have to rethink the security of the US president.

I'm not sure the country of three hundred million guns needs advanced weapons. The President might be heavily secured, but as we saw on Jan 6 it's possible to overrun the security of Congress. Then there are all the various state buildings. There are a lot of Americans who talk up the "right" to armed resistance against their government. There are also an alarmingly large number of mass shootings in America. It's alm…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congressional_baseball_shootin...

>On June 14, 2017, during a practice session for the annual Congressional Baseball Game for Charity in Alexandria, Virginia, James Hodgkinson shot U.S. House Majority Whip Steve Scalise, U.S. Capitol police officer Crystal Griner, congressional aide Zack Barth, and lobbyist Matt Mika. A ten-minute shootout took place between Hodgkinson and officers from the Capitol and Alexandria Police before officers shot Hodgkinson, who died from his wounds later that day at the George Washington University Hospital.[7][8] Scalise and Mika were taken to nearby hospitals where they underwent surgery.[9]

Hodgkinson was a left-wing political activist[10][11] from Belleville, Illinois, while Scalise was a Republican member of Congress. The Virginia Attorney General concluded Hodgkinson's attack was "an act of terrorism... fueled by rage against Republican legislators".[12] Scalise was the first sitting member of Congress to have been shot since Arizona Representative Gabby Giffords was shot in 2011.[13]

In a 2021 report, the FBI classified the shooting as an act of domestic terrorism, and the perpetrator of the shooting as a "domestic violent extremist" with a "personalized violent ideology."

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

#119
post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But, this doesn’t address his points from the end of the article about cheap drone swarm attacks on the top side of tanks.

s/drones/air support/ imho the failures observed caused by manpad in the ukrane theatre were directly attributable to an almost comically poor systems integration on the part of the aggressor and an unwillingness to commit longer range artillery and missile strikes to soften what were hardened infantry targets equipped with sixth generation anti-air and anti-tank weaponry.

> an unwillingness to commit longer range artillery and missile strikes to soften what were hardened infantry targets

Given the current state of cities such as Mariupol I don't believe you can attribute an unwillingness to use artillery to the Russian side.

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

#120
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I saw some tanker on twitter explaining just how bad the Russian tactics with their tanks are. Poor training, poor logistics, and undermanned. Tanks get such poor gas mileage that they need tons of support. Extremely effective weapons when used properly but clearly Russia is not doing that.

Thr Turkish army lost a couple of top of the line Leopard 2s in Syria some years ago for the exact same reason: lack of infantry support. Seems that the "West", spearheaded by the US, has the most experienced military in the world at the moment. 20 years of counter insurgency warfare and some more conventional wars before that seriously helped a lot. Just how much is at display in Ukraine, first by the, so far, Russi…

They were the export version without active armor…
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