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

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

#241

Post by throwawayffffas »

hef19898 wrote: post #205
usrbinbash wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the need of protected offensive destructive power (a tank) Offensive destructive power can be provided by air support, long range self-guiding weapons and drone weaponry as well. I also don't believe that ATGMs mean "Tanks are already obsolete". But I do think they are under threat of becoming so, because: ATGMs will get better, as will drones. Meanwhile, a tank will always be a big hunk of metal moving comparative…

Air support is as vulnerable to MANPADs as tanks are to a Javelin, that's one of the (potential) reasons why neither side has air dominance over Ukraine. And long-range guided weapons are awfully expensive. And they need eyes on the ground. And they cannot carry infantry into battle, nor can infantry hide behind them. EDIT: The point is that a tank will be made obsolete by weapon system that replaces the tanks functi…

> Air support is as vulnerable to MANPADs as tanks are to a Javelin

They are not, the fact the Russians have lost so many planes is a testament to their inability to suppress the Ukrainian air defense.

Fighters are capable of flying far higher than MANPAD ceilings the only reason to fly that low is to employ visually guided weapons under cloud cover or to attempt to hide behind the terrain against longer range air defense systems.

Both of these issues can be resolved. By suppressing the enemy long range air defense and by employing laser guided weapons along with ground based designators.

Also fighters can evade missiles, google f16 dodges 6 sams for an extreme example.

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

#242

Post by CapricornNoble »

inglor_cz wrote: post #178
kitrose wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was an armored vehicle officer in the USMC. ATGMs are a long standing threat. There’s no scenario where hundreds of Javelins are sitting in one infantry company. It’s the type of thing that only makes sense on paper. Would be much more worried about evolution of loitering fires with drones.

As of today, hundreds are out of question, yes. But there may be cheaper and better models one day. This war has shown that ATGMs, MANPADs and their ilk have a huge potential, which means that a lot of countries and companies are going to pour resources into R&D. This usually means an overall improvement in capabilities and possibly a reduced price tag. As an analogy: once it would be considered too expensive and imp…

>>>But there may be cheaper and better models one day.

And when that "one day" comes around, the tank engineers will have outfitted every vehicle with Trophy-style active protection systems AND laser anti-missile/anti-drone remote weapons stations on the turrets.

>>>As an analogy: once it would be considered too expensive and impractical to equip infantry with night vision en masse.

Interesting that you mention night vision. We used to swear by equipping our infantry with IR lasers as well, for pinpoint accuracy during night combat. Now that more of our adversaries are using night vision, we are swinging back towards NOT using IR lasers because the active emission is just like the old Murphy's Law adage: "tracers point both ways".

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

#243

Post by pjc50 »

swader999 wrote: post #121
pjc50 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The legality isn't the issue, it's the expected unlawful proliferation of these systems from this conflict that will happen.

> expected

By whom?

> proliferation

Unlike firearms, the critical and expensive part of these weapons is the round, not the launcher. And they're being used up at a huge rate.

What exactly is the worry scenario, that after the war is over the Ukranian state, newly forged in adversity, will immediately lose operational control over its units which will then decide they aren't imminently going to need these weapons for homeland defence, so they can sell them on the black market?

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

#244

Post by throwawayffffas »

a_crc wrote: post #240
throwawayffffas wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point was not the zero kills, the point is that the US navy decided to use them in only two occasions. In the case of the US involved conflicts it was working with allies and fighters lacking modern IFF that made the likelihood of friendly fire or collateral losses unacceptable to them. It's a matter of acceptable risks. The AIM-54 was designed with a world war III in mind, employed in the middle of the ocean in…

As a counter example, the US has continued to use the BVR AIM-120 even after accidentally shooting down one of their own helicopters in an IFF failure. [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIM-120_AMRAAM#United_States_o...

In the particular case the missile was used after visual identification [1].

> The two F-15s now initiated a visual identification (VID) pass of the contact.

> Wickson's VID pass was conducted at a speed of about 450 knots (520 mph; 830 km/h), 500 feet (150 m) above and 1,000 feet (300 m) to the left of the helicopters.

Now I am not saying there is no room for BVR, ofcourse there is. The 2 tracks in formation coming from Russian airspace pinging you with their Russian military radars are definitely Russian fighters. But there are also a lot of times where there has to be a visual id.

A military jet with it's radars turned off is almost impossible to tell apart from a civilian jet based on radar data alone, and everyone errs on the side of caution, of course the side of caution occasionally is to fire first and id later[2][3].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1994_Black_Hawk_shootdown_inci... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_Air_Flight_655 [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_airliner_shootdown_inc...

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

#245

Post by WJW »

throwawayffffas wrote: post #223
WJW wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are there any air superiority combat drones operational yet? I won't argue that it seems likely that manned dogfights are going to die eventually, but that moment also seems at least a decade away. Until then a F-35 with long range missiles seems to be one of the more lethal things in the air today, even if it is rather expensive. NATO has like 20x the defense budget compared to Russia though, so it's fine not to hav…

> Are there any air superiority combat drones operational yet? From what I have seen reported every major player is working on "loyal wingmen". Autonomous drones that would fly along manned aircraft. That way you supposedly get the best of both worlds, the situational awareness and judgement of a human along the expendability of a drone.

Yes I know everyone wants such drones, but AFAIK nobody has them other than a few prototypes. Developing a prototype far enough to get to an fully operational platform (including things like logistics, training the operators and mechanics, developing doctrines, etc etc etc) can take decades.

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

#246

Post by greedo »

nimbius wrote: post #98
irrational wrote: post #75

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.

Explain how the Bayraktar has been very effective targeting SAM systems? SAMs designed to destroy aircraft in this size range, and operating altitude?

Systems like TOR/Tunguska/Buk should be easily capable of detecting the Bayraktar and destroying it. It's not like Russia didn't see how it worked in the Armenian/Azerbaijan conflict. They knew Ukraine had Bayraktar, but seemed completely unprepared to deal with it.

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

#247

Post by greedo »

hef19898 wrote: post #53
formerly_proven wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

F-35 unit prices are not high and keep getting lower due to the sheer scale of production. Many 4.5 gen fighters are actually more expensive yet less capable than the F-35. Most anti-F-35 arguments are "informed" by the likes of Pierre Sprey.

Which systems are out there that are actually comparable to the JSF? Both the Eurofighter and the Rafale are one gen older (not sure if that actually matters that much so). Which leaves the Russian and Chinese planes, for which cost is hard to come by.

Chinese FC-31 is close to the F-35 (in design and theory, but who knows about actual performance), but it's not in production yet.

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

#248

Post by yobbo »

kcb wrote: post #131
greedo wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 d…

There's some silly idea that it's just a numbers game and 20 Cessna 172s would be able to take out an F-35.

> 20 Cessna 172s would be able to take out an F-35

No, they would not. I believe they would seem easy-mode target practice for the cannon.

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

#249

Post by greedo »

throwawayffffas wrote: post #230
a_crc wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article you linked makes it sound like sensor and rocketry failures on some platforms that were retired 15 years ago, nothing to do with a general fear of BVR missile use. Also I believe the willingness to engage unidentified radar tracks has more to do with the nature of the conflict. I doubt the same restraint would be shown in a war against a near peer foe.

The point was not the zero kills, the point is that the US navy decided to use them in only two occasions. In the case of the US involved conflicts it was working with allies and fighters lacking modern IFF that made the likelihood of friendly fire or collateral losses unacceptable to them. It's a matter of acceptable risks. The AIM-54 was designed with a world war III in mind, employed in the middle of the ocean in…

The Phoenix was never the prime BVR for the US. It was a niche weapon for the USN, to combat the Backfire/Bear threat. Even for the USN, it wasn't the prime; the AIM-7 Sparrow was the primary AAM carried. Tomcats rarely carried Phoenix except when qualifying. It was too heavy, and the F-14 couldn't bring back all 6 to the carrier due to weight. If the Tomcat had stuck around longer, the AMRAAM would have been qual'd for it, and the Tomcat would probably have lost out to it.

And the reason it wasn't used much wasn't just ID issues, but cost. It was supremely expensive, in limited stocks. Why use it against an Su-22 in the Gulf of Sidra? Or waste it over Iraq?

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

#250

Post by yobbo »

sofixa wrote: post #203
greedo wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is ridiculous. A Cessna 172 might be able to suicide into a parked F-35, but the idea that 20 would be able to engage it in a dogfight and win just shows a complete lack of aerospace knowledge.

Dogfighting is a thing of the past. 20 Cessnas approaching from different directions, with decently ranged AA missiles ( which is the point of the discussion, OP compared drone performances to a Cessna, and everyone is going in on the allegory, but the real question is if slow drones would be able to tackle an F-35, and the answer is it will depend on their armament, but probably) could overwhelm an F-35.

> with decently ranged AA missiles

Those missiles are not cheap, and it would be unlikely for cheap Cessnas to get in range of an F-35. At long range the F-35 is difficult to observe by sensors that fit inside a Cessna.

I believe it is possible to shoot down low-radar-crossection aircraft if the missiles are spotted/guided by other sensor networks, but that is not easy, cheap, or mobile. And land based radars are sitting ducks.

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