How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[Vanir Ausf B]

1 hour ago, Battlefront.com said:

An unarmed APC can serve it's function just fine driving at top speed to a predetermined point, dropping off its infantry, and exiting the tactical battlespace quickly.  Tanks can not do that.  Therefore, if limited exposure time is part of the solution (and I believe it is), tanks are inherently not going to be able to leverage that.

I disagree that APCs can limit exposure more so than tanks. APCs need to close to within a certain distance of the objective while tanks can hang back in keyholed positions providing long range fire support, terrain permitting.

The real question is how to limit exposure when the threat envelope is 180°?

 

[The_Capt]

20 minutes ago, Grey_Fox said:

You gave out that it was ridiculous to think that the Russians forgot how to do combined arms warfare. I'm pointing out that a force that has a profound shortage of infantry is missing a fundamental component in combined arms warfare.

 

I do, which is why I don't get it from wikipedia, and that's because...

 

...I can edit the articles so it aligns with my facts.

I have posted dozen of articles and analysis on this war, and on this specific topic.  I am not going to do hours of more digging and research to try and prove a point to a guy who shows up and posts a single Kofman article and is quoting it like gospel.  Kofman is an academic who is accessing  the same info we are - he does not work inside the intel bubble, nor is he in the Russian military staff.  I actually agree with the guy more often than not, but on some key points we disagree.  While I will defer to his expertise on the history of the Russian military, the man does not have time as a military practitioner or professional - his opinion is worth something but he is not Ukraine War Jesus.

The RA went into this war fast and light because they thought they could get away with it due to 1) UA being unprepared and spread out, which they were, 2) shock at the political level, which did not happen, and 3) western dithering and failing resolve, which also did not happen.

They almost pulled it off.  The UA was outnumbered on this axis of advance to the point that despite the shortfalls and screw ups the RA advanced deep into Ukraine.  The RA had the initiative and mass - even infantry light mass.  When they finally faltered and ran out of gas (literally) it was largely because they had very long LOCs that were 1) visible from space, and 2) being targeted (supported by all that C4ISR by various means, not the least of which was UA SOF and TD troops armed with long range highly portable AT systems. There was no way the RA was going to be able to secure those corridors at these ranges.  In fact we could not secure those corridors.  So the RA was over-extended by a combination of factors, of which lack of infantry was one factor.

Then once they reset and fell back to the south, they shifted strategies and tactics.  They went back to the old Soviet playbook of firepower, firepower and more firepower.  Massive use of artillery at levels near to WW1.  They used a lot more infantry and tried combined arms (which they suddenly remembered)…and once again were stopped cold because the UA could see those guns and assaults and conduct strikes against them…once again ATGMs, artillery with UAS spotting and eventually HIMARs showed up.  Add to this air denial was in place so the RA lost air superiority.  We then saw the emergence of drones for strike, not only ISR.

Then Fall of ‘22 the RA was over extended once again.  The UA had conducted a deep strike campaign that crippled their C2 and logistics to the point the they could not hold the line they had, so they fell back to current lines. Then Winter of ‘23 we saw the meat assaults by Wagner…plenty of infantry there.  Then in summer of ‘23 the UA tried the western style assault on the RA lines..full up combined arms approach.  They were stopped cold by long range ATGMs and minefields…all under the eyes of RA ISR (they have drones too).

Then last winter. The RA tried combined arms again…we have seen all sorts of videos of this.  The US was stalled in pushing support, UA units were now the ones undermanned on infantry.  Troop density on a 700km front were (and are ) thin, thinner than any other war of this intensity.  We watched as the UA held off the RA with C4ISR, infantry and FPVs.

So after all that…you want to reduce what is happening down to “the RA did not do combined arms”?  For those who have been active on this board for two years this position is laughably under informed.  It reduces all the phenomena we have watched unfold on a daily basis to a sound bite answer that not even Kofman would agree with.  My main point is that Russian performance - lack of infantry, poor C2, corruption, Cold War tanks..whatever, UA performance - lack of mission command, Soviet legacy..whatever…does not come even close to explaining what we have seen in this war.

It may for tourists but not for those who have been tracking it this close for this long.

[photon]

1 hour ago, ArmouredTopHat said:

Mobile, direct firepower against a variety of ground targets, and being able to do so quickly and effectively with its own optics and stabilisation while also protected against a key range of threats. A key component of supporting infantry and other vehicles. 

Forgive the continued noobish questions. I'm a historical water guy, not a current land guy, except for the various CM titles. 

It seems like the role is mobile direct firepower, and the rest of the things are there to enable it to deliver effects in that role, no? But there are lots of other mobile firepower systems, so is it the direct fire that makes the role for tanks?

[ArmouredTopHat]

17 minutes ago, photon said:

Forgive the continued noobish questions. I'm a historical water guy, not a current land guy, except for the various CM titles. 

It seems like the role is mobile direct firepower, and the rest of the things are there to enable it to deliver effects in that role, no? But there are lots of other mobile firepower systems, so is it the direct fire that makes the role for tanks?

Its not a bother at all really! I'll do my best to explain at least my take on things. Dont treat it as gospel by any means. 

Your question is a good one that I suppose is rooted in historical doctrine. Broadly Yes, tanks are there for direct firepower. What makes them especially good at that compared to other platforms is varied. We have seen a lot of militaries try and squeeze that firepower onto a smaller frame / chassis, but then you sacrifice on protection and suffer accordingly. 

Artillery can reach out further, but is subject to other elements working with it to achieve that effect. There is also the issue of dispersion as range grows and time on target, which can result in misses. Even accurate western systems take at least a few rounds on average to hit a target, and they are reliant on having a drone in the air to correct it. (This could be something that becomes far harder in the future if drone based interception becomes a thing, which to some degree we are already seeing in Ukraine)

What tanks deliver in turn is direct firepower that they are able to leverage themselves quickly and near instantly onto target without much external assistance. (Though they do benefit from drone spotting too for overall situation awareness) Tanks have the optics / thermals to do this at quite some range which is partly why they are so dangerous on the direct line of fire front. Western tanks in particular were designed with this in mind, having been made for the purpose of approaching a position in hull down in order to lay waste to vast amounts of soviet hardware advancing towards them before reversing back to avoid counter fire. 

As mentioned before, there are possible changes to be made with tank design to better optimise them for the role in question, I personally do not see that requirement of direct firepower going away for the future, though its a good question if tanks might remain the best way to deliver it. I personally think there is plenty of potential for them to do so, which is supported overall by the decisions of countries of late in tank procurement. 

 

Edited Wednesday at 09:56 PM by ArmouredTopHat

[zinz]

2 hours ago, ArmouredTopHat said:

Mobile, direct firepower against a variety of ground targets, and being able to do so quickly and effectively with its own optics and stabilisation while also protected against a key range of threats. A key component of supporting infantry and other vehicles. 

 

But the question really is how much direct line of sight fire is needed. Isn't it a lot better to fire from further away? Provided you get similar effects with other weapons. So what do you want to shoot at with your tank? Houses and fortifications? Those are fixed and drones and artillery work quite fine against those. Infantry? Those are inside holes a couple meter underground 99% of the time while under attack? Other vehicles? Don't like sticking around either. So please say what you want the tank to do when it gets to the front line and list a couple of alternatives that could do the same job. 

The other part that is very unique about a tank is the protection. All the examples you are showing is that tanks are more survivable than other vehicles on the front line. But that argument is mute as they were designed to be more protected. So the real question is can a tank be made protected enough to increase the survival rate enough to be worth the cost. What is in development on that front right now? The material side is in a dead end pretty much for half a century. So thicker armor, different material, different spacing is not getting substantially better in the last 50 years. So the other option is active systems like trophy that shoot at the threat. In the end it's a defensive shield with missiles. There are lots of ways to reliably defeat such a system. For example. Shoot more attacks at the system than can be engaged at one point of time. Drain the system of all interceptor missiles. Use attacking characteristics (speed maneuverability direction ) that can not be defended against. So no active protection systems can never be a good solution when attacks are cheap and many. 

In conclusion there is currently nothing that can provide adequate protection on the modern battlefield. That's why survivability,the problem you actually want to solve, is not solved by protection. Instead we use concealment. Something that is not seen by the enemy is not being attacked. Range. Something that is far away can not be engaged although it is seen. Small / unimportant. Although the enemy can see and engage me he doesn't because there are other things to hit or he doesn't have economic weapons to do so. 

Now to the last point of a tank. Mobility. It's in this role we don't have any successor or alternatives currently for the tank.  In the end I think driving over land is way too slow in comparison to how fast information and strikes move. That's why offensive maneuver is dead on the current battlefield. 

To summarize. The current tank does not have enough use for its main armament. Can not survive long enough and can't outrun the things that are trying to kill it. Like the battle ship it's dead. 

[ArmouredTopHat]

4 minutes ago, zinz said:

But the question really is how much direct line of sight fire is needed. Isn't it a lot better to fire from further away? Provided you get similar effects with other weapons. So what do you want to shoot at with your tank? Houses and fortifications? Those are fixed and drones and artillery work quite fine against those. Infantry? Those are inside holes a couple meter underground 99% of the time while under attack? Other vehicles? Don't like sticking around either. So please say what you want the tank to do when it gets to the front line and list a couple of alternatives that could do the same job. 

Range in ground combat is not always everything. In practise combat tends to be shorter ranged than what might seem due to terrain and other situational occurrences. The whole point with a tank type armament is that you can pretty much shoot at everything, from other tanks to vehicles to emplacements to infantry. IE most targets. A tank should be able to engage all of said targets and can do so in a way that nothing else really can. This is why there is not really an immediate replacement in terms of role. An IFV has a good but not equal amount of firepower but less protection for instance. The main gun is also half the reason you want a tank in a lot of situation. Among other things a sabot round arrives on target a hell of a lot more faster than even the fastest ATGM and is plenty accurate with the appropriate FCS. A 125mm explosive round does disgusting things to soft targets as well, far more than say a 25mm cannon round. This is before even factoring in the smart rounds in active development that further refine such explosive potential. 

The point is: main armament is versatile.

13 minutes ago, zinz said:

The material side is in a dead end pretty much for half a century. So thicker armor, different material, different spacing is not getting substantially better in the last 50 years.

This is inaccurate to say the least. There has been a literary of protection improvements and refinements made that have substantially increased the protection of tanks. Chobham, NERA, ERA and such have seen literal generation improvements that have greatly improve overall protection despite steady advances in lethality being directed towards the tank. Even now there are new approaches, materials and practises made that can substantially improve armoured protection. To say that its been a dead end is kind of crazy. Have you not seen the internal armour armoured layouts of vehicles have evolved?

17 minutes ago, zinz said:

There are lots of ways to reliably defeat such a system. For example. Shoot more attacks at the system than can be engaged at one point of time. Drain the system of all interceptor missiles.

No one is suggesting that a tank should be able to sit in place and happily absorb everything shot at it. The whole point of something like APS is to allow a vehicle to safely extract itself from a bad position. The mobility remains key in this instance. It should not be viewed as a system that allows the vehicle to sit in the open and challenge others to hit it. The whole point is to complicate a kill chain on the vehicle to make it far harder to knock out. Its why I say something like an APS is worth the cost if your having to expend many times the amount of effort to the kill the same vehicle. All that time could be spent doing something else, like knocking out other vehicles ect. APS acts as a staying power and that is just as powerful as an offensive force multiplier. 

 

21 minutes ago, zinz said:

In conclusion there is currently nothing that can provide adequate protection on the modern battlefield. That's why survivability,the problem you actually want to solve, is not solved by protection. Instead we use concealment. Something that is not seen by the enemy is not being attacked. Range. Something that is far away can not be engaged although it is seen. Small / unimportant. Although the enemy can see and engage me he doesn't because there are other things to hit or he doesn't have economic weapons to do so. 

Again, this seems a premature conclusion and is literally not the case. We have plenty of examples of tanks dating from the cold war surviving things like FPVs, in fact the data so far supports that said tanks are being blown up because they strike mines, the majority of vehicles killed by FPVs have already been abandoned for example, at least going by daily losses. The challenges of attacking on the battlefield are far more complex than simply being the failing of tanks. 
 

 

26 minutes ago, zinz said:

To summarize. The current tank does not have enough use for its main armament. Can not survive long enough and can't outrun the things that are trying to kill it. Like the battle ship it's dead. 

Yet both sides use and want as many tanks as they can get their hands on. If tanks are so damn useless why are we seeing them being produced and used? Are all the worlds military forces in on some sort of scheme to keep tanks around? Battleships got retired because they were literally doing nothing in combat theatres outside of being glorified AA platforms. Tanks currently even in this constrained environment are still fighting. Its simply not comparable. 

[ArmouredTopHat]

 

As the Chieftain put it: Tanks will not become obsolete until something comes along that can do a tanks job better than a tank. In the case of the battleship: it didn't become obsolete because a torpedo could sink it, it became obsolete because other vessels could do everything a battleship was needed for, but better.

[The_Capt]

2 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

You guys are talking right past each other.  I don't think anybody disputes that Russia was short of dismounts.  It was very, very, very clear to us as this war unfolded that they tried the equivalent of a Command & Conquer "tank rush". 

The point that The_Capt is making is that the deficiencies in dismounts wasn't the deciding factor.  They could have probably doubled their infantry and it likely wouldn't have changed the outcome.  That is because it would still be a drop in the bucket for how much infantry was required for an operation of this scale.

This particular point got raised in relation to keeping LOCs free of bandits and to have some sort of bubble around the armored forces as they advanced.  The point being that the amount of infantry that would be required to effectively do that was beyond any nation's capabilities.  Too much volume to cover against too many weapons that can reach out too far guided by eyes that can see everything.

I really don't think that's in dispute, is it?

Steve

No, this is some weird “Russia had no infantry and therefore did not do “combined arms” myth”.  They were definitely undermanned, no argument there.  And were very undermanned for what they got into.  But the shifts in the combat environment made them fatally undermanned.  The UA was not flush either, it was not like there were tens of thousands of troops waiting for those poorly manned RA BTGs.

The other thing that puts this whole “zero infantry” thing in the grave is simple math.  We know the RA invaded with 190-200k troops.  If they were all vehicle crew that is somewhere in the order of 50k vehicles at 4 crew per.  Even reducing for HQ and artillery, 40-50k vehicles is nonsense, the RA may have had 1/4 of that number. So what was everyone else doing?  There were infantry, we saw them running out of burning IFVs.

This is like having a conversation with someone on why Germany lost WW2, and their answer is “D Day”.

[ArmouredTopHat]

https://static.rusi.org/heavy-armoured-forces-in-future-warfare-occasional-paper-december-23.pdf

This is good for a bit more of an academic read for those interested. It goes over a lot of really well sourced stuff. It sadly does not include FPV drones but I will readily post such a report when it surfaces. Overall probably does a better job of explaining my viewpoint than others. 

Edited Thursday at 12:04 AM by ArmouredTopHat

[photon]

1 hour ago, ArmouredTopHat said:

Battleships got retired because they were literally doing nothing in combat theatres outside of being glorified AA platforms.

So, putting my naval history hat, the timeline here matters. The terminus ante quem for everyone knowing that the day of the battleship was over is somewhere in 1944, probably. There were signs in 1940 (Taranto), and really forward thinking people could have put it together in the 30s. The last real battle involving battleships was 2nd Guadalcanal in November 1942.

But no battleship laid down after Pearl Harbor saw action in World War II.

Except for the United States, who were really just dicking around naval production-wise by mid 1943 (so hilariously outproducing everyone else combined that it didn't matter much what we built), new battleship production was over by Pearl Harbor.

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What tanks deliver in turn is direct firepower that they are able to leverage themselves quickly and near instantly onto target without much external assistance.

This was the raison d'être of battleships too. What happened, though, was the underlying theory of naval battle changed such that decisive battle was no longer a thing: attritional tactics (delivered by submarines and aircraft; range and stealth) totally reshaped the picture of battle. In short, battleships could deliver awesome firepower, but there was so much friction on the battlefield that there was no way to get a battle line anywhere near an interesting target. There was a tiny window in 1942 where you could maybe do it at night in the rain. But advances in ISR made even that impossible by mid 1943.

The question I have now is whether the underlying theory of land battle has changed. It seems like there's so much friction that you can't deliver an armored attack to the enemies battle line? Certainly the failures to do so by both the Ukrainians and Russians to do so seem telling?

How do you deliver a large enough force of tanks to the battle line to apply their effects in the face of the sort of friction a modern army can project? I think the answer seems to be, "you don't"?

[chris talpas]

9 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

Mass is already being beaten by precision.  It doesn't seem that is going to get better, it seems it will get worse.  Which is why doubling down on systems that are already struggling to prove themselves useful is a bad idea.

Steve

Thinking of battleship’s and carriers,  the airplane represented long range precision that could defeat mass.  The US carrier task forces represented mass precision that simply overwhelmed Japanese naval and aviation opposition.  There really was no place for the battleship in this new world of massed long range precision.  Those carrier task forces were well equipped with ISR as well.  Just carrying on with the analogies

[ArmouredTopHat]

7 minutes ago, photon said:

The question I have now is whether the underlying theory of land battle has changed. It seems like there's so much friction that you can't deliver an armored attack to the enemies battle line? Certainly the failures to do so by both the Ukrainians and Russians to do so seem telling?

How do you deliver a large enough force of tanks to the battle line to apply their effects in the face of the sort of friction a modern army can project? I think the answer seems to be, "you don't"?

I think the answer is probably a little more complex and the situation in Ukraine means that attacks are extremely costly at the moment. I think its a wider challenge for attacking rather than a problem we can assign specifically towards tanks. Despite the immense proliferation of drones including FPVs, the front is moving at pretty much the same speed as before, IE barely. 

Perhaps when attrition from drones has caused enough damage we might see a resumption of mobile warfare. 

 

14 minutes ago, photon said:

This was the raison d'être of battleships too. What happened, though, was the underlying theory of naval battle changed such that decisive battle was no longer a thing: attritional tactics (delivered by submarines and aircraft; range and stealth) totally reshaped the picture of battle. In short, battleships could deliver awesome firepower, but there was so much friction on the battlefield that there was no way to get a battle line anywhere near an interesting target. There was a tiny window in 1942 where you could maybe do it at night in the rain. But advances in ISR made even that impossible by mid 1943.

The comparison does fall apart in some areas though. Battleships were seldom risked in the sorts of actions that saw Destroyers and Cruisers fight. Tanks readily engage in combat and contribute to the attrition struggle to this day, even with the rather oppressive ISR. They have purpose on the battlefield, even if its currently constrained more than ideally. 

As for your question, current / old tanks certainly struggle to do so, as do vehicles in general, though we have a very skewed impression of that based on the videos and data we have so far. I suspect its a combination of elements to address the problem in areas both technical and doctrinal, which will include design changes for vehicles going forward. I do wonder how a greater emphasis towards denial of hostile ISR might effect the drone heavy environment going forward, especially with applications revolving around armoured vehicle usage. 

As always: Ask not what they can do to the tank, ask what the tank can do to them.
 

 

[dan/california]

31 minutes ago, ArmouredTopHat said:

https://static.rusi.org/heavy-armoured-forces-in-future-warfare-occasional-paper-december-23.pdf

This is good for a bit more of an academic read for those interested. It goes over a lot of really well sourced stuff. It sadly does not include FPV drones but I will readily post such a report when it surfaces. Overall probably does a better job of explaining my viewpoint than others. 

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. The British Army’s heavy armoured forces will also need to relearn old lessons about logistics, sustainment, vehicle recovery and the reconstitution of armoured formations that have suffered a significant level of battlefield attrition. 

 

This seems like an ambitious goal for an army that is going to have ~200 tanks, total. The Ukrainian battlefield would like to know what the plan is for the third week of the war.

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Ultimately, and regardless of which variation of the conceptual model of combat power is preferred, their value lies in countering the technological determinism that is prevalent in commentary on defence and security issues. 

Technology is not determinant, except when it is. The machine gun did for horse calvary, period. And I have the strongest possible suspicion that someone wrote something that sounded exactly like this about 1911, about horses.

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There are serious differences of opinion over the consequences of recent developments, including how to interpret the effectiveness and efficiency of C2 modernisation at moving information internally and the effectiveness of precision fires at fighting the deep battle. In the context of the difficult challenge that the deployment of uncrewed aircraft systems (UAS) imposes on land forces, the debate surrounding the best way forward often loses sight of the fact that the pervasive ISTAR and precision fires complex offers quite narrow effects. Drones and precision fires face the same inherent boundaries that aviation encountered in previous eras:

Tank on tank battles have all but ceased to happen, yet Ukrainian battlefield are covered with burnt out wrecks.

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Likewise, simulated formation-level activity in the electromagnetic spectrum may not stand up to scrutiny if cyber analysis reveals inconsistencies or a lack of concurrent activity in the social media space, as the pervasiveness of social media and the tendency of local inhabitants to naturally document any unusual activity happening in their vicinity means that such inconsistencies can be easily detected using open sources; such activity is hard to control, suppress or convincingly fabricate.

 

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. However, ATGMs come at a high per unit cost, and top-attack munitions are the most expensive of all (and will require skilled operators until sensor and guidance technology improves).

Javelins are expensive, but they are not exactly difficult to operate. 

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. In an example that proves useful for illustrating both current challenges and potential solutions, in February 2020 the US Army’s 25th Infantry Division took part in Warfighter Exercise (WFX) 20-03, a computer-based simulation. The division found itself fighting a difficult initial shaping battle against enemy long-ranged precision fires and ISTAR assets due to attrition that these enemy capabilities were causing. Passive and reactive air defence deployed against UAS proved inadequate, and so the division approached the problem not as one of force protection but of prioritising the 61. Department of the Army, ‘FM 3–98: Reconnaissance and Security Operations’, 2023, pp. 5-4–5-5. 24 Heavy Armoured Forces in Future Combined Arms Warfare Nick Reynolds targeting and destruction of enemy ISTAR in order to break their kill chain.62 The 25th Infantry Division attempted to target different elements throughout the kill chain – the UAS themselves, dismounted forward observers, and UAS ground control stations, as the launchers for enemy indirect fires were assigned to corpslevel assets.63 They had little success against UAS, downing some systems but being unable to destroy enough to have any overall effect. UAS ground control stations were identified as a more vulnerable element of the kill chain. The prioritisation of the counter-UAS battle, and the detection and collation of the enemy forces’ electronic and signals signature allowed the division to understand what effects they needed to apply and where, though the division’s own C2 processes proved insufficiently integrated to consistently destroy identified targets or render the enemy’s UAS network ineffective until the division could adapt and reorganise these processes. While this adaptation was taking place, the division’s ground manoeuvre elements had been badly attrited.64

So the message is out there, the question is who is listening.

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Likewise, recovery of immobilised MBTs is challenging, especially under fire, requiring well-practised and properly-equipped recovery crews if it is to be effective, but it can allow technically killed vehicles to be rapidly returned to service if they can be withdrawn from enemy contact and evacuated to forward repair facilities.90 Delays to recovery operations in Afghanistan for damaged Stryker vehicles could fix units for 24 hours even when recovery vehicles were readily available. Units were forced to defend what proved a tempting target for 85. Micah Clark, ‘What Do Future Main Battle Tanks Need to Succeed? Ask the Operators’, RUSI Defence Systems, 25 March 2019. 86. Colin P Mahle and Charles L Montgomery, ‘There is No Conflict Between Maintenance and Training: How to Establish an Effective Unit Maintenance Culture’, Armor (Vol. 138, No. 4, Fall 2021), pp. 53–57. 87. Yoo, Park and Choi, ‘The Vulnerability Assessment of Ground Combat Vehicles Using Target Functional Modeling and FTA’, pp. 651–58. 88. Ibid. 89. Ibid. 90. Ibid., pp. 84–89. 31 Heavy Armoured Forces in Future Combined Arms Warfare Nick Reynolds insurgent attacks,91 showing that the challenges of recovering and repairing heavier vehicles in warfighting conditions should not be underestimated.

The best scenario in CMSF is about this very thing. More pertinently to the current discussion, if there is one thing drones have proven great at it is turning M-kills into K-kills. 

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Ultimately, increased battlefield lethality might make it difficult to achieve improved survivability through passive or reactive protection. Technological developments in this area might offer some promise, but also involve limitations. For example, expectations of the benefits to be derived from countermeasures such as APS should be moderated. APS have a high power demand when they are active, and some vehicles cannot provide such power.121 Moreover APS, when active, also involve the use of radar guidance, generating an associated electromagnetic signature that in theory could assist enemy targeting. APS are also generally single-use or quickly expended, such that a moderate volume of incoming fire can overwhelm even an effective and reliable APS, leaving the vehicle in question reliant on its passive protection systems. APS technology may provide a layer of protection, but is no guarantee of survivability against a determined or well-armed enemy. They are most effective when heavy armoured forces can concentrate and quickly overwhelm an enemy, whether that enemy is equipped with heavy armour itself or is composed of lighter forces armed with anti-tank weapons. Improved ISTAR capabilities and situational awareness technologies, coupled with concepts of operations that prioritise counterreconnaissance, may be the best way to ensure that the MBT remains a viable platform. Uncrewed Ground Vehicles 

Why yes, machine gun bullets are quite detrimental to horses, yes they are. But horses are so useful we simply have to figure something out. Even though we are not quite sure what that something is. 

Several decades ago I was involved with a study about diesel car maintenance for the California air resources board. To make very long story short. The most important factor by far in the emissions of diesel cars, at least then, was the injection pump. As the pumps wore out the emissions just get worse and worse. But there was huge political pressure to bring the diesel cars into the extant state vehicle inspection system. But that program had a what in todays dollars would be a ~1500 dollar limit on what an owner could be forced to spend. The pumps cost far more than that. So the state put in the program am and annoyed the heck out of absolutely everyone for approximately zero actual emission reductions. Indeed they eventually figured that out and just banned diesel cars. That report read just like this one. It has been mandated that the army will have a tank force, here are all the reasons it is a terrible idea, but the army will still have a tank force....

[dan/california]

38 minutes ago, photon said:

So, putting my naval history hat, the timeline here matters. The terminus ante quem for everyone knowing that the day of the battleship was over is somewhere in 1944, probably. There were signs in 1940 (Taranto), and really forward thinking people could have put it together in the 30s. The last real battle involving battleships was 2nd Guadalcanal in November 1942.

But no battleship laid down after Pearl Harbor saw action in World War II.

Except for the United States, who were really just dicking around naval production-wise by mid 1943 (so hilariously outproducing everyone else combined that it didn't matter much what we built), new battleship production was over by Pearl Harbor.

This was the raison d'être of battleships too. What happened, though, was the underlying theory of naval battle changed such that decisive battle was no longer a thing: attritional tactics (delivered by submarines and aircraft; range and stealth) totally reshaped the picture of battle. In short, battleships could deliver awesome firepower, but there was so much friction on the battlefield that there was no way to get a battle line anywhere near an interesting target. There was a tiny window in 1942 where you could maybe do it at night in the rain. But advances in ISR made even that impossible by mid 1943.

The question I have now is whether the underlying theory of land battle has changed. It seems like there's so much friction that you can't deliver an armored attack to the enemies battle line? Certainly the failures to do so by both the Ukrainians and Russians to do so seem telling?

How do you deliver a large enough force of tanks to the battle line to apply their effects in the face of the sort of friction a modern army can project? I think the answer seems to be, "you don't"?

Great post!

[The_Capt]

21 minutes ago, photon said:

The question I have now is whether the underlying theory of land battle has changed. It seems like there's so much friction that you can't deliver an armored attack to the enemies battle line? Certainly the failures to do so by both the Ukrainians and Russians to do so seem telling?

This is my working hypothesis - it has changed…but we really do not know by how much.  The core components of land warfare are: mass, fires, manoeuvre and combined arms.  These operate under the existing components of operational theory - Command, Act, Sense, Shield, Sustain/Project, Generate.  These all exist within both strategic theory (Ends - Ways - Means: Options) and institutional theories such as Force Employment, Force Generation, Force Development, Force Sustainment, Force Management.

So if land warfare theory is shifting/changing, it does not happen in isolation.  It impacts all of those other theoretical frameworks.  Within land warfare theory we can see that mass has changed. What concentration of mass means is changing; dispersion, disaggregating capability and synthetic mass of unmanned systems - all of this on the back of new abilities to see, command and coordinate.  Fires have definitely changed: range, lethality and precision have arrived in full force.  In fact fires are so prevalent that they are projecting denial in ways we have not seen before.  Manoeuvre has changed…to the point that we have not really figured it out.  We see a need to fire-to-manoeuvre when it was the other way around.  This all leads to a point that our outgoing CHOD said at the operational conference this year - we still have combined arms, but what those arms are and how they combine is changing.  How we project dilemma onto an opponent is changing.

It has been two years of observations that lead me to this. A growing sense that things were simply not adding up. The evidence just grew too large to ignore.  Land warfare theory has definitely changed in this war - no dodging that reality.  So the question really is, has it changed for every war from now on?  And if so, how much? The future does not simply happen like a truck roaring backwards through time.  We make it happen by acting today.  And what people are seeing is going to change how we invest, what we invest in and where.  Anyone who opposes the west, the US in particular, are going to invest in denial - they already were at sea and in the air.  They are seeing what Ukraine did on a shoestring to Russia and are going to run after it.  Now we can try to sustain advantage by plating up our existing capabilities and hope that works. Or become water ourselves and fight differently.  History is not on the “hey let’s think about it differently” side.

Regardless, no one in the academic or military community disagrees that land warfare has changed.  What we cannot agree upon is what needs to be done about it.  By far the weakest argument is “it will all be fine, it is a fad that will pass.”  The freakin French CHOD is running with that one.  (Not all that surprising really: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/611368-airplanes-are-interesting-toys-but-of-no-military-value) The most likely reaction is to spend billions on trying to protect our current forces.  This will be expensive and wasteful. At best we may delay the trends we have been seeing for 20 years now. Or we may try to hybridize, blending old with new. Or we may try wild and new ideas but in the edges, if a nation can afford it.

In the end we will just have to wait and see I guess.

[ArmouredTopHat]

20 minutes ago, dan/california said:

This seems like an ambitious goal for an army that is going to have ~200 tanks, total. The Ukrainian battlefield would like to know what the plan is for the third week of the war.

In the UK's defence, ground force combat is not exactly the priority compared to Air or Sea. The number of tanks is still too low for my liking all the same. Its been an issue for the MOD for a while. Its what happens when you have several decades of mismanagement I guess. 

20 minutes ago, dan/california said:

Why yes, machine gun bullets are quite detrimental to horses, yes they are. But horses are so useful we simply have to figure something out. Even though we are not quite sure what that something is. 

Bullets are cheap, does that make a human on the battlefield obsolete? How about SAMs, do they make planes obsolete? Did massed artillery fire make the infantry platoon obsolete? I get a little irritated at absolutist conclusions about x, y or z being obsolete when the bodies from this war being fought are still warm.  

I really think we need to wait and see. 

Edited Thursday at 02:05 AM by ArmouredTopHat

[Vanir Ausf B]

15 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

In the end we will just have to wait and see I guess.

 

2 minutes ago, ArmouredTopHat said:

I really think we need to wait and see. 

Consensus reached at last.

/thread

[ArmouredTopHat]

https://dispatch.bazaarofwar.com/p/the-future-of-armor-going-to-ground

I found this as well, which is a response to the article I linked earlier. Interesting concept of outsourcing protection of the vehicles to external drones. Imagine a tank being guarded by several FPVs!

[chrisl]

7 hours ago, ArmouredTopHat said:

APS is a living, breathing system in active use. Does Gaza not count or something? The system has limitations but its value is undeniable. Why else is Israel putting it on MBTs, IFVs and even bulldozers for crying out loud. Why are next gen tanks look very likely to incorporate the system?

 

Hamas probably can't easily do anti-radiation.

A major problem with APS is the sensing - if you do active sensing with a radar, you're providing a homing signal to someone who, after a small number of attempts, can figure out how many simultaneous attackers it takes to overwhelm the APS.  You might as well paint yourself up like Daffy Duck "shoot me now! shoot me now!"

Passive sensing will give you less precision, lower SNR, and be easier to spoof once the attacker figures out the details of your camera system.  And the attacker will do it from their mom's basement BVR at no risk to themselves - just a bunch of cheap semi-autonomous munitions, while the tanks are out there getting hammered.  The problem with tanks using direct fire is range.  On a fully illuminated battlefield (full borg spotting, with partial object transparency) they become targets long, long before they get anywhere near where they will have LOS to a meaningful target.  And they're big, hot, noisy, spectrally-different-from-their-background targets.  Tanks might remain in a semi-direct fire infantry support role where they're more like flat-trajectory artillery firing over the horizon.

[Battlefront.com]

56 minutes ago, ArmouredTopHat said:

https://dispatch.bazaarofwar.com/p/the-future-of-armor-going-to-ground

I found this as well, which is a response to the article I linked earlier. Interesting concept of outsourcing protection of the vehicles to external drones. Imagine a tank being guarded by several FPVs!

Yet another argument for getting rid of tanks and going with something that actually delivers what is needed and doing it without all the horrible baggage that comes with MBTs. 

The same argument I made before about APS not doing anything to fix the core problems applies to this and every other fanciful "let's throw tons more money at the problem and hope it goes away".

Having drones protect horse cavalry or battleships is also the wrong solution.

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

5 hours ago, Vanir Ausf B said:

I disagree that APCs can limit exposure more so than tanks. APCs need to close to within a certain distance of the objective while tanks can hang back in keyholed positions providing long range fire support, terrain permittin

You misunderstood my point.  A tank and an APC are about as equally vulnerable getting from A to B because they are, effectively, the same thing to ISR and various forms of anti-armor capabilities.  True.  The difference is the APC doesn't have to loiter around the highest threat area in order to perform its unique capabilities - moving Humans under some amount of protection.  An MBT, on the other hand, *MUST* loiter in the highest threat environment to perform it's job - putting fire on an enemy position. 

Put another way, the APC and MBT both have the same challenges while moving, but the MBT has an additional challenge of prolonged protection while largely stationary.  It could be there's a way to solve for mobility, but not for standing and fighting.  Further, the APC has a unique role to play, and a very important one, whereas the MBT is a redundant system that arguably is more costly and less effective than other systems.  The point here is that it is worth investing in figuring out how to keep an APC alive doing it's role, there isn't as strong of a case to make for MBTs.

Steve

[chrisl]

7 hours ago, ArmouredTopHat said:

Battleships were superseded in their role (Decisive battle) by other, more effective means. This has not happened to the tank for a variety of reasons. The two are simply not very comparable in terms of roles and usage, not to mention the adaptability difference. 

From what we have seen, even with the current constraints on tanks in Ukraine, they are still getting to where they need to be a lot of the time. They are certainly surviving to some degree despite such proliferation of drones. The key seems to be not to hang around an area for too long, hence the emphasis on mobility for future platforms. 

We're literally watching it happen in Ukraine.

The death of the battleship started with pilots dropping hand grenades out of aircraft in WWI.  It didn't take long for someone to think they could launch and land aircraft on boats, and have those aircraft carry munitions.  So instead of sending a giant capital expense into LOS of the target (that might be a giant capital expense full of explosive stuff that can shoot back) and putting that giant capital expense and 5000 sailors at risk, they could launch ~100 guys off of a different giant capital expense, send them to targets hundreds of miles further than the battleship could reach, and put only the 100 guys and some relatively cheap, almost disposable aircraft at risk.  The battleship was dead by 1941.  It wasn't extinct at that point, but it got on the endangered list and went down from there.

With modern ISR, electronics, and radio Ukraine is doing the same thing on land that the aircraft carriers did on the sea.  It happened earlier on the sea because it's dead flat and there's nothing to hide behind except fog and clouds, so airplanes could do the spotting and eventually satellites with relatively low resolution could do it.  It's taken longer on land, but between optical and SAR, plus local scouting UAVs, high altitude UAVs, and crewed aircraft at a variety of ranges, you can't move something the size of a tank anywhere without being seen and tracked in near real time.  Except maybe in a tunnel, but that presents a whole host of other issues... Which kind of precision weapon destroys your tank will depend on who you are and who your enemy is.  So what if you have APS.  I can drop a bunch of mines around you.  Or fly a drone underneath you.  Or fly a bunch of drones at you from different directions all coordinated to come in faster than your APS can change targets because I can spend 100 drones to learn that, and it still costs less than one of your tanks, and doesn't put my drone drivers at risk

What does the tank get you?  Direct fire AP.  But at what?  Tank duels are pretty much over.  Direct fire HE.  Ok, but you can't depress enough to really get the guys in a trench - we watched a tank use all its HE and then do an overrun to grind up the trench because all that HE on the lip of the trench wasn't useful.  But we've also watched a drone team sit and watch a trench with 2-3 drones while they systematically send FPVs into the secure dugouts in trenches to clear them out. Got a door on your dugout?  We'll send one to blow it open and another to go inside and blow you up.  While sitting safely in Baba's basement eating milk and cookies.

 

[dan/california]

1 hour ago, ArmouredTopHat said:

How about SAMs, do they make planes obsolete?

Not obsolete, but a lot less useful. Neither side in Ukraine can more than barely attempt to fly a plane over the other sides territory. If the Russians could do much with their air force they would be winning this war. I realize that the U.S. has SEAD capabilities that no one else does, but a lot of the trends that are weighing on tanks are going to weigh on manned aircraft, too.

[chrisl]

7 hours ago, ArmouredTopHat said:

While the cost element is true, this is being a little dismissive with regards to durability of tanks. Even tandems can be reliably stopped by the correct layout of protection. Its a question of weight and layout (Something that lighter vehicles struggle with)

There are at least ways to bring tank costs down. Smaller and lighter (than an MBT at least) with smaller crews already cuts costs significantly. 

If I can see you beyond the range of your direct fire tank gun, all I need is an M-kill and I can clean you up later.  Your tracks have to be able to touch the ground and are a weak point.  

[Battlefront.com]

8 minutes ago, chrisl said:

What does the tank get you?  Direct fire AP.  But at what?  Tank duels are pretty much over.  Direct fire HE.  Ok, but you can't depress enough to really get the guys in a trench - we watched a tank use all its HE and then do an overrun to grind up the trench because all that HE on the lip of the trench wasn't useful.  But we've also watched a drone team sit and watch a trench with 2-3 drones while they systematically send FPVs into the secure dugouts in trenches to clear them out. Got a door on your dugout?  We'll send one to blow it open and another to go inside and blow you up.  While sitting safely in Baba's basement eating milk and cookies.

The K-2 video you referenced above is an excellent example of why the tank is not all that great even when it doesn't get killed.  ArmouredTopHat, dozens of pages ago, took the exact opposite lesson from that video.  Which is that tanks did a great job there because the enemy infantry was suppressed and were lucky enough to have been missed by the ATGM firing at it.

How much did it cost to build and field the three tanks in that K-2 video?  How much to train their crews?  How much in ammo did they expend?  Compare that against how much it would have taken to send 10 FPVs into the trench.  Might not even have taken 10 to wind up with the same results as the thanks did.

The evidence is all there plain as day.  We're not the only ones seeing it. Anybody that looks at a vehicle loss chart can see it as well.

Steve