Is The Tank Dead? What Is the Future of Armored Forces

[Erwin]

2 hours ago, slysniper said:

The tank as we know it, is on the going to be dead list, if you cannot see it, that is your problem.  What is going to replace it.  Likely a smaller tracked platform that is remotely operated and it has nothing more than desired weaponry mounted on it.  (at which point, can we call it a tank anymore, Maybe, but really it will not be a tank.)

I envision something much lighter, faster, likely caring something around a 40-45 mm caliber gun unit or missiles on it that can be fire at a very high speed of rate.  The crew will ... be detached ... traveling with their own transport.

+1  This seems to be the future - not just with tanks, but also airpower (and maybe naval as well if Antiship weapons are as unstoppable and deadly as those that sank the Moskva).  Masses of relatively inexpensive units making mass attacks while under remote control or AI control.  

[Erwin]

2 hours ago, chuckdyke said:

All controlled from outer space we play Combat Mission. With real maps our units operate anywhere in the world with our true-to-life equipment and humanoid robotics. 

You have heard of "Meta"?  Seems to be exactly the future it predicts.  Of course once the elites have all sent themselves to the orbiting stations (a la "Don't Look Up" movie) courtesy of SpaceX etc. the rest of us here can kiss our asses goodbye.  

[womble]

7 hours ago, chuckdyke said:

You should consider FOW infantry are concealed a lot longer.

Please try and decide what point you're trying to make. Last I saw, ATGMs are infantry weapons and can stay as concealed as any other infantry element.

[chuckdyke]

5 hours ago, womble said:

ATGMs

Once they fire, they are toast. The Russians should not have any tanks left if the 90% kill probability is true. That is only for the Javelins not counting the NLAWs In WW2 it was the 88 mm killing tanks. Now AT Guns are obsolete not the tank The Russians used their tanks poorly. The question is what are you going to use in your formations instead of the tank. I hope I am wrong but soon the battlefield will be contaminated with nuclear fallout. Armour with positive pressure inside will be the only means to advance across it.   US facing shortage of Javelin anti-tank missiles post supplies to Ukraine: Report (republicworld.com)

[womble]

8 hours ago, chuckdyke said:

Once they fire, they are toast.

In what dreamland is that a precise statement? Sure, some of them will be, but that's true of any battlefield system, so true that it's not worth stating. So are you saying that any ATGM that pops one off gets killed by return fire (whether on-call indirect fires, or from the targetted unit or elements forward of it) every time? But a Stugna firing from defilade isn't vulnerable to direct fire, and can displace before indirect fires can be called. A Javelin at long range isn't necessarily within the range for response from the target vehicle, nor can it necessarily be acquired for effective return fire before it ducks into cover or concealment. Even firing an NLAW at close range isn't a guaranteed suicide mission, depending on the situation.

9 hours ago, chuckdyke said:

In WW2 it was the 88 mm killing tanks. Now AT Guns are obsolete not the tank

Non-sequitur for the win? Tanks outliving AT Guns has zero bearing on whether they'll outlive the "next" threat. It's apparent that ATGMs have numerous advantages over ATG in the Darwinist environment of the battlefield some or all of: range; concealability; killing power; mobility; availability.

9 hours ago, chuckdyke said:

The question is what are you going to use in your formations instead of the tank.

And this thread (and other places) have provided plausible potential answers.

9 hours ago, chuckdyke said:

...nuclear fallout. Armour with positive pressure inside will be the only means to advance across it.

Armour doesn't necessarily mean "tank".  You might have noticed things called "APCs" and "IFVs" in the battlespace.

[chuckdyke]

Some people just keep on dreaming, remembering the Sagger sure it made the Patton and Centurion obsolete the present generation was developed. M4 Sherman was called a tank the Abrams is a completely different vehicle but still called a tank. Something called a tank will get the better of the present Wunderwaffen ATGMs, however some geniuses will think of something to counter it. 

[Grey_Fox]

7 hours ago, womble said:

Armour doesn't necessarily mean "tank".  You might have noticed things called "APCs" and "IFVs" in the battlespace

APCs and IFVs will be even more vulnerable than a tank against the same threats. At the very least they'll either have less armour or less weaponry if they want to be able to carry passengers, and most likely they'll have to have less of both.

Edited April 18, 2022 by Grey_Fox

[womble]

4 hours ago, Grey_Fox said:

APCs and IFVs will be even more vulnerable than a tank against the same threats. At the very least they'll either have less armour or less weaponry if they want to be able to carry passengers, and most likely they'll have to have less of both.

How do you get "more vulnerable" than "dead"? I'm not sure that the state of a BMP is functionally any worse than how a T-72 turns flips its turret into the next street  when a Javelin EFP arrives. Sure, the entire hull top gets ripped off the APC, not just its turret, but both are irreparably combat ineffective and everyone inside is dead. Not sure the tank is worth the extra money for what it brings to the fight.

There are other threats though that the APC is capable of surviving, and "transiting contaminated areas", per the context of what you've quoted, is one of them. And it can carry infantry, protected, where a tank cannot.

[Grey_Fox]

22 minutes ago, womble said:

How do you get "more vulnerable" than "dead"? I'm not sure that the state of a BMP is functionally any worse than how a T-72 turns flips its turret into the next street  when a Javelin EFP arrives. Sure, the entire hull top gets ripped off the APC, not just its turret, but both are irreparably combat ineffective and everyone inside is dead. Not sure the tank is worth the extra money for what it brings to the fight.

There are many things that can kill an APC or IFV that won't kill a tank. If it can kill a tank, of course it's going to kill an APC, and probably a lot harder

25 minutes ago, womble said:

There are other threats though that the APC is capable of surviving, and "transiting contaminated areas", per the context of what you've quoted, is one of them. And it can carry infantry, protected, where a tank cannot.

I'm not saying that APCs and IFVs are obsolete or useless. I'm saying that tanks aren't obsolete or useless. They perform a role that APCs and IFVs can't, which is bringing a whole lot of mobile protected firepower to the field without any compromises made to allow them to carry passengers.

[slysniper]

14 hours ago, Grey_Fox said:

I'm not saying that APCs and IFVs are obsolete or useless. I'm saying that tanks aren't obsolete or useless. They perform a role that APCs and IFVs can't, which is bringing a whole lot of mobile protected firepower to the field without any compromises made to allow them to carry passengers.

well, if I can build something that cost 5 times less, so I can have 5 vs 1 to a tank. and I can make it smaller and faster. And I can have it operate without a crew inside it.

And forget about all the effort to put any protection on it for atgm's or large ordinance. Which one sounds like the way to go in the future, that or a present tank.

 

The only way for a present tank concept to survive long term is if some type of system to be developed that will consistently beat all incoming threats.

( I think that is a task that is not happening much anymore) the defense systems are presently getting too costly and is hurting performance without getting much back in return for survivability

Edited April 19, 2022 by slysniper

[Grey_Fox]

1 hour ago, slysniper said:

well, if I can build something that cost 5 times less, so I can have 5 vs 1 to a tank. and I can make it smaller and faster. And I can have it operate without a crew inside it.

But it isn't 1/5 of the price. A Bradley is ~3.1 million USD, an M1A2 seems to be someplace in the region of 9 million USD. And you sure as hell are not going to get a fully remote-operated, performant IFV for 1/5 the price of an Abrams.

I posted a video here not long ago of IFVs crashing into each other which had manned crews. Any remote-operated IFV is going to have **even worse** situational awareness since the crews aren't going to be able to poke their heads out of the vehicle and look around, plus will be susceptible to all manner of EW.

Besides - what do you think a small, remote-operated, armoured vehicle which doesn't have any passengers and has all sorts of weapons is called? You can call it a UGV all you want, it's still a tank.

1 hour ago, slysniper said:

And forget about all the effort to put any protection on it for atgm's or large ordinance. Which one sounds like the way to go in the future, that or a present tank.

Trophy APS is already a part of the SEPv3 programme, so I'm not sure what this sentence is supposed to mean.

1 hour ago, slysniper said:

The only way for a present tank concept to survive long term is if some type of system to be developed that will consistently beat all incoming threats.

Since when has any tank ever been able to consistently beat all incoming threats? You created scenarios which are bundled into the CW base game - aren't pretty much all tanks in that time period vulnerable to all anti-tank weaponry? Weren't pretty much all tanks in WW2 vulnerable to most AT weaponry?

The way I'm reading this is that you're trying to set an impossible standard - that the only way a tank can be useful is if it's invincible and then declaring victory in the argument because there's no such thing as an invincible wunderwaffe. You even seem to be throwing out the entire concept of combined arms warfare.

1 hour ago, slysniper said:

the defense systems are presently getting too costly and is hurting performance

When has warfare ever been cheap?

Edited April 19, 2022 by Grey_Fox

[db_zero]

The lessons from Ukraine is you need to conduct proper reconnaissance, combined arms tactics and have mech infantry that is well trained and motivated to leave their IFVs close and kill enemy AT teams-something the Russian infantry has been reluctant to do.

Certain tweaks will be made- drone killing vehicles that can keep pace with armored formations and APS systems that get lighter. You’ll probably start seeing the smaller switchblade like drones mounted on armored vehicles specially programmed for use on armored vehicles to hunt down and suppress ATGM operators.

The recent pictures of the unmanned ground vehicles begs the question-how would that do in a heavy artillery barrage?

Looks like it would not last long. Even a nearby blast from a 155mm would flip it over.

[MikeyD]

There's that old saying 'If the tank didn't exist someone would have to invent it.'  Its likely the MBT concept will be abandoned but 'support vehicles' will then begin showing up that start to look more and more tank-like over time. Someone recently plopped a 'close fire support' turret onto a (already huge) Boxer and produced a vehicle  about the dimensions of a Maus!

[Centurian52]

On 4/19/2022 at 1:08 PM, MikeyD said:

There's that old saying 'If the tank didn't exist someone would have to invent it.'  Its likely the MBT concept will be abandoned but 'support vehicles' will then begin showing up that start to look more and more tank-like over time. Someone recently plopped a 'close fire support' turret onto a (already huge) Boxer and produced a vehicle  about the dimensions of a Maus!

This is my view. Modern tanks will be rendered obsolete...by more advanced tanks. But until someone comes up with a better way to provide heavy direct firepower than a big-gunned armored vehicle, the tank is here to stay.

Like Nicholas Moran said, obsolescence is driven by capability, not vulnerability. Infantry are extremely vulnerable to bullets, and a bullet is a heck of a lot cheaper than an infantryman. And yet infantry have not been rendered obsolete because nothing else can provide the same capability as infantry (granting that in a century or so we may have robots performing the same jobs as infantry). The presence of weapons that the tank is very vulnerable to is not enough to render it obsolete. The development of something which does a better job of providing the same capability is what will render it obsolete.

I don't know if perhaps precise enough artillery with short enough call-in times could someday provide the same direct fire capabilities as a tank (hitting a moving target could be difficult). That's the only solution I can think of that would actually render the tank truly obsolete. Any vehicle that tried to take over the role of the tank would quickly start evolving to be very tank-like. Even removing the crew and making it remotely operated, or even fully autonomous, doesn't guarantee that it won't still be called a tank.