Are all the modern western tanks pretty similar in performance ?

[Wiggum]

Is something possible today when you have good equipment against modern (west) tanks ?

http://panzer-archiv.de/forum/viewtopic.php?p=136604&highlight=sherman&sid=4035e77c3580c2dafa6324ac49bc3f52#136604

Its all in German and i cant translate it all...

But the text is about a German Soldier who destroyed 7 US-Tanks (Sherman) within 24h in the same battle with panzerfaust and mines.

[ January 28, 2008, 08:59 AM: Message edited by: Wiggum ]

[Sivodsi]

Tanks won't be obsolete due to the UAV threat for a while yet simply because not enough countries have ones that are capable of knocking out tanks. Until AT-UAVs become so cheap and widespread that they can be had easily on the arms market, tanks will remain a part of a dominating occupying or invading force.

And if two powers that have them do come blows the obsolescence of tanks or otherwise will be the least of anybody's concerns.

[Bigduke6]

Well, cavalry hung around for about a century after becoming obviously obsolescent. It is a coincidence that the armor arm in most armies considers itself a direct descendant of the horse cavalry?

From a purely technical point of view, I think tanks are already obsolete, i.e., if your army has the money and tech to field tanks, already your army with the ability to choose without prejudice can get far more firepower for resources invested than a 50-70 ton hunk of steel that is increasingly impossible to hide.

The logic is obvious. Guided missiles and munitions are no longer only available to the 1st World or even the 2nd: India makes them, so does Iran, etc. The electronics that makes those weapons go are getting cheaper and more available over time, and if the Americans can field a top-attack infantry missile then it's only a matter of time before the Russians do the same, and the Chinese and the rest won't be far behind.

A tank by definition depends on its thick armor for survival, at least, tank tactics have always been built on the idea that at least some part of the tank was relatively invulnerable to at least some of the basic weapons that could get thrown at it.

With the advent of top-attack (or side attack, or bottom-attack, or hyper-targeted, or hyper-velocity, or whatever else missiles in the hands of the infantry, it seems to me the infantry or whatever else throwing missiles will gain a decisive advantage. The infantry can hide better than the tank, and the infantry can hurt the tank from any aspect, at whatever range the tank is likely to find the infantry.

UAVes are a permutation of the same thing - a way of seeing the tank so as to whack it with a missile. As are helicopter-mounted missiles, as are vehicle-mounted missiles, as are laser-riding artillery shells, and so on. All are ways of seeing something on the battlefield and smacking it precisely, with a weapon specifically designed to destroy that particular target. And of course as time has gone on, the "signature" of the missile has tended to become smaller, while tanks if anything are growing easier to spot.

There are reports from the Yom Kippur war, denied by the Israelis, that not only did the Egyptian Sagger belt stop Israeli armor in its tracks, but that a substantial portion of the Israeli counterattack in the Sinai depended on US TOWs to write down the Egyptian armor. There is also the French experience in Chad, where as I understand it Milan on Toyota trucks (WFT isn't a weapon like that in CMSF, BTW?) cut a conventional Libyan armor force to bits.

But aside from that questionable example, never has the theory that a force armed primarily with missles could fight it out with primarily a tank force.

Could an army willing to think creatively do without its tank park entirely? I wonder. Maybe it might well be possible to simply field high missile densities, the infantry capable of handling it, and back up that up with artillery and UAVes capable of riding the same kind kind of guidance beams, and then issue scads of SAM to keep away the airforce operated by conventional opponents. Provided you could keep the infantry and the missiles coming in quantity, it would seem to me a force like that would have all sorts of advantages in any kind of attrition. Their killing power is cheap, flexible, and replacable, the opponents' killing power by comparison is more expensive, harder to maintain, and more difficult to replace.

Sure you do without the "shock" the armor guys keep saying is their secret weapon, but from where I sit, armor shock only works if the tanks can get to a point where they are invulnerable to the infantry opposing them. Theoretically, from a cost POV, already it is possible for almost any nation with a reasonable industrial base to field infantry invulnerable to tanks, for alot less cost than the tanks.

The point of course is that all that is theoretical. Without wars and usually heavy defeats to force the pace, military innovation is typically slow, incremental, and biased towards making what we already have a little bit better. For a nation to buy into a full-missile-force, it would have to jettison its armor branch and any pretensions to an armor force - an almost impossible proposition in any country with a professional military.

An absence of tank envy is even more improbable in a place without armor, but with resources and the ability to decide whether they want tanks or not. A despot newly in control of some African or Asian military wants tanks first and foremost, because even if the 1st World can cut tanks to pieces his domestic opponents cannot, and that's where he sees the first threat to his power.

It's kind of like aircraft carriers. There's alot of evidence out there that a weapon like that, in this day and age, is simply too big and impossible to hide in an all out war. There would be too many guided munitions aimed at it, from things the aircraft carrier would have too much trouble finding, the logic goes.

But as long as there are no all out wars, then it is very convenient to have something big and powerful and capable of delivering a whole bunch of force against opponents incapable of striking back. That's a pretty good description of a tank I think.

[M1A1TC]

What about active defence systems? When mounted on a vehicle, it can defeat an RPG or a missile coming at it.

Some good info here

http://www.imi-israel.com/Business/ProductsFamily/Product.aspx?FolderID=41

http://btvt.narod.ru/2/2.html

http://www.btvt.narod.ru/spec/antitank.html

[ January 28, 2008, 10:28 AM: Message edited by: M1A1TankCommander ]

[cool breeze]

And air bursting heavy HE taking out infantry an uavs?

[gibsonm]

Originally posted by Bigduke6:

It is a coincidence that the armor arm in most armies considers itself a direct descendant of the horse cavalry?

No because in almost every army the Cavalry units swapped their horses for armour and currently conduct similar roles to their mounted forebears but in vehicles instead.

British Light Cavalry became Armoured Reconnaissance Regiments, Heavy Cavalry became Tank or Armoured Regiments, etc.

Similar conversions occurred throughout the Commonwealth.

The French followed a similar process as did the Americans too.

[MikeyD]

Funny how nobody mentions Canada. Leopard 2 A6M with long-barrelled 120mm and Slat armor cage.

[gibsonm]

What do you mean?

I said “Commonwealth” above (that includes Canada) and also I thought the thread was vehicle based so when Leopard 2A6 was mentioned in the second post I took that to include all user countries (again includes Canada).

Also be aware that Canada doesn’t own their 2A6’s they are leased. Interesting to see how they return them all in working order when at least one has been destroyed overseas.

[Stuart Galbraith]

I think for urban operations, the Challenger2 is pretty well setup. With the new toe armour package thats just been developed and the new machine gun the loader can operate under armour, I think that it has the Abrams beat. Post Tusk and I think the only significant advantage the Abrams has is the ammunition, and Challenger2 is getting the smoothbore sometime in the next 10 years. Leopard looks great with Slat armour, by the Challys had that for the past 4 years.

Understand Im not razzing anyone elses armour here. ive just looked at the Challenger2 dorchester level 2 F armour package, and I think people greatly underestimate how thick the side armour is.

[JasonC]

BigDuke6 - I'm not buying it. Only the dead have seen the end of tanks (lol).

You state that the point of tanks and tank tactics has always been to be invulnerable to enemy AT weapons. But this is simply not the case. On the contrary, periods in which the heaviest tanks have been invulnerable, even just through the front aspect, to the most powerful AT weapons of their enemy, are outlier exceptions in the history of tank warfare.

The point of armor is to neutralize some enemy weapon systems. This reduces the effective enemy force, and sets up a concentration game as to where the remaining highly effective AT weapons will be sited. Armor then exploits its superior mobility and an offensive posture to mass elsewhere. Meanwhile, combined arms coordination is employed to reduce the effectiveness of the AT weapons that remain in the tank heavy sectors, or to neutralize the dense ones even when they are avoided.

That recipe has worked from WW I to now.

When lazy overconfident tankers depart from it, sure they can be stopped. Being stopped one place, at one time, has never been the issue, since it can always happen and frequently does. Breakthroughs only need a couple, the defense needs to hold everywhere.

In practice, armor used correctly has only been countered by counter-massed armor )attritional brawling between reserves, like on like), or in very recent times (post smart weapons) by complete air supremacy. Occasionally in earlier eras it was stopped by massed HE storms, depriving attacking armor of combined arms - but even then the bulk of the actual kills and the overall stop still depended on defending armor.

As for Saggers in 1973, it is directly on point. As soon as the Israelis dropped their 1967-learned arrogance and went back to using combined arms, they were readily mastered. That meant coordinating air and artillery with tank movements, and it meant punching through the line at chosen points only, instead of trying to steamroll it everywhere.

Modern infantry AT has proven itself able to cause occasionally losses and thus puncture any mythical invulnerability of tanks. But tanks have never needed any such invulnerability to be effective. Israel lost 400 tanks in 1973, but it had 1500, and won. In fights since, no one has come close to inflicting losses on that scale against modern western armor, with full air supremacy and combined arms.

The Russians lost something like 150 tanks in Afghanistan in 10 years, and more like 50 in the Chechen war. Losses on such a tiny scale simply do not have military significance. Not fun for the few in them who would rather be invulnerable, no doubt. But tanks continue the mission and clobber whatever is in front of them, and if that is all these lose to infantry AT, it does not remotely stop them.

Chad vs. Libya is another case directly on point. Chad was only able to do as well as it did because the Libyans lacked combined arms sophistication. They were militarily incompetent, that is all. Iraq vs. Iran there was plenty of that to go around, but tanks were quite effective. Same in the Bosnia war.

There are tens of thousands of legacy major weapon systems fielded by regional and first world powers, that can't seriously hurt a modern main battle tank, but can readily stop anything less. There are scads of artillery systems and even more of light arms throughout the world, that are completely ineffective against them, but perfectly effective against dismounted infantry touting expensive missiles.

Just as the invention of a PAK 40 hardly made a T-34 obsolete, the invention of good ATGMs does not make modern MBTs obsolete. It just makes them major weapon systems in a combined arms toolbox, just like Panzer IIIs or T-34s or Shermans were, in their heyday.

[John Kettler]

M1A1TankCommander,

Please Google Valeriy Fofanov. He's a contributor to CMSF, and his site has some marvelous material on the issues you raised. Please also see the pertinent parts of www.warfare.ru Apologies for those intrusive ads, which weren't there the last time I visited the site!

Regards,

John Kettler

[ January 29, 2008, 09:47 PM: Message edited by: John Kettler ]

[Lethaface]

Originally posted by Bigduke6:

Well, cavalry hung around for about a century after becoming obviously obsolescent.

I think you might be roughly 4 millennia wrong there

[SgtMuhammed]

I hope they plan on removing those signs. Then again they are Canadian.

[M1A1TC]

Thank you Mr Kettler

I think the new active defence weapons might make AT missiles obsolete (until something else come up)

Now we have lazers that shoot incoming missiles, mortar and RPG rounds. When they are portable enough to be placed on each tank, they will be pretty much invulnurable to AT infantry weapons.

How about this jammer:

The TShU-1-7 optronic jammer ensures effective protection of armoured vehicles against anti-tank guided missiles such as TOW, HOT, MILAN, DRAGON, COBRA, АТ-3, HN-5 etc. The modulated IR flux formed by the TShU-1-7 makes up the jamming noise inside the missile's "track loop" and exploits its guidance system. The hit probability is decreased practically up to zero.

The TShU system consists of two emitters, two power supply and control units, a control panel. It is mounted on tanks like Т-72, Т-80, Т-90 (as a part of the protection unit "ShTORA-1"), as well on other military and civil objects.

[Bigduke6]

JasonC,

Well, what you say is of course the standard professional armor officer line.

You may be right of course, but I think the trends are against the tank. All that metal is getting harder and harder to hide, and easier and easier to hit with something cheap, that can kill the tank.

I think the Sinai '73 is illustrative of an initial step in that trend. The balloon went up, and Israeli tank platoons and companies attempted to overrun Egyptian infantry sitting in holes in the sand on the east side of the Suez canal. The Egyptians had a primitive ATGM - Sagger - which they fired in salvoes at individual tanks. The result was Israeli tank platoons and companies cut to bits.

The Israelis to their credit altered their tactics. They began employing combined arms against missiles, mostly meaning APCs and every one else that could see it hosed wherever the launch exhaust came from, the moment there was a launch.

Sagger is a first generation missile, you fly the thing into the target like a model airplane, there is no sighting. So the operator needs his head stuck way up, as he needs to see the missile and the tank he is trying to hit. Which added up to vulnerability to supression.

This combined with increased density of tanks - eventually standard Israeli attack was by combined arms battalion - and APCs changed the balance. Where once it was tanks outnumbered by missile launchers, now there were enough MGs to supress a missile operator firing a missile with a 20 second flight time out to a maximum range of 3000 meters or so. Result: Sagger threat supressed, the tank is not obsolete after all.

But these days, missiles are alot better, and alot more common. They reach out farther than tanks, the best of them are smart enough to zero in on the thin top of the tank, the low end international sighting standard is the gunner keeps a red dot in his sight on the tank, and the top end standard is fire-and-forget. The big launch cloud is already old hat, the better systems don't make much of a cloud at all, can be fired from buildings, take 8-10 not 20 seconds to reach 3000 meters, etc. All of which predicates against supressing the gunner.

More ominously for the tank, no longer is missile technology monopolized by a couple of superpowers. Iran makes 'em, India makes 'em, China makes 'em, Brazil makes 'em. So you get reduced price for missiles and more effort to figure out a workable system, as quite simply there are more companies out there trying to sell missiles.

It is easy enough to blame the Libyan defeat against the Chadians and their Toyotas on Libyan incompetence. But I think it is worth remembering, the Chadian tribesmen have never been models of Prussian military efficiency, or advanced technological skill. Yet somehow, the French managed to hand out enough missiles and basic training to cut a tank-heavy combined arms force to pieces, using technicals operated by substantially illiterate crews. This I think is evidence the missile is alot more accessible, and therefore distributable, than ever before.

The tank, in my view, appears to be improving its defenses at a much slower rate. Reactive armor returned to the tank immunity from most missiles, for less than a decade. If electronic warfare in the naval arena is any guideline, technologies the tank might use to interrupt missile sighting would, logically, become targeted themselves. A laser beam interrupter emits, that emission can and if there is a will, will be targeted.

The day where the smart AT munition was a high speed/low drag weapon operated only by highly-trained dedicated specialists, with access to big nation inventories, is already passing. Infantry squads have them, FOs have them, UAVs have them, light vehicles have them; heck, if you believe the trade literature even engineering obstacles have them these days. Even tanks have them, come to think of it.

I think this is a potentially, a significant change in the weapons balance on the battlfield. Where once the threat to a tank was a direct LOS weapon fired by only a few participants of the battlefield, at least theoretically, almost

anything on the battlefield can be armed with a cost-effective weapon, in sufficient numbers, capable of destroying a tank, at ranges at least as long as the tank is capable of firing back.

The essence of my thinking is not that the missile suddenly has become superior to the tank in all aspects and battles, but rather, a smart missile is becoming cheap enough that it can be fielded in quantity, and theoretically battlefield-dominating-numbers, if the cost of fielding tanks is done away with.

In other words, today for the first time, true missile quantity is possible.

What if a modern force were to forgo tanks and their cannon completely, arm itself to the teeth with missiles and all the ways missiles can be carried these days, and then find itself in the field against a force using tanks as its primary arm of decision? Could a force like that get a high enough density of missiles to make it invulnerable to a conventional tank-heavy force in most combat situations? Could an "early Sinai" situation be systematically replicated, on most modern battlefields?

Like I said in the previous post, I wonder. I am not arguing the tank is dead, for if nothing else bureaucratic inertia will keep tanks around for quite a while.

But just maybe, the situation today is kind of like post-WWI. For about two decades most militaries considered infantry in trenches backed by MGs and artillery as the prime tactic, to which all other tactics and weapons mixes had to yield. The people arguing the tank could break that mold were generally considered nuts and freaks, and unable to learn the lessons from previous wars.

Perhaps now, a basic lesson from previous wars - the tank and a properly-constituted combined arms team is unlikely to face missiles of sufficient lethality and density to make the tank useless - no longer applies.

Originally posted by JasonC:

BigDuke6 - I'm not buying it. Only the dead have seen the end of tanks (lol).

You state that the point of tanks and tank tactics has always been to be invulnerable to enemy AT weapons. But this is simply not the case. On the contrary, periods in which the heaviest tanks have been invulnerable, even just through the front aspect, to the most powerful AT weapons of their enemy, are outlier exceptions in the history of tank warfare.

The point of armor is to neutralize some enemy weapon systems. This reduces the effective enemy force, and sets up a concentration game as to where the remaining highly effective AT weapons will be sited. Armor then exploits its superior mobility and an offensive posture to mass elsewhere. Meanwhile, combined arms coordination is employed to reduce the effectiveness of the AT weapons that remain in the tank heavy sectors, or to neutralize the dense ones even when they are avoided.

That recipe has worked from WW I to now.

When lazy overconfident tankers depart from it, sure they can be stopped. Being stopped one place, at one time, has never been the issue, since it can always happen and frequently does. Breakthroughs only need a couple, the defense needs to hold everywhere.

In practice, armor used correctly has only been countered by counter-massed armor )attritional brawling between reserves, like on like), or in very recent times (post smart weapons) by complete air supremacy. Occasionally in earlier eras it was stopped by massed HE storms, depriving attacking armor of combined arms - but even then the bulk of the actual kills and the overall stop still depended on defending armor.

As for Saggers in 1973, it is directly on point. As soon as the Israelis dropped their 1967-learned arrogance and went back to using combined arms, they were readily mastered. That meant coordinating air and artillery with tank movements, and it meant punching through the line at chosen points only, instead of trying to steamroll it everywhere.

Modern infantry AT has proven itself able to cause occasionally losses and thus puncture any mythical invulnerability of tanks. But tanks have never needed any such invulnerability to be effective. Israel lost 400 tanks in 1973, but it had 1500, and won. In fights since, no one has come close to inflicting losses on that scale against modern western armor, with full air supremacy and combined arms.

The Russians lost something like 150 tanks in Afghanistan in 10 years, and more like 50 in the Chechen war. Losses on such a tiny scale simply do not have military significance. Not fun for the few in them who would rather be invulnerable, no doubt. But tanks continue the mission and clobber whatever is in front of them, and if that is all these lose to infantry AT, it does not remotely stop them.

Chad vs. Libya is another case directly on point. Chad was only able to do as well as it did because the Libyans lacked combined arms sophistication. They were militarily incompetent, that is all. Iraq vs. Iran there was plenty of that to go around, but tanks were quite effective. Same in the Bosnia war.

There are tens of thousands of legacy major weapon systems fielded by regional and first world powers, that can't seriously hurt a modern main battle tank, but can readily stop anything less. There are scads of artillery systems and even more of light arms throughout the world, that are completely ineffective against them, but perfectly effective against dismounted infantry touting expensive missiles.

Just as the invention of a PAK 40 hardly made a T-34 obsolete, the invention of good ATGMs does not make modern MBTs obsolete. It just makes them major weapon systems in a combined arms toolbox, just like Panzer IIIs or T-34s or Shermans were, in their heyday.

[Peter Cairns]

It's all very well to talk about fitting anti ATGM defences on tanks but why bother.

What tanks have is Mobility Protection and Firepower. But if you look at MPF the modern UAV beats it hands down.

A UAV has far greater mobility, it can fly four or five times as fast as the best tank, it isn't constrained by terrain, hills, rivers, woods, towns.

It has far longer range and endurance while using far less fuel. How many M-1's can you get in a C-17... 1, How many UAV's, anything from 10 to 50..... How much fuel does an M-1 use to cover 100 miles compared to a UAV.

In terms of protection it can avoid the vast majority of field weapons and is difficult to detect let alone hit. They have low visibility and signature and can quickly move away from concentrated defences.

As to firepower a networked UAV can direct everything from a Javelin team to a Trident 2, so that's really no contest.

A stand off UAV will soon be able to target for GPS rounds that can hit a moving target without terminal guidance. But it can also direct conventional dumb rounds or guide in aircraft.

£ for £ and indeed lb for lb the UAV is a more efficient way to do it than a tank.

Peter.

[luderbamsen]

OK, so the attraction of the MBT is the three key features: Mobility, armour protection and firepower.

Mobility: A lot of vehicles have similar (or in certain circumstances superior) mobility to the MBT. Moreover, light vehicles have superior strategic mobility (i.e. being air portable).

Armour Protection: MBT's have an awful lot of armor protection. And they can mount slat cages and active protection systems just like any other vehicle, so they still have a huge advantage in terms of protection.

Firepower: The main gun is a powerful and versatile weapon. It can engage a wide range of targets at very long range.

When and if any and/or all of these features no longer offer any significant advantage over the enemy, then MBT's will dissapear. If not before then when superior weapons turn them into burning hulks.

[Secondbrooks]

Originally posted by M1A1TankCommander:

Thank you Mr Kettler

I think the new active defence weapons might make AT missiles obsolete (until something else come up)

Now we have lazers that shoot incoming missiles, mortar and RPG rounds. When they are portable enough to be placed on each tank, they will be pretty much invulnurable to AT infantry weapons.

How about this jammer:

The TShU-1-7 optronic jammer ensures effective protection of armoured vehicles against anti-tank guided missiles such as TOW, HOT, MILAN, DRAGON, COBRA, АТ-3, HN-5 etc. The modulated IR flux formed by the TShU-1-7 makes up the jamming noise inside the missile's "track loop" and exploits its guidance system. The hit probability is decreased practically up to zero.

The TShU system consists of two emitters, two power supply and control units, a control panel. It is mounted on tanks like Т-72, Т-80, Т-90 (as a part of the protection unit "ShTORA-1"), as well on other military and civil objects.

I would like too see that untranined ATGM-dumbass who desides to lase target which is using Sthora. I can fire my fine, nice and manly TOW to tank and if tank doesn't see it comming enough early or i'm not so stupid that i actaully laser that tank, then Sthora is dead weight. Infact, if i remember right, Sthora didn't prove itself in tests against Kornet, it couldn't much distract them.

This far (with info i'm having) i'm more conserned about Arena and it's likes which are using radars. Then again i've heard that they still are very-very costly. Some Russian said that they are giving 1.5 times more protection to tank (however that is calculated).

[flamingknives]

Against UAVs:

Mobility - extended endurace, able to get around, but they are slow, and operate in the air, where there is nothing to hide behind.

Protection - a UAV only has the outside layers of the onion - don't be detected, seen, aquired and hit. Only small size protects them from a hit and once hit they are toast.

Firepower - minimal, and slow to react. At best they will have a few missiles, or can call in supporting fires. Not very useful against short-exposure targets.

On top of this, current UAVs are severly limited by bandwidth - you need an operator in the loop to fire, so you need to be streaming video back to a ground station.

AFVs are starting to support defensive aid suites that can engage and destroy incoming missiles - the armour/anti-armour battle isn't over yet.

[dima]

Originally posted by John Kettler:

M1A1TankCommander,

Please Google Valeriy Fofanov. He's a contributor to CMSF, and his site has some marvelous material on the issues you raised. Please also see the pertinent parts of www.warfare.ru

Regards,

John Kettler

John, I am curious, where did you get the information that Valeriy Fofanov is a contributor to CMSF?

[Steiner14]

Peter Cairns,

and what happens, if only a few satellites are knocked out?

Hard enough for the US-soldier already, to find the toilet without GPS, but if all heavy weapons are based on extremely high precise satellite navigation, then someone just can switch off the light and they sit in the dark. Not that i would be sad about it, if it hits USrael, but it doesn't seem very clever to me, if an army goes that route.

A weapon system must not only be effective under perfect conditions, it should also be robust, fault tolerant and not built on too much functioning sublayers, to be useable at all.

[JasonC]

BigDuke6 - yes missiles are cheaper. They still cost a darn sight more than an AK. Therefore, they will be sparser on the battlefield.

Infantry with lots of missiles and not much else can't deal with firepower arms delivered over the horizon, and still maneuver. They might hold ground, in a sticky goo sort of "don't wade into these tarpits" way. But they aren't going to attack anything. Not under MLRS strikes, bomblets everywhere from everything, and everything automatic hail. You don't have to suppress the things in the 10-20 seconds of flight, you can suppress the whole grid square and go around.

Success at inflicting occasional losses on opponents unwilling to lose anything, or against incompetent opponents, are really at the end of the day not much to write home about. Show up and don't be brain dead, and you can accomplish that. Tech be darned.

As for the range issue, it is way oversold. Only in desert terrain or a few types of open steppe do full missile ranges matter - and even then, at night they don't go the full distance, for sensor tech reasons. Those environments are dominated by smart weapon air power. Most of the world, ranges are terrain limited, not weapon spec limited.

[Bigduke6]

Jason,

All fair comments, but I think it goes double for tanks. If you have the round count to saturate an area with artillery submunitions so that the infantry has no chance, then it should be easier to do the same to a tank. Tanks are easier to find, larger targets, and more limited than infantry in the places they can go.

Of course, infantry can't do much about the over-the-horizon stuff but hide. My point is, these days, if the trends continue, neither can tanks - and tanks are pretty bad at hiding.

I'm not trying to read too much into Sinai and Chad, but I think those examples do demonstrate missiles in sufficient density can indeed stop armor. My arguement is, the tech trends are making missiles cheaper, more accurate, easier to operate - and at the same time the trend for tanks is to make them heavier, more expensive, and arguably easier to find and hit.

That's why I'm suggesting we may be witnessing a land warfare tech change similar to the introduction of the rifled musket. Where once there was relative balance and opportunity for combined arms, because of increased firepower of the infantry the maneuver arm of the combined arms triad is made obsolete.

You are quite right, this may well mean modern infantry given the probable defensive firepower of the other side, armed as it would be with modern sensors and munitions, may be able to do little but hold ground, and absorb casualties inflicted by artillery.

But indeed, for practical purposes that was the basis of tactics from the introduction of the rifled musket, to the advent of the tank.

Sic transit gloria, and all that.

[ January 30, 2008, 12:58 AM: Message edited by: Bigduke6 ]

[cool breeze]

I believe it takes a lot more unguided sub munitions to wipe out or suppress tanks than infantry. And I would argue that tanks are a much smaller target to hit than infantry, because against tanks you need a direct hit, while against people or tires an air burst 155mm does not have to go off within what I call close.

Didnt you guys notice how easy the campaign levels were when you took advantage of the large stashes of 155mm? It simply wrecks infantry even if you only guess around where they are. and One of the javalins costs as much as a ton of those 155 shells.

Tanks will soon regularly sport anti missiles systems that beat almost all missiles. Any nation can use google earth, pre registered artillery aim points, and low tech coms with good procedures to have artillery control on comparable level to USA, and perhaps the anti air defense to protect it. To me tanks/apcs seem very necessary to winning a war. And, as i said, I have a tech that makes this more true faster, maybe I use it. Any wars I can stop by making missile defense available to anyone cheaply and fast?

[Hat Trick]

Originally posted by cool breeze:

Tanks will soon regularly sport anti missiles systems that beat almost all missiles.

Is this really true? I know that some systems are under development, but the history of anti-missle systems does not provide great confidence in the effectiveness of future systems.