Not practical but I know you love the idea of a constantly viable and available support train. Something the recent conflict should cure folk of. 'Nuff said? Not realistic.
 
Hell the only reason the the T-14 might not have as good armor would be interly because its 10+ tons (more like 20 for the makerva) lighter then any of these tanks.
Well that or the Russian graft effected them and that armor is all notorion or just missing pieces.

Which been sadly shown to be extremely possible with recent events.
Happily shown.
 
Not practical but I know you love the idea of a constantly viable and available support train. Something the recent conflict should cure folk of. 'Nuff said? Not realistic.

If you can't supply spare turrets, you probably can't supply ammo operate mechanized vehicles anyway, so it's a bit of a moot point isn't it?

Saddam moved three tank divisions using highways in 1985. That's the sort of highway capacity you can expect from Arab roadways: substantially greater than Ukraine's, or Western Europe's. Troops in Europe are more dependent on railheads instead, but it just means that destroyed tanks will need to be brought back to depots near the railroads and repaired there. Obviously, this requires capturing railheads and laying railways with military operated railroads.

...and that's exactly what the US Army did in Normandy.

A turret is not an especially complex object and moving it would require less bulk and less weight than a full size tank. It's quite trivial an issue, as if you can't move turrets or firepower-killed, turretless tanks, you probably can't move those tanks to begin with, so they will never lose their turrets anyway.

So if you can move tanks around and fight with a formation of tanks, you can reasonably be expected to recover those tanks and replace their engines, and perhaps, their disposable turrets as well. The alternative to having spare engines and spare turrets and spare roadwheels is to simply not bother with battle damage repair and build tanks so small and cramped that a single penetration completely destroys them. That's a bit Soviet though.

Anyway yes you're probably right that NATO has forgotten how to fight wars in Europe since they've been spoiled by the mega-highways of Arabia, but we knew this from Kosovo when it took the US Army a month to move an armored division by train to the Balkans.
 
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The feasibility of mounting larger weapons to the M1 means that the M1 would not be replaced for the purpose of mounting a bigger weapon! It would just be a upgrade program at most.

It is the improvement of the chassis that will really drive replacement. Normal Automotive improvements just don't seem important enough for a replacement, as operational mobility just don't rank that high in the wish list.

I think the Abrams would be replaced by development of new heavy tracked vehicle chassis developed for other purposes:

Fielding Directed Energy Weapons is a difficult challenge with requirement for power generation, cooling, relevant sensors. A vehicle with such a system would be very expensive and short ranged, and thus ought to be protected by armor and need cross country mobility to keep up and cover maneuver formations.

This pretty much demands the development of new power systems and chassis to fit everything. Since a chassis is to be developed, a "tank" variant would be developed as part of "family of vehicles."
 
The ukraine conflict clearly displays a real APS able to defeat multiple threats in a single exchange and then repeat that defense. RDECOM presented the idea of "revenge shots" attacking the attacker possibly even artillery attacks. Noone is really proposing, although SLID or Quickill might be a start. Tanks have to be worth the effort and survivable and that is getting harder.
 
I think Abrams will be like the B52. It will get a new engine, maybe electric drive, so it can go silent. When they finally run out of old Chassis to rebuild, then they will take that engine, and put it in a new chassis, but unless there is some major breakthrough, it will look similar to the current vehicle.

Tanks will, at least for those that can afford to, become like battleships, you will have reduced numbers, but they will be screened by unmanned full size vehicles, including tanks, then drones, scouting, attacking, even defending, i.e. taking out incoming shots.

Your tanks wont move, without a detailed recon, many hours before, and any movement checked out.
 
When they finally run out of old Chassis to rebuild
Thats not happening.

We are still making the things since building tanks is one of those abilities that if you lose it?

Its fucking gone.

And you will spend well over a decade rebuilding it with the entire snafu costing more then what you saved by closing the lines. We can see similar with the Burke class restart.

So the Lima plant will keep pumping out a new M1 once a month til it gets the replacement design or if need need the 40 per week at its hieght...
 
The ukraine conflict clearly displays a real APS able to defeat multiple threats in a single exchange and then repeat that defense. RDECOM presented the idea of "revenge shots" attacking the attacker possibly even artillery attacks. Noone is really proposing, although SLID or Quickill might be a start. Tanks have to be worth the effort and survivable and that is getting harder.
Popular mechanics 1990s 1653327620246.png 1653327829632.png
 
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I did’t find this twitter image of a 3D model from 2020 being posted but it seam to resemble the turret design in the sneak peak a lot
 

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Not really, bet that is just CGI from a CAD model. Simples these days and far quicker.
 
View: https://twitter.com/ramlaen1/status/1535342620389453825

Abrams appears to have an XM360 gun, 30x113mm RWS, Trophy VPS and two thermal sights. Probably the unmanned turret being developed.

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Wonder if the Next Generation ABRAMS is actually GDLS early concept for the Decisive Lethality Platform (DLP), the replacement for the M1 Abrams main battle tank.
Very early concept, perhaps. This is GLDS tanking the original "Griffin Technology Demonstrator" concept vehicle approach of "here's the kinds of things we can do with what we have based on what we think the Army might want."
 
Cool picture, but honestly makes no sense. May as well distribute those box launchers across your general utility vehicles and concentrate on rate of fire from tubes using wheeled SPGs. So what if you have a superior MBT when the enemy can deliver overwhelming drone swarm, smart missiles, and 155mm rain on command? The future is mobility, not going tit-for-tat.

I can see that 50 ton or better tanks built to survive attacks from massed drones or guided missiles are less feasible than simply automating combat vehicles. How about an air-deliverable MBT thats in the 10-12 ton range, requires no crew, punches like a heavy, impervious to psychological concerns, and is disposable like a pair of socks? And it never gets tired or needs to sleep as long as you feed it a power source. It has no problem going in to draw enemy fire where it can feed targets to the rain gods.
 
How about an air-deliverable MBT thats in the 10-12 ton range, requires no crew, punches like a heavy,
What weapon is this 10 ton "MBT" going to carry that "punches like a heavy"? A cannon is a no-go (too small for the recoil). Given they cancelled both LOSAT and CKEM the missile option is too.
 
How about an air-deliverable MBT thats in the 10-12 ton range, requires no crew, punches like a heavy,
What weapon is this 10 ton "MBT" going to carry that "punches like a heavy"? A cannon is a no-go (too small for the recoil). Given they cancelled both LOSAT and CKEM the missile option is too.
Unfortunate about LOSAT/CKEM. They are talking attritable aircraft you’d think a hit and run attritable UGV with a few CKEMs would be an interesting option.
 
How about an air-deliverable MBT thats in the 10-12 ton range, requires no crew, punches like a heavy,
What weapon is this 10 ton "MBT" going to carry that "punches like a heavy"? A cannon is a no-go (too small for the recoil). Given they cancelled both LOSAT and CKEM the missile option is too.
Raytheon has a two pound grenade launched missilette called a pike. Laser guided. Kind of like a miniaturized APKWS. 2 mile range. And each round is about 18" long. Punches through side armor like Swiss cheese. So mount an M320 with an autoloader with 50 round capacity. Give it 1-2 machine gun turrets for anti-personell work.. A hand full in ambush mode could obliterate a tank company. The pike obliterates helicopters even easier than tanks. One could also wreck havoc on ground troops alike, throwing lead on heads and 'nades on parades.
 
How about an air-deliverable MBT thats in the 10-12 ton range, requires no crew, punches like a heavy,
What weapon is this 10 ton "MBT" going to carry that "punches like a heavy"? A cannon is a no-go (too small for the recoil). Given they cancelled both LOSAT and CKEM the missile option is too.
Raytheon has a two pound grenade launched missilette called a pike. Laser guided. Kind of like a miniaturized APKWS. 2 mile range. And each round is about 18" long. Punches through side armor like Swiss cheese. So mount an M320 with an autoloader with 50 round capacity. Give it 1-2 machine gun turrets for anti-personell work.. A hand full in ambush mode could obliterate a tank company. The pike obliterates helicopters even easier than tanks. One could also wreck havoc on ground troops alike, throwing lead on heads and 'nades on parades.
Don't know that I'd trust a 2lb shaped charge to knock out a modern tank. And no way it hits as hard as an M829A4
 
Raytheon has a two pound grenade launched missilette called a pike. Laser guided. Kind of like a miniaturized APKWS. 2 mile range. And each round is about 18" long. Punches through side armor like Swiss cheese. So mount an M320 with an autoloader with 50 round capacity. Give it 1-2 machine gun turrets for anti-personell work.. A hand full in ambush mode could obliterate a tank company. The pike obliterates helicopters even easier than tanks. One could also wreck havoc on ground troops alike, throwing lead on heads and 'nades on parades.

Nonsense. Pike has a 40mm diameter, <0.3 kg warhead. I believe it's actually blast-frag, but even a HEAT warhead that small will absolutely not reliably penetrate side armor on a modern MBT.

Edit: I totally glossed over the claim that Pike is also a wonder-MANPADs. It isn't. For starters, it's a semiactive laser homer, so you have to hold a laser on the helicopter. Second, it's slow. Third, it only goes 2 km is a quasi-ballistic trajectory against a ground target.

Pike is interesting, but fundamentally it's a counter-sniper/counter-MG weapon for infantry.
 
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Is the Lima plant still striking one wonders?

If the turret is unmanned why man it at all. If it is unmanned why do you need 60ts?
...have to mention again, better to hide manned controllers in what would appear to be unmanned. Optionally manned every vehicle, and discuss why infantry really enters mechanized battles.
The reasoning is logical tbh if turret is unmanned and gun auto loaded them u remove any chance the gunner and commander can be killed or wounded if turret knocked out,also as learned with the T14 Armata project in Russia ware there's a Crew capsule inside the hull for added protection also wouldn't need a loader anymore so there's also more room saved in 2 areas of the vehicle also u have the Turbine that's not being used to full potential if it was they would have created Hybrid version with Kenetic energy recovery systems in the turbine engine to recuperate Electrical energy for the optics and modern interfaces plus autoloaders and Turret systems etc with additional energy from thermal energy from the exhaust as well to create more power this being saved in a New generation Power pack/Battery pack this features alone could make a Abrams creep on electrical power up to enemy positions point blank and surprise the enemy AT gunners or Armour,Add in the fact this new version could be lighter as well if done correctly and composit Armour and materials for the now expendable turret would lower costs as well
 
How about an air-deliverable MBT thats in the 10-12 ton range, requires no crew, punches like a heavy,
What weapon is this 10 ton "MBT" going to carry that "punches like a heavy"? A cannon is a no-go (too small for the recoil). Given they cancelled both LOSAT and CKEM the missile option is too.
Raytheon has a two pound grenade launched missilette called a pike. Laser guided. Kind of like a miniaturized APKWS. 2 mile range. And each round is about 18" long. Punches through side armor like Swiss cheese. So mount an M320 with an autoloader with 50 round capacity. Give it 1-2 machine gun turrets for anti-personell work.. A hand full in ambush mode could obliterate a tank company. The pike obliterates helicopters even easier than tanks. One could also wreck havoc on ground troops alike, throwing lead on heads and 'nades on parades.
Don't know that I'd trust a 2lb shaped charge to knock out a modern tank. And no way it hits as hard as an M829A4
T-72 isn't a modern tank.
 
How about an air-deliverable MBT thats in the 10-12 ton range, requires no crew, punches like a heavy,
What weapon is this 10 ton "MBT" going to carry that "punches like a heavy"? A cannon is a no-go (too small for the recoil). Given they cancelled both LOSAT and CKEM the missile option is too.
Raytheon has a two pound grenade launched missilette called a pike. Laser guided. Kind of like a miniaturized APKWS. 2 mile range. And each round is about 18" long. Punches through side armor like Swiss cheese. So mount an M320 with an autoloader with 50 round capacity. Give it 1-2 machine gun turrets for anti-personell work.. A hand full in ambush mode could obliterate a tank company. The pike obliterates helicopters even easier than tanks. One could also wreck havoc on ground troops alike, throwing lead on heads and 'nades on parades.
Don't know that I'd trust a 2lb shaped charge to knock out a modern tank. And no way it hits as hard as an M829A4
T-72 isn't a modern tank.
A T72 is new enough that a properly built and maintain one will need slightly more tgen a 40mm HEDP to kill.

A modern tank will die to 2lb of shape charge so long as the charge is both made and aim right.

A hit to the sides or even rear will not do much, which even the Pike will often only hit.

But a hit to the roof and engine deck or under it? Like say what the CBU 97 or M93 Hornet does?

Well now you cooking.
 

A 1996 document on the US tank plan through 2015-2020, showing yet another combination of upgrades that were considered for M1A2. Namely more titanium parts for weight reduction, passive or semi-active hydropneumatic suspension to save 1800-2000 lbs and reclaim 17 cu ft of space, the XM 291 L55 120mm gun, electric turret traverse instead of hydraulic, and some improvements to electronics and stuff.

Truly at this point the lack of many of these upgrades even on SEP V3 while more weight gets added and hydraulic lines regularly leak fluid on tankers is borderline criminal.
 
How about an air-deliverable MBT thats in the 10-12 ton range, requires no crew, punches like a heavy,
What weapon is this 10 ton "MBT" going to carry that "punches like a heavy"? A cannon is a no-go (too small for the recoil). Given they cancelled both LOSAT and CKEM the missile option is too.
Raytheon has a two pound grenade launched missilette called a pike. Laser guided. Kind of like a miniaturized APKWS. 2 mile range. And each round is about 18" long. Punches through side armor like Swiss cheese. So mount an M320 with an autoloader with 50 round capacity. Give it 1-2 machine gun turrets for anti-personell work.. A hand full in ambush mode could obliterate a tank company. The pike obliterates helicopters even easier than tanks. One could also wreck havoc on ground troops alike, throwing lead on heads and 'nades on parades.
Don't know that I'd trust a 2lb shaped charge to knock out a modern tank. And no way it hits as hard as an M829A4
T-72 isn't a modern tank.
So your plan is to replace the Abrams and pray all anybody else uses is T-72s? Not a good plan.
 
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How about an air-deliverable MBT thats in the 10-12 ton range, requires no crew, punches like a heavy,
What weapon is this 10 ton "MBT" going to carry that "punches like a heavy"? A cannon is a no-go (too small for the recoil). Given they cancelled both LOSAT and CKEM the missile option is too.
Raytheon has a two pound grenade launched missilette called a pike. Laser guided. Kind of like a miniaturized APKWS. 2 mile range. And each round is about 18" long. Punches through side armor like Swiss cheese. So mount an M320 with an autoloader with 50 round capacity. Give it 1-2 machine gun turrets for anti-personell work.. A hand full in ambush mode could obliterate a tank company. The pike obliterates helicopters even easier than tanks. One could also wreck havoc on ground troops alike, throwing lead on heads and 'nades on parades.
Don't know that I'd trust a 2lb shaped charge to knock out a modern tank. And no way it hits as hard as an M829A4
T-72 isn't a modern tank.
A T72 is new enough that a properly built and maintain one will need slightly more tgen a 40mm HEDP to kill.

A modern tank will die to 2lb of shape charge so long as the charge is both made and aim right.

A hit to the sides or even rear will not do much, which even the Pike will often only hit.

But a hit to the roof and engine deck or under it? Like say what the CBU 97 or M93 Hornet does?

Well now you cooking.
Except munitions that rely on shaped charges are typically quite easily dealt with with modern defense systems like Trophy.
 
A fantastic piece of history!

The Pre-Shinseki era of Force XXI, Army After Next, and FCS are so different from what we ended up with in the 2000s; a great 90s throwback.

Some interesting notes I found
- The Future Combat System had a planned cross-country top speed of 100 kph
- A millimeter wave radar was a planned upgrade for the M1A2 to work in conjunction with the CITV for moving targets
- Voice control in addition to touch screens
- In-arm suspension units use lower tension which leads to better track life and fuel efficiency
- The LV100 engine was not seen as an absolute necessity for future Abrams
- The AGT1500 could be modified with single crystal blades and be bumped to 1,800 HP while still reducing sustainment costs
- The XM291 Cannon could be fitted into production vehicles with minimal modification
- The M830 MPAT can engage air targets
- "Smart" rounds like STAFF and TERM were seen as crucial components of maintaining lethality over potential threats
- The USMC had an ongoing need for an APERS and Smoke round that were lost from their M60 transition

XM291.png

1995-2020.png

MPAT.png
 
Tanks aren't the best anti-tank weapons out there. The tank is modern day heavy cavalry, armored enough to withstand light weapons and armed well enough to wreck unprotected targets. Your next generation tank needs to be able to get in with enough armor to do its job. Without a crew you can do it with much less armor and distributed systems with redundant computers, sensors, and communications. It doesn't need to slug it out with MBTs and other armor, just survive long enough to mark the MBT/other asset for destruction from offboard assets. That weapon that makes the kill can come from many sources. If your tank doesn't need to carry that weapon, your platform shrinks even more in weight.
 
Tanks aren't the best anti-tank weapons out there.
Which single vehicle is better?
pereh.jpg
The aka if tanks kills tanks the best, one wouldn't make a tank not a tank to kill tanks!

Really though, "tank destroyers" have been effective anti-tank weapons, (situationally) more effective than tanks, having characteristics like lower cost, higher mobility, longer effective weapons range and so on. The stug killed a lot of tanks, and one wouldn't have built something like the Su-100 if tanks could do a better job given the constraints.

The problem with ww2 era tank destroyers is that in a environment when crew is the limiting factor as opposed to industrial capacity and logistics, a good tank destroyer approach a tank in design. (which led to the downfall of the US tank destroyer doctrine)

With the development of ATGMs however, tank destroyers can be order(s) of magnitude smaller and cheaper (ATV ATGM carriers), or order of magnitude faster (attack helicopters, attack aircraft), or have order of magnitude longer range (NLOS missile shooters, smart munitions artillery, etc) or have ridiculous overkill (LOSAT, other large missiles) (of course overkill is practically useless and generally do not get into service).

It is possible to come up with scenarios where a very specific tank design is better at killing a very specific enemy tank, but in actual warfare most forces do not remotely attempt it. Forces simply do not bother committing armor to fight armor in almost all cases.

For example, Isis shot tanks with ATGMs instead of using their industrial base to build and repair tanks. Similarly, Ukrainians stopped Russian armor by infantry and artillery instead of throwing armored division at it in a pitched battle. French used their naval air to defeat Libyan armor instead of landing armored divisions. If other platforms are truly worst at anti-tank, everyone would be throwing more tanks at tanks and there'd be just about battle against tanks without tanks of your own if any force could help it.

In eras of tank dominance, attacking into a tank force without your own tanks would be very difficult. In the modern era, a whole array of long range precision weapons could replace your own tanks, though it may mean a slower advance or other tactical constraints however it still works out operationally in practice: forces without tanks do take ground from those with tanks, without massive force imbalance.

So your plan is to replace the Abrams and pray all anybody else uses is T-72s? Not a good plan.
It takes a long time for someone to develop and mass produce a uber tank, one can arms race it when it happens.

And no, T-14 is not it since its turret is easy to knock out, and its side and top aspect is still highly vulnerable. Having one piece of frontal armor (that doesn't even protect the firepower) that can not be penetrated is not a huge advantage as combat experience have shown.

From an anti-tank perspective, a tank destroyer without a turret and VLS can be immune to penetration via current and "normal" sized tank guns and kill tanks. This is really kinda pointless however, since you can just have a jeep with missiles and a tall mast and it does practically the same thing.

Except munitions that rely on shaped charges are typically quite easily dealt with with modern defense systems like Trophy.
The arms race against APS systems have not remotely started as developing APS doesn't even cover existing threats. Saying that APS will end missiles is like saying 25mm autocannons will end airplanes.

Nevermind the whole Russian APS development that wholesale fail to materialize, even western APS fails against top attack. Nothing on the drawing board can defeat a large EFP warhead on top attack trajectory doing standoff attack. Few could be projected to deal with jammers in the missile, decoys, pen-aids, precursor EMP and all sorts of fun. Even if it could, the cost would inflate faster than missiles it'd take to defeat it.

Decades of missile defense on ships didn't result in one ship where it is simply uneconomic to shoot at it with missiles because its defenses are too good. Instead, there'd be ships that could survive some leakers when the opponent is heavily outmatched.

Translated, this means a tank can conceivably defeat a infantry missile team, but no way it can survive another 60ton vehicle throwning an alpha strike saturation attack with weapons on technological parity. Ships with massive investment into active defenses are practically vulnerable to a dedicated attack boats 1/10 its tonnage if the latter gets to launch an attack.
 
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Not really, bet that is just CGI from a CAD model. Simples these days and far quicker.
I'm expecting full-size mocks at AUSA, or a fairly elaborate VR presentation. Just having models on a screen won't cut it at that show.

We've already had leaks of the CG concept models for the modern Block III, so a wooden mockup is plausible I guess.

I suspect they'll just have the pictures from that leak though. Some guy had one on a desk in a press photo at Futures Command and someone on Twitter used an AI to transform the image from its highly slanted form into something presentable.

I'll try to find the image later but it looked similar to whatever GD is shilling IIRC, but I think it was an internal Army thing rather than GD.

Tanks aren't the best anti-tank weapons out there.
Which single vehicle is better?

A missile, obviously.

Norms dictate that an anti-tank missile or anti-tank gun in enfilade (this includes tanks, but they have a higher vertical roof so they will be detected well before a camouflaged ATG!) can kill two or three times their number of armor vehicles in the defense, provided they don't move around much, before being destroyed by counter-fire. Conversely, a tank that is mobile in the defense needs superior numbers to stop an armored force.

These norms are battle tested and well proven in Kursk and other anti-armor actions in the Great Patriotic War.

Tanks aren't the best anti-tank weapons out there.
Which single vehicle is better?
View attachment 682235
The aka if tanks kills tanks the best, one wouldn't make a tank not a tank to kill tanks!

Really though, "tank destroyers" have been effective anti-tank weapons, (situationally) more effective than tanks, having characteristics like lower cost, higher mobility, longer effective weapons range and so on. The stug killed a lot of tanks, and one wouldn't have built something like the Su-100 if tanks could do a better job given the constraints.

These are a lot of words to explain very simple concepts that aren't particularly hard to describe.

A Stug killed tanks for a very simple reason: it was very short and it was fighting from a static position in ambush.

That's it. That's the secret sauce.

The ambush is more important than the height but height being a critical factor means you want a big ass gun or big ass sensor to spot a shorter tank than you before they see you. American tanks have the most capable anti-tank guns and best sensors in the world, though, so that's not a problem.

Macroeconomic conditions mean that every European and American civilization is highly declining in industrial output while the PRC is rising. Expect in the future that, barring some tremendous economic catastrophe that will make "number of tanks" the least concerns for people who require functional machine tools or semiconductors for their economies to work, that the PRC will likely be able to produce as many "super tanks" as America did M1s. It can already produce T-90s like hot cakes, in vastly higher quantities than America could ever produce the M1 (it's made 7,000 tanks in half the time it took America), so something like Nota being produced at a rate of the original M1s is not out of the question. Macroeconomics, like demography, has a huge time horizon given accurate information, so this will not meaningfully change for decades, unless someone is lying bigly and one of the two great world economies is about to rupture in the near future.

Ukraine stopped Russian tanks for a simple reason: Russian tankers tended to outstrip their infantry because the BTGs lack 2/3rd's of their infantry compliment for proper combat in close terrain, and because the levy forces intended to fill the gaps of the BTGs tended to be liquidated through desertions or diversions to other combat areas. Where the Russians have had adequate infantry, they fight like normal in close terrain: infantry screen, machine guns are spotted through reconnaissance by (enemy) fire, the (most likely) anti-tank positions are suppressed by 12.7mm MGs and 30mm AGS, and the tanks roll up to demolish the machine gun.

Rinse and repeat. It's not complicated to explain, just hard to do in practice, and it tends to take a toll without significant manpower reserves, which Russia has so far been unable to tap extensively. Its pool of levies is not unlimited it seems.

Where they have not had the luxury of being able to fight like the Bocages in 1944, they resort to the other tried and true method of clearing urban zones: massive preparatory bombardment of likely positions with heavy artillery to smash and demolish ATGW positions followed up with mechanical troops. The troop shock and fire shock of the combination of the artillery, which dazes ATGW gunners, and the subsequent assault by mechanical troops, tends to force the ATGW teams back to retreat or they die attempting to re-man their positions.

Again, not hard, and actually less complicated than the prior method, but very heavy on ammunition consumption (whereas the prior method is heavy on manpower consumption) and requires a large quantity of artillery pieces, but this is the Russians we're talking about, artillery is sort of their thing.

Killing tanks is not hard, and while it is true that tanks are not "the best" anti-tank weapon, they are excellent in certain situations when required. As good as any other anti-tank means, actually: These situations are when they are not moving and able to take other tanks from enfilade. Both of these need to occur, otherwise the defense turns into a mobile defense, and the capacity of a smaller force to defend against a larger one evaporates.

This is all basic Lanchesterian stuff that people discovered in like the 1930's. Tanks were never "dominant" or whatever, and the Kaiser's stormtroopers were blowing them up with field guns and satchel charges in 1917, so I'm not sure why you think that lol.

At the root of it, tanks defeat the thing that defeats infantry, which defeat the thing that defeats the tank, which protects the thing that kills the infantry, which protects the thing that kills the tank. It's less esoteric than you imply and much more akin to rock-paper-scissors.

That is, tanks kill machine guns by being bulletproof field guns that follow the infantry, and the infantry defeat the field gun by being sneaky lads with sharp eyes who can spot a gun crew waddling into position, and take the gun under fire with rifles to close with grenades and kill crew, before the field gun can kill the tank.

Again, rinse and repeat. All methods of defeating tanks boil down to this extremely simple relationship, but like Clausewitz says, everything in war is simple, and the simple is difficult. There is much to be said about the actual doing of this, than there is to be said about the saying of the doing.

Tanks fighting tanks occurs often enough and is extremely common in major wars where lines of sight are large, because tanks are modern cavalrymen and conventional cavalry action is possible when lines of sight are broad and open. Cavalry were historically powerful shock troops and this remains true today. The tank can defend itself by simply shooting anything that moves next to it if it can see several miles distant, so long as it can further than its gun can shoot it is perfectly safe. Desert Storm literally proved that mass cavalry action is viable in open terrain actions and remains so today.

Ukraine is just heavily urbanized and has very short lines of sight because it's a hugely industrialized and relatively modern country. It's not empty. It's not flat. Lines of sight probably rarely exceed 700 meters and tank actions tend to be limited engagements of a platoon on a company at most and probably more often a singleton or a pair of tanks versus a platoon or two. In other words, it's the Bocages in 1944 with light infantry dominating the fight as the tip of the spear for tanks. In open terrain, this is reversed, because infantry walk slowly and tanks move very quickly. Kind of a duh moment.

The current big question is how much of a importance are UAS and the answer seems to be "not much" as despite letting you know what is beyond the next hill it's rare for troops to have much in the way of attacking things there because a lot of company level weapons outside of grenade launchers and light mortars are direct fire and require line of sight. They are useful for artillery spotting and such for the most part.

tl;dr Tanks have plenty of armor it's just weakly distributed for close combat, because most tanks were designed with open terrain in mind and avoiding cities, because armies in the 80's were poorly trained for the future (i.e. now) and had soundly forgotten all the lessons of WW2 by that time i.e. tanks are a vital and ineffable part of the combined arms team in all terrains. Less armor on the front, more on the sides and top, and it ends up looking like an SPz Puma with a 5" gun I guess is "optimal" or whatever.

Or you can eat the weight/power losses and just slap fat ERA slats on the side like M1 and drive around in 100 ton monster trucks that crush infrastructure, cars, and enemy corpses alike.

Either works honestly well enough that there's not a huge difference. You'll need to BYOB for the latter though, which is why Penetration Division has so much bridging lol. Hope the division is packing proper Baileys for moving across major water obstacles.
 
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