What kind of OPFOR would be scared of a vehicle that would not arrive in theater for weeks, demands a huge logistic support for any mobility that is also constrained to a few river crossing points that could be destroyed a hour into the conflict, have effective weapons range shorter than infantry systems, have the biggest sensor signature ever and can be killed semi-reliably by two man infantry weapons?
As a OPFOR, I'd be far more scared of saturation brimestone/spear3/spike/etc strikes whenever anyone with a radio, any aircraft from quadcopter to high attitude stealth aircraft flyby, any sensor from long range standoff to unattended junk, detects me. Spending money to maintain missile overmatch against Soft-kill/APS/C-RAM is decisive, while a bigger tank gun is irrelevant in the huge number of conflicts where they could not be used due to all kinds of constraints (time, A2AD bubble, politics, logistics, infrastructure, casualty aversion, low numbers, plausible deniability needed, etc)
An assault gun is neat for digging out infantry and lowering casualties. It is no going to win wars if air superiority is lost, dismantle recon-strike complexes or break into A2AD.
If you gave any force that fought in the past 30 years a 130~140~152mm armed tank, there would be just about zero positive impact on any of the conflicts fought relative to what happened otherwise. This is unlike, many other piece of equipment that have proven to be decisive.
A somewhat future proof APS system is perhaps a reason to upgrade for lower threat environments, if more asymmetric war is on the table. A bigger gun on a platform what'd die to random two man teams with modern weapons is.....
Yes to all the missiles etc.
But at the end, 'someone' needs to go onto the field of battle, to make sure all the enemy are dead/gone. There will be mines, some enemy, etc. If we line up from an unarmoured landrover, through to a Chall 2 - which one , given this job, would you choose to go in?
We can play rock-paper-scissors all night, a heaily armoured 'bastion' has still got a role.
Dear all,
One more link on Challenger 2 before I throw my hat into the ring on the 'do we need the tank' question:
"Challenger 2 may not have been the best tank in the world, but it was the best tank for the British Army, British industry, and the British people."
ukdefencejournal.org.uk
My experience says yes but that will persuade few.
Shin_getter quite rightly points out all the technical assets, many of them airborne, that can be deployed against the tank. For those who have any experience with any type of aircraft/helicopter they will always comment on how bloody unreliable they are (read up on Task Force Hawk in the Balkans) and how ficke they can be. The numbers of airframes of all types that had to be in/nearby Afghanistan just to keep a few aircraft overhead areas of high threat to protect patrols/ops etc was amazing; and that is in a benign air threat. And these wonderful smart munitions cost an arm and a leg each and most countries will have surprisingly low stocks at the onset of war. However the threat from UAVs, especially loitering UAVs, is currently evolving and is definitely a threat to watch; cloud punchers take note (cloud punchers = those very clever air defence chaps). So yes aircraft/helicopters/UAVs are a threat to the tank but unless you are fighting the US not as much as you think - at the moment ...........
And yes the infantry anti-tank weapons, both hand held and vehicle mounted, are indeed a threat to the tank but can be mitigated by the modern active defence systems; just ask Israel/US why they are spending so much money on this area. And of course the the tank armour wins/ATGM wins/tank protection system wins etc, etc technical battle continues. And then there is all the other weapons on the all arms battlefield, tanks do not operate in isolation, to suppress those bad guys with their ATGMs; not guaranteed but it can work.
Both threats to the tank have their place on the battlefield and can be successful but can they knock the tank off the battlefield, especially when operating with an effective all arms force, no not yet.
Azerbaijan has just last year recovered the Armenian occupied Nagorno-Karabakh (Google it) with an extraordinarily successful campaign hugely supported by UAVs, and what a job they did, but it still took tanks, and other parts of the all arms force, to stand on the Lachin corridor cutting off Nagorno-Karabakh from Armenia to win the war for sure. Tanks did that!
And as Fluff alludes to, in a conflict if you want somebody's else's territory, for whatever reason, and hold onto that territory then you need to park your bloody great big tank (or big vehicle with big gun and lots of protection) on the bad guys lawn and say 'I am here what are you going to do about it'. Tanks can do that!
However I do agree with Shin_getter ref infantry assault guns for close support of infantry on the battlefield, and belonging to the infantry, but the purse holders and the tankers would have a fit at that heresy! Oh and by the way the infantry also needs this heavy armour and protection systems, i.e. Israeli Namer, but thats another story!
So long live the well protected, well armed, mobile thing! And as none of us can see the future, the next conflict will be as unexpected as the last........
Vikingtank.
