The tank is dead: Long live the javelin, the switchblade, the ... ?(warontherocks.com) |
The tank is dead: Long live the javelin, the switchblade, the ... ?(warontherocks.com) |
Lighter wheeled gun armed vehicles can be cheaper, but they don't have the survivability. They also can't go everywhere a tracked tank can go, such as jungle busting or just driving right through many kinds of buildings or cover. Missile have much longer flight times to target than gun rounds. A tank can move into position, fire, destroy it's target and be back in cover before a missile gets anywhere near it's target. The missiles are also vastly more expensive than tank rounds.
Yes tanks are vulnerable when not properly integrated with air support, artillery and infantry. They're still a lot more survivable than pretty much anything else that can provide the same capabilities though. One tank in the second Gulf War shrugged off 14 RPG hits, and overall tanks in that conflict amply proved their value, when used effectively.
That's the point so, there is no other system that can give those capabilities for now. Seriously read the article, it is pretty good on that topic.
In terms of tank usage, they are also quite good in when directly engaging fortified positions, e.g. field bunkers and so on.
1. Hard-kill APS - active protection systems - mm AESA (fast, high resolution) miniature radar detecting threats and sending munitions to intercept them. See Arena, Trophy. Eventually, laser counter-drone systems for small swarms (see Israeli developments)
2. Soft-kill APS - smarter/highly-automated smoke deployment, IR smoke, radar chaff. Directed radar / IR blinders. (See T-90 systems failing in Ukraine atm)
3. Passive - lower signatures.
4. Target detection and automatic turret queuing - tanks have a lot of space, they can have sophisticated optics and computers that find targets (including OTH data from tethered drones) or find launches against them and can fire on that launch. This is less effective against fire and forget systems ala Javelin or systems like Stunga where the launch platform is away from the guidance system.
5. Trench sweepers and coupled 30mm cannons - tanks can airburst and clear trenches / buildings better.
6. Operating in fully jammed environments. This has NOT happened in Ukraine at all. Wide-area signal suppression seems like a myth in the current war.
Anyway, this is just basic stuff to look into. The tanks remains a "go fast, penetrate stuff, maneuver" platform.
One thing most people also forget is the cost of the firepower that comes with the platform. Smart/loitering munitions are still expensive, and still have a high time-to-target than direct fire or dumb mortars.
imho the failures observed caused by manpad in the ukrane theatre were directly attributable to an almost comically poor systems integration on the part of the aggressor and an unwillingness to commit longer range artillery and missile strikes to soften what were hardened infantry targets equipped with sixth generation anti-air and anti-tank weaponry.
There is nothing fundamentally indefensible about drone swarms, the complex just hasn't had enough time to react. You can bet that, if it doesn't already exist in secret somewhere in the US, there are many teams actively working on tank-mounted drone laser defense systems.
I suspect that drones have been hard to target until now because they have a unique air signature far different from all previous air targets, not because they are fundamentally more "invisible" than a Predator or a helicopter. Given their unique shape, movement, noise, and radio profile, a CS grad could certainly cobble together a drone target acquisition system using some consumer-level optic systems combined with a radio antenna, radar, and microphone array.
And as we all know, quadcopter drones are exceedingly fragile and most of their profile is millimeter-thin plastic blades. Once you have the ability target them, you'd only need a moderately powered laser to completely disable them.
The tank may not be completely obsolete and indeed properly used like the US did and like Russia sadly probably re-learned it is a very useful tool.
More defensive automation will put even that "properly used" to the test. I think we've just scratched the surface of what AI can do for defense; for offense also, but not as much. It's now in the realm of reality (think the mossad machine gun attack in Iran) to have systems that will autonomously attack any tank/vehicle/human, just waiting in ambush. It's orders of magnitued to have offensive AI driven tanks.
Imagine 1000 Mariupols, all automated with automated machine guns, AT missiles, drones and so on. Those do not require food, no water, no sleep, are not afraid to die.
Regardless, tanks are not what they used to be in WW2 -- modern tanks are extremely expensive and there are a lot of ways to kill tanks nowdays.
The battle will go back and forth, the tanks will get active protection, the ATGMs will get a lot faster, will used efps like the NLAW, but I think the writing is on the wall. Yeah, it was said before, just like it was said about the missile making dogfights obsolete -- a little early, but true eventually.
The first point is the big one, the future of ground forces may not be built around gunned vehicles. Drone swarms can threaten entrenched infantry, ATGMs can destroy tanks from a distance. A "dumb" artillery round costs $1,000 and is accurate to 20 meters, recent "smart" artillery rounds cost $140,000, a switchblade costs $6000.
A lot of the breathless enthusiasm for drones seems premature. SAMs didn't make aircraft obsolete, air to ground missiles from aircraft and helicopters didn't make tanks and other vehicles obsolete, and there's doesn't seem to be any reason to believe that adjustments won't be made by the various militaries to provide protection against drones.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUyAPQEb01Q
Chieftain
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lI7T650RTT8
Bernard
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPth_xqBXGY
Extreme summary, blame me if I missed something obviously important - unsupported tanks will die to infantry or artillery and have done so since shortly after the inception of the tank. Tanks are actually pretty cheap compared to replacing a human, it costs quite a lot to raise a modern human. The tank role still exists, but ratios of tanks to other fighting vehicles may change.
[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidhambling/2022/04/01/why-do...
I think we will see the tanks in future battlefields still but rather than cannons they will be using more electronic warfare and will be providing indirect fire with "smart" weapons. Essentially they will be multi role armoured vehicles with high manoeuvrability e.g. (British Ajax Scout Vehicle)
Or my sci-fi'ish theory of a "drone tank"
Why?
* Governments have high demands from defence and at the same time want low costs.
* Military doesn't want an infantryman any more; they want a soldier who can perform several other roles. Same goes for vehicles.
* The concept of modular vehicles with the same chassis is becoming popular.
* Everyone who was taught or believed cold war military tactics is retiring or will be soon. So new doctrines will emerge.
<armchair_opinion/>
Do you (honestly) believe the US doesn't have tank armor that can withstand a (from the top) hit from a Javelin?
The tank is not dead (well, not any more than large tank charges are probably dead and ww2 style combat is dead? We likely won't see anything like in desert storm or the Yom Kippur war again).
If this exists, why did the USMC binned their tanks 2 years ago stating they weren't cost-effective anymore? I'll believe this exists when I'll see it, but so far we have seen $4M tanks defeated by $100K javelins with a 93% kill rate, and so far cope cages have done nothing against them.
Also again: you are taking Russian armor survivability as proof for US armor survivability against the same threat. I totally get if you take my comments here with a (big) grain of salt because I can't provide citations and I'm not making any direct claims about US armor survivability against Javelins (and you'll note you won't find any videos/info online about that because of classification).
Doctrine and training are paramount, together with command and control that's what enabled the early German successes in WW1. And in the case of France a ton of luck.
The article asks the right question: is the role of the tank still needed? A Javelin neutralizes a tank, under the right conditions, it doesn't replace it.
Tanks have always been vulnerable to very cheap infrantry weapons if used badly.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trophy_(countermeasure)
[2] https://asc.army.mil/web/portfolio-item/abrams-main-battle-t...
Active protection systems like Trophy are designed to pre-detonate that shaped charge so that they actual sabot penetrator just bounces off the normal armor, or is hit by ERA (explosive reactive armor). I'm sure APS work better against most ATGMs than sabots, but fundamentally, many of them are designed similarly. Sans maybe there are no depleted uranium ATGMs.
Tanks must be supported by infantry teams. Without capable mortar teams, rifle teams, automatic weapons teams, they are sitting ducks, as Russia has proven.
Nothing has significantly changed since the 80s-90s, ATGMs have gotten better but they were still a huge problem back then and the solution seems to be the same, better recon, more artillery.
Drones don't represent something new but really precision strikes at a discount, capabilities only available to major powers once are now "buy off the shelf".
The TB-2 with a couple of MAM missiles does the same job as an f4 with a couple of walleyes.
The only difference being the f4 cost 2 million dollars in 1965 while the TB-2 costs 2 million dollars now.
anti-tank hand grenades are obsolete.
The only use is to somehow get them to detonate under the tank and pray it will do something.
Anyone with a mild knowledge of history knows about the huge tank battle that took place between India and Pakistan in 1965. Hard to take the article without any reference to that conflict.
And because US marines conceded on the idea of fighting China amphibiously. Honestly, the idea to take, and hold those tiny islandlets in the South Sea by force landing is ridiculous.
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No tank, or just anything will "live" if being sent into a know killbox, and Russians keep doing that repeatedly. This is what's happening in Ukraine now. Literally this: a clueless battalion sized force wades into a killbox, gets annihilated to last few men, next day, another battalion is sent to exactly the same spot...
Russians could've easily lost as much with modern, or other kind of military hardware than tanks.
Most Russian tanks were disabled by artillery, and missiles, not in tank vs. tank battles. No tank in the world would survive a 40kg missile, or an artillery shell hitting its roof. So, the quality of hardware is irrelevant.
Most of Russian military hardware losses are not from battles, but from soldiers routing, and abandoning their vehicles, which are LATER destroyed, or captured.
What is really telling is extremely low quality is the Russian military leadership.
The key here is to understand that losses do not come from 40kg missiles themselves, but from Russian generals knowingly sending their troops into ATGM, and artillery killboxes, and from Russian troops knowing their generals intentions, and acting accordingly (routing upon first battle damage)
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In the context of above, it's very clear that amphibious landing in the age of satellite reconnaissance, infrared optics, 100km artillery projectiles, and antiship missiles is not a smart way to wage war today
Given that modern war should be centered toward war crimes, witch means using civilian stuff to disguise forces, mass kill people with poisoned water without damaging significantly the infra, use and abuse modern IT crap vulnerabilities do disable infra (like electric grid, connected vehicles etc) without physical damage, spread disinformation with the best possible ability etc.
That's why, for instance, in Ukraine Russia can't really arrive to a quick victory. Such immoral and criminal pattern is nothing new: WWI was a combat between armies, civilians are evacuated before combats, non-combatant on the front line was a bit respected etc, WWII change the game hitting civilians without any morale, hitting ambulances, putting military in hospitals etc. Now we do not even use State's official army preferring mercenaries with formally no flag and no code of conduct, engaging rule: "do what you want but win".
In such scenario try to be civil is not doable, the sole option is show equal behaviors, not encouraging criminals and violence per se, but mastering it to crush enemy forces and push civilians of all sides against the combatant because being unable to distinguish between them any unknown human being can be an enemy so a legit target for all sides.
Reaching such level of brutality means creating just bloodbaths where public opinion will rise at a certain point against the war itself. At that point no gear will work, the force of the crowd could not be stopped.
That's the modern strategy no one admit of course, but many practice shamefully.
Until very recently, 2 guys hiding in a bush couldn't kill a tank, you needed a predator drone, an helicopter or some other advanced system requiring heavy logistics. Now behind every bush and every road corner is a potential enemy able to defeat you. With >90% kill ratio for javelins, the tanks needs to be lucky for weeks on end to survive, and the ATGM needs to be lucky only once.
It's easy to forget that reality isn't a third-person shooter. When you're sitting in a steel box with an engine in the back and a cannon on the top, situational awareness will inevitably suffer to some degree, and no amount of cameras will completely offset that.
Do you now what's funny? Even RTS videogames like the Command and Conquer series or Star-Craft made this point clear early in our childhoods.
Tanks will be eaten alive by hoards of cheap disposable units, so you always had to support them with anti-infantry units if you wanted them to be useful in battle.
No realistic amount of infantry support can shield you against weapons with such a huge range. An entire army could, but that is obviously too much.
A tank performs a critical role. You can't replace it until you have something else performing that role.
And you don't just have the cost of the tank - there's also the cost of all the logistics needed to get the tank to the battlefield, no matter where it is in the world - and then to feed it a constant supply of fuel, ammo, spare parts and repair.
Tanks are expensive, missiles that can defeat tanks are cheap. But the question is, what is a replacement good for a tank? What fills the role? What is the role?
Does it take a platoon to replace a tank?
The lifetime value of a human is only going up. Most soldiers go on to take jobs and contribute to the economy of a nation.
You could think of a tank saving the lives of the 3 people inside it, or the lives of the 10 or 20 people it would take to fill the role if the tank was not available. You could think of the days, hours, or minutes of fighting it might save, which might translate to many more lives saved.
Also consider the political cost of loss of life.
I don't think it is AT ALL clear how to evaluate the relative costs here. One would have to consider the mission at hand and the value of that mission.
I'm guessing the total lifetime cost of a trained soldier is less than $8.9M but I wouldn't be suprised to find that the figures are comparable in the end.
As far as I know, it is because the current gen of Russian tanks were designed for how they envisioned WW3 40 years ago [1]. Basically the tanks would follow nuclear strikes, and making humans load the ammunition would make them die a lot quicker from radiation, so they made an autoloader.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Days_to_the_River_Rhine
It's a large-scale conflict so one can cherry-pick enough footage to support any narrative.
This made me happy. :)
(In Russian, numeric determiners 2-4 place the noun in genitive singular and numeric determiners 5+ place the noun in genitive plural. One book, two of book, three of book, four of book, five of books.)
I'd be shocked if canons went away though. The end goal of warfare is to cause enough chaos/destruction that your enemy's choices are constrained to what you want. Without physical violence there's no sense going out into the field in the first place.
The ultimate faraday cage match, where swarms of autonomous surface and air vehicles jam, cook, and subvert the circuits of the opposition into oblivion
But why would such capabilities need to be installed on the heavy chassis of a tank?
Electronic warfare and smart weaponry benefit alot from mobility and redundant systems that can operate even when front-line-logistics are interrupted. Tanks offer neither, they are slow, hard to repair, and burn fuel like noones business.
The only advantage a tank offers is, well, being tank-y, and as modern ATGM systems have demonstrated in Ukraine, that advantage isn't what it used to be.
Seems that the "West", spearheaded by the US, has the most experienced military in the world at the moment. 20 years of counter insurgency warfare and some more conventional wars before that seriously helped a lot. Just how much is at display in Ukraine, first by the, so far, Russian failures and second by the preparation and performance of the Ukrainians, which where supported, cinsulted and equiped by NATO for years by now.
Basically, it is doctrine and some technical solutions (Javelins attack tanks from the top as opposed horizontally like older anti-tank missiles) that will enable the tank to do its job.
It's curious so, that nobody asks these questions when it comes to fighter aircraft and helicopters. Because those are vulnerable to manpads as well, and the war in Ukraine shows this pretty clearly. I guess burned out tank make for better footage then some small pieces or debris in some field that only experts can tell which aircraft it used to be once.
There are a lot of Americans who talk up the "right" to armed resistance against their government. There are also an alarmingly large number of mass shootings in America. It's almost surprising that these rarely overlap and you get people shooting up their school, university, a nightclub, or random people in Las Vegas rather than directed terrorism towards the actual government.
The Capitol Police, despite being both armed and trained to use their arms, inexplicably did not use their weapons until something like 90 minutes into the riot. The only fatality from the riot, one unarmed protester, was the result.
The Capitol Police is wholly under the control of Congress. Keep that in mind as you read this Time article <https://time.com/5936036/secret-2020-election-campaign/>, which specifically discusses how leftist groups that also had planned protests at the Capitol that day were specifically told to stand down.
>On June 14, 2017, during a practice session for the annual Congressional Baseball Game for Charity in Alexandria, Virginia, James Hodgkinson shot U.S. House Majority Whip Steve Scalise, U.S. Capitol police officer Crystal Griner, congressional aide Zack Barth, and lobbyist Matt Mika. A ten-minute shootout took place between Hodgkinson and officers from the Capitol and Alexandria Police before officers shot Hodgkinson, who died from his wounds later that day at the George Washington University Hospital.[7][8] Scalise and Mika were taken to nearby hospitals where they underwent surgery.[9]
Hodgkinson was a left-wing political activist[10][11] from Belleville, Illinois, while Scalise was a Republican member of Congress. The Virginia Attorney General concluded Hodgkinson's attack was "an act of terrorism... fueled by rage against Republican legislators".[12] Scalise was the first sitting member of Congress to have been shot since Arizona Representative Gabby Giffords was shot in 2011.[13]
In a 2021 report, the FBI classified the shooting as an act of domestic terrorism, and the perpetrator of the shooting as a "domestic violent extremist" with a "personalized violent ideology."
I think DIY weapons would be the more dangerous threat btw. A sharpened stick on one of those racing drones could rest on top of (say) a small shack until the target comes by, then strike extremely quickly.
> Its not like the President / etc are actually all that important. The Government is more than them, and will live on and continue doing the objectionable stuff regardless.
The US president is a very important symbol and therefore a potential target, even though the whole of the US government consists of much more than just that one person.
For example, the T-72B3M Obr. 2016 is a thoroughly modern tank, though obviously based on the T-72. Modern fire-control, modern vision equipment, solid ERA, good cannon.
Where it is failing is in how it's being used, even ignoring the lack of appropriate infantry/artillery support. This is a tank that has thermal day/night sights (not IR spotlights). It should be able to see someone lurking with an NLAW or RPG, but they are continually being sniped.
So why? Well, perhaps the thermal sights suck, or were stripped out at depot by some corrupt quartermaster. Or perhaps the crews are so poorly trained they can't take advantage of them. Or perhaps a lot of the ATGM kills we see are abandoned vehicles that are just getting destroyed.
Also, during the 2014 Donbass war, the UA lost roughly 400 MBTs, the majority of which were lost to mortars and artillery, not ATGMs. We see the videos of the Javelin/NlAW strikes, but we don't see hardly as much artillery. Artillery is the king of war...
Most of this we won't know until the conflict has quieted down, and after action reports are gathered.
Tanks aren't obsolete by any means, but the reasons for the high losses are multivariate, a nd not due to old armor being destroyed by "modern" (30 year old Javelin) anti-tank weapons.
I think the main gun on an MBT will be replaced by rocket systems on smaller lighter, faster vehicles like the Boxer CRV family.
Edit just to add,
The secrets out that the idea behind Javelin and NLAW is sound. Expect there to be a proliferation of reasonably cheap weapons in this category being developed and built by everyone.
The only reason we're hearing so much talk about the Javelin/NLAW is because of cheap cellphone videos capturing so much of the war in Ukraine. (And extremely poor Russian tactics...)
The only more advanced tank Russia has is the T-14, but it likely has less then 20 of those and due to the sanctions wont be able to make anymore, so its unlikely to be fielded in Ukraine.
The US can soften things up with cruse missiles and the F-22 or it’s successors, the F-35’s job is to crush what remains and it does that very well. Difficult enough to fight that you need expensive and therefore difficult to replace weapons systems while still being affordable enough to be plentiful.
The F-35 is fine. It's designed to be a replacement to the F-16 with a good level of stealth. NO fighter is 100% immune to SAMs, but the F-35 can survive on the modern battlefield against S300/S400 etc just fine. It would be cleaning up in Ukraine right now as long as the airbases it flew from were protected.
And what "unmanned fighters" are out there right now? Some low performance drones? Sure. But unmanned fighters that can engage in A2A combat are non-existent. Most current drones have the performance of a Cessna 172.
I don't think you could possibly know this. NATO countries have S-300s and the F-35 was probably tested against it, but it's highly unlikely it was tested against an actual latest gen S-400 in fighting condition ( if such a thing even exists, Russian military readiness is dubious at best).
If the F-35 will be allowed to shoot targets over the horizon based only on instruments, it will most probably work as intended.
If visual confirmation will be required, it will be a boondoggle.
From what I have seen reported every major player is working on "loyal wingmen".
Autonomous drones that would fly along manned aircraft. That way you supposedly get the best of both worlds, the situational awareness and judgement of a human along the expendability of a drone.
Where do you get that from? The whole point of the 1.2 trillion endeavor is survivability.
In the end we are at a trade-off situation: Either we don't send weapons to Ukraine and let Putin take over, raze the country and genocide off the population (they are already setting up "filtration camps" and forcibly relocating Ukrainians to Siberia [1]), and risk that the Baltic states or Poland becomes the next target for Putin. Or we send weapons to Ukraine, blow the invasion forces to pieces, and risk that the weapons will be sold off later on to the highest bidders.
Personally I prefer the latter: no one should be forced to live under Putin's dictatorship and the post-WW2 world order was explicitly created to condemn Nazi-style landgrab operations. If the price of that will be that some ammo gets diverted off to some other warlord, that's bad but acceptable because the alternative is so much worse.
[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/ukrainian-woman-gives-accoun...
https://www.rferl.org/a/pandora-papers-tax-havens/31490744.h...
there is no reason to assume weaponry will be somehow excluded from their corrupted business operations
It is entirely reasonable that, similar to the aftermath of the 90s wars, weapons from Ukraine will turn up in every major conflict zone - especially because the current supply from the Balkan is all 30 years old decrepit shit, whereas Ukraine (rightfully) got the very best of the best of Western weaponry.
[1] https://www.nordbayern.de/region/nsu-prozess-gericht-will-he...
[2] https://www.dw.com/de/waffenlager-balkan-kalaschnikow-300-eu...
> The Russian Army has shown that it is not competent in combined arms fire and maneuver. Where is the accompanying infantry with the tank formations, who are supposed to bust the ambushes executed by Ukrainian forces? Where are the suppressive mortar, artillery, and close air support fires? If the Russian Army was tactically skilled, then the Javelin and other ATGMs would be suppressed by artillery or air support and their surviving crews would be swept up by Russian infantry. Thus far, these key competencies seem to be lacking and Russian soldiers are paying a high price for their unpreparedness.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMWHTVLWo2E
Wikipedia is not always a good source for military information, FYI...
https://cat-uxo.com/explosive-hazards/grenades/rkg-1600-hand...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M2_Bradley: "The use of aluminum armor and the storage of large quantities of ammunition in the vehicle initially raised questions about its combat survivability."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M1_Abrams: "The M1 Abrams...introduced several innovative features, including a multifuel turbine engine, sophisticated Chobham composite armor, a computer fire control system, separate ammunition storage in a blow-out compartment"
Handheld old anti-tank weapons like RPGs with HEAT warheads were extremely unreliable, defeated by reactive explosive armors, successful only at very close range and so on. Modern ATGMs able to be fired from kilometers away and with >90% kill rates completely changes the dynamic. Those systems are only going to get smarter and cheaper when there is a physical limit on the armor+weight+cost+logistical support equation for tanks.
You do realize that the S400 is just an upgraded S300, right? Hence it's original name of S300 PMU-3?
Its not like a medium income politician having hundreds of millions stored away.
I m quite impressed by the attrition in both troops, ammo, and material. More than Wunderwaffen, i think the lesson is more in trained personel reserves, as well as stockpiles.
By whom?
> proliferation
Unlike firearms, the critical and expensive part of these weapons is the round, not the launcher. And they're being used up at a huge rate.
What exactly is the worry scenario, that after the war is over the Ukranian state, newly forged in adversity, will immediately lose operational control over its units which will then decide they aren't imminently going to need these weapons for homeland defence, so they can sell them on the black market?
This argument only makes sense if the turret is entirely unmanned.
According to the wiki, an autoloader also improves smoke removal, which would also help maintain a safe NBC-isolated interior space.
Given the current state of cities such as Mariupol I don't believe you can attribute an unwillingness to use artillery to the Russian side.
Systems like TOR/Tunguska/Buk should be easily capable of detecting the Bayraktar and destroying it. It's not like Russia didn't see how it worked in the Armenian/Azerbaijan conflict. They knew Ukraine had Bayraktar, but seemed completely unprepared to deal with it.
The Ukrainians have all the same SAM systems the Russians do, so are super familiar with their limitations. They’re also many times more motivated.
Russia's BTGs were explicitly designed to (a) consume minimal manpower (they were composed of non-coscript troops from their parent units), (b) consequently, to maximize lethality:person (tank co + 3x mech inf co + 2 AT co + artillery/anti-air), and (c) to minimize logistical support requirements (by deploying smaller units).
Essentially, they were built to win small-scale conflicts at a price Russia could afford.
Ukraine is not a small-scale conflict.
Consequently, the following chain of events (predictably) occurred: (1) Putin proposes 2003 military reforms [0], (2) Serdyukov realizes many of these in 2008 reforms [1], (3) optimistic appraisal of capabilities vs Ukraine leads to Army grandstanding, little strategic integration with different branches (e.g. VVS, VMF), (4) utter failure of real political intelligence mistakenly assumes Ukrainian population (esp urban) will not support government & defense, (6) infantry-light, manuever-oriented assault predictable bogs down in urban areas, without necessary troop count in assaulting units, (7) strategic approach is locked in, as a consequence of previous choices, (8) everyone involved at a command level scrambles to cover their ass and blame others.
If Russia had wanted to win the war they ended up getting, they should have never assaulted urban areas with BTGs.
They would have manuevered south from western Belarus, bisecting the country, and forced Moldova to declare neutrality and forbid weapons shipments. Then pick key infrastructure apart at leisure. Because that's the sort of thing the BTGs were built to do.
But presumably Russia didn't want to do that because it betrays the "this is all about Donbas (and the criminal Ukrainian government)" talking points, and it didn't think it would need to. Hindsight is 20/20.
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Ground_Forces#Reform...
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Russian_military_reform
That's what I call over simplification.
The point is that modern, competent armies have been preparing to counter the ATGM threat for over half a century.
On a more serious note, I would have counted the Russians in the group of competent armies. Maybe they were during the cold war, Afghanistan is not really a good measure. Maybe they were not, no way to ever find out. All being said, I'm happy that we never found out so far. Because one thing is sure, finding out involves turning whatever region is used to find out into a war zone.
Not true so. The US thought that in Vietnam, the F-4 (?) didn't have an on-board canon for that very reason. All new planes again have one, because dog fights turned out to be very much a thing. The Phoenix missile, and the F-14, have been built around the beyond-visual range idea. Both are out of service now. Beyond visual range works when you see the enemy but the enemy doesn't see you. If both parties see each other, the first shot will be beyond visual range, any survivors will find themselves in dog fight after that. And if both side use stealthy fighters, they won't see each other, or be able to engage each other, at distances beyond a dog fight.
That's one of the big challenges, isn't it? If an enemy catches a flight of F-35s / F-22s with enough numbers the result could be devastating. And the big limitation of stealth aircraft is payload. Have them carry more, on external hardpoints, and they loose stealth. Have them maintain stealth means carrying less. Having too large internal bays makes them useless as fighters. Quite a fascinating conundrum there.
A cohesive BCT would be able to decimate light infantry. Yes, there will always be losses in war, but this shouldn't be an effective strategy. And I also think that the video coverage is making everyone think that ATGMs are winning the war. In the 2014-2016 Donbass, the UA lost over 400 tanks, the majority to artillery. Yet that isn't captured on video as easily unless there's a drone correcting the artillery's fall.
Plus, while adding layers of protection to armor (or ships and planes) is a useful endeavor, the maxim of shooting the archer, not the arrow is a better strategy. There's a point of diminishing returns when you layer so much on a vehicle instead of dealing with threats using an entire system (Artillery/Infantry/ECM/ECCM/Air Support).
Now? I think that NATO could easily handle almost anything Russia could throw at it, short of nukes.
It really is amazing how poorly they've performed. And the BTG concept has been utterly disproven as a brittle, unsustainable force.
Putin and most of the Russian military doctrine would beg to differ.
It depends on the nation and their political situation.
Since 1945, Russia hasn't shown that it can accept a war of mass casualties without political fallout. Russian military doctrine may say that it can, but Putin would be unwise to assume so.
Siege tanks are grouped with marines and firebats for protection, Marines and medics run with medics for assistance. Have your infantry out front. Move to a location, plant your troops, put your tanks in siege mode, rain hellfire down upon aerial defenses and approaching units so your Battlecruisers can come in with their Vulture and Wraith support to decimate a base.
It takes a village. You know, to destroy the other guys village. But still. Villages.
For sure the Russians have lots a lot of vehicles to ATGMs, they have proved to be extremely effective weapons, especially against tanks moving forward in tight formations without infantry support. However nobody is looking at the terrible infantry casualties Russia has suffered, due to poor tactics, training and resupply, and concluding that infantry are obsolete.
Here's a video of a Ukrainian tank ambushing a Russian convoy. Seems like a pretty effective weapon system to me.
On the video, the ukrainian tank is of course performing an effective ambush. I don't pretend I have the answers, but I wonder how would perform a bunch of infantry with NLAWs striking the column from multiple places at once, for cheaper than the tank, able to engage multiple targets at once, much less spottable, and so on.
The point is that a properly equipped, prepared and trained military would have taken steps to use assets like tanks well and not marched them into oblivion, and perhaps researched and developed countermeasures to what is clearly a popular anti-tank missile system.
Such a military would also have conducted reconnaissance by drone, scouts, satellite etc. and concluded from the data gathered that driving a tank into [area with lots of unpacked Javelin crates] would perhaps be impractical, and focused on eliminating the munitions before playing the tank card.
The tank can wipe out infantry and survive anything with less-than-anti-tank weapons, the Javelin user can kill the tank, the sniper can kill the Javelin, the counter-sniper can kill the sniper, the artillery strike or sustained covering fire by infantry can cancel out the counter-sniper, etc.
The point is that simply driving tanks into a city full of people with anti-tank missile launchers and a strong inclination to attack invading tanks is not a good idea without mitigating the risk.
The existence of an anti-tank missile launcher does not make the tank irrelevant. Fighter jets still fly despite the existence of anti-aircraft missile systems.
What makes war technology irrelevant is whether it is prohibitively expensive to replace, assuming non-zero odds that the unit will be incapacitated/destroyed.
This is especially true against an opposing military force that has large amounts of existing man-made or natural shelter and cover, high motivation, *and* supplies/support from multiple wealthy countries, etc. that basically doesn't have to spend because it's defending with whatever it has, tooth and nail.
Offensive destructive power can be provided by air support, long range self-guiding weapons and drone weaponry as well.
I also don't believe that ATGMs mean "Tanks are already obsolete". But I do think they are under threat of becoming so, because: ATGMs will get better, as will drones. Meanwhile, a tank will always be a big hunk of metal moving comparatively slowly on the ground.
EDIT: The point is that a tank will be made obsolete by weapon system that replaces the tanks function on the battlefield. And not by a system that can destroy a tank. Because those anti-tank systems exist since WW1. Initially the Germans were not that impressed by tanks, large caliber rifles and re-purposed field guns worked just fine against the first tanks the French and British used. Nobody stopped tank, or anti-tank weapon, development then so. I don't see a reason why anybody would stop tank development just because we have impressive Javelin footage. If anything, tanks will improve to increase protection against ATGMs and drones. As will tactics and doctrine.
They are not, the fact the Russians have lost so many planes is a testament to their inability to suppress the Ukrainian air defense.
Fighters are capable of flying far higher than MANPAD ceilings the only reason to fly that low is to employ visually guided weapons under cloud cover or to attempt to hide behind the terrain against longer range air defense systems.
Both of these issues can be resolved. By suppressing the enemy long range air defense and by employing laser guided weapons along with ground based designators.
Also fighters can evade missiles, google f16 dodges 6 sams for an extreme example.
The point is that a soldier with a Javelin is a much less visible target than a big vehicle. Even if he runs just 40 meters away between the firing of the missile and its impact, any return fire aimed at the original site will likely miss him. And there can be a hundred of such Javelin-equipped soldiers in range.
There’s no scenario where hundreds of Javelins are sitting in one infantry company. It’s the type of thing that only makes sense on paper.
Would be much more worried about evolution of loitering fires with drones.
EDIT: Just looked, the T-72 has a 125 mm smoothbore cannon.
No, they would not. I believe they would seem easy-mode target practice for the cannon.
Tactical aircraft in Ukraine is also targeted by Buk/Tor/Tunguska, but I believe most of the aircraft and helo losses have been due to MANPADs.
Now the US is realizing that what it once thought of as robust stocks of PGMs may not be enough for a high-intensity conflict. Production rates of Javelin are pretty slow, and the Stinger has been out of production for a while with no planned replacement. The US Army has always given air defense low priority, counting on the USAF to provide air supremacy. Against a near pear, that might not be the wisest choice, and doesn't help with drones anyways.
That's the secret power of a functional democracy: it can empower the military.
So your cloud of Cessnas could conceivably carry 60 Stingers. How will they detect a fighter flying at 30K? A 172 can only get to about 15K in perfect conditions. It flies at like 100mph compared to a Mach 2 F-35.
Again, short of being a suicide bomber trying to kill an F-35 on the ramp, this idea is ludicrous.
To create a drone capable of threatening an F-35 requires creating something very similarly capable in all ways but without the pilot. This may exist one day but it isn't going to come at a discount.
Those missiles are not cheap, and it would be unlikely for cheap Cessnas to get in range of an F-35. At long range the F-35 is difficult to observe by sensors that fit inside a Cessna.
I believe it is possible to shoot down low-radar-crossection aircraft if the missiles are spotted/guided by other sensor networks, but that is not easy, cheap, or mobile. And land based radars are sitting ducks.
But there may be cheaper and better models one day. This war has shown that ATGMs, MANPADs and their ilk have a huge potential, which means that a lot of countries and companies are going to pour resources into R&D. This usually means an overall improvement in capabilities and possibly a reduced price tag.
As an analogy: once it would be considered too expensive and impractical to equip infantry with night vision en masse. Russia still cannot do that, but for rich Western countries, it is an absolutely realistic option.
Have you ever humped a combat load? It sucks. You’re rolling out with 40 lbs of stuff hanging off you before we even talk sustainment.
Javelin has gotta be 40-50 lbs. Add that on. Want an extra missile? Add another 30 or so.
Now suppose you don’t run into any armor, this is why every infantryman doesn’t/won’t carry one. Maybe 1 per squad, if we want to be super aggressive maybe 1 per fireteam. But that’s now a machine gun they’ve left out, what if they really needed more suppression?
It’s a trade off and humans aren’t capable of bringing all the nice to haves to every fight. This is why there won’t be hundreds in a company.
And when that "one day" comes around, the tank engineers will have outfitted every vehicle with Trophy-style active protection systems AND laser anti-missile/anti-drone remote weapons stations on the turrets.
>>>As an analogy: once it would be considered too expensive and impractical to equip infantry with night vision en masse.
Interesting that you mention night vision. We used to swear by equipping our infantry with IR lasers as well, for pinpoint accuracy during night combat. Now that more of our adversaries are using night vision, we are swinging back towards NOT using IR lasers because the active emission is just like the old Murphy's Law adage: "tracers point both ways".
[1] by the US, Iran has used it more with more success.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIM-54_Phoenix#U.S._combat_exp...
What we are witnessing from Russia is not how armor should be employed. Armor is not suddenly obsoleted due to tech that’s been out for decades. That take is probably overly simplistic and wrong.
By the way, I’m a big proponent of FD2030.
Unaided pilot vision is unlikely to spot a target at 22 miles without some type of guidance.
In the case of the US involved conflicts it was working with allies and fighters lacking modern IFF that made the likelihood of friendly fire or collateral losses unacceptable to them.
It's a matter of acceptable risks. The AIM-54 was designed with a world war III in mind, employed in the middle of the ocean in closed airspaces were unidentified contacts could be treated as hostile with minimum political consequences.
The point I was making is here is an example of a time a major force decided not to use their prime BVR missile because of target identification concerns.
And the reason it wasn't used much wasn't just ID issues, but cost. It was supremely expensive, in limited stocks. Why use it against an Su-22 in the Gulf of Sidra? Or waste it over Iraq?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIM-120_AMRAAM#United_States_o...
> The two F-15s now initiated a visual identification (VID) pass of the contact.
> Wickson's VID pass was conducted at a speed of about 450 knots (520 mph; 830 km/h), 500 feet (150 m) above and 1,000 feet (300 m) to the left of the helicopters.
Now I am not saying there is no room for BVR, ofcourse there is. The 2 tracks in formation coming from Russian airspace pinging you with their Russian military radars are definitely Russian fighters. But there are also a lot of times where there has to be a visual id.
A military jet with it's radars turned off is almost impossible to tell apart from a civilian jet based on radar data alone, and everyone errs on the side of caution, of course the side of caution occasionally is to fire first and id later[2][3].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1994_Black_Hawk_shootdown_inci... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_Air_Flight_655 [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_airliner_shootdown_inc...