I think you need to look at the cost trajectory. ATGMs get cheaper over time as cost of electronics comes down. Tanks get more expensive as they update to more exotic composite armor, active protection systems, fancy sensors etc. Estimates vary, but a new NATO ATGM is probably around ~5% the cost of a new Russian Tank.
A missle can sit on a shelf for years, pop in fresh batteries and it is good to go.
A tank requires frequent maintenance and lots of expensive crew training to be effective.
Training a modern tank crew is not easy either. Think of the logistics too. There is a entire staff of people maintaining these things in battle zones. Gasoline resupply, tracks, electronics, shipment, crossing rivers, it's endless - in hot zone! THEN some 19 year old on a moped wastes it with a javelin.
It's very similar to what brought down knights on the battlefield(cheaper massed gunfire defeated plate armor), although the result for the next few centuries favored substituting lighter cavalry forces, right up until the World Wars brought the tank in as the new knight. Tanks won't disappear immediately - there's still justifications to have something in the role, perhaps with adjustments to the details - but it has to be part of a combined arms doctrine.
The key element in these tank kills is lack of support. Russia has long been thought to be behind on modern doctrine and the performance to date in Ukraine drives this home: in an environment that demands high levels of force coordination and expensive gadgets, a cannon fodder offensive creates extremely high attrition, and the demographics and economy of Russia today aren't as favorable to absorbing this as in the past(older, fewer young men to lose, dependencies on the rest of the world to rearm).
Half a million to destroy something that costs a million or more seems like a decent bargain to me, especially given that it’s fire and forget and capable of hitting them where their armor is thinnest. The pentagon’s latest numbers claim that out of 112 Javelins fired in Ukraine so far, 100 have hit their target[0].
>Half a million to destroy something that costs a million or more seems like a decent bargain to me
That's fine as long as you don't forget that a tank is designed to do the same thing. Nobody builds a $6 million tank to destroy $3 million worth of targets.
Sure they do, that is the nature of asymmetric warfare. In any US fiasco, a guy making 24k could call in a 500k airstrike on any antique of military origin. The point of engaging in a foreign war isn't a profit for a government to distribute to its citizens, it is to reallocate or destroy assets of the populace within the country to ensure a majority of internal power is consolidated on internal allies of the entity that can declare war.
The United States Dollar equals 84 Russian Ruble. You can now buy the T-72 for the price of a Tesla, and I heard the Ukrainian Army is making bulk discounts...
The one thing I don't understand about this debate is that if tanks are incurably vulnerable to drones and ATGMs and therefore obsolete, then why aren't IFVs/APCs, artillery, and transport vehicles obsolete for the same reason? Logically, they would be equally vulnerable since both weapons systems work just as well on them.
tl;dr: the russians are demonstrating the failure of a particular strategy/theory on how to deploy and use armor, not a failure of the concept of armor itself.
I'm not even sure that that's completely accurate. I think the Russians are demonstrating a failure to accurately assess the likely strength of their enemy.
In Georgia in 2008, skirmishes began in earnest on 8th August, and Russia were ready to roll into Tbilisi by the 14th.
I believe that Putin expected Ukraine to be very similar to Georgia - very fast advances to the capital, and ultimately capitulation from the Ukrainians to the Russians almost immediately.
The key to winning in Georgia was an overwhelming display of force. In Ukraine, I believe the strategy was the same - let Ukrainians see tank after tank after tank rolling through their villages, gently 'soften' the cities with artillery before rolling through the cities, and reach the capital in a few days. Furthermore, I think Putin genuinely wanted to avoid civilian and military casualties as much as possible, so a 'blitzkrieg' was preferable.
If you're moving that quickly, you don't need supply lines, you don't need logistics to the same extent, especially if your plan is not to occupy, just to withdraw after (for example) reinstating Yanukovic.
I think it's a legitimate strategy, but they gambled that they'd be able to achieve it and lost. That miscalculation has cost Russia a lot of time, morale, and equipment. I think now they're starting to adjust to the reality, which is that Ukraine were stronger than they were expecting in the first place, and on top of that, they're being supplied with weapons and real-time intelligence from the West. Assuming diplomatic efforts continue to fail, I see Russia now withdrawing to territory they are confident they control, and consolidating their forces, and beginning a war of attrition, which in the long run, Russia are likely to win.
However, there's a good chance that diplomacy will be successful. This war is incredibly costly for Russia, and if Putin finds a way to spin it that Russia have 'won' or 'achieved their objective' or whatever, then I think he will take that route - provided Russia maintains control of Sevastopol.
Everything is vulnerable. The US has just been lucky its been fighting yokels who didn't get frequent shipments of modern weaponry.
If the USMC ever finds themselves in the situation of having to storm the beaches of Hainan may God help them. But then the US nor China are dumb enough to get dragged into a fight like that.
What's going to happen in Taiwan as China gets ever closing to some kind of direct attack. No, we won't land on Chinese land to help them. There's always the point that it is hard to make an amphibious attack on Taiwan. Eventually China will attack them, then what will the US do to help? Then there are the potential for island battles in the ocean.
is there any evidence of the Chinese military being particularly effective? And not sure you can say that the Chinese don't plan to get dragged into a fight that starts with them storming beaches.
Some of the elements that you've mentioned are subject to divestment as well. The Marine Corps is abandoning their long-trusted M777 howitzer in favor of HIMARs, which are self-propelled and purported to be more mobile than a M777. There is a fair amount of disagreement in the artillery community over this choice among the guys on the ground from what I understand. Many platforms used in the military and Marine Corps are inherently vulnerable to attack. The question you have to ask is whether you can take the budget that would be allocated to one platform and use it better elsewhere. As with many other things in life, this comes down to a constrained optimization problem with many different factors to consider.
Overall, an aggressor has to "find, fix, and finish" the enemy to complete the kill chain. My understanding is that the general idea is to invest in platforms can move quickly, continue to decentralize command, and adopt a new warfare doctrine for the "pacing threat" in the Pacific. If you're interested in learning about contemporary doctrine--particularly in the Marine Corps--I'd suggest you look into EABO, which is the war-fighting doctrine that's being proposed for conflicts in the Pacific.
What is obsolete is the doctrine of “armored warfare”, the idea that armor is the primary weapon on the battlefield that allows you to break through enemy defenses. In the days of trench warfare, tanks were a “disruptive technology” - an almost invulnerable mobile fortress that allowed armies to completely change the script on the battlefield by blitzing up the middle and breaking stalemates.
Now that ATGMs are everywhere, armor is no longer invulnerable enough for this to be the main strategy - you need “combined arms operations” - infantry and air support to protect the armor. The Russians are not acting like this is the case, which is why their tanks are getting destroyed left and right.
Armored vehicles will never be obsolete - if you’re sending in infantry or artillery or whatever, it’s still better to have armor for eg. small arms fire and shrapnel - you just can’t rely on its strength as the core of your strategy.
I just don't see heavy armor such as tanks is going away any time soon, because of engagement range and maneuver capabilities, Russia failed to utilize ISR to counter anti tank threats (eg. recon drones and probably some infantry elements) and in general seems like failed miserably in combined arms maneuvers (where tanks provide only support to infantry in near real time coordination).
Russians don't seem to be using them very effectively either. A lot of the destroyed ones I've seen have been bogged in fields or static in convoys. Looks like poorly trained crews and tank commanders not using the mobility of a tank properly. Plus a lot of the tanks look super poorly maintained. I used to be a Challenger 2 crewman and if I'd kept my wagon in that state, I would have got some percussive encouragement to get my s*t sorted out.
The Russian problems appear to be at a higher level than just poorly trained tank crews and commanders (although that is a factor). Vehicles are essentially confined to roads because there's deep mud everywhere else until the weather warms up. In order to move on roads with any degree of safety they would need constant extensive air support, but that hasn't been available.
I read that this was a tactic the Ukrainians used: flood the roads with water to create mud that the Russians will get stuck in. So low tech, so brilliant.
That's also how it worked out in central Finland during WW2. A normally 2-D army was confined to roads, making it 1-D with exposed flanks. The Finns were able to starve them out, with very low losses. Shoot up their field kitchens (vital in the cold), keep'em awake all night with gunfire, and they crumble pretty quickly.
Whether it's smart or not, with the current budget situation the Marines simply don't have the funding to prepare for both an island-hopping campaign in the Pacific theater and desert warfare in the Middle East. So they had to pick one. There's no practical way to put modern tanks ashore on those islands in quantity.
As the author points out, the US Marines don't have to prepare for every kind of land war because the US Army can do what the Marines can't (and visa versa).
In addition, Marines believe that "Hunting tanks is fun and easy."
I do wonder about active defenses, like the Trophy system mentioned in the article. If these defenses can bring down missiles reliably, we could easily see a shift back to tank > missiles.
One thing these active defense systems will never solve for is kinetic weapons. Large enough shells can't be intercepted, only avoided.
I was recently reading about North Africa campaigns in ww2. One thing to note was that decisive aggressive actions that tanks allowed cause a lot more POWs because their positions could be overrun so quickly and effectively that desperate last stands weren’t feasible. Mud and hedgerows in France were a problem back then too. I also remember in desert storm 2 hearing that although many Abrams tanks were taken out of action, none of them were penetrated, it was all maintenance issues.
Rommel and Patton seemed to both think of tank warfare as it’s own thing that was hard. In the Patton movie they talk of troops thinking tanks were death traps back then too.
It’s touched on in the article, Ukrainian tank kill videos I’ve seen seem to be close range ambushes in urban areas. It’s my opinion that the US would have already bombed those areas to pieces and were much less willing to take risks with potential civilian combatants. But as the article says there is a lot of fog about what’s really happening and my view of the US is flavoured by the ‘atrocity’ videos that were popular ala Manning etc.
Super heavy tanks like Abrams and tigers seem really cool
Edit because didn’t finish: but that’s not the only way to go with tank design
Maybe not a good idea if they have to fight tanks with the new active protection systems. The latest tests with the Trophy system made by the US Army, seem to show Tanks are back.
“Trophy exceeded our expectations,” said Col. Dean. “Unlike prior APS tests…we were shooting actual threats at actual vehicles. I’m happy to say I kept trying to kill an Abrams tank about 48 times and failed every time.”
33 comments
[ 4.5 ms ] story [ 94.0 ms ] threadA missle can sit on a shelf for years, pop in fresh batteries and it is good to go.
A tank requires frequent maintenance and lots of expensive crew training to be effective.
The key element in these tank kills is lack of support. Russia has long been thought to be behind on modern doctrine and the performance to date in Ukraine drives this home: in an environment that demands high levels of force coordination and expensive gadgets, a cannon fodder offensive creates extremely high attrition, and the demographics and economy of Russia today aren't as favorable to absorbing this as in the past(older, fewer young men to lose, dependencies on the rest of the world to rearm).
Javelin: $250K missile + $250K launcher
T-72: $1000K-1200K (1-1.2 million)
Of course, non-US options are much cheaper:
NLAW: $40K
Stuhna-P: $20K
[0] https://www.armyrecognition.com/ukraine_-_russia_invasion_co...
Launcher: 250k
Getting to engage the Russkies via proxy while maintaining moral high ground and zero American casualties: priceless
That's fine as long as you don't forget that a tank is designed to do the same thing. Nobody builds a $6 million tank to destroy $3 million worth of targets.
tl;dr: the russians are demonstrating the failure of a particular strategy/theory on how to deploy and use armor, not a failure of the concept of armor itself.
In Georgia in 2008, skirmishes began in earnest on 8th August, and Russia were ready to roll into Tbilisi by the 14th.
I believe that Putin expected Ukraine to be very similar to Georgia - very fast advances to the capital, and ultimately capitulation from the Ukrainians to the Russians almost immediately.
The key to winning in Georgia was an overwhelming display of force. In Ukraine, I believe the strategy was the same - let Ukrainians see tank after tank after tank rolling through their villages, gently 'soften' the cities with artillery before rolling through the cities, and reach the capital in a few days. Furthermore, I think Putin genuinely wanted to avoid civilian and military casualties as much as possible, so a 'blitzkrieg' was preferable.
If you're moving that quickly, you don't need supply lines, you don't need logistics to the same extent, especially if your plan is not to occupy, just to withdraw after (for example) reinstating Yanukovic.
I think it's a legitimate strategy, but they gambled that they'd be able to achieve it and lost. That miscalculation has cost Russia a lot of time, morale, and equipment. I think now they're starting to adjust to the reality, which is that Ukraine were stronger than they were expecting in the first place, and on top of that, they're being supplied with weapons and real-time intelligence from the West. Assuming diplomatic efforts continue to fail, I see Russia now withdrawing to territory they are confident they control, and consolidating their forces, and beginning a war of attrition, which in the long run, Russia are likely to win.
However, there's a good chance that diplomacy will be successful. This war is incredibly costly for Russia, and if Putin finds a way to spin it that Russia have 'won' or 'achieved their objective' or whatever, then I think he will take that route - provided Russia maintains control of Sevastopol.
If the USMC ever finds themselves in the situation of having to storm the beaches of Hainan may God help them. But then the US nor China are dumb enough to get dragged into a fight like that.
Overall, an aggressor has to "find, fix, and finish" the enemy to complete the kill chain. My understanding is that the general idea is to invest in platforms can move quickly, continue to decentralize command, and adopt a new warfare doctrine for the "pacing threat" in the Pacific. If you're interested in learning about contemporary doctrine--particularly in the Marine Corps--I'd suggest you look into EABO, which is the war-fighting doctrine that's being proposed for conflicts in the Pacific.
Now that ATGMs are everywhere, armor is no longer invulnerable enough for this to be the main strategy - you need “combined arms operations” - infantry and air support to protect the armor. The Russians are not acting like this is the case, which is why their tanks are getting destroyed left and right.
Armored vehicles will never be obsolete - if you’re sending in infantry or artillery or whatever, it’s still better to have armor for eg. small arms fire and shrapnel - you just can’t rely on its strength as the core of your strategy.
In addition, Marines believe that "Hunting tanks is fun and easy."
I do wonder about active defenses, like the Trophy system mentioned in the article. If these defenses can bring down missiles reliably, we could easily see a shift back to tank > missiles.
One thing these active defense systems will never solve for is kinetic weapons. Large enough shells can't be intercepted, only avoided.
https://www.janes.com/defence-news/news-detail/iav-2020-elbi...
Even large armor-piercing shells require sophisticated electronics to correctly time the explosion.
These may be defeated by EW. Proximity fuses, for example, are just simple radars.
Supposedly, the Russians were are able to defend against artillery by jamming or spoofing proximity fuses with EW in Ukraine.
“Trophy exceeded our expectations,” said Col. Dean. “Unlike prior APS tests…we were shooting actual threats at actual vehicles. I’m happy to say I kept trying to kill an Abrams tank about 48 times and failed every time.”
https://breakingdefense.com/2017/10/army-accelerates-armor-s...
Also recent and less recent discussions:
"On Killing Tanks (2020)" - 13 days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30699355
"On Killing Tanks": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22661946
Edit: "Trophy (countermeasure)": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trophy_(countermeasure)