Daily Mail: Putin's new 'super tank' leaves West totally outgunned

[Berkut]

Now, it could be argued that modern weapons are simply so powerful that they have tilted the balance fundamentally.

This - if it is the case, it is because the capability of modern man portable weapons is radically greater than what was around in WW2, compared to the capability of the tank to resist them.

They have radically greater range, and some of them have astounding killing power. They are not really comparable to WW2 infantry AT weapons in anything but the grossest sense.

[Malthus]

Those weapons were not effective enough to really impact the overall viability of the tank though.

Panzerfaust had less than a 100m range. Bazookas maybe 200m, at best. And even the bazooka was hardly a sure kill, if you could hit.

Those weapons, in WW2, were better than nothing, but not actually decisive. They were reasons why it was dangerous for armor to go up against infantry in close terrain - they were not effective against tanks in general.

The bazooka and the panzerfaust were certainly relatively primitive weapons of limited range. But the wire-guided missiles of the '70s were a generation more sophisticated, and more readily comparable with today's weapons, used in open terrain; and actual war experience with them (in the Arab-Israeli wars, notably in '73) did not render the tank obsolete.

No question, today's weapons are more powerful yet. But then, so are today's anti-missile defenses. I don't think the balance has tipped so far, that use of tanks is comparable to armored knights facing muskets and cannon.

That will come with some sort of paradigm shift in weaponry - perhaps miniaturization of military drones to the point where they are the size of insects or smaller. The modern army of the future could be swarms of these things, acting more like an infestation than a traditional army with a front line. Against that, tanks will be totally useless.

[Admiral Yi]

I wonder why the Iraqis didn't have a bunch of Saggers when we rolled in.  At least i never read of any being encountered.

[Berkut]

Note: I am NOT arguing that tanks are obsolete - just that the idea that they might be in not implausible.

Those weapons were not effective enough to really impact the overall viability of the tank though.

Panzerfaust had less than a 100m range. Bazookas maybe 200m, at best. And even the bazooka was hardly a sure kill, if you could hit.

Those weapons, in WW2, were better than nothing, but not actually decisive. They were reasons why it was dangerous for armor to go up against infantry in close terrain - they were not effective against tanks in general.

The bazooka and the panzerfaust were certainly relatively primitive weapons of limited range. But the wire-guided missiles of the '70s were a generation more sophisticated, and more readily comparable with today's weapons, used in open terrain; and actual war experience with them (in the Arab-Israeli wars, notably in '73) did not render the tank obsolete.

Well yeah, that is how it works - there is a progression of technology, and at some point, that progression becomes enough that the old paradigm is done. This is what happened in the previous examples I cited of similar shifts, with the obsolescence of the armored knight and the battleship.

Neither of those systems went away over night, they both had a (in hindsight) rather obvious progression of increasing lethality of the superseding system that only eventually made it clear the dominant system was done.

The real key is something you mentioned above - the modern capability of ATM excels in open ground - the very terrain where the MBT previously dominated itself.

Again, I don't *know* that this MBT is obsolete. But if it is, it would look a lot like what it looks like right now...

I would not consider the 70's Arab-Israeli wars as too definitive as well. There are a lot of other variables going into that conflict. And even at that, there are those who consider that to be the first premonition that the age of the tank was coming to a close...

No question, today's weapons are more powerful yet. But then, so are today's anti-missile defenses. I don't think the balance has tipped so far, that use of tanks is comparable to armored knights facing muskets and cannon.

No, but it might be comparable to armored knights facing blunderbusses and simple cannons. Or maybe not.

It does seem to me though that the ability of armor to improve its defense is not keeping up with the increase in lethality of guided weapons. You say they are getting better, but are they really? The improvements seem very incremental to me, and difficult to really make work consistently, mainly due to the radically increased accuracy of the weapons systems. There is only so much you can do to counter a direct hit with a modern ATGM, especially with their top-attack capabilities.

A huge difference between now and the 70s though is that fucking everything is guided now. Guided weapons or plentiful and cheap, and as long as you can reliably hit a target, the targets ability to not get killed by it seems very low relatively.

That will come with some sort of paradigm shift in weaponry - perhaps miniaturization of military drones to the point where they are the size of insects or smaller. The modern army of the future could be swarms of these things, acting more like an infestation than a traditional army with a front line. Against that, tanks will be totally useless.

Well, yeah, but I think tanks could be obsolete even if we don't have moisturized drone bumblebees.

It is possible they are in fact obsolete right now, and we just won't know it until we get into a fight and find out...

[Berkut]

I wonder why the Iraqis didn't have a bunch of Saggers when we rolled in.  At least i never read of any being encountered.

I think they did, but we did a pretty damn good job of suppressing them.

Plus the M1 Abrams is pretty awesome.

As someone whose job it was to crew a ATGM, they are pretty incredible weapons. But...they do require you to be able to (at least at that time):

1. See the target
2. Track the target for the flight time of the missile.

#2 is pretty tough. Our TOW-II had a range of 2000m, which is pretty damn far. But it took the missile about 16 seconds to cover that range. That is a long fucking time to sit there keeping your reticle on the target while people shoot at you....

Of course, modern missile are more likely to be fire and forget...

[The Minsky Moment]

My understanding is that the advent of firearms did not render armored cavalry obsolete overnight or even particularly quickly - armored cavalry (at least breastplate and helmet) was still around even into Napoleonic Era.  There is always a trade off between protection on the one hand, and mobility and cost on the other.

[Razgovory]

Armored cavalry was not obsolete until the 19th century. About 600 years after guns and cannon were invented.  The Israelis have had a lot of success with their Trophy system to intercept anti-tank missiles.  There is no particular reason to think that such a defense can't stop a TOW missile or a Javelin.

[celedhring]

I think that at the end of the day it's a matter of asymmetry. A tank is still surely a useful asset. You need to still take territory no matter how much stuff you can kill over the horizon, and a fast, armored and powerful fighting vehicle is just too useful to do that. But at some point these super-expensive weapon platforms will become trivial to kill reliably by cheap and easily operated systems, making them maybe not really obsolete-obsolete, but just too expensive to deploy and replace.

I agree with Berkut that this point seems to be coming closer. Fire-and-forget ATGMs don't seem *that* ubiquitous yet though.

[Berkut]

My understanding is that the advent of firearms did not render armored cavalry obsolete overnight or even particularly quickly - armored cavalry (at least breastplate and helmet) was still around even into Napoleonic Era.  There is always a trade off between protection on the one hand, and mobility and cost on the other.

Indeed - but I would argue that the time of the knight as a dominant battlefield weapon was long over before the Napoleonic era.

That doesn't mean there isn't still a role for armor by any means, just like there was a role for the battleship long after it was no longer the decisive naval weapons system anymore. We were still lobbing 16" shells at our enemies well into the 80s, after all.

But no one would argue that the battleship was not obsolete in the role it was built for, and the era of warfare being dominated by the armored knight was over...well, a good long time before the Napoleonic Wars, anyway.

[Berkut]

I think that at the end of the day it's a matter of asymmetry. A tank is still surely a useful asset. You need to still take territory no matter how much stuff you can kill over the horizon, and a fast, armored and powerful fighting vehicle is just too useful to do that. But at some point these super-expensive weapon platforms will become trivial to kill reliably by cheap and easily operated systems, making them maybe not really obsolete-obsolete, but just too expensive to deploy and replace.

I agree with Berkut that this point seems to be coming closer. Fire-and-forget ATGMs don't seem *that* ubiquitous yet though.

I don't think it is just ATGMs though, it is also the prevalence of guided air launched weapons as well. There is nothing really magical about the ATGM for that matter compared to a cannon...except that it is just a lot easier to employ. It pretty much takes a tank to tote around a 125mm main gun capable of killing a tank.

A ATGM can be carried by something much lighter, hence the much lighter (and of course cheaper) weapon system now has a reliable way of killing the heavy and expensive system, along with guided bombs, air launched ATGMs with really astounding range and accuracy, etc., etc.

If tanks are obsolete, it won't be because of ATGMs alone, or because of Hellfire-type air launched missiles alone, or even precision laser guided bombs, but rather the sum of all these that just makes the modern battlefield completely lethal to anything that can be hit - and that comes down to size and detectability. Something MBTs are pretty terrible at...

I could actually imagine a return to the Napoleonic Wars, where light infantry is again the dominant battlefield weapon system...albeit ultra high tech light infantry supported by over the horizon sensor and weapons systems...

[The Brain]

Many visionaries were thought to inhabit cuckoo land. Everyone from Tesla to Newton to Einstein to Jim Jones, David Koresh, and L. Ron Hubbard has been dismissed by some as crazy.

Don't dare to put Tesla in the same sentence as Newton and Einstein. 

You Tesla fanboys are tiresome.

[alfred russel]

We were just on a modern battlefield where infantry found it useful to up armor humvees by bolting on metal plates. It seems odd to think that tanks are obsolete just a few years later.

I think that it is more likely the next battlefield opponent will be more like Iraq than Russia, China, or Germany.

[The Brain]

The infantryman is obsolete because now we have cheap plentiful weapons that can kill him.

[Berkut]

The infantryman is obsolete because now we have cheap plentiful weapons that can kill him.

Except that we do not, in fact, have such things. Killing infantryman is actually quite hard. They are small, easily concealed, and generally pretty smart and good at evading weapons.

For a given unit of infantryman, it is quite difficult to render it combat ineffective.

[alfred russel]

The infantryman is obsolete because now we have cheap plentiful weapons that can kill him.

Except that we do not, in fact, have such things. Killing infantryman is actually quite hard. They are small, easily concealed, and generally pretty smart and good at evading weapons.

For a given unit of infantryman, it is quite difficult to render it combat ineffective.

Artillery was effective in WWI. Artillery has gotten better since then; infantry defenses not as much.