Good video. However, whilst you do acknowledge that there is a doctrinal reason why tanks are going to stay around, I feel you hand-wave away just how important that doctrinal reason is, and even the economic viability of an expensive, survivable system capable of dealing much greater death and destruction much faster, and in both offense and defense. I sense a response video coming on my channel next week to give that tanker's perspective. Not necessarily to counter anything you said, I disagree with little, but to provide that little extra food for thought to re-balance things.
Please don't take it as a handwave, just deference on the point to those who can speak more confidently on it. As I see it, Army argues this is something they need in order to do a job, the spreadsheet warriors then get on with making sure industry and budget can deliver that (or as close to that as reasonably possible), preferably without blowing out the budget. I like to think that civie analysts can take it as far as "hey guys, do these numbers and indicators give you pause? Are we on the right track here?" But they can't go as far as saying "trash your armour, and no, we have no idea what you should do instead, deal with it". I can confidently, intellectually get as far as "smacking around poorly utilised legacy systems is easier than ever" but I can't get to "so this is a better system for supporting the infantry, do this instead." So please take it not so much as a handwave so much as an active invitation for input.
Fair enough. Out of interest, are you familiar with "DOTMLPF"? (Or whatever the Aussie equivalent is?) (Edit. Turns out the closest Aussie equivalent is "Fundamental Inputs to Capability")
@@swj719 How did you find out about that? Rule 1 of Department of Transportation My Little Pony Fans is that you don't talk about Department of Transportation My Little Pony Fans....
@@TheChieftainsHatch While I think everyone tends to use their own acronyms, the core ideas are reasonably transferable (or at least I'd hope so). As a sidenote, your talk on US WWII AFV development at the New York Military Affairs Symposium back in 2017 has to be one of my most watched YT videos, as are the recent series on doctrinal development. Thanks for everything you do. Edit: DOTMLPF is a lot less of a mouthful than whatever you'd end up with if you tried to make something out of "Organisation, Command & Management, Personnel, Collective Training, Major Systems, Facilities and Training Areas, Supplies, Support, and Industries."
I’ve never seen your gaming videos, but I’ve gotten addicted to these analyses. You have a fresh perspective on the pre-conflict logistics and supply chain issues that I’ve seen very little of in other content that covers this war, and you explain it incredibly well. Which is crazy because these are essentially “just” recorded PowerPoint decks - no fancy graphics, no music, no animations. It just goes to show you how the quality of the content itself can drive interest compared to slick production values. I don’t know if you would ever be interested in doing these types of analyses for past conflicts, but I bet you would get a lot of interest in them. One of my favorite aspects of American Civil War history is understanding how Ulysses Grant‘s expertise as a quartermaster played directly into his successful strategies against Confederate forces. I’d love to see your take on historical conflicts.
@@AR-GuidesAndMore - The interesting bit is that the presentation of @PerunAu is so clear and structured that those great visuals aren't necessary. I'm regularly listening to Perun videos as podcasts while driving or working, because they are such great enterteachment. There's something so nice about the Perun format that I think it could reach out enormously into mainstream if it was used for other topics.
Based on your video view counts, the internet likes your military analysis more than game commentary. I've only seen your Ukraine videos and they're good enough that I'd expect you to blow up if you stick with it. You're one of the best I watch, more thorough than any others.
I mean, porque no los dos? If he enjoys the video game content he should do both so that he can do a mix. Really enjoy the military videos though so would def be happy if he continues
I think the way to frame it is "tanks are in need of a recontextualization". The B-52's original role no longer exists, and they'd last about 30 seconds in that role, but they're very effective at lobbing large numbers of standoff weapons. Something similar will have to happen with the MBT. My personal take is that situational awareness will be the main future thrust. Having drone feeds data linked into tanks could prevent a large number of these sorts of attacks while giving them a huge advantage in tank on tank fighting.
Definitely. Ignoring the mud Ukraine should be the absolute perfect situation for tanks to take over the battlefield just like it did in the same area in WW2. Even in their ideal infantry support role now, what advantage does it have over a heavily equipped IFV? Better armour that still gets shredded anyway. Tanks need to justify their expense, surely, armies don't want to just get rid of them like Belgium did so they need to integrate with increasingly relevant aspects like electronic warfare better than they currently do. The problem is if they just negate other tanks, everything else is doing that already.
@@Spaced92 Heavy IFVs generally have lower caliber guns and a shorter firing range compared to a heavy MBT. They are also less capable of negotiating difficult terrain compared to a modern MBT. And heavy armor still does count against most weapons that doesn't impact perfectly on the turret or side of the tank. But an IFV will bring supporting infantry, which is crucial for the survival of the tank in forests, as well as urban and hilly terrain.
As a 19K, our weaknesses are well known. It's worth noting the anti-warhead defensive systems are not rapid-fire and usually not very good at defending against multiple attacks. They're designed to defeat the golden BB, not beat off a concerted push. Further, anti-tank weapons don't have to blow the turret off or destroy the interior to mission-kill a tank. Simply knocking the sprockets or road wheels off, or breaking the track itself (seen that a few times in some of the city fighting) means the tank cannot move. And tanks that cannot move are short-lived unless your units are advancing past the casualties. The biggest thing I've seen the defenders doing in Ukraine that's working so well is getting in multiple attacks on a single target. One video I saw showed no less than five different hits on the same tank, with the left track coming off on the fourth hit, resulting in a mobility kill. As mentioned in the video, unsupported vehicles (armor or not) are easy pickings for infantry, especially when they have ready access to modern anti-materiel weapons. But how else is an army that is badly coordinated and badly supplied supposed to take ground? Poor coordination in the laager means not all tanks end up fully fueled before the road march. Poor coordination on the march means armor sometimes outruns the infantry vehicles, with expected results. Poor training in reaction to contact means you end up with a bunch of tanks stuck in the ditch or in a muddy field like I saw in one video. Poor morale means almost nothing works the way commanders think things are going to work, so the least little bloody nose and the formation breaks down resulting in far too many avoidable casualties. On top of that we have the staggering intelligence failures of Russia in estimating what they were going up against -- Ukrainians ain't a bunch of mountain goat-herds with a few RPGs and AKs, and they should have known better, especially after the Donetsk fighting. It's almost like the Russian command staff has been training to try and win the next Afghanistan, and this is not that. My worry is not whether tanks are going to become obsolete -- it's what Putin and his ego will do when he thinks he is cornered and about to lose to an outnumbered and outgunned foe. He cannot afford to have all his other thinly-contained satrapies decide the Kremlin has become weak and decide to secede, costing them more strategic assets.
yeah I think this is bit of an edge case in terms of armor everything the Russians did in building their tactical formations exacerbates poor coordination. the BTG is the formation I would adopt if I knew all my mid grade officers were the reincarnation of Napoleon other wise I have questions about a major's qualifications to integrate that many arms with a junior staff
I remember reading beyond 3-4 defeats the shrapnel statistically will have knocked out the defensive systems. Even if you needed to fire 4 hellfire’s off to take out one MBT, the cost is still vastly less than that tank.
Would something like a 50 cal with AP rounds (especially tungsten) be able to damage a tank track enough to disable it? I'd suspect a 50 cal to be worthless against a modern tank but I've seen some of the tracks used on them and I'm sure 50 cal rounds could certainly severe the bolts & connecting bars that keep the track together. I'm sure it's usually take multiple hits in the same area, but I would think it would be possible. The larger the caliber, the higher chance of disabling the track I would think.
@@kde5fan737 Technically, yes, eventually, but the whole time you're trying to mission-kill the tank by pecking away at it, that tank and all his buddies and (hopefully) his infantry support will be trying to suppress and kill YOU. A machine gun big enough to damage a tank will be throwing up a pretty large dust cloud of its own, along with a lot of noise and muzzle flash that says HEY YOU GUYS, SHOOT ME PLEASE. This is one reason man-portable SAMs and ATGMs are effective in broken terrain or city environments: you can pop out, fire, and retreat to cover pretty easily. Tank crews if trained properly will pull up, fire, and then retreat back behind whatever cover they have if they are aware of anti-tank threats in the area. Assuming you have any cover available. If you're trying to move fast and capture ground, you usually don't have time to dig revetments, even if you have the combat engineers around to do it. The diagram posted in the video where it shows the rock/paper/scissors diagram is a good one to start with. Take that and now imagine the effective ranges of the weapons involved. Then consider how visible the enemy you're fighting is i.e. does he have cover and/or concealment too? Then consider how fast each of those systems can be employed and how exposed you have to be to employ them. It's enough to make your head hurt.
I have really appreciated these videos on this topic. So many videos seem to be way too enthusiastic about killing and how "cool" weapons are. This is the kind of thing I can learn from and have an interesting discussion with people after. Thank you for doing these.
These weapons are cool haha. Acknowledge it or not, the majority of people who get into military kit and equipment as hobbyists are on some level driven by the cool factor.
To plus on this, I appreciate recognising the limits of your ability to commentate on these topics - too many folks have gone down the speculative rabbit hole and not made it out the other side
@@johncampbell2979 You're a snob, Campbell! I invite you to turn your nose down every once in a while, the whole world can see right into your nostrils.
Perun, I am so incredibly happy to have come across your content. Some of, if not the most well put together presentations on the Ukraine war and modern conflict. Keep at it. Never heard of you through gaming but I hope you'll continue being thorough and not succumb to trying to pump content out seeing how successful these videos seem to be. Ace job, keep at it.
After watching and reading some comments I'd just like to point out a couple of interesting tidbits. In my country "armour" has largely been replaced by two vehicles, (1) a 155mm self propelled howitzer with an on road top speed of 90kmh and a maximum firing range of +70kms, and (2) a recon/anti tank vehicle with a 76mm AT gun, top speed of 120kmh on and 60kmh offroad. Both of these use large wheels instead of tracks. The idea behind them were to maximize mobility, i.e. they were specifically designed to get to and between conflict zones themselves, not via trains or other means, are specifically protected against landmines (and I presume therefore IEDs) and in the case of (2) doctrine dictated that they would be used as static AT weapons once at a conflict zone. (There were also versions built with 105mm NATO barrels, AA types and SAM types)
There is still the problem of holding terrain if you're the attacker. For that you need people protecting what you have taken. Artillery can't do that. Light vehicles with AT guns can't do that either. An attacker also needs other systems than the ones you hold up as examples. Russia wants Ukraine so it must send tanks to capture it and troops to support the tanks. Once it is captured the tanks support the troops.
@@tacticalosintcombatfootage2022 Looking at ambushes I would say that Russian armored infantry knows when to follow but not when to lead. So they'll keep risking and losing tanks unnecessarily.
One stat that was given by a tanker a couple of years ago was that in all wars that tanks have been used in, their casualty rate were far lower than infantry casualties. By something like 1-to2. As vulnerable as a tank may be to a top-attack missile, think how vulnerable infantry is to artillery air-burst and MLRS cluster bombs.
I'm assuming that's talking about tank crews, right? Obviously there will always be more infantrymen than tanks even in the tankiest treadhead army. And while that might well be true, you still have the issue of the massive cost it takes to buy, maintain, and especially fuel a tank. You need to be getting something worthwhile to justify that kind of cost.
i think casualties are poor metric on how useful tanks are. economics and logistics are a more useful metric. if a tanks that costs millions can easily be taken out by someone with barely any training with a weapon costing only thousands thats when youy start wondering if it is worth. and then there is the issue of what role a MBT is suppose to have. tanks biggest role is killing other tanks, to fight foot mobiles tanks are not very effective compared to IFV with autocannons.
Infantry units are much less expensive to build, train and support at the strategic level. If the terrain your army is on is northern, western or central Europe, infantry is the way to go with a few tank units and plenty of ground attack and artillery forces supporting them. Forests, swamps/marshes, rough terrain and BUAs are not the friends of Armor. Infantry is best there at the operational level. Combined arms always has the edge in the end, regardless of terrain because it allows adaptation to the changing situation warfare always presents.
Another historical example is the Israel-Lebanon war in 2006. Merkava units got hammered pretty hard by ATGM crews. Estimates vary from 20 to 50 tanks, which is relatively big for the IAF.
Before I watch the video, I expect the answer to be "no". If we look at only say the Iran-Iraq war, or US invasions in the Middle-East, we get a skewed picture of modern warfare that does not favour the use of armour. Battle tanks have overwhelming firepower and are great at penetrating enemy lines and securing positions at high speed and cutting off positions. They must be properly supplied, maintained, supported by infantry and work in mostly flat areas where targets can't hide in buildings, forests or mountains easily. Russian armour did literally none of these things. They drove single-file, in poorly maintained and supplied tanks without support or intel straight into Ukrainian tractors. Not to take away from the Ukrainians, but in theory, if the Russian vehicles were actually properly supplied, etc. they could have easily completely restricted the Ukrainians' ability to maneuver East of the Dnieper within a few days. A complete death sentence for any cities and forces caught behind the advance. In a conventional war between armies, armour is still extremely useful as a strong and maneuverable firepower platform. But they are a force multiplier. You still need competent infantry, logistics, intelligence, etc. for them to be effective. At least, this is my opinion before watching the video. We will see if it changes!
since a tank needs to be supported by deployed infantry it is no longer usefull at securing positions at high speed. The armenian-azeri conflicts already demonstrated that they sucked in defense when the air superiority is contested. Conclusion: the cumulation of circumstances to succesfully operate tanks in combination wth its cost-efectiveness is so interdictive that a serious tankdeployment is no longer relevant AS LONG AS THERE IS NO EFFECTIVE WAY TO DEFEND THE TANK (besides slow infantry) against different threats. At the moment they are armoured coffins,
@@Belisarius277 The Azeris still used 'grunts' to close with and secure positions; so, 'combined arms--tanks, crunchies, arty and air working in tandem'-is still the way to go.
@@nickmitsialis The azeris "droned" armenian tanks which were the only anti-tank capacity the armenians had besides RPG7. its obvious now that relying on tanks to act defensively without air superiority is a bad idea since essentially everyone with an rc airplane can take them out. The tank as an offensive weapon is history too since it is useless against even light infantry sporting atgm even in the open. As long as a 80k dollar missile can take out a 2 million dollar tank without the tank being able to spot the atgm crew, its absurd to try to bring them. Too complex logistics, cost ineffective and essentially just a big bullseye. Battleship were obsolete when airpower outranged their guns. same thing for atgm in relation to tanks.
@@Belisarius277 yes; but drones can't occupy terrain and infantry still need to be pushed back; Combined Arms-=-Nick Moran did a vid about this, and he's the 'tread head'.
@@nickmitsialis as far as i know the ukrainians are relying pretty much on infantry to occupy territory. This is not desert storm where you could drive miles through featureless terrain where every bump sticks out like a sour thumb. Again costineffective, cumbersome and obsolete in its current configuration. The concept "tank" needs an update, perun made a great analysis on this
I watched your Terra Invicta games, which helped me defeat the alien threat as the resistance. To my delight I discovered that you also make videos covering IRL military analysis that are with minimal bias. Is very bueno. Keep up the amazing work!
One of the things that people seem to not realize is that there hasn't been a point in time when tanks were actually "invincible". You look at WW2 and the insane casualty figures of tanks and tankers. Even without long ranged fired and forget weapons they were being knocked out by infantry, AT guns, mines, and towards the end of the war, portable AT weapons. The Russian Airforce is getting blasted and is largely absent from the conflict in a way it really shouldn't be, but people aren't scrambling to say that air support is obsolete. Nah, people are rightly pointing out that Russian doctrine is bad and their training/tech is inadequate. In the same way we see a lot of the ineffectiveness of Russian armor on the ground being caused through seemingly terrible decision making from the forces on the ground. Lots of unsupported tanks getting caught out or abandoned in bad terrain more than anything. However, if we're talking APCs, then I think there is an argument to be made that transporting fireteams and even entire platoons in large, armored vehicles that attract a lot of fire but can't resist anything above some small arms might be a doctrine that isn't applicable to the field anymore when reliable AT is everywhere. There's a reason you see soldiers riding on top of BMPs and not inside them, they're legitimately more likely to survive and respond to threats outside the box than inside it.
That's a half truth, American tanks were largely survivable due to their open crew compartment design allowing tankers to easily escape when their tank was hit. The poorly designed interiors of German and Russian tanks resulted in heavy losses of their crews on the other hand. And the whole thing about Russians riding on top of BMPs isn't to do with BMPs being vulnerable, they do so to be able to dismount quickly when being employed. The BMP 1/2 is very cramped and while infantry Armor and weapons have increased in size along with kit the average soldier carries those old IFVs have not.
Consider if you would prefer to be inside an APC or foot slogging in the event of a CBRN attack. Not to mention troops have to be in a fightable condition when they arrive where the fighting is, foot slogging won't help. And heli-lift has its drawbacks too.
@@InterstellarTaco BMP's fuel tanks are the doors. And it's extremely vulnerable to small arms fire on the side, it absolutely have to do with the survivability
First of all, more absolutely stellar work. Really well done. Former tanker here: this war yet another opportunity for system and doctrine evolution. Remove the tanks and something else will have to assume that role. I find it slightly amusing to suggest the death of the tank without suggesting the end of pretty much all armored vehicles. If a tank is too vulnerable, where does that leave thinner skinned things like armored personnel carriers? All of this means years of new theories, new developments, new training, and everyone will be ready to refight this war when the next one comes, most likely with a different scenario we aren’t ready for.
G’Day from Oregon, USA. Listened (more than watched) a few hours of your Ukraine analysis. Think you got the RUclips config’d right as no ads at all! Thank so much for the week or more of work you put into this.
So what you are saying is that it is not ATGMs but John Deere tractors..... all of these weapon systems have ups and downs. Success is combining the strengths and weaknesses effectively. That's what the Russians have not been doing. They boasted about all their Wunderwaffe, but did not/could not employ them. So they have gone back to positively Soviet tactics. On the other hand the Ukrainians have used the KISS principle and employed a small number of weapons and systems simply and effectively. Combined with the spring thaw, bad logistics and now I suspect morale issue the Russians are suffering. Stupid thing is they know of the thaw - it saved them from Napoleon and Hitler!
@@Etaoinshrdlu69 interesting thought and I think you are right - but they knew about the weather issues and drove straight into it ... then trapped their lines of advance on the roads. It seems they cannot even do the Soviet era bypass manouevres. Definitely they have not seen the pinks...
I think the Russians couldn't have timed this any worse. As some tankers have said in the comments, tanks are a force in numbers across an open field. They are denied the open fields by the mud/timing of the invasion. There are only so many of these bulky, single shot weapons that infantry can carry in one place, when their targets are not restricted to the roads. Can't help but think of the poor Russians who have been ordered to proceed by idiots who have NFI, or, more likely, didn't have the balls to tell the glorious leader that the timing was atrocious!
The South African military knew the weaknesses of tanks vs well armed infantry back in the 80's. The South African Defence Force spearheaded its attacks with infantry and fast moving wheeled vehicles and left the heavy armour in the reserve and only brought it in as a final line of defence/offence. Our Soldiers gave russians and cubans and other communist block soldiers hell throughout the war with fast mobile warfare but still used tanks during battles such as Cuito Cuanavale, the largest tank battle in Africa since WW2. Tanks will always have a place in warfare although it will switch from the spearhead to a more supportive role
The weakness of tanks vs infantry that has the right equipment has been known as long as tanks existed. Bundles of stick grenades were used by the Germans to tank out tanks in WWI. Infantry guns, special anti-tank guns, and even anti-tank rifles could do the same. Tanks vs infantry anti-tank weapons have been an arms race since then. Who has had the advantaged have changed back and forward over time. At what distance and what terrain is better for each has also changed. The general knowledge that infantry can take out tanks if they have the right equipment has always existed. If you look at armored units between the world wars and in the early part of WWII most units had too many tanks and too few infantry initially. There is a shift to more infantry when they get tested in combat. Germany removes 1/3 of the tanks in Panzer divisions between the attack on Poland and the Soviet Union. They doubled the amount of infantry in the divisions, this was because you could not use too many tanks efficiently without infantry support. So the knowledge that combined arms is the most efficient way to use tanks is as old as the tanks. The knowledge of combined arms in general predates tanks by centuries. Archers, foot soldiers, and cavalry is better in a battle than either of them separatly.
from my experience with milsims it’s very easy to lose a tank if you’re not experienced, and while it’s tempting to throw them at the enemy they’re most protected and mobile deep in your back line where they don’t need to move at combat pace. what I’m saying is they might as well become self-propelled artillery with an MG on top lmao
Hey man, love your content. As a suggestion, it would be interesting to know about the failures of the VDV, and how air assault / airborne units might have to rethink their usage given how MANPADs can relatively cheaply defeat helicopters / low flying airborne troop transports, given how much of an issue the Russian military has had conducting SEAD
Yes, that's a big one. The VDV has lost enough BMDs to leave 2 regiments walking. The last time I checked Oryxspioenkop, anyways. Maybe it's up to a full 3 regiments.
In my opinion, the reason why russian tanks get severed a lot by missiles is more on tactical incompetence as well as russia's history of leaving tanks on their own in urban areas, and soft factors like how corruption affects the quality of russian tank armor as well as not bothering to properly check it's quality, manufacture defects etc. also why is it that people just look at the ukraine war tanks destroyed/broken down and say the tank is dead? This is such a harsh conclusion, america deployed abrams tanks EFFECTIVELY during desert storm. The abrams footage are on par with the symphonies of bach. Yes i am aware that some abrams were lost throughout, no tank is perfect after all.
this reminds me of the discussion in the early 80s when an Exocet missile sank the Sheffield. i remember that it's price tag went from ~$100k to $1m after it was proven in war.
Exocet price went excessively high was also because it was being bought by British agents to deny supply to Argentina. Market supply and demand went crazy.
This seems analogous to the situation in Europe towards the end of the Middle Ages, when heavily armored cavalry was neutralized by massed archers, pikemen, and then massed firearms and mobile artillery. There remained a limited shock role for heavy cavalry, but the battlefield was dominated by infantry and artillery. Heavy cavalry was no longer the dominant force that it was in the early Middle Ages.
I think your three most strongest points that you made was one ) the arms race between shoulder arm weapons that can defeat most tanks 2) combine arms training that is properly done and efficient and three3 logistics, those who talk about tactics are amateurs,those who talk about logistics are professionals. I think you had a great presentation that ass lotta questions and people need to think about the answers because it’s a matter of life and death for the individuals and for the nation itself many times.
A few points about the Turkish Leopards.. Operation Euphrates Shield was launched straight after the coup. Due to fears of a followup coup, a lot of the tank crews were arrested. The men using the tanks were commandos (either blue or maroon berets). To make matters worse, Turkey had both terrible relations with the USA and Russia at the time and most experienced pilots were temporarily detained. So there was basically no air support at all. The leopards were the only thing providing direct fire support. It wasn't an ideal situation, but they managed to defeat ISIS. Most leopards were hit when parked. We can see how Turkish operations have improved since then. All Turkish leopards are receiving ERA and APS by the way.
Also it was the first combined arms operations Turkey had launched since the 1974 Cyprus Intervention. So they were both inexperienced from top to bottom and had inadequate tactics to boot.
The first proper combined arms operations* There have been many incursions inside Iraq in the 90's but it targeted the PKK instead of a more organized faction
I foresee the refinement and proliferation of active protection systems (APS), including those using lasers, changing the calculus of tank relevance in a significant way. A very expensive tank can be killed by a moderately expensive ATGM, but that ATGM can be killed by a relatively inexpensive APS. Additionally, although I haven't yet seen this technology demonstrated, the future might include loitering drones that provide a "bubble" of active protection to a larger area of ground forces by including the APS on the drone instead of, or in addition to, an APS mounted to a tank. Either way, more/better APS are likely to increase the survivability of tanks against ground-based ATGMs, air-to-ground missiles, suicide drones, tank shells, and other ballistic threats, thus prolonging the usefulness of tanks for decades to come.
In the back of Infantry. Main Battle Tank to come forth if unexpectingly some danger pours up. Radar-Tanks 35mm cannon #GepardPanzer - #FlakPanzerGepard plus 12 and 5mm self-defence plus multiple-rocket-launch-system against vehicles, helis and jets, 18 meters long max allowed to transport 2x6 Infantry to the wider area of battle, and sit in the background, hauling supplies, transporting wounded. In tight populated Western Europe there is not much wide open space for tanks, everywhere protective cover for tank-destroying Infantry like houses, fences, hedgerows. That is completely nuts in such environment to drive a tank without clearing infantry ahead.
Even if you *could* put state-of-the-art APS systems on every single Russian tank, unless it suddenly starts to take 100 rockets to kill a tank, you're not going to outpace the cost efficiency of just giving Yuri and his mates a couple of NLAWs, teaching them to point & shoot, and hoping they can pop a turret or two.
@@Dramatic_Gaming If claims about the efficacy of Trophy are even close to being realistic then properly implemented APS is an absolute game-changer. Not only will it shoot down multiple missiles but it also provides location and targeting data of where the shots came from, allowing for immediate counter-fire. Apparently during Operation Protective Edge no vehicle equipped with Trophy was hit despite dozens of missiles fired.
Tanks big problem is development and building of new tanks is so crazy expensive that Nations can't afford to keep up in the arms race with Anti Tank Missiles. They never get to use their previous generation of tanks before it is obsolete and they have to spend multiple Billions again developing new ones, over and over. Prototypes of new tanks that can deal with anti tank missiles exist but they are in such small numbers because of cost.
It does make you wonder if it's not tanks that are obsolete, but Main Battle Tanks. The 70 ton hulking monstrosities. We perhaps need to go back to the time of the M4, PkIV, T-34, Patton. The medium tank maybe needs to be the mainstay of an army. Light and maneuverable enough to stay with infantry and protect them, cheap enough to produce far quicker and cheaper, and still have a big gun that can aid in supporting infantry, and be large enough to field the most recent electronics and active protection systems necessary to survive in a missile hurling world.
@@Proletariat12 I think you either need to make them be able to defend against Anti Tank weapons, which is almost prohibitively expensive or get rid of them and just have support vehicles which follow the infantry line and are protected by infantry. Sure you can have large guns that can shoot multiple km to take out defences ahead of your infantry but these vehicles don't defend themselves, and so the way to keep them safe is your infantry are far enough ahead that Anti Tank weapons are not close enough to shoot them.
Conversely, having tanks also forces nations to develop and/or buy anti-tank systems, that too, will likely never be used and will still need to be replaced when they their shelf life expires. So you would want to be a market leader in both, to be a step ahead of the market and to be able to sell your designs. Economic warfare wise, and diplomatic wise, it rewards who has the most developed/entrenched military-industrial complex combined with the economy to support it.
@@Horizontalvertigo anti tank weapons at the very least are cheaper, and having older more obsolete stock is still useful as they can take out stuff that are not MBTs.
Well this is why you provide infantry support. Tanks have always been vulnerable to infantry. Just because Russia is incompetent it doesn’t mean the tank is obsolete.
Don't worry about the ads - this is nothing compared with the value of your analyses. These videos are very informative. From checking my other sources of information, there is a consistency of the evidence you are presenting. Thank you.
Oh, my Lord, you should continue to offer your commentary on Defense matters, writ large. Your mind is fantastic, and I hope to see more of you on these topics.
I've been saying this about tanks for a long time, their limited effectiveness in Iraq and Afghanistan really showed what even a half-armed opposition can do to armored columns. However in lieu of armored spearheads I think tanks will remain as effectively direct artillery support being faster to react and more precise than a lot of alternative artillery options which might require a lot more triangulation before the infantryman will get his support.
You didn't really go into what tanks use cases are on the modern battlefield. Do you have another video where you go into that? Really enjoying your work!
Tanks still have an important role, particularly in specific circumstances in the offensive and in the right terrain, where a balanced combination of firepower, protection and mobility is required. They won't work in urban areas where enemy infantry have plenty of AT weapons. They usually won't work in mountain or forest terrain in a conventional battle. They are not invulnerable in ANY environment. But in open terrain, in the offensive or counterstroke, what else are you going to use? Helicopters? Far too vulnerable. Infantry? Far too slow. Fast soft vehicles? Too vulnerable. Drones/ROVs? They can't hold ground. Logistics are important for tanks, which is why I've always thought gas turbine engines were a bad idea. But the basic concept of the tank (a mobile armoured weapons platform) remains as valid as ever, if used correctly.
I'm not so sure that ATGM's have not made the tank irrelevant. Infantry screening can only screen to a fairly short distance in front of armor that is also supposed to be supporting them. ATGM's have an engagement range that is outside the infantry's effective range. ATMG operators can kill tanks outside the range of the infantry, and helicopter support can be suppressed by MANPADS protecting the ATMG operators. Without the tanks being able to support the infantry assault, what is their mission? ATGM's can be operated in all terrain, in almost all weather, and at a stand-off range that a tank can't effectively engage. The only use for a tank these days is probably against countries that cannot afford ATMG technologies. Since it is a relatively cheap technology, that list of countries (now that the cat is out of the bag) will shrink quite quickly.
I think you are framing the question reasonably. I would suggest that fast and lightly armored vehicles used in conjunction with drones and various advanced missiles would be a plausible alternative. Yes, they are vulnerable to pretty much any RPG and mortars, but that may be acceptable for the advantages in speed. As the range of missile increases, these become platforms for carrying large numbers longer ranged missiles where they are most valuable. In the easily imagined near future, specialized spotter forward infantry units will paint the bullseye electronically where to put the HE, while in direct real time communication with the light AFV a mile back (out of sight) carrying the missiles. I would never go so far as to suggest the basic concept of the tank is invalid -- clearly it is still possible to use them to great effect. But I would say that we are reaching a point where a well equipped military going against another well equipped military might perceive the overall costs of tanks in budget and logistics makes them less and less attractive going into the future. There are more and more alternatives that make a lack of proper tough tanks more manageable now more than ever before.
You say fast soft vehicles are too vulnerable, but too vulnerable to what? To tanks? If you make those fast soft vehicles deadly then that conclusion they are too vulnerable might be premature. Battle of 73 easting comes to mind. Lighter vehicles with atgms wrecking dug-in tanks thanks to a maneuver advantage. It seems there's an argument to be made that if you can move anti-tank weapons to light vehicles and drones they will be able to maneuver faster and farther while trading equally with the tanks, because you no longer need a big 120mm cannon to destroy the tanks, and carrying that huge cannon is what the tanks do that nobody else does.
I think tank like vehicles in the future will have to be remote controlled. Kinda like the way modern attack drones have taken away (though certainly notcreplaced) much of the responsibility of attack helicopters.
@@Synaps4 Fast soft vehicles are vulnerable to all sorts of things: artillery, small arms, tanks, mortars, ATGW, air attack. And not many of them can match the cross-country mobility of tracked vehicles.
The whole basic argument of "we can destroy tanks with something cheaper, so tanks will vanish" is something I can't get my head around at all. By the same logic with the prize difference between a bullet and a soldier infantrie should have vanishes from war ages ago. Something is made to do a job thats need to be done and it will stay untill either the job is gone or a better/cheaper thing to do the same job is found. That is the easiest you can break it down and this is the same for war or peace economics.
I think the core of the argument comes from the fact that countries often times invest so much into tank armor and survivability only for the costs put into _this one area_ to simply have almost no return on the field. Yeah, infantry doesn't go obsolete at all, but the difference here is that in both of the World Wars, almost no infantry wore body armor, and for a good reason: All you need is the ability to have GUN and the only thing that matter afterwards is whether or not you're gonna be able to hit the first shot before they hit YOU and any attempts to make effective protection that will supposedly make the soldier last long enough to return the investments will in actuality be impractical either because the armor slows the wearer down or it'll simply be far too expensive to have any strategic viability on a large scale. Armor technology will always be far more limited than any offensive capability and it has been that way ever since gunpowder came into existence.
I've watched a lot of military analysis, and you by far is some of the best I've watched. Especially for Ukraine. Your evidence based approach in long form format is the most neutral thing I've seen in this. Very hard to get the info with Russian or Ukrainian bias.
This war, like all war, signals the end of poorly used equipment. Of course, this isn't the last time we will see tanks used poorly. It's almost always easier to construct a weapon that destroys something than it is to construct something that will survive an attack. I don't know a lot about tanks, but I imagine that they need support to excel. Infantry etc. to protect it, something like drones to ensure the visuals are good. Frankly speaking, things that just about any highly visible military vehicle should require.
“McNamara would be proud” lol. Part of Kennedy’s flexible response was addressed when they moved a bunch of men and material to the gulf coast, as an exercise, they realized the issue of logistics. Part of that result was McNamara essentially getting the ball rolling on what has become the backbones of the AIr Mobility Command of the C5, C141, and the Ci30.
Javelin missiles and Bayraktar TB2 drones are to tanks what pike and shot were to heavy armoured cavalry. They shift the balance of power, but remember that heavy cavalry stuck around on the battlefield for centuries after the invention of guns.
Maybe it's unfair to judge armour as a viable weapons system solely on the basis of the inept performance of the Russians in this conflict. If nothing else though, we know that there are definitely wrong ways to use tanks, the Russian operation being a case in point. If there's a right way to use armour on the modern battlefield, this ain't it.
Hi Perun. I find your analysis spot on and extremely enjoyable to watch (out rather, listen to while driving to work) I am slowly working on catching up the backlog of videos I missed, but the work you put in collecting all the relevant informations, and presenting your results (including the potential caveats and flaws of the data or your reasoning) is truly remarquable. As a professional of a related field, I commend you for your excellent analytical skills, and acknowledgement of your "ignorance" (in the Duning-Keuger sense) that you really should not be concerned about. You know more about what you speak of than most military experts I have met. Kuddos to you mate, from the other side of the world, and keep sane and safe.
Hey man, I know you normally like to decompress on YT with gaming vids, so I just wanted to extend a sincere thanks for doing these vids. You do a quality presentation. I wish major news networks would match the level of quality in their coverage that one can find here. Cheers!
Video on various aspects of hypersonic weaponry (and defense against them) for relevant nations US, Russia, and China would be a very interesting video. Saw some info recently that the US's ability to develop hypersonics is being significantly bottlenecked by decades of wind tunnel closures and limited funding for testing facilities (at the same time that China was building out their testing capabilities). Seems like the potential threat of hypersonic weaponry to the US aircraft carriers would be a great topic to include as well.
Should be noted that nobody actually knows that China and Russia actually have functional hypersonic missiles that can be used against US aircraft carriers. All we really have are assertions from their governments.
@@stephenjenkins7971 Of course it works because otherwise the US wouldn’t be developing hypersonic missiles for even smaller mobile targets. Think about it, what’s the biggest mobile military target that can be hit and then think if the US think even smaller target can be hit in the future, why couldn’t the biggest target be hit now?
@@Peizxcv US military functions based on assuming the worst, dude. Nobody actually knows, but it's better to assume that they had managed it. US also assumed that USSR had extremely accurate ICBMs under Kruschev because Kruschev said so; whej in reality they were extremely inaccurate and faulty. US also assumed that the Russian military was near-peer. As we can see; worst assumption does not equate to reality.
@@stephenjenkins7971 Self advertising doesn’t make it true. If the US military is as restrain as advertised, it wouldn’t try to win the misadventures in so many parts of the world
@@Peizxcv What are you talking about? What self advertisement? What restraint? I never said the US military does either. All I am saying is that "Russia said they have hypersonic weapons" doesn't mean they have it.
I really like your evaluation of tanks and MANPADS-ATGMS. In many ways, war fighting assets are getting smaller. And they work! This raises the question about other large weapon systems seen as "bedrocks" of national defense. One that needs serious evaluation is the CATOBAR aircraft carrier. You talk about a money-sucker. The carrier, the screen ships, the air wing, the fuel, support ships, the list is long. The screen ships are an open admission that the carrier is a sitting duck. There is no such thing as a stealth carrier. Look at the Martin P6M Seamaster. Infinite basing, no huge trail of support, conventional, support, and nuclear weapons and can be deployed with less obvious intent of use. And they can be supported by many different ships and shore facilities. REALLY! Look at the C-130. After decades of hand-rubbing, it finally looks like it will get a hydro aviation option it has needed since it was first developed. The new performance numbers are very similar to the Convair R3Y Tradewind developed in the 1950s. What? Sorry for the long comment, but this is all true. Good work!
You failed to mention the effect of active protection system (like Israel's trophy system) on tank survivability. It actually saved many tanks from ATGMs during recent conflicts...
Tanks, as we see them today will fade away in the near future due to ATGMs, however Light tanks or conventional tanks with high rate of fire guns will likely replace them for the direct fire support capabilites, with advanced in projectile design, material science and explosive technologies, allowing smaller rounds to do the same job as larger ones
If tanks are fading away; then, why wouldn't everything else? I don't think they will stop making ATGMs because tanks go away. The better response is the old tactics of deploying tanks will go away because of ATGM. New tactics for tank deployment and updated countermeasure will be developed for the future battlefield.
I came here bc the Chieftain linked your video and I thought I'd watch it for context. I think you had good intentions trying to say "the doctrine guys tell us this" but it does come off more like "there's all this evidence but the doctrine guys say we're wrong" more than "I'm not qualified to speak on the role the tank plays on the battlefield or how to replace them, so I defer the subject to them." other than that though this was a really good, well researched video. it made me think that maybe tanks aren't going to be viable in the future considering the capabilities that tanks provide didn't exist for thousands of years.
Wouldn't the lessons from Iraq and Afghanistan be that armoured vehicles, whether tanks or APCs etc, are extremely vulnerable to IEDs, especially shaped charge devices. When you add to that problem the newest generation of fire and forget ATMs and anti-aircraft missiles it would seem that the balance between armour and anti-armour has tilted significantly towards the latter. The drone situation is only just beginning to develop as the smaller, swarm type of drone is mixed in with the RPV aircraft. I know I would not feel at all safe in a tank today!
Well, everthing depends on where you're figthing. A tank worst nightmare wouldbe obviously mountanious terrain, jungles or dense forests and urbans areas. But when you need to advance trought an open field like large farming areas, a saline or another kind of desert like zone, the tank is the thing to go, obviously if supported by enough.
But would you feel safer against all that in unarmored vehicles or just on foot. There are plenty of nasty weapons already out there that would tear infantry to pieces. If one guy steps on a bouncing betty mine you're whole squad could be taken out.
Directed here from The Chieftain. Frankly, I'm new to both of your channels. I have watched this video before The Chieftain's rebuttal since he pointed this video out at the beginning of his vid and linked it in his description, going to watch his video next. I feel as though this is a very healthy introduction to this new and unknown topic to me, of tanks being perhaps obsolete in the modern era. Honestly the concept has NEVER occurred to me, this video has presented a very good case I think, curious as to The Chieftain's response. This is fun! :) Well, I can say that quite merrily here in Canada. Heart goes out to Ukraine. God bless 'em, fight for your nation and your freedom! So kickass that they're handing out assault rifles to their citizenry.
LOVE your analysis, content and style! your format is great and the commentary is insightful and humorous while staying respectful, which is a thin line that's difficult to balance, so i appreciate your ability to do so even more! please please please keep it coming! you are probably my favorite youtuber covering this conflict along with goodtimesbadtimes. THANK YOU!
So, what did the Americans do so right during Desert Storm, that the Russians are doing so wrong today. Tanks should always be kept at 85% to 90% of its main gun's effective range away from its target/objective. Once the infantry has engaged the enemy, then bring the tanks in across a secured route to engage static reenforced defensive positions.
It's a constant arm's race, make tank, make RPG to counter said tank, make reactive armour for RPG, make missiles to defeat reactive armour, make APS system to shoot down anti tank missiles and so on.
One thing of note, in many videos I've seen of Russian tanks the ERA that should be protecting them isn't fitted except maybe on the turret. In some videos the cases for the ERA are in place but the explosive packs are obviously missing. In one video you can see the spaced off steel plates that should have era packs behind them but it is clear that there is nothing there. As far as the "cope cages" are concerned, these seem more designed to prevent a grenade or Molotov cocktail being dropped in the turret in an urban combat environment than anything that will defend against a top down ATGM attack. I've seen quite a few images of the cages smashed up.
@@PalleRasmussen In the west many tanks use detachable packs, they would only be fitted if going into combat. The British Challenger 2 is a case in point.
I agree 100% with your analysis. This conflict will be analyzed for decades in the headquarters and military schools or even simulated many time because quite all doctrines will have to be rewrited and established balance of power will be to be re considered. Combat is now drastically driven by technology like the everyday life. As you explained the loss of an nail drove to an empire loss….The price/effectiveness ratio of ATGM drone is a major game changing. By the way, the conclusions of tank against ATGM is also widely linked to the theater where they fight. For example, combat in wide desert or frozen plains area, over long ranges, where infantry has no means to really hide move or has to survive difficultly will definitely change the game specially if the armored vehicles are networked with drones fellows providing recce from above using various sensors like optical, IR and radars. Other major impact are the role of OSINT over conventional high price reconnaissance assets as well as the role of smartphone as a dangerous weapon of information and désinformation of impact of social network with real or fake news upon public opinions an emotional pression on politics… If I had to point 2 other éléments that surprised me a lot up to now (I was no surprised at all about the weakness of tank versus ATGM, we have to remind the last Lebanon conflict between Israel and hezbolha in a time where ATGM were much less sophisticated…), first the relative ineffectiveness of SAMs and of SEAD that obliged Russian aircraft to fly low and make TB2 often unseen and second the incredible shortage of military communication of Russian army that obliged it not to disrupt mobile and internet networks…
The Javelin is the game-changer. It's not new. It's 90s tech. But the reason the Javelin obsoletes the tank, is that it allows infantry to reliably kill tanks from cover at long ranges. US tanks defeated RPGs with slat armor, but cope cages don't work against Javelins. Active defense systems are too expensive and unreliable. Drones pile on top of the Javelin threat as an additional cheap and widespread hard counter to tanks, for which tanks have no defense. What do tanks offer? Mobile direct fire gun support. If the tank can't survive ATGMs, then something like the Stryker MGS is superior. Of course the MGS is gone now because the "need" for direct fire high caliber gun support is obsolete as well. Long range fire with precision rounds make it redundant. Short range fire with things like AT4s already pack as much punch as a tank round. IFVs fill in the middle. So yes, the tank is obsolete. It offers nothing that can't be done more efficiently by other platforms, including infantry, artillery, and lighter vehicles like IFVs. And we've seen this before: the rise and fall of the Battleship. Once air power became dominant, which BBs were poorly suited to defend against, the BB fell into sharp decline. Once Anti-ship missiles became dominant, BBs became utterly obsolete. The dramatic advances in ATGMs, and high performance ATGMs being available for both infantry and drones, make the tank little more than a coffin against any remotely peer opponent.
The older & newer tanks are equally vulnerable to anti-tank missiles. You are wrong about new tanks being survivable. I don't think you would be willing to go against the Ukrainians with an Armata. I wouldn't. The Israelis were surprised about the vulnerability of their tanks. The missiles will get cheaper and smaller and will multiply on the battlefield.
I guess RTS games had proved it correct since the 90s, infantrymen with rocket launchers are far cheaper to be utilized against expensive Tanks and Air Targets. If anything, Rocket Infantries in CnC and Starcraft Marines are quite the meta literally in this conflict so far. I doubt they can utilize Flamethrower tanks or anything without also being detonated by rockets as well.
First, I think that what the war has shown very clearly is the threat of the shoulder-fired anti-aircraft weapon. It makes the CAS mission, airborne assault and resupply using transport aircraft much, much more difficult. Controlling the skies will be very costly until Stingers can be countered. Second, the muddy terrain in Ukraine at this time of year forces armored columns to stick to the roads instead of going around an ambush or out-flanking it. They lose the maneuver capability that usually makes them a much more daunting task to deal with. Of course maneuver warfare costs a lot of fuel which makes functioning logistics even more important, especially if resupply using air transport is threatened by Stingers. Third, the discipline and training of troops looks absolutely dismal. Vehicles that pull off the road are at increasing risk of being discovered and should be protected by infantry forming a secure perimeter to protect against opposing forces and if the stop is for an extended period of time the vehicles should be camouflaged and/or hidden. When advancing over open terrain tanks should lead and infantry follow immediately behind: tank guns should be aimed where threats might reasonably be found. When advancing where visibility is poor - woods or built-up - infantry should lead and tanks follow immediately behind: IFV guns should be aimed where troops with AT-weapons may hide, if troops can observe and shoot through open hatches they will probably do it better than the gunner and they might even react before the AT-weapon is fired (was it Wittman who used to fire preemptively against possible targets rather than wait for someone to fire first?). So when an IFV is fired upon in a built-up area infantry shouldn't run and hide, their IFV gun should hose down the area in the general direction until infantry has dismounted and organized a counter-attack. Accompanying tanks should assist in shelling in the general direction. When infantry has cleared the area they re-mount and the column can move again. I have left out the fact that the attack may come from several directions at once so all infantry must not be committed in a single direction. If the ground in Ukraine had not been muddy an ambush would affect just a few vehicles before the vehicles behind go cross-country to bypass the ambush. But even when it is muddy, an infantry counter-attack will not be hindered and will be effective. Not counter-attacking essentially means that vehicles are left without effective defenses. Fourth, troops must be motivated and understand the mission. A peacekeeping mission that is actually an all-out assault on a friendly nation is a lot less motivating than protecting your country, your family, your friends. The lack of understanding of these basic facts within Russian military leadership astounds me. It's as if they missed Leadership 101 or never once managed to pass it. Or maybe they just see troops as cannon-fodder, no more no less. Or as robots without emotions. Fifth, when I was trained as an armored infantry platoon commander the instructors said "if your armored column stops, it will be destroyed." For whatever reason Putin went ahead with the attack with very little detailed knowledge of what makes or breaks an armored campaign. Multiple Putin-Shoigu family vacations made a lapdog out of Shoigu instead of someone fighting for his army to be given a realistic objective instead of a one-way trip to the meat grinder. The Javelins or NLAWs have become noticed due to this armored campaign being anything but. A properly planned and fought campaign will instead shine the proper light on the main issue, the Stingers and the increased threat to the concept air superiority.
I think it's quite telling that territorial volunteer reservists with comparatively minimal training can pick up a portable stand alone intelligent fire and forget ATGM and wreak havoc on advancing enemy armor. Really what used to take long months of initial training, specialized tactics and continuing practice has been simplified significantly for modern armies employing them. While I don't believe for a second that armor has gone the way of the Dodo, their employment in combined arms tactics is up for a significant review. While we in no way have a thorough and complete enough picture as yet to come to any conclusions, I'd expect a few new "Tradocs" to surface within NATO pretty soon. Maybe even a new modified rock, paper, scissors, farm implement diagram...
Yeah the annoyanomic of RUclips are well bothersome. Way to many adds just to push people into premium. Thanks for trying to help keep the ads to a minimum
I really like the :"dont even bother with Armour instead become faster, more agile, sneaky and even deadlier option" but that might just be the light cavalry lineage speaking tho.
Such an interesting video covering a topic I have long considered - will small and inexpensive high-tech weapons replace older systems built for survivability? These days technology is so cheap a very advanced guiding/tracking systems can be built for peanuts.
@@Shadow25720 LOL what power of Russian logistics? They can't manufacture any of the parts they need. They're desperately trying to buy night vision sensors from France. They can't get any semiconductor chips for the electronics. Nobody will sell them anything. Their economy is in tatters and they're bogged down and losing in an ill-advised war of their own making where they've lost 30% of the forces they committed and have been forced to pull troops protecting their borders to desperately try and reinforce. In 2 or 3 years there won't be a Russia left to receive the T-14s at this rate. What a joke.
When I was in the army 35 years ago, we referred to the armored personnel carriers as "group coffins". Knowing what I did about the anti-tank weapons that we had, even back then, I was terrified with the prospect of being inside of one. We had 81mm rockets that could make a roast dinner out of the occupants of these vehicles. I assumed an enemy would have something similar.
I see this issue in the very same way. Missile-armed infantry is more agile and effective than tanks and from the number of tanks being destroyed in Ukraine these days, this is clearly the case. Tanks are basically just mobile artillery these days and their time in military history is ending, thanks to light, portable, and relatively inexpensive shoulder-launched anti-armor missiles. It has been said that all wars are economic in nature. If so, then much lower cost but effective weapons will dominate the battlefields now and even more so in the future.
You can buy 150 javelin for the price of 1 main battle tank ( us, fr , german or uk)... with a miss rate of 50% you can roast 75 tanks. What MBT can hope to destroy 75 armor before dying ?
Drones are even cheaper than ATGM's and require little training to operate. There will b a role for some sort of armored mobile artillery for the foreseeable future but MBT's r expensive to produce, to train, to fuel and to maintain. Seems the cost-benefit ratio just isn't there. Probably why the USMC doesn't field them anymore.
Finally, someone actually using logic when publicly talking about modern warfare. I like that you present the ambiguity and shades of gray that are missing in most outlets that claim either side of an argument as if there's no doubt or conditions
What about how they thought they wouldn’t need long Johns and gloves for fighting in the freezing cold? Or I guess they didn’t bring winter gear because they weren’t expecting a fight
It's not that they don't have logistics, they do (though at times it looks like it is dated to ca. 1943). It's that they rely upon their rail network for logistics. they have a force of 20k troops just devoted to operating and defending this network. It is a very efficient system if they are invaded, whereby they can easily rush supplies and equipment to a hub and defend that land not far from the hub. The whole system breaks down when they try to project their power. The rail hubs end at their borders. As a result they have difficulties projecting power much beyond the 150km mark from their nearest rail hub. Of course, they also operate on the push model of logistics. This means that the supplies that troops get are known ahead of time, but that also results in logistic driving strategy. They prioritize missiles and ammo over fuel and food. It is obvious how that kind of system will easily breakdown in an offensive invasion but Russia hasn't needed to do large scale offensive wars in a long time.
@@ewqe1-2223 That is very true. They don't have massive dedicated LHA/LHDs, they don't have a large number of oversea bases that can refuel their fleet. This means that they can't establish a fleet train. And that means that they don't think about projecting logistics, only dumping logistics.
Sincere compliments on this comprehensive and balanced video! As a once ATGW operator (armored infantry) who used to operate in close coordination with MBTs and a military analyst later on, you have taken into account most relevant factors. One small factor I'd like to highlight here that is somewhat overlooked is the apparent absence of Russian (armored) recce in their - obviously failing - combined arms approach. Most western forces that deploy MBTs have recce forces scan ahead for possible threats that use long range/high resolution sensors and which cooperate closely with artillery, air support and infantry. Their data usually contributes to how tanks, infantry and fire/air support is deployed ahead of contact with enemy forces. Today (armored) recce forces also deploy drones and deploy dismounted troops to scan for hostile infantry and sometimes can operate as or with Joint Terminal Air Controllers (JTAC) or Fire Support Teams (FST) to coordinate fire control. All of that seems lacking in the Russian approach. And that tells more than anything else I suppose that the Russian ground forces are ill prepared for whatever engagement they end up in. The mud for example seems to have them surprised completely, when most recce troops could have conveyed information on the terrain conditions well in advance. This all shows one thing more than anything else to me. The Russian military leadership is there only to satisfy the need for the Kremlin to have obedient subordinates, not effective ones.
I have heard reports that the Russian Air Units are afraid of and do not trust their own ADA! And that Ground/Air Communication is almost nonexistent .....
@@swj719 True. But then deconfliction (which units are exactly where?) becomes of paramount importance. Another aspect that the Russian forces seem to have no clue of. Having said that, deconfliction - even with the best procedures and training in place - is a b@tch regardless during actual combat. Fratricide sadly occurs to often.
One disclaimer and one post-recording thought on this one: Disclaimer first: I get "Skiff" and "Sagger" mixed up at one point in this recording when talking about the Stugna vs the much older Malyutka ATGMs. I also make typos that got missed. Second just a closing thought on why I'm not prepared to outright call time on the tank: The invention of gunpowder weapons didn't immediately kill the previously dominant knights and armoured cavalry of the European battlefields. At first, they thickened their armour to resist early projectiles, then when that was no longer possible they began to reduce their armour and change their role. Heavy cavalry remained, albeit with a different look and new tactics, for centuries to come. Until armies are confident that they can do without the role filled by the tank, I believe it's far more likely that tanks and their associated tactics evolve rather than go extinct in the near term. As to what that evolution is likely to look like, I'd rather leave to the experts with experience in the field. All I can say is that powers observing the Ukraine conflict are likely to ask questions about whether or not they really get value out of older and more vulnerable vehicles, and whether they can get more bang for their buck from mobile ATGMs and shoulder fired ordinance.
yes this is the end of the tank and armor. ukraine has shown armor cannot take a city. and the miniaturization and lethality and fire power of a small infantry carried weapon is an astounding 90 percent with javalins, nlaws, stingers. why would anyone bother spending 8-9 million or more to manufacture a tank now after what we have seen in ukraine. compare that to ww2 where the lethality of bazookas was only 60-70 percent. only idiot advisors in the military will be making tanks now for a nation.
I believe that tanks will always have a place on the battlefield. The problem with Russia is that they keep playing rock-paper-scissors and always select rock. ATGMs are vulnerable to infantry and quick responding mortars. A column of tanks driving down the road into enemy territory without infantry or scouting elements has almost always been a bad idea.
@@spencerstevens2175 And this is why we see countries like the USA have such success with tanks. The US has exceptional combined arms doctrine and has air supremacy as a primary goal in any fight. Which allows ground attack assets to be in the air over the armor on overwatch duties. As well as good infantry dismount tactics from APCs and IFVs. But that requires extensive logistics capacity suited to global power projection, I don't think Russia has that full logistics integration into all methods of power projection.
Great video! My two cents worth (as an ex-mechanized infantry soldier) is the critical role of the environment. As you mentioned, built-up areas are no-go zones for tanks, even with infantry support. The infantry will just spend most of their effort in protecting the enticing target that is the tank, while the tank is not able to offer much value in return. Tanks do better in open country and fighting at longer ranges. In short, tanks belong in the countryside and not in the city. Unfortunately for the Russians, the Ukrainian countryside is also proving inhospitable to their tanks, and a major underestimated factor is the mud. From first-hand experience I can tell you that operating in heavy sticky mud is a nightmare for armored vehicles. I've trained in those conditions and had days when I spent two hours actually training and ten hours extracting vehicles from mud. Look at the sheer numbers of abandoned Russian tanks that were captured by the Ukrainians. Yes, some of the Russian crews abandoned their vehicles because of mechanical breakdowns and lack of fuel, but I would bet that simply getting stuck in mud is also a major reason. The mud is also acting as an area denial weapon to the Russian armor, much like a minefield would. The mud forces the Russian vehicles to use the roads, which makes them much easier targets for Ukrainian hit-and-run ambushes. Almost every video I've seen of Russian tanks getting destroyed had the tanks on a road, not spread out in an open field. I cannot over-emphasize how important this factor is. Ambushing a tank driving across a wide-open countryside is far more difficult that ambushing one that you know has to come down a certain road. One of the lessons drilled into mechanized infantry is to avoid roads whenever possible. Always travel unpredictably across open country if you can. My prediction is that if this conflict continues for long enough for the ground to dry up, then the Russian tanks will perform better (assuming there are any left by then). The tanks will become much more difficult to take out once they can travel cross-country rather than use roads.
What would be the point of using the tanks in the countryside though? Ukraine won't engage them with their own tanks, it would be suicide and they can just continue to use drones and rocket launchers. They can move them more safely perhaps but they can't use them to project power into dense urban areas. Am I wrong or is even using tanks in this type of war just not useful?
@@branteus In this scenario you would use the tanks to dominate the countryside and encircle the cities. Tanks would also be needed for taking out enemy armor and fortified positions in the countryside. The actual city fighting would be done with dismounted infantry backed by their own mechanized vehicles and artillery support from batteries a safe distance outside the city. The tanks would definitely still be needed for this kind of war.
@@branteus Tanks can engage from miles away. Antitank weapons that can be carried by a person/pair have ranges of ~1/4 mile. Drones change things, definitely, but they aren't everywhere. It would also force the Ukrainians to defend against armor from all sides instead of just down major highways.
I think "Assuming there are any left" is going to be the key factor, not just for the tanks but for supply and personnel. Battle groups are effectively useless offensively with as little as 10% casualties and while proposed rates are impossible to verify I suspect the logistical train is approaching something like 25% and passable roads evaporate with each ambush and IED. It will be at least late May before the north is not boggy enough to neutralize tanks but even in the south where ground is better tanks are still taking losses. Of course the other issues still cripple the offensive; morale, training, equipment, money, etc. etc. If you can't even issue your troops effective nav equipment they will be hopeless at fighting an offensive war.
@@marcusmoonstein242 But wouldn't these tanks need supply convoys (that I assume would not have the same off road capabilities of tanks, and thus could be easily targeted) to refuel and rearm?
Another note. The premise that ‘old cheap tanks’ can flip the economics on using Javeline is laughable, because old tanks are very vulnerable to the old trusty RPG-7. There is a reason nobody uses these old tanks anymore except in very poor third world countries. Heck, even modern tanks are vulnerable to RPG rockets. In Ukraine for example they target tank tracks with RPGs. Yes, it requires good hit, but a tank with broken tracks becomes very vulnerable and often abandoned by crew.
Let us also consider the fact that russia doesn't defend its tanks with adaquate screening troops. Tanks have always been very vulnerable to infantry. The role of a tank is to assist the infantry, not replace it as russia has
@@goldenhate6649 seems that Russian generals must have presumed that a show of massed armor would be enough to get a "cheap" victory. They were very wrong and in being wrong, they created a HUGE morale problem when their troops started getting incinerated by the dozens. Now they are stuck in a nasty bloody fight.
I read about a challenger or abrams tank that got stuck in a ditch in Iraq and took like 60-80 hits from rpg 7s and survived. Both tanks however have been penetrated/destroyed by the rpg 29. The moral of the story is that modern tanks can withstand old anti tank rockets
Combined arms means that without infantry every tank is vulnerable. Tanks are still viable in my humble opinion but must be deployed with accompanying infantry to have any chance. But on saying that it was shown in WW2 that with enough mortars the infantry defenders could strip away enough infantry support to render the tanks vulnerable again. The USA army at one point in time thought that the "Stryker" type wheeled armoured vehicles could replace tanks but have since reconsidered that line of thought. There's no simple answer but a tank attack with trained accompanying "Panzer Grenadeers" is the best tactic the Russians could employ but its the human factor of who wants to win the most I believe.
When my father was tankist in Czechoslovak army in 80s, they believed that tanks are outdated already in that time. They were learning that if they see radar of Apache heli over trees, they should leave tank and run as far as possible because they can't do anything with that. 🙂 We are small nation and surviving of crew is priority, but on other hand, due to political situation, we had to use soviet tanks which really didn't (and still don't) guarantee you that you survive, there was enough tanks, but not enough experienced crews, so just leave the tank was not a big deal I guess. I think this was unofficial strategy, my father said that there were 2 types of military leaders - type 1 was commie who knew nothing about military but he was good member of party, and second was real military leader who didn't care about politics much, these 2 types of officers were very often in conflict and were saying things which are going directly against each other. 🙂 Type one was saying propagandistic shits about how they are the best and immortal and second type told you that you will survive 5 minutes in tank battle, that was really positive motivation. 🙂
@@epicurusurist9017 When my father was ending military service, they were retraining him to medic reservist, because it was time when they lowered amount of tanks and they didn't need him later. He was really glad that he didn't have to enter that steel coffin called T-55A again. We had thousands of tanks during communism time, can you imagine it for such a small country? Now we have 30 operable modernised tanks and another 100 outdated T-72 and few others conserved, it's ridiculous imagination that we had like 5000 tanks back in the day. 🙂
5 minutes? The political military leader won't last 5 seconds in a real firefight against actually experienced and trained veterans. Also another aspect to look at. Putin was trained as a spy, and agent, not an elite soldier who can take on a battalion of enemy soldiers.
Ondrej... People just love "bling". (I do myself, in my backpack...) ...Even if it is on the opposite side: The last time I was at a normal Home Guard exercise, I had to listen to to how stupid it was to guard a stationary object. "Because the Russians woul 'just' send in a cruise missile!" -- A cruise missile flying 2000 km ...or across Sweden ...or from a submarine??? For a target that was vulnerable to any caffe latte drinking political hothead with a cheap hammer? --- People are just blinded by "bling" sometimes.
@@MultiZirkon People here believed that both sides will nuke us in case of war NATO vs Warsaw Pact. 🙂 That's why Soviets needed sattelite states, they needed bumper zone and keep nuclear wasteland far from their land.
Combined arms has always been the way to go. Our resident you tube tanker put out a video today too, where he comes to a lot of the exact same conclusions.
Pretty much this. Well trained infantry working in close coordination with tanks neutralize most ATGMs because they can't get close enough without tangling with enemy soldiers.
This video was superbly researched and reasoned By someone who is not a tank expert by any means. The evidence is overwhelming against tanks in an era of smart and affordable light weight antitank weapons. It’s a no-brainer.
@@Caseytify Yes, but . . . The range, accuracy, and concealibility of the newest ATGMs indicates to me that you want your tanks operating further back during an advance, with troops out ahead, already dismounted. A spearhead with mechanized infantry could run into a lot of trouble unless you’re using your tanks as old WWII style Infrantry Tanks (think Matildas and Churchills), unless the terrain is as smooth as a cue ball.
ATGM's, especially the Javelin and NLAW, have changed things but this particular war just seems to be the reality of facing a defense in-depth which is always going to be a costly affair.
Every since the earliest days of the "Tank" there have been weapons for killing them that could be transported and used by either 1 soldier, or a 2 soldier team. Survival of MBTs and all other forms of armored combat vehicles on a modern conventional battlefield depends upon the coordinated effort of a "Combined Arms Combat Team" that utilizes Aviation assets (both fixed wing and rotary), Artillery, Reconnaissance elements, and of extreme importance, almost as much as Aviation assets (in some cases more) is the need for a proper balance of Mechanized Infanyry traveling with the MBTs in vehicles that can not only keep up with the MBTs but also have a level of survivability that allows them to transition through the MBTs when needed for engaging dismounted enemy Infantry with their own dismounted Infantry. Commanders of Armored and Mechanized forces must follow certain guidelines about movement of these units like not moving them during daylight unless you have Air Superiority ( without it you cannot reliably keep Close Air Support on station ready to react as needed) and the terrain that MBTs can be used in. Every since WW1 we've known tanks don't do well in deep muddy fields, densely populated urban areas, steep mountains or very heavily wooded areas. They should not travel down roads in convoys to avoid muddy fields and heavily wooded areas, especially not if those roads traverse unsecured areas or if you don't have effective Close AR Support or effective and rapid Counterbattery Artillery fires. Modern tanks come with smoke generators, multiple smoke grenade launching systems, and are capable of relatively fast speeds, but where do we see most of the tanks being destroyed in Ukraine? Static positions, convoys on roads, urban areas, or in assaults against dug in Ukrainian defensive positions that the Russians know exactly where they are, they know that they are full of Infantry dismounts with tons of ATGMs and yet we don't see dismounted Infantry assaulting those positions under covering Artillery or Close Air Support with their IFVs moving close by giving supporting fires with their auto cannons and coaxial machine guns. We see tanks killed after sitting in the same poorly camouflaged positions for days ( evidenced by the tables, chairs and other "hooch" setups soldiers create anytime we sit in one place over 24 hours). We see them destroyed or captured where they ran out of fuel or where their crew abandoned them. We see them killed when being committed into battle in a piecemeal fashion (and once again without effective Close Air Support or Artillery Support/effective Counterbattery Support. By the 2nd time tanks were used on the battlefield in WWI these lessons were being learned, it's almost like a lot of Russian Officers/Commanders never really spent much time reading the history of Armored Warfare. Combine that with, from all appearances a significant portion of Russian soldiers not wanting to be there, and apparently poorly trained, undisciplined, and unmotivated (by looking at uniforms and gear, watching how they handle their weapons ( poor muzzle discipline and a lot of unaimed spray and pray shooting) and the fact that so many vehicles, and so much equipment and ammunition being abandoned in completely usable condition with little to no attempt to prevent the Ukrainian forces from being able to use it tells us a lot about the Russian military that has entered Ukraine. I'm sure there are some really good quality Russian units involved in this war, and I'd bet we just aren't hearing much about them. Probably because they still have most of their MBTs, IFVs, and other vehicles and equipment in their possession and in working order because those leading these units actually spent their training time awake, alert, and sober.
I'm not a military expert by any means, but; isn't it fair to say that ATGMs are a defensive weapon essentially? And that to capture territory on the offense, you will still need heavily armed and armoured vehicles? Dismounted infantry as main offensive arm without armour support would still be horribly vulnerable to all forms of fire, no? Therefore some form of tank will still be necessary for the offensive.
yes, but what we're talking about here is Ukraines ability specifically and any small country facing a larger foe generally, to use these weapons in defence. That's all.
Infantry ATGMs are essentially a replacement for WW2 antitank guns, which are primarily defensive weapons. Offensive weapons are able to move fast, and infantry on foot are not fast.
What you are actually saying is that defence has now grown strong relative to the offensive - maneouvre warfare is now extremely expensive. Like how the machine gun and barbed wire did in 1914-18 MANPADs, ATGMs and drones will create slugfests.
@@kenoliver8913 eh, defense has had the advantage for a while. As you note, since 1918 at least. And the Russians are ignoring a good 80 years of history in how they are fighting.
It seems to me that the crew space and survivability systems occupy a significant portion of a tank’s volume. Might we see unmanned or autonomous tanks in the near future? Edit: perhaps one way to counter the threat of jamming, in addition to or instead of an autonomous mode, would be to allow line of sight remote control by the accompanying manned combined arms force?
Already here. But the problem is the AUTONOMOUS part. That is what everyone is trying to avoid. Except comms links might be jammed or hacked. So it's a dilemma. For now, anything like that needs a human operator, so a comms link.
2 года назад+8
@@スガル Whatever would work against unmanned tanks (like EMP) would also work against unmanned drones, wouldn't it?
"Killing a truck worth it, let alone a tank" Indeed: don't under-rate trucks. If a row of fifty trucks have all of the food and fuel that the invaders can lay hands on for two hundred miles, then they're more valuable than twice the number of tanks. "But if you're on a budget, do those legacy tanks provide you value?" Alas, probably yes: wars tend to be fought against civilians.
Unless you have all your units near rail depots or a plentiful supply of transport helicopters with secure landing zones, trucks are the way to go. In mountains and jungles I would suggest mule trains if you can find a plentiful source of mules and the personnel to support them. But this isn't Burma during the second world war, is it? :)
I have seen several videos depicting Ukrainian troops in action. With the exception of the squad machine gunner, every troop had some kind of anti armor capability. You might not completely kill a tank with one shot, but damage adds up. If you just slow a tank down, it's less capable of offensive action and can be taken out later. Combine that, with the effect of the rasputitsa, the tanks will not be as effective as they could be until the mud solidifies.
The Russians are failing massively because of lack of combined arms, lack of communication/cooperation and choosing to attack right at the start of the mud season, limiting your vehicles to the asphalt roads. Non-supported tanks were punished already in WW2 in 1940-1941, with anti-tank guns. You don't need bazookas and late WW2 era to learn these lessons about combined arms warfare. Actually, you don't even modern industrial warfare to learn the lessons of combined arms warfare. That the Russians are failing so horribly means we cannot draw any conclusions about the value of the tank in adequate combined arms warfare. We can only confirm what the Germans already knew in 1940: tanks need infantry support (combined arms) to be successful.
small corection , from end of february until 20th of march it wasnt that muddy as you might think , this year march was cold in ukraine, reaching -18 at night and -10 during day
I have the sensation that the so called "operation" is a failed maskirovska, they just used the army to draw the western attention and made an "all in" with the attack on the Kiev airport to take the Govt and cut the head, but they failed and now they have to use the poor russian gopniks as cannon fodder :(
Well presented. I’m an old M1A1 tanker in the US Army. Before 911 we spent all our time training in combined arms to fight the Russian hoard. Most of the time in MOPP 2 or MOPP 4. I agree older tanks are a waste of resources. Modern tanks with well trained crews, active protection systems and a clear well executed combined arm doctrine can still decide a battle.
t-series tanks including the T-90 are utterly obsolete. the gap is the same as the difference from an A7V to a Panther and its showing. when you are that much of a target being a generation behind is suicide.
Great video! As a naval officer, the concept of relying on mobility and active protection over armor is an interesting one…it basically encapsulates the philosophy of warship design since the advent of anti-ship missiles.
Yes, I see land warfare evolving much the same way navel warfare has. The tank is equivilent to a battleship (heck they called the tank the land-battleship when it was in development) and they rely almost exclusivly on direct fire guns and thick armor to defeat peer platforms. When battleships became obsolete we still retained cruisers and destroyers which gradually merged in size and role to systems which carried a large variety of weapon systems and many people just term them all as 'surface combatants' now. In the same manor I see our modern IFV's with their combination of infantry, misiles and auto-cannons will become the dominant platform on land. Drones will also get incorporated likely with each IFV having a little helo-pad on the back for the launch and recovery of it's own recon drones just as warships launch helecopters.
I would recommend people go see the video that The Chieftan put out about this today. Cliff notes version...tanks are not dead, active protection is going to become bigger, combined arms is a must.
@@talandar5773 Even before that the myth of armor invincibility has been around since the 20s it tends to take a hit any time there is a large scale conflict involving armor especially if a side tries to rely on it but neglects infantry support. But it always comes back. I expect in 10 years after whatever the next defensive system will be shows up to deal with Javelins and the like we will see people once again proclaiming the supremacy of the tank. Tanks are just too cool a penis enhancer not to have a devoted following.
You hit the nail on the head. The way to win war is combined arms warfare. It doesn't matter if its 1942 or 2022, the side that has their different units effectively communicate and work together tend to win. Tanks + infantry + air strikes + artillery + drones + logistics + intelligence + proper training + competent leadership = winning.
If this is the case, which it seems to be, it also helps to explain why the Russians have performed so poorly: they have struggled to conduct themselves in this sophisticated way.
Until Rods From God wipes your Army and Navy out. And you have no idea where it’s coming from. Putin, meet US Space Force. We don’t need boots on the ground to annihilate Russian armor.
@@InshushaGroupie Because that type of sophistication takes money, a career military force, said force knowing that their survival relies on being effective, and leadership which is willing to trust units to at least do their jobs. Funnily enough, that describes a competent westernized army. Maybe not as much on the money side, but more on the "being good at your job" side. The thing is, I don't realistically think anyone expects a military coup in most western nations. One of the reasons is because there's far less personal power in being a general or admiral than in countries where that is a concern. The priorities from the top to the bottom are different.
Measure and Countermeasure ! The tank starting in WW1 was an answer to the trench warfare and barbed wire of the Western Front trenches, and the beginning of mobile warfare as seen in Nth Africa in WW2. Combined operations are now the go, but with helos and missiles, a new paradigm has evolved.
I think that what we are seeing is the modern-day "Infantry Revolution." The Infantry Revolution was during the 14th century when weapons like pikes were invented specifically to counter knights. All of the supply problems with tanks now were similar problems with knights and their horses during the medieval era. Once infantry was able to actually take down knights, the knight (and assorted light cavalry) became much less popular. The tank will follow a similar path as cavalry did up until WWI; it will be used, but only for specific roles like breaking through a line, flank charging, or pursuing fleeing enemies.
I think IFVs will still be a thing that can be used like tanks, but the officers and the NCOs better have the good sense to tell the squad to leave the damn vehicle under most types of fire. I think armoured mortars and artillery are to stay too and will play an even bigger role. Because still need big gun, but why needlessly expose yourself in direct fire?
The thing is, these ATGM's aren't new technology, Javlins entered service in 1984. This debate has been doing the rounds since the late 1960's when Israel used early ATGM to devastate Egyptian tanks in the 6 days war. Armor provides a huge benefit in terms mobility and fire supoort, but it needs to be protected and properly supported, what we are seeing here is what happens when outdated armour (bulk of the Russian armour being T-72's) isn't used correctly, driving down narrow roads single file without proper recon and support or engage in close quarters in city streets, in those situations without awareness of there surroundings, supporting infantry clearing surrounding buildings and room to manuver or bring their firepower to bear, they're just over priced moving coffins
I think the longbow was not unlike the more modern day equivalent of long range artillery and this had a devastating effect on cavalry and infantry alike at over 300 metres. Arrows fired from longbows were also, presumably, the medieval equivalent of the Javelin at shorter distances.
@@richardcory5024 It was the tactics that mattered not the longbows. Longbows were destroyed by cavalry at the Battle of Patay without doing any damage.
Even in WW2 it was understood that tanks could not operate effectively without air and infantry support. Russia has neglected this. There will always be utility in a self-propelled gun with immunity to small arms and autocannons, and resistance to artillery. The problem is that countries like Russia keep using them comically badly.
tanks is ment to fight other tanks in open areas. not for fight people hiding in Urban area with javelin rocket. russis didnot anticipate ukraine was going to get 30 billion in military aid.
The difference between now and WW2 is that infantry cannot protect vehicles from ATGMs that are fired from more than 200 meters away, let alone kilometres aways. And what's new in this conflict is the not only the mass deployment of weapons that have this long range capability, but are also portable. Not to mention the heavy use of cheap expendable undetectable drones that guide arty strikes accurately.
@@JAnx01 Nailed it! In WW2 dismounted troops could clear the way in front of tanks of defenders with short range anti-tank Panzerfaust. The infantry could sometimes over run German 88mm artillery positions before the tanks came in range. To make that happen with modern ATGM's mean that the infantry has to be so far ahead of the tanks, that the mission of the tanks (to be the iron fist that shocks defending infantry) is completely failed.
Only at the cost of making them star-wars level expensive. A system that your grandmother can be trained to use in an afternoon and that can be fielded in huge numbers for a fraction of the cost (and with no logistical tail at all) can make fielding a useful number of "protected" tanks so ridiculously expensive they will be virtually unusable. You'll lose the conflict financially before you can win militarily. I think that's what the West is demonstrating to the Russian government as we speak. Add to that problem an even bigger one: There is no conceivable way to protect your supply columns to this degree. And without support vehicles (not to mention IFVs in combat support) your tank is worth almost nothing, regardless of how much you spend on it.
@@charlesfaure1189 And add to that the fact ATGMs are improving far faster than tanks. Today, ATGMS can hit tanks 1.5 miles away. It's not hard to imagine ATGMs with several miles range or longer, with cheap drones acting as spotter. Tanks have no chance against such systems whether protected by infantry or not.
Remember that these questions have been asked _many_ times before, but the tank always survives. APDS, HEAT, older generation ATGMs like the Malyutka, the attack helicopter, IEDs, smart munitions, etc. Every 10 years or so some new development happens that makes everyone speculate that the tank is "obsolete". I have no reason to believe that handheld anti tank weapons (which have been a threat since WW2) are suddenly going to single handedly render tanks unusable.
The tank can only effectively be used in conjunction with skilled infantry, with out that skilled infantry the tank is merely an expensive target. Infantry needs tanks, but the tank also needs that infantry. If you try to use a tank as a mobile fortress it will not survive...
This was implied, but older ATGM systems are likely to be cycled out of use fast (per your comments on ammo use) leading to cutting edge systems in front line hands fast and at scale. Countries must pay heavily for an AFV generational upgrade, while an ATGM generational upgrade costs 'only' the current stock of ATGMs and the phase-out still yields significant value. Phasing out a generation of AFVs appears to primarily create value for local farmers and interested bystanders. Let's hope we continue to support Ukraine in demonstrating the power of international collaboration over tearing up treaties and that Russia fails to escape this doctrinal trap they have walked into.
All of these videos have been absolutely wonderful. Well research, well explained, and very well argued. I sent them to my family and now we watch them together, which is pretty cool seeing as they’re not normally defense policy minded people. (it’s mostly energy policy and healthcare law with them). Anyways I hope to see more, great job!
Talk to them about how Germany’s disastrous energy politics weakened all of Europe and made Putin more bellicose. Talk to them about gas, lignite, “Energiewende”, nuclear energy, LNG terminals, gas storage (LNG and gaseous), pipelines, strategic oil reserves, household heating, HVDC, etc…
@@peterfireflylund don’t worry, we are all baffled by germany shutting down actively operating nuclear power plants, and how stupid and greedy it was to decide it was okay to rely on the russians for energy products. it’s one of the few things we can all agree on.
I really like your analysis. As a former tank soldier in the Australian Army (1988 - 1996), I have long been waiting for the development of specialised armoured vehicles designed specifically around countermeasures for anti tank weapons, perhaps, even to the point of not having any main armour, much as the tracked AA guns of the Cold War period. Ideally, these would be sprinkled at the troop, or squadron level. So there would be one of these dedicated vehicles for every three to 12 standard tanks. However, I do fear that the "queen of the battlefield" is currently failing in its primary role, namely penetration and exploitation of enemy defensive lines. Edit: I would also point out that I was trained to successfully use a Carl Gustav 84mm Anti-Tank recoilless rifle in the space of two days. I will admit that I was in the top 5-10 percent of my regiment, with regard to small arms fire, having learnt how to shoot, prior to joining the Army. (Even during my time with the Navy Cadets, as a teenager with TS Melbourne", I was one of the few who obtained the marksman badge - which was a hugely watered down version of the real thing. But hey, we were kids, so lacked both the time and experience to even consider any of us even remotely close to a regular soldier with the marksmanship badge, let alone even the worst soldier from any Australian infantry regiment.) Out of my squadron, we only had enough Gustav rounds for two soldiers to fire real round, as opposed to .22 calibre sub rounds, which adequately mimicked the flight path of the of real weapon. And I hit my tank sized target at a range of about 300 - 400 metres, with both the practice and later on with the live round. But my tank sized target was a stationary steel water tank, so If they'd been moving I almost certainly wouldn't have hit with either shot. What takes time, however, is teaching the bush skills that an infantry man requires in order to conduct fire and movement. All Australian soldiers are also trained in infantry minor tactics' it is literally (Seriously, if we handed out medals like the US do, we'd all be stooped to the left with the weight, because the Aussie soldier is trained on a wider variety of weapon systems and able to easily transition our modes of war, knowing our soldiers already have the basics a significant part of ALL NCO training, where there is a generic leadership course, as well as another course that is directly related to your job. By way of example, all Australian Corporals are trained to lead a section in the field, irrespective of whether their day job is counting blankets. By the end of my service, I had not only fired the Tank main gun, but been trained and fired the following weapon: The SLR rifle, of the Vietnam era, he 30 and 50 calibre machine guns, the 40 mm "wombat gun", or percussion grenade launcher, the M60 machine gun, the MG3 the F1 submachine gun, the 9mm Browning pistol. Probably missed the point, but you get what I mean. I recall having a conversation with an American Private, who couldn't believe that I was not only trained in multiple tank crew positions, but could also drive an army truck and was a fully qualified "B" vehicle (land Rover) and a few other things. He just knew infantry minor tactics and if another job needed to be done, his unit had people to do that job. So, yes, you can easily train soldiers to use the weapons. But against a well trained force, that knows how to engage in fire and movement, I'd expect less success. For whatever stupid reason, Russia attacked Ukraine at exactly the wrong time of the year. Everybody knows that during spring and autumn the plains of Ukraine turn into mud. FFS, this was what saved Moscow during the 1942. Tanks do best on open terrain, where they can easily move, shoot and scoot and engage in other traditional tank tactics. I once had my entire troop of tanks (3 at the time) bogged in the same swamy area on Puckapunyal range. We subtlety contacted the spanners to come and get us out and that cost us several slabs of beer. But our Squadron OC didn't fine out, so all was good! :-) Had the Russians invaded during either the height of winter, or in May, once the ground has dried out, it would have allowed tanks to do what they do best, namely engage in overwhelming manuver warfare across a wide front (as opposed to a single road with its "40 mile convoy"), where if you advance at pace, you'll easily overrun the infantry on the ground. Infantry can't move as fast as armour, so if you can gain the mobility advantage and the tanks can very quickly close the distance between infantry ATGMs and the extreme target range of those systems. A Modern Tanks Thermal vision can easily see the heat radiating off a recently used weapon, so hiding would be hard. I can tell you from personal experience, being charged by a tank, as an infantryman, is a terrifying experience. When on exercise, we would do demo runs against infantry positions and while we knew that a tank can go from full speed to a dead stop within its own length, assuming dry ground. On one exercise in the Northern Territory, we "charged" a group of infantry attempting to infiltrate our defences. One of our tanks charged towards them at full speed and halted about 20 metres from there. The tank driver had night vision gear, so could easily see the infantry. The infantry didn't, so all they heard was the very loud noise of a 36 litre diesel engine as it approached them, followed by the emergence the tanks headlight at about 50 feet (because the drive didn't want to run them over). Simply on the basis of that charge, the section of infantry became combat ineffective. By the time that I rocked over in the troop leader's vehicle, the section commander was engaged in a highly heated argument about how dangerous the charge was. His troops were medevac'd an even the next day, some members were reported to be displaying what we'd now call "Combat Stress Reaction". Given just how badly one solder responded, I wouldn't be surprised if he went on to develop PTSD over the event. So tanks, when deployed properly have an incredible shock value that simply should not be under-estimated. In Australia, we went from over 100 leopard tank variants, to only 56 and our supposition was that the halving of the numbers was largely for us to retain "armoured capability", so that if we ever got into a shooting war, we'd still have a well trained cadre of troops upon which to build a larger tanks force. Basically, 1st Armoured Regiment would have largely merged with the School of Armour to train thousands of new troops on how to not get themselves killed in batle. Tanks without infantry support is Modern Combat is pure silliness and opens you up to being taken out by a single Molotov Coctail on the engine deck. We've known that since WW1, but someone has to learn it about every generation, or so. Long term, I see tanks becoming much, much heavier as these missiles become more accurate and dangerous. This extra weight will allow for more robust passive armour, at the cost of mobility. But this has been a back and forth for years. The Leopard 1 that I crewed, was designed at a time when the even an unguided HEAT round was king of the battlefield and been able to get out of the line of sight of these lumbering beasts was vital. The best defence against such a weapon is mobility, so the tank sacrificed armour, for mobility. This kind of "arms race" has been going on for years, but given the slowness of the missile, if we were attacked in a hull up, or turret down position, we could easily break line of sight, rendering the missile pointless. Problem is that these days they chase you down. As an aside, by the early 1990s Australian tanks, no longer carried HEAT rounds, because APDS and HESH were an easier combination and greatly streamlined our logistics. So as with all warfare, I see an evolution (much like the T-14 Amarta), that prioritises crew survivability, but in which tanks are no longer the speedy, 42 ton, wonders of my day, but rather slower (although not lumbering) behemoths that are built specifically to overcome the threat of missile, because of their better armour and active protection systems. We've seen a lot of what I expect with the Abrahms tank, which is about ten tons heavier, in today's modern variant, than it was during the initial release. I don't expect tanks to start carrying ATGMs themselves (although Russian designs can), but wouldn't be surprised to see the Australian Army (for example) finally begin to include larger artillery pieces for infantry suppression roles, being that the biggest danger to enemy artillery is often a good, old fashioned dash of artillery, which is guaranteed to leave the survivors less capable fighters and your mobile forces a much greater sense of success. The idiocy of the Russians bot using their artillery to support their combat troops astounds me. WTF are they thinking, when they take a valuable combat resource out of the line, so it can waste its rounds against civilian (AKA : militarily useless) targets? Idiocy. As I said, I am an old school tank soldier. I haven't even stepped inside an Australian Abrams, so much of what I've said is probably hugely out of date, but I handle criticism well and would love for anyone to tell me if I'm on the right track, or simply a tank soldier out of time and out of his depth. :-)
My training is very similar. Trained in all infantry weapons, SLR, SMG, GPMG, Browning 9mm,LMG(7.62 Bren)M79,L96 then Charlie G and Law 66. Later SA 80 etc...We also did artic warfare etc. I trained as a driver on the 432, then Scimitar. All crew could do each others job. In terms of tactics you do the NCO cadre followed by junior Brecon then senior Brecon. All this in the roll of infantry. To be good at any role you have to specialise at it. All this wide ranging training was good but to become good you have to specialise. We did different rolls in 2 year stretches. You were just becoming good at it when you moved onto something else. We became good at close recce with the scimitar, I had the chance to observe a medium recce regiment, I think the Blues and Royals. They were superb because that is all they did. We learnt so much from them. We also realised it is a job that needs to be dedicated to full time. Wide ranging training is not always good. Also whatever you learn has to be relearnt and often.
Killing civilians in siege is pointless. Shelled buildings are excellent cover for ambush and you don't have feed dead civilians. You could let all the civilians go and shell the city or build strong lines around the city and the defenders will attack you when the run out of food and water.
Azerbaijan used Russian tanks very effectively in 2020 war, while Armenian tanks became scrap metal or war trophies for Azerbaijanis. It really depends on your war concept. Tanks are still useful, especially if they are equipped with active protection.
Good video. However, whilst you do acknowledge that there is a doctrinal reason why tanks are going to stay around, I feel you hand-wave away just how important that doctrinal reason is, and even the economic viability of an expensive, survivable system capable of dealing much greater death and destruction much faster, and in both offense and defense. I sense a response video coming on my channel next week to give that tanker's perspective. Not necessarily to counter anything you said, I disagree with little, but to provide that little extra food for thought to re-balance things.
Please don't take it as a handwave, just deference on the point to those who can speak more confidently on it.
As I see it, Army argues this is something they need in order to do a job, the spreadsheet warriors then get on with making sure industry and budget can deliver that (or as close to that as reasonably possible), preferably without blowing out the budget.
I like to think that civie analysts can take it as far as "hey guys, do these numbers and indicators give you pause? Are we on the right track here?" But they can't go as far as saying "trash your armour, and no, we have no idea what you should do instead, deal with it".
I can confidently, intellectually get as far as "smacking around poorly utilised legacy systems is easier than ever" but I can't get to "so this is a better system for supporting the infantry, do this instead."
So please take it not so much as a handwave so much as an active invitation for input.
Fair enough. Out of interest, are you familiar with "DOTMLPF"? (Or whatever the Aussie equivalent is?) (Edit. Turns out the closest Aussie equivalent is "Fundamental Inputs to Capability")
@@TheChieftainsHatch Department of Transportation My Little Pony Fans?
@@swj719 How did you find out about that? Rule 1 of Department of Transportation My Little Pony Fans is that you don't talk about Department of Transportation My Little Pony Fans....
@@TheChieftainsHatch While I think everyone tends to use their own acronyms, the core ideas are reasonably transferable (or at least I'd hope so).
As a sidenote, your talk on US WWII AFV development at the New York Military Affairs Symposium back in 2017 has to be one of my most watched YT videos, as are the recent series on doctrinal development. Thanks for everything you do.
Edit: DOTMLPF is a lot less of a mouthful than whatever you'd end up with if you tried to make something out of "Organisation, Command & Management, Personnel, Collective Training, Major Systems, Facilities and Training Areas, Supplies, Support, and Industries."
I’ve never seen your gaming videos, but I’ve gotten addicted to these analyses. You have a fresh perspective on the pre-conflict logistics and supply chain issues that I’ve seen very little of in other content that covers this war, and you explain it incredibly well. Which is crazy because these are essentially “just” recorded PowerPoint decks - no fancy graphics, no music, no animations. It just goes to show you how the quality of the content itself can drive interest compared to slick production values.
I don’t know if you would ever be interested in doing these types of analyses for past conflicts, but I bet you would get a lot of interest in them. One of my favorite aspects of American Civil War history is understanding how Ulysses Grant‘s expertise as a quartermaster played directly into his successful strategies against Confederate forces. I’d love to see your take on historical conflicts.
@@AR-GuidesAndMore - The interesting bit is that the presentation of @PerunAu is so clear and structured that those great visuals aren't necessary. I'm regularly listening to Perun videos as podcasts while driving or working, because they are such great enterteachment.
There's something so nice about the Perun format that I think it could reach out enormously into mainstream if it was used for other topics.
Based on your video view counts, the internet likes your military analysis more than game commentary. I've only seen your Ukraine videos and they're good enough that I'd expect you to blow up if you stick with it. You're one of the best I watch, more thorough than any others.
Have to agree... your insights on both the Ukraine crisis and military technology as a whole are excellent...that's actually why I'm subbed
😆 Dude wants to do videos about his hobby, not his day job 🤷♂️
yep. his game commentary is already quite good, but these real-life commentary videos are even better.
I mean, porque no los dos? If he enjoys the video game content he should do both so that he can do a mix.
Really enjoy the military videos though so would def be happy if he continues
I agree ☝🏼
I think the way to frame it is "tanks are in need of a recontextualization". The B-52's original role no longer exists, and they'd last about 30 seconds in that role, but they're very effective at lobbing large numbers of standoff weapons. Something similar will have to happen with the MBT. My personal take is that situational awareness will be the main future thrust. Having drone feeds data linked into tanks could prevent a large number of these sorts of attacks while giving them a huge advantage in tank on tank fighting.
Definitely. Ignoring the mud Ukraine should be the absolute perfect situation for tanks to take over the battlefield just like it did in the same area in WW2. Even in their ideal infantry support role now, what advantage does it have over a heavily equipped IFV? Better armour that still gets shredded anyway. Tanks need to justify their expense, surely, armies don't want to just get rid of them like Belgium did so they need to integrate with increasingly relevant aspects like electronic warfare better than they currently do. The problem is if they just negate other tanks, everything else is doing that already.
Using tanks as mobile drone platforms seems pretty terrifying
@@Spaced92 Heavy IFVs generally have lower caliber guns and a shorter firing range compared to a heavy MBT. They are also less capable of negotiating difficult terrain compared to a modern MBT. And heavy armor still does count against most weapons that doesn't impact perfectly on the turret or side of the tank.
But an IFV will bring supporting infantry, which is crucial for the survival of the tank in forests, as well as urban and hilly terrain.
As a 19K, our weaknesses are well known. It's worth noting the anti-warhead defensive systems are not rapid-fire and usually not very good at defending against multiple attacks. They're designed to defeat the golden BB, not beat off a concerted push. Further, anti-tank weapons don't have to blow the turret off or destroy the interior to mission-kill a tank. Simply knocking the sprockets or road wheels off, or breaking the track itself (seen that a few times in some of the city fighting) means the tank cannot move. And tanks that cannot move are short-lived unless your units are advancing past the casualties. The biggest thing I've seen the defenders doing in Ukraine that's working so well is getting in multiple attacks on a single target. One video I saw showed no less than five different hits on the same tank, with the left track coming off on the fourth hit, resulting in a mobility kill.
As mentioned in the video, unsupported vehicles (armor or not) are easy pickings for infantry, especially when they have ready access to modern anti-materiel weapons. But how else is an army that is badly coordinated and badly supplied supposed to take ground? Poor coordination in the laager means not all tanks end up fully fueled before the road march. Poor coordination on the march means armor sometimes outruns the infantry vehicles, with expected results. Poor training in reaction to contact means you end up with a bunch of tanks stuck in the ditch or in a muddy field like I saw in one video. Poor morale means almost nothing works the way commanders think things are going to work, so the least little bloody nose and the formation breaks down resulting in far too many avoidable casualties.
On top of that we have the staggering intelligence failures of Russia in estimating what they were going up against -- Ukrainians ain't a bunch of mountain goat-herds with a few RPGs and AKs, and they should have known better, especially after the Donetsk fighting. It's almost like the Russian command staff has been training to try and win the next Afghanistan, and this is not that.
My worry is not whether tanks are going to become obsolete -- it's what Putin and his ego will do when he thinks he is cornered and about to lose to an outnumbered and outgunned foe. He cannot afford to have all his other thinly-contained satrapies decide the Kremlin has become weak and decide to secede, costing them more strategic assets.
yeah I think this is bit of an edge case in terms of armor everything the Russians did in building their tactical formations exacerbates poor coordination. the BTG is the formation I would adopt if I knew all my mid grade officers were the reincarnation of Napoleon other wise I have questions about a major's qualifications to integrate that many arms with a junior staff
I remember reading beyond 3-4 defeats the shrapnel statistically will have knocked out the defensive systems. Even if you needed to fire 4 hellfire’s off to take out one MBT, the cost is still vastly less than that tank.
@@kalimarus but you have had to sit there long enough to fire off 4 hellfires
Would something like a 50 cal with AP rounds (especially tungsten) be able to damage a tank track enough to disable it? I'd suspect a 50 cal to be worthless against a modern tank but I've seen some of the tracks used on them and I'm sure 50 cal rounds could certainly severe the bolts & connecting bars that keep the track together. I'm sure it's usually take multiple hits in the same area, but I would think it would be possible. The larger the caliber, the higher chance of disabling the track I would think.
@@kde5fan737 Technically, yes, eventually, but the whole time you're trying to mission-kill the tank by pecking away at it, that tank and all his buddies and (hopefully) his infantry support will be trying to suppress and kill YOU. A machine gun big enough to damage a tank will be throwing up a pretty large dust cloud of its own, along with a lot of noise and muzzle flash that says HEY YOU GUYS, SHOOT ME PLEASE. This is one reason man-portable SAMs and ATGMs are effective in broken terrain or city environments: you can pop out, fire, and retreat to cover pretty easily. Tank crews if trained properly will pull up, fire, and then retreat back behind whatever cover they have if they are aware of anti-tank threats in the area. Assuming you have any cover available. If you're trying to move fast and capture ground, you usually don't have time to dig revetments, even if you have the combat engineers around to do it.
The diagram posted in the video where it shows the rock/paper/scissors diagram is a good one to start with. Take that and now imagine the effective ranges of the weapons involved. Then consider how visible the enemy you're fighting is i.e. does he have cover and/or concealment too? Then consider how fast each of those systems can be employed and how exposed you have to be to employ them. It's enough to make your head hurt.
I have really appreciated these videos on this topic. So many videos seem to be way too enthusiastic about killing and how "cool" weapons are. This is the kind of thing I can learn from and have an interesting discussion with people after. Thank you for doing these.
These weapons are cool haha. Acknowledge it or not, the majority of people who get into military kit and equipment as hobbyists are on some level driven by the cool factor.
To plus on this, I appreciate recognising the limits of your ability to commentate on these topics - too many folks have gone down the speculative rabbit hole and not made it out the other side
Wanted to say basically the same!
Yes! I concur with your sentiments, sadly this channel is full of jingoistic juveniles, what mother grunted them Into the world.
@@johncampbell2979 You're a snob, Campbell! I invite you to turn your nose down every once in a while, the whole world can see right into your nostrils.
Perun, I am so incredibly happy to have come across your content. Some of, if not the most well put together presentations on the Ukraine war and modern conflict. Keep at it. Never heard of you through gaming but I hope you'll continue being thorough and not succumb to trying to pump content out seeing how successful these videos seem to be. Ace job, keep at it.
I came for the Ukrainian analysis, but stayed for the Phoenix Point playthrough.
After watching and reading some comments I'd just like to point out a couple of interesting tidbits. In my country "armour" has largely been replaced by two vehicles, (1) a 155mm self propelled howitzer with an on road top speed of 90kmh and a maximum firing range of +70kms, and (2) a recon/anti tank vehicle with a 76mm AT gun, top speed of 120kmh on and 60kmh offroad. Both of these use large wheels instead of tracks. The idea behind them were to maximize mobility, i.e. they were specifically designed to get to and between conflict zones themselves, not via trains or other means, are specifically protected against landmines (and I presume therefore IEDs) and in the case of (2) doctrine dictated that they would be used as static AT weapons once at a conflict zone. (There were also versions built with 105mm NATO barrels, AA types and SAM types)
There is still the problem of holding terrain if you're the attacker. For that you need people protecting what you have taken. Artillery can't do that. Light vehicles with AT guns can't do that either. An attacker also needs other systems than the ones you hold up as examples.
Russia wants Ukraine so it must send tanks to capture it and troops to support the tanks. Once it is captured the tanks support the troops.
@@УллечкоПеровчДедушка how is that working out?
@@tacticalosintcombatfootage2022 Looking at ambushes I would say that Russian armored infantry knows when to follow but not when to lead. So they'll keep risking and losing tanks unnecessarily.
What country is that?
South Africa?
One stat that was given by a tanker a couple of years ago was that in all wars that tanks have been used in, their casualty rate were far lower than infantry casualties. By something like 1-to2. As vulnerable as a tank may be to a top-attack missile, think how vulnerable infantry is to artillery air-burst and MLRS cluster bombs.
Yeah, but since the 70's, modern NATO-nation horse cavalry have had, like, zero casualties.
I'm assuming that's talking about tank crews, right? Obviously there will always be more infantrymen than tanks even in the tankiest treadhead army. And while that might well be true, you still have the issue of the massive cost it takes to buy, maintain, and especially fuel a tank. You need to be getting something worthwhile to justify that kind of cost.
i think casualties are poor metric on how useful tanks are. economics and logistics are a more useful metric. if a tanks that costs millions can easily be taken out by someone with barely any training with a weapon costing only thousands thats when youy start wondering if it is worth. and then there is the issue of what role a MBT is suppose to have. tanks biggest role is killing other tanks, to fight foot mobiles tanks are not very effective compared to IFV with autocannons.
Infantry units are much less expensive to build, train and support at the strategic level. If the terrain your army is on is northern, western or central Europe, infantry is the way to go with a few tank units and plenty of ground attack and artillery forces supporting them. Forests, swamps/marshes, rough terrain and BUAs are not the friends of Armor. Infantry is best there at the operational level. Combined arms always has the edge in the end, regardless of terrain because it allows adaptation to the changing situation warfare always presents.
@@iroll Yea, isn't that odd :)
Another historical example is the Israel-Lebanon war in 2006. Merkava units got hammered pretty hard by ATGM crews. Estimates vary from 20 to 50 tanks, which is relatively big for the IAF.
Before I watch the video, I expect the answer to be "no".
If we look at only say the Iran-Iraq war, or US invasions in the Middle-East, we get a skewed picture of modern warfare that does not favour the use of armour.
Battle tanks have overwhelming firepower and are great at penetrating enemy lines and securing positions at high speed and cutting off positions. They must be properly supplied, maintained, supported by infantry and work in mostly flat areas where targets can't hide in buildings, forests or mountains easily.
Russian armour did literally none of these things. They drove single-file, in poorly maintained and supplied tanks without support or intel straight into Ukrainian tractors. Not to take away from the Ukrainians, but in theory, if the Russian vehicles were actually properly supplied, etc. they could have easily completely restricted the Ukrainians' ability to maneuver East of the Dnieper within a few days. A complete death sentence for any cities and forces caught behind the advance.
In a conventional war between armies, armour is still extremely useful as a strong and maneuverable firepower platform. But they are a force multiplier. You still need competent infantry, logistics, intelligence, etc. for them to be effective.
At least, this is my opinion before watching the video. We will see if it changes!
since a tank needs to be supported by deployed infantry it is no longer usefull at securing positions at high speed. The armenian-azeri conflicts already demonstrated that they sucked in defense when the air superiority is contested. Conclusion: the cumulation of circumstances to succesfully operate tanks in combination wth its cost-efectiveness is so interdictive that a serious tankdeployment is no longer relevant AS LONG AS THERE IS NO EFFECTIVE WAY TO DEFEND THE TANK (besides slow infantry) against different threats. At the moment they are armoured coffins,
@@Belisarius277 The Azeris still used 'grunts' to close with and secure positions; so, 'combined arms--tanks, crunchies, arty and air working in tandem'-is still the way to go.
@@nickmitsialis The azeris "droned" armenian tanks which were the only anti-tank capacity the armenians had besides RPG7. its obvious now that relying on tanks to act defensively without air superiority is a bad idea since essentially everyone with an rc airplane can take them out. The tank as an offensive weapon is history too since it is useless against even light infantry sporting atgm even in the open. As long as a 80k dollar missile can take out a 2 million dollar tank without the tank being able to spot the atgm crew, its absurd to try to bring them. Too complex logistics, cost ineffective and essentially just a big bullseye. Battleship were obsolete when airpower outranged their guns. same thing for atgm in relation to tanks.
@@Belisarius277 yes; but drones can't occupy terrain and infantry still need to be pushed back; Combined Arms-=-Nick Moran did a vid about this, and he's the 'tread head'.
@@nickmitsialis as far as i know the ukrainians are relying pretty much on infantry to occupy territory. This is not desert storm where you could drive miles through featureless terrain where every bump sticks out like a sour thumb. Again costineffective, cumbersome and obsolete in its current configuration. The concept "tank" needs an update, perun made a great analysis on this
I watched your Terra Invicta games, which helped me defeat the alien threat as the resistance. To my delight I discovered that you also make videos covering IRL military analysis that are with minimal bias. Is very bueno. Keep up the amazing work!
One of the things that people seem to not realize is that there hasn't been a point in time when tanks were actually "invincible". You look at WW2 and the insane casualty figures of tanks and tankers. Even without long ranged fired and forget weapons they were being knocked out by infantry, AT guns, mines, and towards the end of the war, portable AT weapons.
The Russian Airforce is getting blasted and is largely absent from the conflict in a way it really shouldn't be, but people aren't scrambling to say that air support is obsolete. Nah, people are rightly pointing out that Russian doctrine is bad and their training/tech is inadequate. In the same way we see a lot of the ineffectiveness of Russian armor on the ground being caused through seemingly terrible decision making from the forces on the ground. Lots of unsupported tanks getting caught out or abandoned in bad terrain more than anything.
However, if we're talking APCs, then I think there is an argument to be made that transporting fireteams and even entire platoons in large, armored vehicles that attract a lot of fire but can't resist anything above some small arms might be a doctrine that isn't applicable to the field anymore when reliable AT is everywhere. There's a reason you see soldiers riding on top of BMPs and not inside them, they're legitimately more likely to survive and respond to threats outside the box than inside it.
That's a half truth, American tanks were largely survivable due to their open crew compartment design allowing tankers to easily escape when their tank was hit. The poorly designed interiors of German and Russian tanks resulted in heavy losses of their crews on the other hand. And the whole thing about Russians riding on top of BMPs isn't to do with BMPs being vulnerable, they do so to be able to dismount quickly when being employed. The BMP 1/2 is very cramped and while infantry Armor and weapons have increased in size along with kit the average soldier carries those old IFVs have not.
Consider if you would prefer to be inside an APC or foot slogging in the event of a CBRN attack.
Not to mention troops have to be in a fightable condition when they arrive where the fighting is, foot slogging won't help. And heli-lift has its drawbacks too.
@@Horizontalvertigo Russians ride on tops of the APCs when AT is a bigger threat, inside when indirect fire and NBC is a bigger threat.
@@InterstellarTaco BMP's fuel tanks are the doors. And it's extremely vulnerable to small arms fire on the side, it absolutely have to do with the survivability
@@pepebeezon772 then would you suppose that they'd rather dump the BMPs for more logi trucks and personal CBRN equipment?
First of all, more absolutely stellar work. Really well done. Former tanker here: this war yet another opportunity for system and doctrine evolution. Remove the tanks and something else will have to assume that role. I find it slightly amusing to suggest the death of the tank without suggesting the end of pretty much all armored vehicles. If a tank is too vulnerable, where does that leave thinner skinned things like armored personnel carriers? All of this means years of new theories, new developments, new training, and everyone will be ready to refight this war when the next one comes, most likely with a different scenario we aren’t ready for.
G’Day from Oregon, USA. Listened (more than watched) a few hours of your Ukraine analysis. Think you got the RUclips config’d right as no ads at all! Thank so much for the week or more of work you put into this.
So what you are saying is that it is not ATGMs but John Deere tractors..... all of these weapon systems have ups and downs. Success is combining the strengths and weaknesses effectively. That's what the Russians have not been doing. They boasted about all their Wunderwaffe, but did not/could not employ them. So they have gone back to positively Soviet tactics.
On the other hand the Ukrainians have used the KISS principle and employed a small number of weapons and systems simply and effectively. Combined with the spring thaw, bad logistics and now I suspect morale issue the Russians are suffering.
Stupid thing is they know of the thaw - it saved them from Napoleon and Hitler!
@@Etaoinshrdlu69 interesting thought and I think you are right - but they knew about the weather issues and drove straight into it ... then trapped their lines of advance on the roads. It seems they cannot even do the Soviet era bypass manouevres. Definitely they have not seen the pinks...
I think the Russians couldn't have timed this any worse.
As some tankers have said in the comments, tanks are a force in numbers across an open field.
They are denied the open fields by the mud/timing of the invasion.
There are only so many of these bulky, single shot weapons that infantry can carry in one place, when their targets are not restricted to the roads.
Can't help but think of the poor Russians who have been ordered to proceed by idiots who have NFI, or, more likely, didn't have the balls to tell the glorious leader that the timing was atrocious!
The South African military knew the weaknesses of tanks vs well armed infantry back in the 80's.
The South African Defence Force spearheaded its attacks with infantry and fast moving wheeled vehicles and left the heavy armour in the reserve and only brought it in as a final line of defence/offence. Our Soldiers gave russians and cubans and other communist block soldiers hell throughout the war with fast mobile warfare but still used tanks during battles such as Cuito Cuanavale, the largest tank battle in Africa since WW2.
Tanks will always have a place in warfare although it will switch from the spearhead to a more supportive role
The weakness of tanks vs infantry that has the right equipment has been known as long as tanks existed. Bundles of stick grenades were used by the Germans to tank out tanks in WWI. Infantry guns, special anti-tank guns, and even anti-tank rifles could do the same.
Tanks vs infantry anti-tank weapons have been an arms race since then. Who has had the advantaged have changed back and forward over time. At what distance and what terrain is better for each has also changed. The general knowledge that infantry can take out tanks if they have the right equipment has always existed.
If you look at armored units between the world wars and in the early part of WWII most units had too many tanks and too few infantry initially. There is a shift to more infantry when they get tested in combat. Germany removes 1/3 of the tanks in Panzer divisions between the attack on Poland and the Soviet Union. They doubled the amount of infantry in the divisions, this was because you could not use too many tanks efficiently without infantry support.
So the knowledge that combined arms is the most efficient way to use tanks is as old as the tanks. The knowledge of combined arms in general predates tanks by centuries. Archers, foot soldiers, and cavalry is better in a battle than either of them separatly.
from my experience with milsims it’s very easy to lose a tank if you’re not experienced, and while it’s tempting to throw them at the enemy they’re most protected and mobile deep in your back line where they don’t need to move at combat pace.
what I’m saying is they might as well become self-propelled artillery with an MG on top lmao
Hey man, love your content. As a suggestion, it would be interesting to know about the failures of the VDV, and how air assault / airborne units might have to rethink their usage given how MANPADs can relatively cheaply defeat helicopters / low flying airborne troop transports, given how much of an issue the Russian military has had conducting SEAD
Yes, that's a big one.
The VDV has lost enough BMDs to leave 2 regiments walking. The last time I checked Oryxspioenkop, anyways. Maybe it's up to a full 3 regiments.
In my opinion, the reason why russian tanks get severed a lot by missiles is more on tactical incompetence as well as russia's history of leaving tanks on their own in urban areas, and soft factors like how corruption affects the quality of russian tank armor as well as not bothering to properly check it's quality, manufacture defects etc.
also why is it that people just look at the ukraine war tanks destroyed/broken down and say the tank is dead? This is such a harsh conclusion, america deployed abrams tanks EFFECTIVELY during desert storm. The abrams footage are on par with the symphonies of bach.
Yes i am aware that some abrams were lost throughout, no tank is perfect after all.
this reminds me of the discussion in the early 80s when an Exocet missile sank the Sheffield. i remember that it's price tag went from ~$100k to $1m after it was proven in war.
yes in fact it doubled it, from 1 to 2 million. I saw it from ARgentina
Exocet price went excessively high was also because it was being bought by British agents to deny supply to Argentina. Market supply and demand went crazy.
@@rodthurley5343 ohhhh, interesting. had not heard that, before.
“The T-14 will NEVER be destroyed by ATGMs!!!!” Well yeah because the T-14 won’t be able to make it to the front...
This seems analogous to the situation in Europe towards the end of the Middle Ages, when heavily armored cavalry was neutralized by massed archers, pikemen, and then massed firearms and mobile artillery. There remained a limited shock role for heavy cavalry, but the battlefield was dominated by infantry and artillery. Heavy cavalry was no longer the dominant force that it was in the early Middle Ages.
I think your three most strongest points that you made was one ) the arms race between shoulder arm weapons that can defeat most tanks 2) combine arms training that is properly done and efficient and three3 logistics, those who talk about tactics are amateurs,those who talk about logistics are professionals. I think you had a great presentation that ass lotta questions and people need to think about the answers because it’s a matter of life and death for the individuals and for the nation itself many times.
I think the drone is the next evolution in defense. Take that toward an offense seems likely as well.
Thank you for this informative video.
A few points about the Turkish Leopards..
Operation Euphrates Shield was launched straight after the coup. Due to fears of a followup coup, a lot of the tank crews were arrested. The men using the tanks were commandos (either blue or maroon berets). To make matters worse, Turkey had both terrible relations with the USA and Russia at the time and most experienced pilots were temporarily detained. So there was basically no air support at all. The leopards were the only thing providing direct fire support. It wasn't an ideal situation, but they managed to defeat ISIS. Most leopards were hit when parked. We can see how Turkish operations have improved since then. All Turkish leopards are receiving ERA and APS by the way.
Also it was the first combined arms operations Turkey had launched since the 1974 Cyprus Intervention. So they were both inexperienced from top to bottom and had inadequate tactics to boot.
The first proper combined arms operations*
There have been many incursions inside Iraq in the 90's but it targeted the PKK instead of a more organized faction
I foresee the refinement and proliferation of active protection systems (APS), including those using lasers, changing the calculus of tank relevance in a significant way. A very expensive tank can be killed by a moderately expensive ATGM, but that ATGM can be killed by a relatively inexpensive APS. Additionally, although I haven't yet seen this technology demonstrated, the future might include loitering drones that provide a "bubble" of active protection to a larger area of ground forces by including the APS on the drone instead of, or in addition to, an APS mounted to a tank. Either way, more/better APS are likely to increase the survivability of tanks against ground-based ATGMs, air-to-ground missiles, suicide drones, tank shells, and other ballistic threats, thus prolonging the usefulness of tanks for decades to come.
In the back of Infantry.
Main Battle Tank to come forth if unexpectingly some danger pours up.
Radar-Tanks 35mm cannon #GepardPanzer - #FlakPanzerGepard plus 12 and 5mm self-defence plus multiple-rocket-launch-system against vehicles, helis and jets, 18 meters long max allowed to transport 2x6 Infantry to the wider area of battle, and sit in the background, hauling supplies, transporting wounded. In tight populated Western Europe there is not much wide open space for tanks, everywhere protective cover for tank-destroying Infantry like houses, fences, hedgerows. That is completely nuts in such environment to drive a tank without clearing infantry ahead.
The problem with APS is it becomes prohibitively expensive very quickly.
Even if you *could* put state-of-the-art APS systems on every single Russian tank, unless it suddenly starts to take 100 rockets to kill a tank, you're not going to outpace the cost efficiency of just giving Yuri and his mates a couple of NLAWs, teaching them to point & shoot, and hoping they can pop a turret or two.
@@Dramatic_Gaming If claims about the efficacy of Trophy are even close to being realistic then properly implemented APS is an absolute game-changer. Not only will it shoot down multiple missiles but it also provides location and targeting data of where the shots came from, allowing for immediate counter-fire. Apparently during Operation Protective Edge no vehicle equipped with Trophy was hit despite dozens of missiles fired.
Tanks big problem is development and building of new tanks is so crazy expensive that Nations can't afford to keep up in the arms race with Anti Tank Missiles. They never get to use their previous generation of tanks before it is obsolete and they have to spend multiple Billions again developing new ones, over and over.
Prototypes of new tanks that can deal with anti tank missiles exist but they are in such small numbers because of cost.
It does make you wonder if it's not tanks that are obsolete, but Main Battle Tanks. The 70 ton hulking monstrosities.
We perhaps need to go back to the time of the M4, PkIV, T-34, Patton.
The medium tank maybe needs to be the mainstay of an army. Light and maneuverable enough to stay with infantry and protect them, cheap enough to produce far quicker and cheaper, and still have a big gun that can aid in supporting infantry, and be large enough to field the most recent electronics and active protection systems necessary to survive in a missile hurling world.
Honestly, I feel like more Russian aligned armies/countries should roll them on the battlfields. More easy kills for ATGMs and TB2s.
@@Proletariat12 I think you either need to make them be able to defend against Anti Tank weapons, which is almost prohibitively expensive or get rid of them and just have support vehicles which follow the infantry line and are protected by infantry.
Sure you can have large guns that can shoot multiple km to take out defences ahead of your infantry but these vehicles don't defend themselves, and so the way to keep them safe is your infantry are far enough ahead that Anti Tank weapons are not close enough to shoot them.
Conversely, having tanks also forces nations to develop and/or buy anti-tank systems, that too, will likely never be used and will still need to be replaced when they their shelf life expires.
So you would want to be a market leader in both, to be a step ahead of the market and to be able to sell your designs.
Economic warfare wise, and diplomatic wise, it rewards who has the most developed/entrenched military-industrial complex combined with the economy to support it.
@@Horizontalvertigo anti tank weapons at the very least are cheaper, and having older more obsolete stock is still useful as they can take out stuff that are not MBTs.
Well this is why you provide infantry support. Tanks have always been vulnerable to infantry. Just because Russia is incompetent it doesn’t mean the tank is obsolete.
Don't worry about the ads - this is nothing compared with the value of your analyses. These videos are very informative. From checking my other sources of information, there is a consistency of the evidence you are presenting. Thank you.
Oh, my Lord, you should continue to offer your commentary on Defense matters, writ large. Your mind is fantastic, and I hope to see more of you on these topics.
I've been saying this about tanks for a long time, their limited effectiveness in Iraq and Afghanistan really showed what even a half-armed opposition can do to armored columns. However in lieu of armored spearheads I think tanks will remain as effectively direct artillery support being faster to react and more precise than a lot of alternative artillery options which might require a lot more triangulation before the infantryman will get his support.
Infantry calling in air or artillery support should lay down weapons and becomming POW.
You didn't really go into what tanks use cases are on the modern battlefield. Do you have another video where you go into that? Really enjoying your work!
Tanks still have an important role, particularly in specific circumstances in the offensive and in the right terrain, where a balanced combination of firepower, protection and mobility is required. They won't work in urban areas where enemy infantry have plenty of AT weapons. They usually won't work in mountain or forest terrain in a conventional battle. They are not invulnerable in ANY environment. But in open terrain, in the offensive or counterstroke, what else are you going to use? Helicopters? Far too vulnerable. Infantry? Far too slow. Fast soft vehicles? Too vulnerable. Drones/ROVs? They can't hold ground. Logistics are important for tanks, which is why I've always thought gas turbine engines were a bad idea. But the basic concept of the tank (a mobile armoured weapons platform) remains as valid as ever, if used correctly.
I'm not so sure that ATGM's have not made the tank irrelevant. Infantry screening can only screen to a fairly short distance in front of armor that is also supposed to be supporting them. ATGM's have an engagement range that is outside the infantry's effective range. ATMG operators can kill tanks outside the range of the infantry, and helicopter support can be suppressed by MANPADS protecting the ATMG operators. Without the tanks being able to support the infantry assault, what is their mission? ATGM's can be operated in all terrain, in almost all weather, and at a stand-off range that a tank can't effectively engage. The only use for a tank these days is probably against countries that cannot afford ATMG technologies. Since it is a relatively cheap technology, that list of countries (now that the cat is out of the bag) will shrink quite quickly.
I think you are framing the question reasonably. I would suggest that fast and lightly armored vehicles used in conjunction with drones and various advanced missiles would be a plausible alternative. Yes, they are vulnerable to pretty much any RPG and mortars, but that may be acceptable for the advantages in speed. As the range of missile increases, these become platforms for carrying large numbers longer ranged missiles where they are most valuable. In the easily imagined near future, specialized spotter forward infantry units will paint the bullseye electronically where to put the HE, while in direct real time communication with the light AFV a mile back (out of sight) carrying the missiles.
I would never go so far as to suggest the basic concept of the tank is invalid -- clearly it is still possible to use them to great effect. But I would say that we are reaching a point where a well equipped military going against another well equipped military might perceive the overall costs of tanks in budget and logistics makes them less and less attractive going into the future. There are more and more alternatives that make a lack of proper tough tanks more manageable now more than ever before.
You say fast soft vehicles are too vulnerable, but too vulnerable to what? To tanks? If you make those fast soft vehicles deadly then that conclusion they are too vulnerable might be premature. Battle of 73 easting comes to mind. Lighter vehicles with atgms wrecking dug-in tanks thanks to a maneuver advantage. It seems there's an argument to be made that if you can move anti-tank weapons to light vehicles and drones they will be able to maneuver faster and farther while trading equally with the tanks, because you no longer need a big 120mm cannon to destroy the tanks, and carrying that huge cannon is what the tanks do that nobody else does.
I think tank like vehicles in the future will have to be remote controlled. Kinda like the way modern attack drones have taken away (though certainly notcreplaced) much of the responsibility of attack helicopters.
@@Synaps4 Fast soft vehicles are vulnerable to all sorts of things: artillery, small arms, tanks, mortars, ATGW, air attack. And not many of them can match the cross-country mobility of tracked vehicles.
The whole basic argument of "we can destroy tanks with something cheaper, so tanks will vanish" is something I can't get my head around at all. By the same logic with the prize difference between a bullet and a soldier infantrie should have vanishes from war ages ago. Something is made to do a job thats need to be done and it will stay untill either the job is gone or a better/cheaper thing to do the same job is found. That is the easiest you can break it down and this is the same for war or peace economics.
I think the core of the argument comes from the fact that countries often times invest so much into tank armor and survivability only for the costs put into _this one area_ to simply have almost no return on the field. Yeah, infantry doesn't go obsolete at all, but the difference here is that in both of the World Wars, almost no infantry wore body armor, and for a good reason: All you need is the ability to have GUN and the only thing that matter afterwards is whether or not you're gonna be able to hit the first shot before they hit YOU and any attempts to make effective protection that will supposedly make the soldier last long enough to return the investments will in actuality be impractical either because the armor slows the wearer down or it'll simply be far too expensive to have any strategic viability on a large scale. Armor technology will always be far more limited than any offensive capability and it has been that way ever since gunpowder came into existence.
I've watched a lot of military analysis, and you by far is some of the best I've watched. Especially for Ukraine. Your evidence based approach in long form format is the most neutral thing I've seen in this. Very hard to get the info with Russian or Ukrainian bias.
This war, like all war, signals the end of poorly used equipment.
Of course, this isn't the last time we will see tanks used poorly.
It's almost always easier to construct a weapon that destroys something than it is to construct something that will survive an attack.
I don't know a lot about tanks, but I imagine that they need support to excel. Infantry etc. to protect it, something like drones to ensure the visuals are good. Frankly speaking, things that just about any highly visible military vehicle should require.
“McNamara would be proud” lol.
Part of Kennedy’s flexible response was addressed when they moved a bunch of men and material to the gulf coast, as an exercise, they realized the issue of logistics. Part of that result was McNamara essentially getting the ball rolling on what has become the backbones of the AIr Mobility Command of the C5, C141, and the Ci30.
McNamara is known for the McNamara fallacy. "If we just kill *Insert number of North Vietnamese troops* each month then we win the war".
He was wrong.
Javelin missiles and Bayraktar TB2 drones are to tanks what pike and shot were to heavy armoured cavalry. They shift the balance of power, but remember that heavy cavalry stuck around on the battlefield for centuries after the invention of guns.
Maybe it's unfair to judge armour as a viable weapons system solely on the basis of the inept performance of the Russians in this conflict. If nothing else though, we know that there are definitely wrong ways to use tanks, the Russian operation being a case in point. If there's a right way to use armour on the modern battlefield, this ain't it.
The USMC saw the light years ago and ditched the tank. Tank historians don't want to see the future without tanks.
Hi Perun. I find your analysis spot on and extremely enjoyable to watch (out rather, listen to while driving to work)
I am slowly working on catching up the backlog of videos I missed, but the work you put in collecting all the relevant informations, and presenting your results (including the potential caveats and flaws of the data or your reasoning) is truly remarquable.
As a professional of a related field, I commend you for your excellent analytical skills, and acknowledgement of your "ignorance" (in the Duning-Keuger sense) that you really should not be concerned about. You know more about what you speak of than most military experts I have met.
Kuddos to you mate, from the other side of the world, and keep sane and safe.
Hey man, I know you normally like to decompress on YT with gaming vids, so I just wanted to extend a sincere thanks for doing these vids. You do a quality presentation. I wish major news networks would match the level of quality in their coverage that one can find here. Cheers!
"They won't destroy T-14's..."
Yeah, you'd have to actually SEE a T-14 first.
Video on various aspects of hypersonic weaponry (and defense against them) for relevant nations US, Russia, and China would be a very interesting video.
Saw some info recently that the US's ability to develop hypersonics is being significantly bottlenecked by decades of wind tunnel closures and limited funding for testing facilities (at the same time that China was building out their testing capabilities).
Seems like the potential threat of hypersonic weaponry to the US aircraft carriers would be a great topic to include as well.
Should be noted that nobody actually knows that China and Russia actually have functional hypersonic missiles that can be used against US aircraft carriers. All we really have are assertions from their governments.
@@stephenjenkins7971 Of course it works because otherwise the US wouldn’t be developing hypersonic missiles for even smaller mobile targets.
Think about it, what’s the biggest mobile military target that can be hit and then think if the US think even smaller target can be hit in the future, why couldn’t the biggest target be hit now?
@@Peizxcv US military functions based on assuming the worst, dude. Nobody actually knows, but it's better to assume that they had managed it. US also assumed that USSR had extremely accurate ICBMs under Kruschev because Kruschev said so; whej in reality they were extremely inaccurate and faulty. US also assumed that the Russian military was near-peer.
As we can see; worst assumption does not equate to reality.
@@stephenjenkins7971 Self advertising doesn’t make it true. If the US military is as restrain as advertised, it wouldn’t try to win the misadventures in so many parts of the world
@@Peizxcv What are you talking about? What self advertisement? What restraint? I never said the US military does either. All I am saying is that "Russia said they have hypersonic weapons" doesn't mean they have it.
I really like your evaluation of tanks and MANPADS-ATGMS. In many ways, war fighting assets are getting smaller. And they work! This raises the question about other large weapon systems seen as "bedrocks" of national defense. One that needs serious evaluation is the CATOBAR aircraft carrier. You talk about a money-sucker. The carrier, the screen ships, the air wing, the fuel, support ships, the list is long. The screen ships are an open admission that the carrier is a sitting duck. There is no such thing as a stealth carrier. Look at the Martin P6M Seamaster. Infinite basing, no huge trail of support, conventional, support, and nuclear weapons and can be deployed with less obvious intent of use. And they can be supported by many different ships and shore facilities. REALLY! Look at the C-130. After decades of hand-rubbing, it finally looks like it will get a hydro aviation option it has needed since it was first developed. The new performance numbers are very similar to the Convair R3Y Tradewind developed in the 1950s. What? Sorry for the long comment, but this is all true. Good work!
You failed to mention the effect of active protection system (like Israel's trophy system) on tank survivability. It actually saved many tanks from ATGMs during recent conflicts...
Great video! And I didn't see one ad. Can't wait for the next one.
Tanks, as we see them today will fade away in the near future due to ATGMs, however Light tanks or conventional tanks with high rate of fire guns will likely replace them for the direct fire support capabilites, with advanced in projectile design, material science and explosive technologies, allowing smaller rounds to do the same job as larger ones
If tanks are fading away; then, why wouldn't everything else? I don't think they will stop making ATGMs because tanks go away. The better response is the old tactics of deploying tanks will go away because of ATGM. New tactics for tank deployment and updated countermeasure will be developed for the future battlefield.
I came here bc the Chieftain linked your video and I thought I'd watch it for context. I think you had good intentions trying to say "the doctrine guys tell us this" but it does come off more like "there's all this evidence but the doctrine guys say we're wrong" more than "I'm not qualified to speak on the role the tank plays on the battlefield or how to replace them, so I defer the subject to them." other than that though this was a really good, well researched video. it made me think that maybe tanks aren't going to be viable in the future considering the capabilities that tanks provide didn't exist for thousands of years.
Wouldn't the lessons from Iraq and Afghanistan be that armoured vehicles, whether tanks or APCs etc, are extremely vulnerable to IEDs, especially shaped charge devices. When you add to that problem the newest generation of fire and forget ATMs and anti-aircraft missiles it would seem that the balance between armour and anti-armour has tilted significantly towards the latter. The drone situation is only just beginning to develop as the smaller, swarm type of drone is mixed in with the RPV aircraft. I know I would not feel at all safe in a tank today!
But would you feel safe outside of a tank?
Every other vehicle is less protected.
Infantry of course has pretty much no protection at all.
@@HingerlAlois Given how tanks always draw fire, yes it might be safer outside the tank.
@@ElBandito you'd draw fire as an infantryman too, if you were the only threat around, and you wouldn't have the benefit of armour protection.
Well, everthing depends on where you're figthing. A tank worst nightmare wouldbe obviously mountanious terrain, jungles or dense forests and urbans areas. But when you need to advance trought an open field like large farming areas, a saline or another kind of desert like zone, the tank is the thing to go, obviously if supported by enough.
But would you feel safer against all that in unarmored vehicles or just on foot. There are plenty of nasty weapons already out there that would tear infantry to pieces. If one guy steps on a bouncing betty mine you're whole squad could be taken out.
Directed here from The Chieftain. Frankly, I'm new to both of your channels. I have watched this video before The Chieftain's rebuttal since he pointed this video out at the beginning of his vid and linked it in his description, going to watch his video next. I feel as though this is a very healthy introduction to this new and unknown topic to me, of tanks being perhaps obsolete in the modern era. Honestly the concept has NEVER occurred to me, this video has presented a very good case I think, curious as to The Chieftain's response. This is fun! :) Well, I can say that quite merrily here in Canada. Heart goes out to Ukraine. God bless 'em, fight for your nation and your freedom! So kickass that they're handing out assault rifles to their citizenry.
Infantry is the ultimate weapon probably the only thing I'd be scared of in a war
Rock/scissors/paper
Infantry is vulnerable to artillery and is slow moving.
Why combined arms is a thing.
I don't know man. Armenian infantry will hiding in burrows in trences and doing somersaults when hit with TB2 drones.
LOVE your analysis, content and style! your format is great and the commentary is insightful and humorous while staying respectful, which is a thin line that's difficult to balance, so i appreciate your ability to do so even more! please please please keep it coming! you are probably my favorite youtuber covering this conflict along with goodtimesbadtimes. THANK YOU!
So, what did the Americans do so right during Desert Storm, that the Russians are doing so wrong today. Tanks should always be kept at 85% to 90% of its main gun's effective range away from its target/objective. Once the infantry has engaged the enemy, then bring the tanks in across a secured route to engage static reenforced defensive positions.
It's a constant arm's race, make tank, make RPG to counter said tank, make reactive armour for RPG, make missiles to defeat reactive armour, make APS system to shoot down anti tank missiles and so on.
One thing of note, in many videos I've seen of Russian tanks the ERA that should be protecting them isn't fitted except maybe on the turret. In some videos the cases for the ERA are in place but the explosive packs are obviously missing. In one video you can see the spaced off steel plates that should have era packs behind them but it is clear that there is nothing there. As far as the "cope cages" are concerned, these seem more designed to prevent a grenade or Molotov cocktail being dropped in the turret in an urban combat environment than anything that will defend against a top down ATGM attack. I've seen quite a few images of the cages smashed up.
Most modern ATGMs have developed ways to deal with ERA. Notice that western tanks do not use it.
@@PalleRasmussen In the west many tanks use detachable packs, they would only be fitted if going into combat. The British Challenger 2 is a case in point.
I agree 100% with your analysis. This conflict will be analyzed for decades in the headquarters and military schools or even simulated many time because quite all doctrines will have to be rewrited and established balance of power will be to be re considered. Combat is now drastically driven by technology like the everyday life. As you explained the loss of an nail drove to an empire loss….The price/effectiveness ratio of ATGM drone is a major game changing. By the way, the conclusions of tank against ATGM is also widely linked to the theater where they fight. For example, combat in wide desert or frozen plains area, over long ranges, where infantry has no means to really hide move or has to survive difficultly will definitely change the game specially if the armored vehicles are networked with drones fellows providing recce from above using various sensors like optical, IR and radars.
Other major impact are the role of OSINT over conventional high price reconnaissance assets as well as the role of smartphone as a dangerous weapon of information and désinformation of impact of social network with real or fake news upon public opinions an emotional pression on politics…
If I had to point 2 other éléments that surprised me a lot up to now (I was no surprised at all about the weakness of tank versus ATGM, we have to remind the last Lebanon conflict between Israel and hezbolha in a time where ATGM were much less sophisticated…), first the relative ineffectiveness of SAMs and of SEAD that obliged Russian aircraft to fly low and make TB2 often unseen and second the incredible shortage of military communication of Russian army that obliged it not to disrupt mobile and internet networks…
The Javelin is the game-changer. It's not new. It's 90s tech. But the reason the Javelin obsoletes the tank, is that it allows infantry to reliably kill tanks from cover at long ranges. US tanks defeated RPGs with slat armor, but cope cages don't work against Javelins. Active defense systems are too expensive and unreliable. Drones pile on top of the Javelin threat as an additional cheap and widespread hard counter to tanks, for which tanks have no defense.
What do tanks offer? Mobile direct fire gun support. If the tank can't survive ATGMs, then something like the Stryker MGS is superior. Of course the MGS is gone now because the "need" for direct fire high caliber gun support is obsolete as well. Long range fire with precision rounds make it redundant. Short range fire with things like AT4s already pack as much punch as a tank round. IFVs fill in the middle.
So yes, the tank is obsolete. It offers nothing that can't be done more efficiently by other platforms, including infantry, artillery, and lighter vehicles like IFVs. And we've seen this before: the rise and fall of the Battleship. Once air power became dominant, which BBs were poorly suited to defend against, the BB fell into sharp decline. Once Anti-ship missiles became dominant, BBs became utterly obsolete. The dramatic advances in ATGMs, and high performance ATGMs being available for both infantry and drones, make the tank little more than a coffin against any remotely peer opponent.
The older & newer tanks are equally vulnerable to anti-tank missiles. You are wrong about new tanks being survivable. I don't think you would be willing to go against the Ukrainians with an Armata. I wouldn't. The Israelis were surprised about the vulnerability of their tanks. The missiles will get cheaper and smaller and will multiply on the battlefield.
I guess RTS games had proved it correct since the 90s, infantrymen with rocket launchers are far cheaper to be utilized against expensive Tanks and Air Targets. If anything, Rocket Infantries in CnC and Starcraft Marines are quite the meta literally in this conflict so far. I doubt they can utilize Flamethrower tanks or anything without also being detonated by rockets as well.
First, I think that what the war has shown very clearly is the threat of the shoulder-fired anti-aircraft weapon. It makes the CAS mission, airborne assault and resupply using transport aircraft much, much more difficult. Controlling the skies will be very costly until Stingers can be countered.
Second, the muddy terrain in Ukraine at this time of year forces armored columns to stick to the roads instead of going around an ambush or out-flanking it. They lose the maneuver capability that usually makes them a much more daunting task to deal with. Of course maneuver warfare costs a lot of fuel which makes functioning logistics even more important, especially if resupply using air transport is threatened by Stingers.
Third, the discipline and training of troops looks absolutely dismal. Vehicles that pull off the road are at increasing risk of being discovered and should be protected by infantry forming a secure perimeter to protect against opposing forces and if the stop is for an extended period of time the vehicles should be camouflaged and/or hidden. When advancing over open terrain tanks should lead and infantry follow immediately behind: tank guns should be aimed where threats might reasonably be found. When advancing where visibility is poor - woods or built-up - infantry should lead and tanks follow immediately behind: IFV guns should be aimed where troops with AT-weapons may hide, if troops can observe and shoot through open hatches they will probably do it better than the gunner and they might even react before the AT-weapon is fired (was it Wittman who used to fire preemptively against possible targets rather than wait for someone to fire first?). So when an IFV is fired upon in a built-up area infantry shouldn't run and hide, their IFV gun should hose down the area in the general direction until infantry has dismounted and organized a counter-attack. Accompanying tanks should assist in shelling in the general direction. When infantry has cleared the area they re-mount and the column can move again. I have left out the fact that the attack may come from several directions at once so all infantry must not be committed in a single direction. If the ground in Ukraine had not been muddy an ambush would affect just a few vehicles before the vehicles behind go cross-country to bypass the ambush. But even when it is muddy, an infantry counter-attack will not be hindered and will be effective. Not counter-attacking essentially means that vehicles are left without effective defenses.
Fourth, troops must be motivated and understand the mission. A peacekeeping mission that is actually an all-out assault on a friendly nation is a lot less motivating than protecting your country, your family, your friends. The lack of understanding of these basic facts within Russian military leadership astounds me. It's as if they missed Leadership 101 or never once managed to pass it. Or maybe they just see troops as cannon-fodder, no more no less. Or as robots without emotions.
Fifth, when I was trained as an armored infantry platoon commander the instructors said "if your armored column stops, it will be destroyed." For whatever reason Putin went ahead with the attack with very little detailed knowledge of what makes or breaks an armored campaign. Multiple Putin-Shoigu family vacations made a lapdog out of Shoigu instead of someone fighting for his army to be given a realistic objective instead of a one-way trip to the meat grinder.
The Javelins or NLAWs have become noticed due to this armored campaign being anything but. A properly planned and fought campaign will instead shine the proper light on the main issue, the Stingers and the increased threat to the concept air superiority.
I think it's quite telling that territorial volunteer reservists with comparatively minimal training can pick up a portable stand alone intelligent fire and forget ATGM and wreak havoc on advancing enemy armor. Really what used to take long months of initial training, specialized tactics and continuing practice has been simplified significantly for modern armies employing them. While I don't believe for a second that armor has gone the way of the Dodo, their employment in combined arms tactics is up for a significant review. While we in no way have a thorough and complete enough picture as yet to come to any conclusions, I'd expect a few new "Tradocs" to surface within NATO pretty soon. Maybe even a new modified rock, paper, scissors, farm implement diagram...
Yeah the annoyanomic of RUclips are well bothersome. Way to many adds just to push people into premium. Thanks for trying to help keep the ads to a minimum
Thanks for your video series on the ukraine russian conflict.
I really like the :"dont even bother with Armour instead become faster, more agile, sneaky and even deadlier option" but that might just be the light cavalry lineage speaking tho.
I've heard Russia quoted as having 22000 tanks. I doubt even 20% of those have ever been simultaneously operable since the fall of the USSR
Such an interesting video covering a topic I have long considered - will small and inexpensive high-tech weapons replace older systems built for survivability? These days technology is so cheap a very advanced guiding/tracking systems can be built for peanuts.
An ATGM into the tracks will disable even modern up to date tanks
"They won't destroy T-14s..."
Well yeah, that's because T-14s pretty much don't exist. Russia has like 5 of them total.
But russia has now started serial production. And with the power of russian logistics they maybe have them ready for battle in 2 or 3 jears.
@@Shadow25720 LOL what power of Russian logistics? They can't manufacture any of the parts they need.
They're desperately trying to buy night vision sensors from France.
They can't get any semiconductor chips for the electronics.
Nobody will sell them anything.
Their economy is in tatters and they're bogged down and losing in an ill-advised war of their own making where they've lost 30% of the forces they committed and have been forced to pull troops protecting their borders to desperately try and reinforce.
In 2 or 3 years there won't be a Russia left to receive the T-14s at this rate.
What a joke.
Nothing is indestructible. But T-14 has some great design ideas. The tank itself will be knocked out easily, but the crew will survive.
@@TurkishRepublicanX The crew may not survive.
@@bigmatthews666 In theory they can, in practice more work may need to be done but the concept is sound.
When I was in the army 35 years ago, we referred to the armored personnel carriers as "group coffins". Knowing what I did about the anti-tank weapons that we had, even back then, I was terrified with the prospect of being inside of one. We had 81mm rockets that could make a roast dinner out of the occupants of these vehicles. I assumed an enemy would have something similar.
I see this issue in the very same way. Missile-armed infantry is more agile and effective than tanks and
from the number of tanks being destroyed in Ukraine these days, this is clearly the case. Tanks are
basically just mobile artillery these days and their time in military history is ending, thanks to light,
portable, and relatively inexpensive shoulder-launched anti-armor missiles. It has been said that all
wars are economic in nature. If so, then much lower cost but effective weapons will dominate the
battlefields now and even more so in the future.
You can buy 150 javelin for the price of 1 main battle tank ( us, fr , german or uk)... with a miss rate of 50% you can roast 75 tanks. What MBT can hope to destroy 75 armor before dying ?
Drones are even cheaper than ATGM's and require little training to operate. There will b a role for some sort of armored mobile artillery for the foreseeable future but MBT's r expensive to produce, to train, to fuel and to maintain. Seems the cost-benefit ratio just isn't there. Probably why the USMC doesn't field them anymore.
@@markb8468 suicide drone with double warhead? I dont think its less than $ 100k.
@@northerngannetproject3147 I haven't looked up the cost....but it's substantially less than a tank. From 3-5 million or so?
Finally, someone actually using logic when publicly talking about modern warfare. I like that you present the ambiguity and shades of gray that are missing in most outlets that claim either side of an argument as if there's no doubt or conditions
Thanks for the video. Next potential topic - the Russian military's allergy to pallets, forklifts and logistics in general.
Logistiwhatsits?
What about how they thought they wouldn’t need long Johns and gloves for fighting in the freezing cold? Or I guess they didn’t bring winter gear because they weren’t expecting a fight
It's not that they don't have logistics, they do (though at times it looks like it is dated to ca. 1943). It's that they rely upon their rail network for logistics. they have a force of 20k troops just devoted to operating and defending this network. It is a very efficient system if they are invaded, whereby they can easily rush supplies and equipment to a hub and defend that land not far from the hub.
The whole system breaks down when they try to project their power. The rail hubs end at their borders. As a result they have difficulties projecting power much beyond the 150km mark from their nearest rail hub. Of course, they also operate on the push model of logistics. This means that the supplies that troops get are known ahead of time, but that also results in logistic driving strategy. They prioritize missiles and ammo over fuel and food. It is obvious how that kind of system will easily breakdown in an offensive invasion but Russia hasn't needed to do large scale offensive wars in a long time.
@@kinamuranyan goes to show the USSR and Russian military is built for defense not offense like the american...
@@ewqe1-2223 That is very true. They don't have massive dedicated LHA/LHDs, they don't have a large number of oversea bases that can refuel their fleet. This means that they can't establish a fleet train. And that means that they don't think about projecting logistics, only dumping logistics.
As a former tanker who was part of the Iraq invasion and occupation I think your coverage was very fair. Urban warfare sucks for tanks.
Sincere compliments on this comprehensive and balanced video! As a once ATGW operator (armored infantry) who used to operate in close coordination with MBTs and a military analyst later on, you have taken into account most relevant factors.
One small factor I'd like to highlight here that is somewhat overlooked is the apparent absence of Russian (armored) recce in their - obviously failing - combined arms approach. Most western forces that deploy MBTs have recce forces scan ahead for possible threats that use long range/high resolution sensors and which cooperate closely with artillery, air support and infantry. Their data usually contributes to how tanks, infantry and fire/air support is deployed ahead of contact with enemy forces. Today (armored) recce forces also deploy drones and deploy dismounted troops to scan for hostile infantry and sometimes can operate as or with Joint Terminal Air Controllers (JTAC) or Fire Support Teams (FST) to coordinate fire control.
All of that seems lacking in the Russian approach. And that tells more than anything else I suppose that the Russian ground forces are ill prepared for whatever engagement they end up in. The mud for example seems to have them surprised completely, when most recce troops could have conveyed information on the terrain conditions well in advance.
This all shows one thing more than anything else to me. The Russian military leadership is there only to satisfy the need for the Kremlin to have obedient subordinates, not effective ones.
Well spoken....
I have heard reports that the Russian Air Units are afraid of and do not trust their own ADA! And that Ground/Air Communication is almost nonexistent .....
@@zeprin I mean, it isn't unreasonable - when the other side's air units are largely the same as yours, target ID gets dicey.
@@swj719 True. But then deconfliction (which units are exactly where?) becomes of paramount importance. Another aspect that the Russian forces seem to have no clue of.
Having said that, deconfliction - even with the best procedures and training in place - is a b@tch regardless during actual combat. Fratricide sadly occurs to often.
@@alantoon5708 Thank you kindly.
One disclaimer and one post-recording thought on this one:
Disclaimer first: I get "Skiff" and "Sagger" mixed up at one point in this recording when talking about the Stugna vs the much older Malyutka ATGMs. I also make typos that got missed.
Second just a closing thought on why I'm not prepared to outright call time on the tank:
The invention of gunpowder weapons didn't immediately kill the previously dominant knights and armoured cavalry of the European battlefields. At first, they thickened their armour to resist early projectiles, then when that was no longer possible they began to reduce their armour and change their role. Heavy cavalry remained, albeit with a different look and new tactics, for centuries to come.
Until armies are confident that they can do without the role filled by the tank, I believe it's far more likely that tanks and their associated tactics evolve rather than go extinct in the near term.
As to what that evolution is likely to look like, I'd rather leave to the experts with experience in the field. All I can say is that powers observing the Ukraine conflict are likely to ask questions about whether or not they really get value out of older and more vulnerable vehicles, and whether they can get more bang for their buck from mobile ATGMs and shoulder fired ordinance.
yes this is the end of the tank and armor. ukraine has shown armor cannot take a city. and the miniaturization and lethality and fire power of a small infantry carried weapon is an astounding 90 percent with javalins, nlaws, stingers. why would anyone bother spending 8-9 million or more to manufacture a tank now after what we have seen in ukraine. compare that to ww2 where the lethality of bazookas was only 60-70 percent. only idiot advisors in the military will be making tanks now for a nation.
I believe that tanks will always have a place on the battlefield. The problem with Russia is that they keep playing rock-paper-scissors and always select rock. ATGMs are vulnerable to infantry and quick responding mortars. A column of tanks driving down the road into enemy territory without infantry or scouting elements has almost always been a bad idea.
Also tanks in the open, like in a desert, are top notch if you have air superiority. They still have their place for sure.
@@spencerstevens2175 And this is why we see countries like the USA have such success with tanks. The US has exceptional combined arms doctrine and has air supremacy as a primary goal in any fight. Which allows ground attack assets to be in the air over the armor on overwatch duties. As well as good infantry dismount tactics from APCs and IFVs. But that requires extensive logistics capacity suited to global power projection, I don't think Russia has that full logistics integration into all methods of power projection.
That has been a bad idea for about 80 years. That's when the Panzerfaust was invented...
@@Argosh see: Desert Storm
@@Argosh also the six day war and Yom kippur war. Israel used their tanks very effectively
Great video! My two cents worth (as an ex-mechanized infantry soldier) is the critical role of the environment. As you mentioned, built-up areas are no-go zones for tanks, even with infantry support. The infantry will just spend most of their effort in protecting the enticing target that is the tank, while the tank is not able to offer much value in return. Tanks do better in open country and fighting at longer ranges. In short, tanks belong in the countryside and not in the city.
Unfortunately for the Russians, the Ukrainian countryside is also proving inhospitable to their tanks, and a major underestimated factor is the mud. From first-hand experience I can tell you that operating in heavy sticky mud is a nightmare for armored vehicles. I've trained in those conditions and had days when I spent two hours actually training and ten hours extracting vehicles from mud.
Look at the sheer numbers of abandoned Russian tanks that were captured by the Ukrainians. Yes, some of the Russian crews abandoned their vehicles because of mechanical breakdowns and lack of fuel, but I would bet that simply getting stuck in mud is also a major reason.
The mud is also acting as an area denial weapon to the Russian armor, much like a minefield would. The mud forces the Russian vehicles to use the roads, which makes them much easier targets for Ukrainian hit-and-run ambushes. Almost every video I've seen of Russian tanks getting destroyed had the tanks on a road, not spread out in an open field.
I cannot over-emphasize how important this factor is. Ambushing a tank driving across a wide-open countryside is far more difficult that ambushing one that you know has to come down a certain road. One of the lessons drilled into mechanized infantry is to avoid roads whenever possible. Always travel unpredictably across open country if you can.
My prediction is that if this conflict continues for long enough for the ground to dry up, then the Russian tanks will perform better (assuming there are any left by then). The tanks will become much more difficult to take out once they can travel cross-country rather than use roads.
What would be the point of using the tanks in the countryside though? Ukraine won't engage them with their own tanks, it would be suicide and they can just continue to use drones and rocket launchers. They can move them more safely perhaps but they can't use them to project power into dense urban areas. Am I wrong or is even using tanks in this type of war just not useful?
@@branteus In this scenario you would use the tanks to dominate the countryside and encircle the cities. Tanks would also be needed for taking out enemy armor and fortified positions in the countryside. The actual city fighting would be done with dismounted infantry backed by their own mechanized vehicles and artillery support from batteries a safe distance outside the city. The tanks would definitely still be needed for this kind of war.
@@branteus Tanks can engage from miles away. Antitank weapons that can be carried by a person/pair have ranges of ~1/4 mile. Drones change things, definitely, but they aren't everywhere. It would also force the Ukrainians to defend against armor from all sides instead of just down major highways.
I think "Assuming there are any left" is going to be the key factor, not just for the tanks but for supply and personnel. Battle groups are effectively useless offensively with as little as 10% casualties and while proposed rates are impossible to verify I suspect the logistical train is approaching something like 25% and passable roads evaporate with each ambush and IED.
It will be at least late May before the north is not boggy enough to neutralize tanks but even in the south where ground is better tanks are still taking losses.
Of course the other issues still cripple the offensive; morale, training, equipment, money, etc. etc. If you can't even issue your troops effective nav equipment they will be hopeless at fighting an offensive war.
@@marcusmoonstein242 But wouldn't these tanks need supply convoys (that I assume would not have the same off road capabilities of tanks, and thus could be easily targeted) to refuel and rearm?
Another note. The premise that ‘old cheap tanks’ can flip the economics on using Javeline is laughable, because old tanks are very vulnerable to the old trusty RPG-7. There is a reason nobody uses these old tanks anymore except in very poor third world countries. Heck, even modern tanks are vulnerable to RPG rockets. In Ukraine for example they target tank tracks with RPGs. Yes, it requires good hit, but a tank with broken tracks becomes very vulnerable and often abandoned by crew.
Let us also consider the fact that russia doesn't defend its tanks with adaquate screening troops. Tanks have always been very vulnerable to infantry. The role of a tank is to assist the infantry, not replace it as russia has
@@goldenhate6649 exactly
@@goldenhate6649 seems that Russian generals must have presumed that a show of massed armor would be enough to get a "cheap" victory. They were very wrong and in being wrong, they created a HUGE morale problem when their troops started getting incinerated by the dozens. Now they are stuck in a nasty bloody fight.
I read about a challenger or abrams tank that got stuck in a ditch in Iraq and took like 60-80 hits from rpg 7s and survived. Both tanks however have been penetrated/destroyed by the rpg 29. The moral of the story is that modern tanks can withstand old anti tank rockets
Combined arms means that without infantry every tank is vulnerable. Tanks are still viable in my humble opinion but must be deployed with accompanying infantry to have any chance. But on saying that it was shown in WW2 that with enough mortars the infantry defenders could strip away enough infantry support to render the tanks vulnerable again. The USA army at one point in time thought that the "Stryker" type wheeled armoured vehicles could replace tanks but have since reconsidered that line of thought. There's no simple answer but a tank attack with trained accompanying "Panzer Grenadeers" is the best tactic the Russians could employ but its the human factor of who wants to win the most I believe.
When my father was tankist in Czechoslovak army in 80s, they believed that tanks are outdated already in that time. They were learning that if they see radar of Apache heli over trees, they should leave tank and run as far as possible because they can't do anything with that. 🙂 We are small nation and surviving of crew is priority, but on other hand, due to political situation, we had to use soviet tanks which really didn't (and still don't) guarantee you that you survive, there was enough tanks, but not enough experienced crews, so just leave the tank was not a big deal I guess. I think this was unofficial strategy, my father said that there were 2 types of military leaders - type 1 was commie who knew nothing about military but he was good member of party, and second was real military leader who didn't care about politics much, these 2 types of officers were very often in conflict and were saying things which are going directly against each other. 🙂 Type one was saying propagandistic shits about how they are the best and immortal and second type told you that you will survive 5 minutes in tank battle, that was really positive motivation. 🙂
That is an amazing story lol. Very practical advice from the second type of officer.
@@epicurusurist9017 When my father was ending military service, they were retraining him to medic reservist, because it was time when they lowered amount of tanks and they didn't need him later. He was really glad that he didn't have to enter that steel coffin called T-55A again. We had thousands of tanks during communism time, can you imagine it for such a small country? Now we have 30 operable modernised tanks and another 100 outdated T-72 and few others conserved, it's ridiculous imagination that we had like 5000 tanks back in the day. 🙂
5 minutes? The political military leader won't last 5 seconds in a real firefight against actually experienced and trained veterans.
Also another aspect to look at. Putin was trained as a spy, and agent, not an elite soldier who can take on a battalion of enemy soldiers.
Ondrej... People just love "bling". (I do myself, in my backpack...) ...Even if it is on the opposite side:
The last time I was at a normal Home Guard exercise, I had to listen to to how stupid it was to guard a stationary object. "Because the Russians woul 'just' send in a cruise missile!" -- A cruise missile flying 2000 km ...or across Sweden ...or from a submarine??? For a target that was vulnerable to any caffe latte drinking political hothead with a cheap hammer? --- People are just blinded by "bling" sometimes.
@@MultiZirkon People here believed that both sides will nuke us in case of war NATO vs Warsaw Pact. 🙂 That's why Soviets needed sattelite states, they needed bumper zone and keep nuclear wasteland far from their land.
Combined arms has always been the way to go.
Our resident you tube tanker put out a video today too, where he comes to a lot of the exact same conclusions.
Pretty much this. Well trained infantry working in close coordination with tanks neutralize most ATGMs because they can't get close enough without tangling with enemy soldiers.
It's the right conclusion.
It has always been rock paper scissors. If you only have rocks, a few papers will decimate them.
This video was superbly researched and reasoned By someone who is not a tank expert by any means. The evidence is overwhelming against tanks in an era of smart and affordable light weight antitank weapons. It’s a no-brainer.
@@Caseytify Yes, but . . .
The range, accuracy, and concealibility of the newest ATGMs indicates to me that you want your tanks operating further back during an advance, with troops out ahead, already dismounted. A spearhead with mechanized infantry could run into a lot of trouble unless you’re using your tanks as old WWII style Infrantry Tanks (think Matildas and Churchills), unless the terrain is as smooth as a cue ball.
ATGM's, especially the Javelin and NLAW, have changed things but this particular war just seems to be the reality of facing a defense in-depth which is always going to be a costly affair.
Every since the earliest days of the "Tank" there have been weapons for killing them that could be transported and used by either 1 soldier, or a 2 soldier team. Survival of MBTs and all other forms of armored combat vehicles on a modern conventional battlefield depends upon the coordinated effort of a "Combined Arms Combat Team" that utilizes Aviation assets (both fixed wing and rotary), Artillery, Reconnaissance elements, and of extreme importance, almost as much as Aviation assets (in some cases more) is the need for a proper balance of Mechanized Infanyry traveling with the MBTs in vehicles that can not only keep up with the MBTs but also have a level of survivability that allows them to transition through the MBTs when needed for engaging dismounted enemy Infantry with their own dismounted Infantry. Commanders of Armored and Mechanized forces must follow certain guidelines about movement of these units like not moving them during daylight unless you have Air Superiority ( without it you cannot reliably keep Close Air Support on station ready to react as needed) and the terrain that MBTs can be used in. Every since WW1 we've known tanks don't do well in deep muddy fields, densely populated urban areas, steep mountains or very heavily wooded areas. They should not travel down roads in convoys to avoid muddy fields and heavily wooded areas, especially not if those roads traverse unsecured areas or if you don't have effective Close AR Support or effective and rapid Counterbattery Artillery fires. Modern tanks come with smoke generators, multiple smoke grenade launching systems, and are capable of relatively fast speeds, but where do we see most of the tanks being destroyed in Ukraine? Static positions, convoys on roads, urban areas, or in assaults against dug in Ukrainian defensive positions that the Russians know exactly where they are, they know that they are full of Infantry dismounts with tons of ATGMs and yet we don't see dismounted Infantry assaulting those positions under covering Artillery or Close Air Support with their IFVs moving close by giving supporting fires with their auto cannons and coaxial machine guns. We see tanks killed after sitting in the same poorly camouflaged positions for days ( evidenced by the tables, chairs and other "hooch" setups soldiers create anytime we sit in one place over 24 hours). We see them destroyed or captured where they ran out of fuel or where their crew abandoned them. We see them killed when being committed into battle in a piecemeal fashion (and once again without effective Close Air Support or Artillery Support/effective Counterbattery Support. By the 2nd time tanks were used on the battlefield in WWI these lessons were being learned, it's almost like a lot of Russian Officers/Commanders never really spent much time reading the history of Armored Warfare. Combine that with, from all appearances a significant portion of Russian soldiers not wanting to be there, and apparently poorly trained, undisciplined, and unmotivated (by looking at uniforms and gear, watching how they handle their weapons ( poor muzzle discipline and a lot of unaimed spray and pray shooting) and the fact that so many vehicles, and so much equipment and ammunition being abandoned in completely usable condition with little to no attempt to prevent the Ukrainian forces from being able to use it tells us a lot about the Russian military that has entered Ukraine. I'm sure there are some really good quality Russian units involved in this war, and I'd bet we just aren't hearing much about them. Probably because they still have most of their MBTs, IFVs, and other vehicles and equipment in their possession and in working order because those leading these units actually spent their training time awake, alert, and sober.
Or invade Russia type terrain/geography when the ground is thawing ......or going into winter
I'm not a military expert by any means, but; isn't it fair to say that ATGMs are a defensive weapon essentially? And that to capture territory on the offense, you will still need heavily armed and armoured vehicles? Dismounted infantry as main offensive arm without armour support would still be horribly vulnerable to all forms of fire, no? Therefore some form of tank will still be necessary for the offensive.
yes, but what we're talking about here is Ukraines ability specifically and any small country facing a larger foe generally, to use these weapons in defence. That's all.
Infantry ATGMs are essentially a replacement for WW2 antitank guns, which are primarily defensive weapons.
Offensive weapons are able to move fast, and infantry on foot are not fast.
What you are actually saying is that defence has now grown strong relative to the offensive - maneouvre warfare is now extremely expensive. Like how the machine gun and barbed wire did in 1914-18 MANPADs, ATGMs and drones will create slugfests.
@@kenoliver8913 eh, defense has had the advantage for a while. As you note, since 1918 at least.
And the Russians are ignoring a good 80 years of history in how they are fighting.
Yes you want to use atgm's defensively for best results but they can be and have been used offensively
It seems to me that the crew space and survivability systems occupy a significant portion of a tank’s volume. Might we see unmanned or autonomous tanks in the near future?
Edit: perhaps one way to counter the threat of jamming, in addition to or instead of an autonomous mode, would be to allow line of sight remote control by the accompanying manned combined arms force?
At the very least, reduced crew. Two man tanks with automated turret
@@bernieeod57 EMP will be it's counter. Tho right now EMP is still in its infancy and has not yet develop,
Rheinmetall is already working on that. Basically an automated truck, but instead of grad rockets it launches loitering munitions.
Already here. But the problem is the AUTONOMOUS part. That is what everyone is trying to avoid. Except comms links might be jammed or hacked. So it's a dilemma. For now, anything like that needs a human operator, so a comms link.
@@スガル Whatever would work against unmanned tanks (like EMP) would also work against unmanned drones, wouldn't it?
"Killing a truck worth it, let alone a tank"
Indeed: don't under-rate trucks. If a row of fifty trucks have all of the food and fuel that the invaders can lay hands on for two hundred miles, then they're more valuable than twice the number of tanks.
"But if you're on a budget, do those legacy tanks provide you value?"
Alas, probably yes: wars tend to be fought against civilians.
Unless you have all your units near rail depots or a plentiful supply of transport helicopters with secure landing zones, trucks are the way to go. In mountains and jungles I would suggest mule trains if you can find a plentiful source of mules and the personnel to support them. But this isn't Burma during the second world war, is it? :)
I have seen several videos depicting Ukrainian troops in action. With the exception of the squad machine gunner, every troop had some kind of anti armor capability. You might not completely kill a tank with one shot, but damage adds up. If you just slow a tank down, it's less capable of offensive action and can be taken out later. Combine that, with the effect of the rasputitsa, the tanks will not be as effective as they could be until the mud solidifies.
The Russians are failing massively because of lack of combined arms, lack of communication/cooperation and choosing to attack right at the start of the mud season, limiting your vehicles to the asphalt roads.
Non-supported tanks were punished already in WW2 in 1940-1941, with anti-tank guns. You don't need bazookas and late WW2 era to learn these lessons about combined arms warfare. Actually, you don't even modern industrial warfare to learn the lessons of combined arms warfare.
That the Russians are failing so horribly means we cannot draw any conclusions about the value of the tank in adequate combined arms warfare. We can only confirm what the Germans already knew in 1940: tanks need infantry support (combined arms) to be successful.
small corection , from end of february until 20th of march it wasnt that muddy as you might think , this year march was cold in ukraine, reaching -18 at night and -10 during day
I have the sensation that the so called "operation" is a failed maskirovska, they just used the army to draw the western attention and made an "all in" with the attack on the Kiev airport to take the Govt and cut the head, but they failed and now they have to use the poor russian gopniks as cannon fodder :(
This war seems to be won by Ukraine on the internet and won by Russia on the ground.
The Russians are not loosing. They are in the process of squashing the best brigades ~70000 men on the Donbas front. Kiev is a holding battle
@@mattiasdahlstrom2024 Yeah if Ukraine was winning why would the US be talking territorial concessions by Ukraine?
Well presented. I’m an old M1A1 tanker in the US Army. Before 911 we spent all our time training in combined arms to fight the Russian hoard. Most of the time in MOPP 2 or MOPP 4.
I agree older tanks are a waste of resources. Modern tanks with well trained crews, active protection systems and a clear well executed combined arm doctrine can still decide a battle.
Couldnt agree more !
Electronic warefare too
t-series tanks including the T-90 are utterly obsolete. the gap is the same as the difference from an A7V to a Panther and its showing. when you are that much of a target being a generation behind is suicide.
Yes to attack ( irak)... no to defend.
Semper Fi. 1st Tank Bn
Great video! As a naval officer, the concept of relying on mobility and active protection over armor is an interesting one…it basically encapsulates the philosophy of warship design since the advent of anti-ship missiles.
Yes, I see land warfare evolving much the same way navel warfare has. The tank is equivilent to a battleship (heck they called the tank the land-battleship when it was in development) and they rely almost exclusivly on direct fire guns and thick armor to defeat peer platforms. When battleships became obsolete we still retained cruisers and destroyers which gradually merged in size and role to systems which carried a large variety of weapon systems and many people just term them all as 'surface combatants' now. In the same manor I see our modern IFV's with their combination of infantry, misiles and auto-cannons will become the dominant platform on land. Drones will also get incorporated likely with each IFV having a little helo-pad on the back for the launch and recovery of it's own recon drones just as warships launch helecopters.
I would recommend people go see the video that The Chieftan put out about this today. Cliff notes version...tanks are not dead, active protection is going to become bigger, combined arms is a must.
Right. The notion of armor invincibility is a myth and has been since the widespread deployment of infantry portable AT
Does bigger active protection require bigger tanks? Are we going to see Mammoth tanks in our lifetime??
@@talandar5773 All tanks, from WW1 to the present, have been vulnerable to something. They're just less vulnerable than other types of vehicles.
They just need to keep stacking cope cages on top of each other
@@talandar5773 Even before that the myth of armor invincibility has been around since the 20s it tends to take a hit any time there is a large scale conflict involving armor especially if a side tries to rely on it but neglects infantry support. But it always comes back. I expect in 10 years after whatever the next defensive system will be shows up to deal with Javelins and the like we will see people once again proclaiming the supremacy of the tank. Tanks are just too cool a penis enhancer not to have a devoted following.
You hit the nail on the head. The way to win war is combined arms warfare. It doesn't matter if its 1942 or 2022, the side that has their different units effectively communicate and work together tend to win. Tanks + infantry + air strikes + artillery + drones + logistics + intelligence + proper training + competent leadership = winning.
If this is the case, which it seems to be, it also helps to explain why the Russians have performed so poorly: they have struggled to conduct themselves in this sophisticated way.
Until Rods From God wipes your Army and Navy out. And you have no idea where it’s coming from. Putin, meet US Space Force. We don’t need boots on the ground to annihilate Russian armor.
@@InshushaGroupie Because that type of sophistication takes money, a career military force, said force knowing that their survival relies on being effective, and leadership which is willing to trust units to at least do their jobs. Funnily enough, that describes a competent westernized army. Maybe not as much on the money side, but more on the "being good at your job" side.
The thing is, I don't realistically think anyone expects a military coup in most western nations. One of the reasons is because there's far less personal power in being a general or admiral than in countries where that is a concern. The priorities from the top to the bottom are different.
Measure and Countermeasure ! The tank starting in WW1 was an answer to the trench warfare and barbed wire of the Western Front trenches, and the beginning of mobile warfare as seen in Nth Africa in WW2. Combined operations are now the go, but with helos and missiles, a new paradigm has evolved.
I think that what we are seeing is the modern-day "Infantry Revolution." The Infantry Revolution was during the 14th century when weapons like pikes were invented specifically to counter knights. All of the supply problems with tanks now were similar problems with knights and their horses during the medieval era. Once infantry was able to actually take down knights, the knight (and assorted light cavalry) became much less popular. The tank will follow a similar path as cavalry did up until WWI; it will be used, but only for specific roles like breaking through a line, flank charging, or pursuing fleeing enemies.
I think IFVs will still be a thing that can be used like tanks, but the officers and the NCOs better have the good sense to tell the squad to leave the damn vehicle under most types of fire.
I think armoured mortars and artillery are to stay too and will play an even bigger role.
Because still need big gun, but why needlessly expose yourself in direct fire?
You left out unruly populations. Tanks work great on crowds when you have police power.
The thing is, these ATGM's aren't new technology, Javlins entered service in 1984. This debate has been doing the rounds since the late 1960's when Israel used early ATGM to devastate Egyptian tanks in the 6 days war. Armor provides a huge benefit in terms mobility and fire supoort, but it needs to be protected and properly supported, what we are seeing here is what happens when outdated armour (bulk of the Russian armour being T-72's) isn't used correctly, driving down narrow roads single file without proper recon and support or engage in close quarters in city streets, in those situations without awareness of there surroundings, supporting infantry clearing surrounding buildings and room to manuver or bring their firepower to bear, they're just over priced moving coffins
I think the longbow was not unlike the more modern day equivalent of long range artillery and this had a devastating effect on cavalry and infantry alike at over 300 metres. Arrows fired from longbows were also, presumably, the medieval equivalent of the Javelin at shorter distances.
@@richardcory5024 It was the tactics that mattered not the longbows. Longbows were destroyed by cavalry at the Battle of Patay without doing any damage.
Even in WW2 it was understood that tanks could not operate effectively without air and infantry support. Russia has neglected this.
There will always be utility in a self-propelled gun with immunity to small arms and autocannons, and resistance to artillery. The problem is that countries like Russia keep using them comically badly.
tanks is ment to fight other tanks in open areas. not for fight people hiding in Urban area with javelin rocket.
russis didnot anticipate ukraine was going to get 30 billion in military aid.
The difference between now and WW2 is that infantry cannot protect vehicles from ATGMs that are fired from more than 200 meters away, let alone kilometres aways. And what's new in this conflict is the not only the mass deployment of weapons that have this long range capability, but are also portable. Not to mention the heavy use of cheap expendable undetectable drones that guide arty strikes accurately.
@@JAnx01 Nailed it! In WW2 dismounted troops could clear the way in front of tanks of defenders with short range anti-tank Panzerfaust. The infantry could sometimes over run German 88mm artillery positions before the tanks came in range. To make that happen with modern ATGM's mean that the infantry has to be so far ahead of the tanks, that the mission of the tanks (to be the iron fist that shocks defending infantry) is completely failed.
Urban areas are the death of tanks
@@firstname4476 Even NLAW has a range of 800m. You just need some undulating terrain. No urban area needed.
Seems like there’s going to be a massive emphasis on active protection systems. Their effectiveness could keep the tank’s role secure.
Only at the cost of making them star-wars level expensive. A system that your grandmother can be trained to use in an afternoon and that can be fielded in huge numbers for a fraction of the cost (and with no logistical tail at all) can make fielding a useful number of "protected" tanks so ridiculously expensive they will be virtually unusable. You'll lose the conflict financially before you can win militarily. I think that's what the West is demonstrating to the Russian government as we speak.
Add to that problem an even bigger one: There is no conceivable way to protect your supply columns to this degree. And without support vehicles (not to mention IFVs in combat support) your tank is worth almost nothing, regardless of how much you spend on it.
most modern anti tank weapons counter APS
@@charlesfaure1189 And add to that the fact ATGMs are improving far faster than tanks. Today, ATGMS can hit tanks 1.5 miles away. It's not hard to imagine ATGMs with several miles range or longer, with cheap drones acting as spotter. Tanks have no chance against such systems whether protected by infantry or not.
@@springer-qb4dv the javelin had more then 1.5 so yeah
Remember that these questions have been asked _many_ times before, but the tank always survives. APDS, HEAT, older generation ATGMs like the Malyutka, the attack helicopter, IEDs, smart munitions, etc.
Every 10 years or so some new development happens that makes everyone speculate that the tank is "obsolete". I have no reason to believe that handheld anti tank weapons (which have been a threat since WW2) are suddenly going to single handedly render tanks unusable.
The tank can only effectively be used in conjunction with skilled infantry, with out that skilled infantry the tank is merely an expensive target. Infantry needs tanks, but the tank also needs that infantry. If you try to use a tank as a mobile fortress it will not survive...
This was implied, but older ATGM systems are likely to be cycled out of use fast (per your comments on ammo use) leading to cutting edge systems in front line hands fast and at scale. Countries must pay heavily for an AFV generational upgrade, while an ATGM generational upgrade costs 'only' the current stock of ATGMs and the phase-out still yields significant value. Phasing out a generation of AFVs appears to primarily create value for local farmers and interested bystanders. Let's hope we continue to support Ukraine in demonstrating the power of international collaboration over tearing up treaties and that Russia fails to escape this doctrinal trap they have walked into.
All of these videos have been absolutely wonderful. Well research, well explained, and very well argued. I sent them to my family and now we watch them together, which is pretty cool seeing as they’re not normally defense policy minded people. (it’s mostly energy policy and healthcare law with them). Anyways I hope to see more, great job!
Talk to them about how Germany’s disastrous energy politics weakened all of Europe and made Putin more bellicose.
Talk to them about gas, lignite, “Energiewende”, nuclear energy, LNG terminals, gas storage (LNG and gaseous), pipelines, strategic oil reserves, household heating, HVDC, etc…
@@peterfireflylund don’t worry, we are all baffled by germany shutting down actively operating nuclear power plants, and how stupid and greedy it was to decide it was okay to rely on the russians for energy products. it’s one of the few things we can all agree on.
I really like your analysis. As a former tank soldier in the Australian Army (1988 - 1996), I have long been waiting for the development of specialised armoured vehicles designed specifically around countermeasures for anti tank weapons, perhaps, even to the point of not having any main armour, much as the tracked AA guns of the Cold War period.
Ideally, these would be sprinkled at the troop, or squadron level. So there would be one of these dedicated vehicles for every three to 12 standard tanks.
However, I do fear that the "queen of the battlefield" is currently failing in its primary role, namely penetration and exploitation of enemy defensive lines.
Edit: I would also point out that I was trained to successfully use a Carl Gustav 84mm Anti-Tank recoilless rifle in the space of two days. I will admit that I was in the top 5-10 percent of my regiment, with regard to small arms fire, having learnt how to shoot, prior to joining the Army.
(Even during my time with the Navy Cadets, as a teenager with TS Melbourne", I was one of the few who obtained the marksman badge - which was a hugely watered down version of the real thing. But hey, we were kids, so lacked both the time and experience to even consider any of us even remotely close to a regular soldier with the marksmanship badge, let alone even the worst soldier from any Australian infantry regiment.)
Out of my squadron, we only had enough Gustav rounds for two soldiers to fire real round, as opposed to .22 calibre sub rounds, which adequately mimicked the flight path of the of real weapon. And I hit my tank sized target at a range of about 300 - 400 metres, with both the practice and later on with the live round. But my tank sized target was a stationary steel water tank, so If they'd been moving I almost certainly wouldn't have hit with either shot.
What takes time, however, is teaching the bush skills that an infantry man requires in order to conduct fire and movement. All Australian soldiers are also trained in infantry minor tactics' it is literally (Seriously, if we handed out medals like the US do, we'd all be stooped to the left with the weight, because the Aussie soldier is trained on a wider variety of weapon systems and able to easily transition our modes of war, knowing our soldiers already have the basics a significant part of ALL NCO training, where there is a generic leadership course, as well as another course that is directly related to your job.
By way of example, all Australian Corporals are trained to lead a section in the field, irrespective of whether their day job is counting blankets. By the end of my service, I had not only fired the Tank main gun, but been trained and fired the following weapon: The SLR rifle, of the Vietnam era, he 30 and 50 calibre machine guns, the 40 mm "wombat gun", or percussion grenade launcher, the M60 machine gun, the MG3 the F1 submachine gun, the 9mm Browning pistol. Probably missed the point, but you get what I mean.
I recall having a conversation with an American Private, who couldn't believe that I was not only trained in multiple tank crew positions, but could also drive an army truck and was a fully qualified "B" vehicle (land Rover) and a few other things. He just knew infantry minor tactics and if another job needed to be done, his unit had people to do that job.
So, yes, you can easily train soldiers to use the weapons. But against a well trained force, that knows how to engage in fire and movement, I'd expect less success.
For whatever stupid reason, Russia attacked Ukraine at exactly the wrong time of the year. Everybody knows that during spring and autumn the plains of Ukraine turn into mud. FFS, this was what saved Moscow during the 1942. Tanks do best on open terrain, where they can easily move, shoot and scoot and engage in other traditional tank tactics. I once had my entire troop of tanks (3 at the time) bogged in the same swamy area on Puckapunyal range. We subtlety contacted the spanners to come and get us out and that cost us several slabs of beer. But our Squadron OC didn't fine out, so all was good! :-)
Had the Russians invaded during either the height of winter, or in May, once the ground has dried out, it would have allowed tanks to do what they do best, namely engage in overwhelming manuver warfare across a wide front (as opposed to a single road with its "40 mile convoy"), where if you advance at pace, you'll easily overrun the infantry on the ground.
Infantry can't move as fast as armour, so if you can gain the mobility advantage and the tanks can very quickly close the distance between infantry ATGMs and the extreme target range of those systems. A Modern Tanks Thermal vision can easily see the heat radiating off a recently used weapon, so hiding would be hard.
I can tell you from personal experience, being charged by a tank, as an infantryman, is a terrifying experience.
When on exercise, we would do demo runs against infantry positions and while we knew that a tank can go from full speed to a dead stop within its own length, assuming dry ground.
On one exercise in the Northern Territory, we "charged" a group of infantry attempting to infiltrate our defences. One of our tanks charged towards them at full speed and halted about 20 metres from there. The tank driver had night vision gear, so could easily see the infantry. The infantry didn't, so all they heard was the very loud noise of a 36 litre diesel engine as it approached them, followed by the emergence the tanks headlight at about 50 feet (because the drive didn't want to run them over).
Simply on the basis of that charge, the section of infantry became combat ineffective. By the time that I rocked over in the troop leader's vehicle, the section commander was engaged in a highly heated argument about how dangerous the charge was. His troops were medevac'd an even the next day, some members were reported to be displaying what we'd now call "Combat Stress Reaction". Given just how badly one solder responded, I wouldn't be surprised if he went on to develop PTSD over the event.
So tanks, when deployed properly have an incredible shock value that simply should not be under-estimated.
In Australia, we went from over 100 leopard tank variants, to only 56 and our supposition was that the halving of the numbers was largely for us to retain "armoured capability", so that if we ever got into a shooting war, we'd still have a well trained cadre of troops upon which to build a larger tanks force. Basically, 1st Armoured Regiment would have largely merged with the School of Armour to train thousands of new troops on how to not get themselves killed in batle.
Tanks without infantry support is Modern Combat is pure silliness and opens you up to being taken out by a single Molotov Coctail on the engine deck. We've known that since WW1, but someone has to learn it about every generation, or so.
Long term, I see tanks becoming much, much heavier as these missiles become more accurate and dangerous. This extra weight will allow for more robust passive armour, at the cost of mobility.
But this has been a back and forth for years. The Leopard 1 that I crewed, was designed at a time when the even an unguided HEAT round was king of the battlefield and been able to get out of the line of sight of these lumbering beasts was vital. The best defence against such a weapon is mobility, so the tank sacrificed armour, for mobility. This kind of "arms race" has been going on for years, but given the slowness of the missile, if we were attacked in a hull up, or turret down position, we could easily break line of sight, rendering the missile pointless. Problem is that these days they chase you down.
As an aside, by the early 1990s Australian tanks, no longer carried HEAT rounds, because APDS and HESH were an easier combination and greatly streamlined our logistics.
So as with all warfare, I see an evolution (much like the T-14 Amarta), that prioritises crew survivability, but in which tanks are no longer the speedy, 42 ton, wonders of my day, but rather slower (although not lumbering) behemoths that are built specifically to overcome the threat of missile, because of their better armour and active protection systems.
We've seen a lot of what I expect with the Abrahms tank, which is about ten tons heavier, in today's modern variant, than it was during the initial release. I don't expect tanks to start carrying ATGMs themselves (although Russian designs can), but wouldn't be surprised to see the Australian Army (for example) finally begin to include larger artillery pieces for infantry suppression roles, being that the biggest danger to enemy artillery is often a good, old fashioned dash of artillery, which is guaranteed to leave the survivors less capable fighters and your mobile forces a much greater sense of success.
The idiocy of the Russians bot using their artillery to support their combat troops astounds me. WTF are they thinking, when they take a valuable combat resource out of the line, so it can waste its rounds against civilian (AKA : militarily useless) targets? Idiocy.
As I said, I am an old school tank soldier. I haven't even stepped inside an Australian Abrams, so much of what I've said is probably hugely out of date, but I handle criticism well and would love for anyone to tell me if I'm on the right track, or simply a tank soldier out of time and out of his depth. :-)
tltr
It was a good comment before the edit, and it's an excellent comment after it, cheers mate
My training is very similar. Trained in all infantry weapons, SLR, SMG, GPMG, Browning 9mm,LMG(7.62 Bren)M79,L96 then Charlie G and Law 66. Later SA 80 etc...We also did artic warfare etc. I trained as a driver on the 432, then Scimitar. All crew could do each others job. In terms of tactics you do the NCO cadre followed by junior Brecon then senior Brecon. All this in the roll of infantry. To be good at any role you have to specialise at it. All this wide ranging training was good but to become good you have to specialise. We did different rolls in 2 year stretches. You were just becoming good at it when you moved onto something else. We became good at close recce with the scimitar, I had the chance to observe a medium recce regiment, I think the Blues and Royals. They were superb because that is all they did. We learnt so much from them. We also realised it is a job that needs to be dedicated to full time. Wide ranging training is not always good. Also whatever you learn has to be relearnt and often.
yeah modern AT wepons have night vision, and avtive protection doesn't work well and miles of range, so idk if yo tank can charge before it gets hit
Killing civilians in siege is pointless. Shelled buildings are excellent cover for ambush and you don't have feed dead civilians. You could let all the civilians go and shell the city or build strong lines around the city and the defenders will attack you when the run out of food and water.
Azerbaijan used Russian tanks very effectively in 2020 war, while Armenian tanks became scrap metal or war trophies for Azerbaijanis. It really depends on your war concept. Tanks are still useful, especially if they are equipped with active protection.