The future of the tank ...

thanks for the offer, but I found a copy of the article at http://www.aei.org/publications/filter.all,pubID.24584/pub_detail.asp.

There's no need to photograph it or anything.  Thanks though.

edit:

I have since read the article.  It makes a number of very good points.  I had not really taken the line of thinking that I began in discussing the end of the tank this far, but it is true.  The US needs more infantry, and since being infantry is not exactly a fun job, I wonder how we will get them. 

edit 2:

After reading the above article, I decided that it was time to hit the hay.  I lay down and grabbed my book, which just so happened to be Starship Troopers.  I was towards the beginning, reading along, when suddenly something jumped out at me, something that is perfectly applicable to the difference between the realists and the technophiles in the current military debate.  Robert A. Heinlein more or less paraphrases what Kagan says.  Here's the quote that jumped at me:

"'If you wanted to teach a baby a lesson, would you cut its head off?'
'Why no sir!'
'Of course not.  you'd paddle it ... War is not violence and killing pure and simple, war is controlled violence, for a purpose.  The purpose of war is to support your government's decisions by force.  The purpose is never to be killing the enemy just to be killing him ... but to make him do what you want him to do.'"

To bring this back to a discussion of the tank: the tank, like the airplane, exists only to kill the enemy.  It supports the infantry as they attempt to influence the enemy, but doesn't have an application besides brute force.  A man on his own feet can shoot someone lethally, shoot them non-lethally, use nonlethal weapons, or simply knock a person down with a well aimed fist.  A tank can destroy another tank, or kill a man with a machine gun.  It can run someone over.  However, in terms of modulated force, it can't do much.  Infantry is the only thing that can determine just how much damage it will do.  That is why I see the death of the tank.  Once it's firepower can be more or less copied by a man with the ability to discriminate, then it will go the way of the dinosaur and he will go the way of the mammal. 

Forgive any gramatical errors, right now it is getting rather late and I'm not really sure that I'm thinking straight. 





Edited by bagelofdoom - 13-Sep-2006 at 04:14

I for one if I was a tanker would LOVE to take on those new Stryker Brigs. Sure the Stryker is easily transportable and what not, but in a battle even an old T-55 would send the Stryker the way of its namesakes.

Light armour? That is a IMO even more dangerous than IFV's. Armour is what makes a MBT,the ability to take a massive amount of punishmnent.

This entire force is designed around what the projected future wars will be like.

Originally posted by xristar The future wars of America you should say.

Well, yes... given that it's the United States, Germany, the United Kingdom and Russia who are the principle tank designers at the current date.

Originally posted by xristar Ther are more tank designers (France, smaller like Pakistan, Korea etc), and of them only UK and USA have such goals (operations overseas). Russia and Germany sell as many tanks as they keep for themselves to countries that will fight more conventionally.

France, Germany and Russia have similar goals to that of the United States - for example, the T-95's potential of having an unmanned turret.  The Germans are also one of the major nations experimenting with newer gun technologies that can reduce weight by not going the way of the 140mm gun, like ETC and EM. 

Originally posted by Sparten Those require a different TOE than say an armoured thrust into Iran. I have no doubt that US 3 ID, 1 cav Div and two additional Divisions, could destroy Iranain armies as fast as the mullahs could send them,

Edited by Cryptic - 16-Sep-2006 at 16:30

Disimir, most of those are IEDs, and IIRC, only 8 Abrams have been lost insofar in Iraq, unless the count went up when I was in Spain this summer.  And, you have to take into consideration, that only the Abrams and the Challenger series have been the only two most modern tanks that have seen extensive warfare.  Of course, there always is the T-72 and the T-80 in Chechnya...which were mauled.

I'm truly sorry to disrupt your expert debate with my slightly out of topic and uneducated question but here it is: if there is ever a war in which I am engaged I'd most likely be sent to an infantry division. Most likely again, this wa will be fought in an urban environment. What does modern technology offer to protect me (poor foot soldier) against the big bad militiamen trying to kill me. In other words: is there any vehicule specially design for urban warfare (lots of protection, room for the infantry, tactical high tech stuff to spot the ennemi hidden three storey up)?

Thats a good point, but wouldn't tanks represent the same threat?  I don't really know, I haven't got much experience in this sort of thing, but it seems to me that if one tank crew decided to go up against the government, they could do a whole world of hurt if their timing was right. 

As for unmanned tanks, I know that a human crew has so far proved more efficent, especially in terms of loading the cannon.  An unmanned tank would probably be a bear to maintain too, I bet it would cost at least as much (at least in terms of our current technological levels).  I would call it a definite future possibility though (at least before the tank is overtaken by technological developements).