Russia’s heavy tank losses can be explained by employment mistakes, poor planning and preparation, insufficient infantry support, and Ukrainian artillery. The available data from Ukraine, as well as the recent war in Nagorno-Karabakh, indicate that tanks are still critical in modern warfare and their vulnerabilities have been exaggerated. As a result, specific weapon systems may appear to be ineffective based on how and where they are employed, not necessarily due to their inherent shortcomings. There is still much about this war that is not known from open sources, and there is good reason to think that the conditions that marked its early phases will not necessarily be relevant to future conflicts. Once they shed heavy armor, tanks become lighter, more maneuverable, and easier to ship across the world.After six months of war in Ukraine, some observers have insisted that “we are seeing the very nature of combat change” and that tanks, along with fighter jets and warships, “are being pushed into obsolescence.”īut it is too soon to write off the tank, and we should resist jumping to other sweeping conclusions about the future of warfare based on a conflict whose lessons are not yet clear. Active protection systems, which can shoot down incoming rockets and missiles, makes them harder to hit. This can be accomplished by giving them stealth technology and reducing their infra-red signature, which makes them harder to find. Technologies that give tanks a good defense without covering them in heavy armor, for instance, the idea being that making tanks harder to detect and more difficult to hit means tanks can shed heavy plates of steel. Gareth Evans points out several key technologies that could become standard issue on future main battle tanks. But as the threat evolves so must the tank, which raises the question: What will the tanks of the future look like? Heavily armed and heavily armored, tanks have repeatedly proven themselves the arm of decision on the battlefield, even in the face of repeated challenges from other weapons such as bazookas, anti-tank guns, and even guided missiles. The tank has dominated battlefields for the last 100 years.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |