(There’s actually a Marine Corps saying, “hunting tanks is fun and easy.”) Historically the hardest thing to kill has been deeply dug-in infantry, from the entrenched defenders of the Western Front to the Viet Cong in their tunnels. In fact, tanks have never even been the toughest target on the battlefield. Even in the early days during World War I, German artillerymen quickly learned that the new Allied tanks could be destroyed by existing field guns. Nothing will make the tank invulnerable to drones – but it’s crucial to remember that tanks have never been invulnerable on any battlefield, popular mythmaking aside. Likewise, the seemingly unstoppable threat of drones could be countered by new tactics aimed at their weak points, for example intensive jamming of their control links and sensors. “Regaining freedom of maneuver for tanks might come more from changes in tactics versus technology.”Ī historical parallel is how new man-portable anti-tank missiles savaged Israeli armor in the 1973 war, only to have the Israelis learn to flush the missile teams out with infantry. But nothing lasts forever,” Spoehr told me. “Right now, UAS with smart munitions and kamikaze drones do seem to command the upper hand. The US finally began installing an active protection system – the Israeli Trophy – on its Abrams tanks in 2018.Įven without new technology, better tactics can make a difference, argued Thomas Spoehr, a retired Army three-star now at Heritage. “Much of what we saw in the Nagorno-Karabakh involved older Soviet tanks in the Armenian service that were not well defended against loitering munitions, actually do not pack a big punch.”īy contrast, modern Russian tanks routinely carry reactive armor tiles, which preemptively detonate in the path of incoming warheads infrared dazzlers, which blind the sensors of anti-tank guided missiles and active-protection systems, which physically shoot down inbound munitions like a miniaturized missile defense. “Had the Armenians prepared their tanks for the new type of war that took place last October, their losses would have been far fewer,” he told me.
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