>AT rifles will obsolete the tank
>AT guns will obsolete the tank
>mines will obsolete the tank
>shaped charges will obsolete the tank
>missiles will obsolete the tank
>droones will obsolete the tank *you are here*
Will it ever end? How do we break the cycle bros?
>AT rifles will obsolete the tank
nobody ever said that at the time they were invented
>AT guns will obsolete the tank
nobody ever said this at the time they were invented
>mines will obsolete the tank
mines predate tanks, but they were never seen as a major threat to armor
>shaped charges will obsolete the tank
nobody ever thought this
a few countries briefly experimented with lightly armored tanks like the leo 1 and AMX-30, but the 2 major powers, the US and USSR, continued to make heavily armored tanks
and the israelis purposefully asked to have the AMX-13 gun mounted in an M4 because they thought the extra armor was worth using a 30 year old vehicle
there was literally no point in the last 100 years when people ever thought the tank was going to be obsolete
tankies coping, face it, every infantry squad has AT capabilities now, with specialized rockets capable of piercing through heavy armor, tanks as done for, they are big mobile targets only waiting to be hit
>tankies coping
literally the current state of the art
>tankies
war tourists pls go and stay go
>tankies
That's not what that word means.
>tankies
God you're fucking retarded.
People very emphatically did claim that AT guns would obsolete the tank, there were claims in the 1930s that they would do to the tank what the machine gun did to the infantry, as early as 1919 iirc and certainly the French thought tanks might have been obsolete in the Spanish Civil War
>>AT rifles will obsolete the tank
>nobody ever said that at the time they were invented
AT rifles could knock out any tank before countermeasures were produced.
>AT rifles could knock out any tank before countermeasures were produced.
and nobody ever said it would obsolete the tank, which was heavily used until the end of WW1 and beyond
holy shit how are you so wrong?
like everything you posted is the opposite of correct.
>nobody ever thought this
OP literally gave you an example you stupid fuck
and the US military itself suggested the idea back in the late 90s, because they knew exactly what their Tank Breaker suite of weapons could do
oh wait, you probably weren't even born then
Imbecile
ah jeez fellas are we using russia as the rule and not the exception again?
>using tanks as front line meat shields instead of the breakthrough vanguard assault like cav was used
Tanks are just modern cav, using them like giant shields to hide behind isn't helping anyone.
Suicide drones seem to do pretty well.
> Spears will obsolete the horse
> Crossbows will obsolete the horse
> Cannons will obsolete the horse
> Muskets will obsolete the horse
Will it ever end? How do we break the cycle bros?
The horse WAS eventually obsoleted, so not a good comparison.
That... was the fucking point anon.
the horse was literally no obsoleted by anything invented to kill them, but by the motor vehicle which could do the job of the horse
This is the real answer, the tank can only be made obsolete by something that can do its job, can a drone do the job of a tank, no, the fuck off.
It got replaced by a mechanical horse lmao.
The solution is biological tanks
You are will attract the architekt poster here
>AT rifles will obsolete the tank
>AT cannons will obsolete the tank
>AT grenades/rockets will obsolete the tank
>Tandem warheads will obsolete the tank
>F&F standoff munitions have obsoleted the tank
It wasn't the development of any counter horse munition that rendered cavalry obsolete, but instead the emergence of the armoured fighting vehicle - something that did the same job only better - that saw it leave the battlefield
we will not see the obsolescence of the tank until someone invents something that that can do a tanks job better than a tank can, and that's not happening any time soon
Missiles and drones will obsolete the current tank but what comes after will look much like a tank still.
Top attack weapons - missiles or drones - obsolete the heavily directional armor of current tanks. Future vehicles will need all around armour (but it will necessarily be much weaker) and massive amounts of APS. They will need to be much careful about not being subjected to direct fire, because their protection will be insufficient.
Datalinked recon drones, free flying or tethered, will make indirect fire almost as accurate as direct one. Future weapons will all have indirect fire capability, including tank guns of course. Combat between large equipment will happen at generally greater range, while the space inbetween is filled with drones and shrinking amounts of infantry.
future tanks will keep heavy frontal armor to resist attacks from non-top attack threats like KE weapons and regular ATGMs
they will probably look exactly like modern MBTs, just with APS that can fire upwards
>KE weapons
Just stay out of range
>regular ATGMs
Going the way of the dodo.
Within a sufficiently advanced future, mind you. For the near future you're correct.
APS has a very limited magazine, it can save you in a pinch, however it's not going to provide protection if your opponent has plenty of chances to shoot at you before you even get into range.
Concentrations of armored vehicles will need a more specialised air defence against this kind of threat, laser or gun based most likely.
>APS has a very limited magazine
even a limited magazine essentially means the enemy has to throw everything and the kitchen sink to overwhelm even a single target
if APS can stop even a single shot, its already doubled its lifespan, and most APS can defend itself for much longer
and if you need to fire 2 missiles in quick succession to overwhelm APS, then you have more than doubled the effort needed to destroy a single tank, because coordinating two different teams to fire at the same time is difficult, and if just one of them is disabled before firing the entire exercise is fatal
>however it's not going to provide protection if your opponent has plenty of chances to shoot at you before you even get into range.
so pretty much the only time APS might fail to work is if youre being swarmed from multiple angles by multiple attackers and the tanks themselves arent being supported by infantry or artillery
Anti tank missiles are much cheaper than tanks, you could fire twenty per vehicle and still come out ahead.
>only have 10 on hand
>tank rolls in and blows up triple its value in soldier lives
>fucks off before a dedicated AT unit arrives
What now
you are a fucking retard
why does it matter when the tank is already dead?
an IFV with APS can do its job so shut up
>an IFV with APS can do its job
It can survive direct hits from auto cannons from other IFVs or sustained heavy MG fire?
If you get the chance to fire more than once in an engagement than the enemy fucked up already.
The whole point is that NLOS anti tank weapons allow you to do that, they completely change the shape of the battlefield for armor and severely punish concentration.
APS isn't a comprehensive answer to this, because you only get 1-4 defensive shots in your magazine.
That's expensive and limited ammo, good for certain defensive scenarios, but it doesn't substitute the tank.
For the price of a new build leopard 2 you can have 100 multi-mode brimstones.
Air defence against this kind of threat and the reconnaissance that enables it will be necessary.
Just like you need to deal with ATGMs from attack helicopters.
Not the same kind of problem, the solution there is shooting the big expensive attack helicopter, not the missile.
But in terms of capabilities, the helicopter is probably more dangerous.
>It's to show your argument about IFVs is retarded
But it does the exact opposite, tanks require the enemy to be prepared to deal with them specifically more so than IFVs, that's one of their jobs, to challenge the enemy preparedness, because if you fail to stop them, you lose instantly, the tank is the best exploitation system.
>tanks require the enemy to be prepared
What a retarded argument.
You mean the fake video you fucking retard?
>No other system could have taken advantage of that situation in the same way.
One ATGM would destroy the tank.
>column of ukie light armored vehicles
An IFV would do the same job retard.
>One ATGM would destroy the tank.
Cold, would, should, but it didn't, maybe you can begin to understand the value of tactically flexible, mobile and protected firepower now.
>fire 2 missiles in quick succession to overwhelm APS, then you have more than doubled the effort needed to destroy a single tank, because coordinating two different teams
Hisballa and Iran already haмy two rocket Kornet-derived lauchers which shoot both in auto mode
There are videos of its work
>shoots down both rockets
its hard enough to fire off one rocket
trying to fire two is drastically more difficult
>its hard enough to fire off one rocket
>trying to fire two is drastically more difficult
Beam riders have no inherent limitation on how many missiles can be shot simultaneously at a target. The problem is multiple targets from the same station (requires encoding)
Iron Fist is basically a single shot gun already.
>coordinating two different teams to fire at the same time is difficult
You need to think with tech my man. Coordinating two datalinked automated NLOS ATGM launchers is easy as fuck.
This assumes a modern peer war won’t be full of jamming spoofing and general electronic warfare that will render current BVR engagement tactics obsolete at worst and impractical at best. I think it’s going to be very hard to get rid of direct fire support for the same reason it’s always existed in all of human history which is that nothing is as good at killing something as a big rock going really fast exactly where you’re aiming with your eyeball. I think mobility, saturation, and electronic countermeasures will be far more impactful than BVR tech long term, since all of those make or break BVR itself.
>muh jamming
That's why everything will have AI homosexual.
Stop parroting retarded sillicon valley investor trap talk. It's not AI, it's advandced skip-logic machines and I haven't seen a single fucking indication they can get this shit to work now or in the near future in any meaningful effort that they're able to fly a fucking drone through the clutter and chaos of a modern battlefield.
It also heavily relies that basic bitch shit like camouflage, simple nets or automated point-defense systems won't completely fuck up drones (in addition to jamming severing any link they have to their operator).
>It's not AI, it's advandced skip-logic machines and I haven't seen a single fucking indication they can get this shit to work now or in the near future
It's extremely easy to make AI controlled missiles and drones you fucking retards.
And then being destroyed by drones, mines, artillery.
Tell me you don’t work with AI without telling me you don’t work with AI.
Brimstone has had autonomous terminal targeting since the 1990s, this isn't a real problem.
It's a trivial issue today, literally a dissertation project.
You can try to jam the sensor instead of the data link but then you have to deal with home on jam.
Fundamentally there needs to be a kinetic countermeasure to these kinds of system.
Whether it's missiles, AHEAD style cannons, lasers ect.
You fucking moron that’s the exact shit I’m talking about. Brimstone is a preprogrammed system that relies on databases to function. Do you even know anything about it as a weapon system? It is not a hunter killer system and fails to basic spoofing. Both visually and GPS spoofing completely defeat the system because it is not AI it relies on preprogrammed coordinates if external guidance fails.
Brimstone is a hunter killer system, you give it a target box and it will hit anything it's radar recognises inside the box.
Without GPS it can use inertial guidance.
Modern pattern recognition can be run on mass produced phone hardware, you don't necessarily need access to an online database, and even then you can have a pretty enormous database at low cost and small footprint on modern solid-state hardware.
Brimstone is a $100,000 missile system that can be defeated by a $75 moped with some ferrous metal and cardboard spoofing itself as a tank. It’s not a hunter killer. It’s a fire and forget pre programmed missile with basic autonomous guidance but it’s as much AI as your toaster is. You don’t know what you’re talking about.
>It's not hunter killer it's just an autonomous weapons system
Autonomous weapons systems like these don't have to be perfect.
The old solution to deleting large formations of armor was cluster munitions, which are hardly discriminatory.
The kill box for a cluster munition is one in which everything living dies.
No it isn’t. That’s the problem. They’re only good at hitting very specific kinds of targets and they can be easily spoofed for a fraction of the cost. The argument is tanks are obsolete because guided munitions are cheaper then guided munitions are obsolete because spoofing is cheaper. We’re so impossibly far from actual autonomous weapon systems. If you actually designed a hunter killer system currently you would wipe out ever bird beaver and large bug because we have no ability to get algorithms to recognize the vast array of human movement or vehicle size shape and radar signature. AI is not self aware and it is so far from being self aware that any attempt to make a real hunter killer would be a warcrime as it would kill more babies than the One Child Policy. It would slaughter more civilians than Stalin could ever dream of. Autonomous weapon systems like these DO have to be perfect, which is why we have zero autonomous weapon systems. Instead we have a handful of semi autonomous pre programmed missiles that let a human do 99.7% of any thinking and only take over at the last moment and also don’t work in Ukraine if either side is putting up a heavy amount of electronic countermeasures mainly spoofing. And for the most part the Russians are fucking balls at fun and games like that, but it still works well enough that these kinds of weapons do not have near their effectiveness as they did in Libya where we blew up a lot of Ghadaffi’s $500 trucks on purpose with. Direct fire or at least directed fire of non autonomous, non jammable, non spoofable munitions have been responsible for the vast majority of Russian armor knocked out. From simply artillery barrages to hunter killer infantry t teams. For one, those missiles and shells cost a few hundred to a few thousand as opposed to a tenth of a million like most semi autonomous systems do. Two, they’re much harder to intercept and impossible to fool unlike a semi autonomous system.
Gibberish.
Autonomous weapons systems have been deployed for thousands of years.
First came the traps, pits with or without spikes, snares ect.
Then came mines, pressure, tripwire magnetic, even mines that could detect a sapper in the act of defusal and kill him.
After that torpedoes, that could home on the wake or sound signature of a ship.
Then missiles that could sense in infrared, electro optical, electronic signals or the radar cross section.
Following this they even put little sensors inside bomblets and artillery shells that would detect the signature of an armored vehicle below and hit it.
Now modern technology has allowed for even more discriminatory autonomous systems at even lower cost, this allows these kinds of weapons to enter new domains of warfare.
Whether it's it's FPV drones that can fly themselves to a target area and hit vehicles, or long range missiles that can create a picture of an air defense network and make a plan of attack.
That they might be able to be spoofed does not invalidate them; you can spoof a pitfall trap with a big rock, it didn't stop GIs from falling into them.
Decoys can also spoof human eyes and brains, they aren't magic and they have limitations.
>And then being destroyed by drones, mines, artillery
Jets are downed all the time by SAMs and drones stopped by EW and AA, guess airpower is obsolete.
>muh AI
That shit ain’t real, homosexual. We’re as far away from autonomous AI as we are a Mars Colony. Unless you’re going to go full scorched earth and just have “AI” that shoots everything that moves.
I think the cold war concept of the do everything MBT is on the way out, I think you are likely to see a mix of lighter and more specialised AFVs in the future.
There will still likely be a turreted direct fire vehicle, but rather than going for an even bigger gun and even more armor with the associated diminishing returns it will likely actually move to a lower logistical footprint.
The increasing threat to tanks now is non line of sight anti tank weapons, from the spectrum of guided artillery shells and NLOS missiles like Brimstone or spike, all the way down to FPV style drones.
Armor is not an efficient way to protect against this threat, what is needed is a much more comprehensive air Defence.
This is likely to be provided by another specialised vehicle.
The same for artillery, IFV, missile carriers ect.
>droones will obsolete the tank
this one is true
cope
the thing about drones is they are very cheap and easily available by civilians you retard
Okay retard, are the RPG warheads they put on those cheap and easily available to civilians too?
they can make their own explosives like they always did or just drop molotov cocktails
they only need a mission kill and it will be very easy to do in cities
What if the tank has an integrated drone to provide overwatch, anyone that shoots a missile at it will be spotted immediately.
The tanks are not obsolete fags are so pathetic. There's a reason US focused on air superiority and infantry support you fucking retards.
Tanks not being the sole decisive weapon system don't make them obsolete, they never really were.
Tanks were obsolete since WW2 once everyone caught up with the technology.
Can a tank survive fire from other tanks, ATGMs or drones?
>Can a tank survive fire from other tanks, ATGMs or drones?
So tanks are obsolete because they can be killed by a number of weapon systems designed to kill them and your solution is to use vehicles that are even more vulnerable to a greater number of weapon systems?
Tanks are especially useless if you focus on air superiority.
It's to show your argument about IFVs is retarded.
>There's a reason US focused on air superiority
air superiority is intended to degrade enemy capability to fight in preparation for the ground operations and to support the ground operations
but the army itself is expected to fight, otherwise the air force would be the only branch of the armed forces
>and infantry support you fucking retards.
what world do you live in because it sure is not this one
the US expects to operate 6 armored divisions and 3 infantry divisions
of those 3 infantry divisions, 2 of them are the mountain and airborne, leaving only 1 active duty infantry division
while of the 6 armored divisions, 3 are reinforced divisions which dont even have strykers
and 5 of which are classified "infantry" divisions despite being organized as armored
meaning that bulk of the army maneuver capabilities are still in the tank
with infantry existing as armored support, rather than the tank as infantry support
The US didn’t “focus” on anything. The US is standout in everything. The airforce is just more standout because it’s much more powerful and visibly so than other nation’s peer forces, even though American armor could also probably do almost as good a job against their matchups as the Airforce would do against its. You make it sound like the American armored is some third rate poorly funded sideshow when by number it’s the second largest AFV fleet in the world and possibly the largest since Russia is currently losing all their tanks. And it was always the most advanced armored force. Germany’s stuff is technically more advanced but since they have a whole 12 of each of their top of the line AFVs it’s hard to count their stuff as mattering when most of their armor predates the fall of the Berlin Wall.
tanks are going to turn into artillery that goes a bit closer to the front and shoots while moving
That too, tanks are so versatile, to even suggest that they are obsolete demonstrates complete lack of knowledge about modern warfare.
You are a fucking retard.
Nice argument.
>tanks are not obsolete
You retards forgot Ukraine? It shows how obsolete those pieces of shit are in a real conflict.
Tanks are the backbone of both armies, every attack and every defense they play a key role.
This isn't WW2 anymore.
>WW2
>infantry divisions outnumber armored divisions
>today
>almost all "infantry" divisions are actually armored divisions
They are increasingly not the backbone, drone recon and FPV drones are shredding traditional mechanised assaults.
These threats need to be countered to allow for armor concentration again.
Tanks still have greater tactical mobility than any other system in the field, you still would rather have one around them not.
>Tanks still have greater tactical mobility than any other system in the field
Just like Ukraine is showing.
Do you remember that video of the Russian tank coming out of its hiding position to destroy a column of ukie light armored vehicles?
No other system could have taken advantage of that situation in the same way.
>tanks in ukraine are an absolute joke
>a bradley does the job just as well
>retards: tanks are not obsolete
Great how these retards conveniently ignore how useless tanks are in Ukraine.
I guess we aren't watching the same war, because I'm seeing the tank everywhere, leading a assault column, providing direct fire support, executing local counterattacks, exploiting weakened defensive positions and crushing them.
You see a tank attacking trenches with mobiks who don't even have guns. Of course you fags cherry pick only the things you want to see.
It's extremely easy to make AI controlled missiles and drones you fucking retard.
Guess why nobody can fly in Ukraine and nobody can have air superiority you fucking retard.
tankseethers have been cherry picking hard this whole time
You are a fucking retard and there's no point in discussing anything with you you airbrained fucktard. You sincerely are mentally deficient if you think any of this "AI" shit is real. We have limited pattern recognition and it takes quite an effort to place any of it in functional weapons sysems. Whatever the fuck you're trying to convey about "AI controlled missiles and drones" is simply false and non-existent. There are no hunter-killer drones and there won't be for a long time to come.
You've been duped by shitty sillicon valley investor talk.
Listen. My guy. We do not have AI. We have pre programmed systems that rely on uninterrupted communications with large servers being maintained and signaled by humans to operate. Autonomous AI is not possible. Even if it were, current “AI” sucks balls. It can be defeated by face paint, or crab walking. All current “AI” models are based on repetitive and vast databases which, in a heavily jammed airspace would not be possible. Unless you want to shove every drone missile and bomb full of a 20TB NVMe drive so it has its own localized pattern recognition software running and also hope the enemy didn’t adapt by painting their tanks a bright blue that the algorithm can no longer recognize as a tank and instead pancakes into a flock of geese because it vaguely resembled a fighter from the database.
It is not easy to make AI controlled missiles. We cannot make AI controlled anything. We do not have AI. We just don’t. You’re wrong, you don’t know what you’re talking about and you’re wrong.
whatabout guided mortars?
Implessive
impghessive*
That's just mortar that's safer to use in an environment where counter-battery could shut them down otherwise, nice to have.
A breach loading mortar firing munitions like Iron Sting with UAV integration could provide a tank with inexpensive BLOS capability. Probably of questionable survivability outside of COIN, though.
Things like THOR and "iron beam" are coming online faster than anyone expects.
A lot of current drone/ missile weaponry will be obsolete by 2028 if not sooner. The 20-5000ft airspace will be locked the fuck down.
Tanks were *vastly* more vulnerable in the 1950's and 1960's, with shitty armor, no thermals and shit sights, combined with wide proliferation of HEAT weapons of all kinds, AT mines just as powerful as modern ones, and autocanons of >20mm caliber appearing on jet aircraft. Most importantly, NBC weapons were expected to be used constantly, not just strategically but tactically, where and entire tank battalion would get fucking deleted by an atomic bomb from a Mig, or a 203mm shell.
Yet somehow that was the absolute peak of tank production, even though their survivability was worse than ever, before or after. I wonder if it's because there are a lot more variables to this problem than drooling know-nothing retards like yourself realize.
You fags have no idea how AI works. It's so simple a retard can make one.
If someone else has provided all the hardware, tagged all the data and written all the code, sure. Anyone can click the begin training button.
>AT rifles make tanks a little less useful
>AT guns make tanks a little less useful
>mines make tanks quite significantly less useful
>shaped charges have at least some effect on tanks
>missiles make tanks a little less useful
>drones make tanks a little less useful
nowadays they need to be coddled by the airforce and other supporting elements to be useful. They have indeed seen their independence reduced since the 40s, though even then they of course required support.
>nowadays they need to be coddled by the airforce and other supporting elements to be useful.
do you not understand how combined arms works?
>They have indeed seen their independence reduced since the 40s
its non-motorized infantry that have seen their best days behind them
and modern armored divisions are about as independents as they come
virtually all maneuver divisions in the upcoming army reorganization are armored, with only a single regular division being classified as infantry
this means that the armored division, centered around the tank, is the primary unit of maneuver on the battlefield
>do you not understand how combined arms works?
no shit every weapon system is better when supported by every other weapon system, if a system doesn't help towards your overall strategy then why do you have it in the first place?
the point is that a GOOD system can work at least semi-independently, because you don't always have the luxury of infinite stocks of every weapon type in every location. In the 40s a couple of panzer divisions could do decent work even if they had extended beyond the point the infantry could assist them.
>the point is that a GOOD system can work at least semi-independently
its a division, its expected to work somewhat on its own
but thats the point of a division, they are able to be deployed on their own
>In the 40s a couple of panzer divisions could do decent work even if they had extended beyond the point the infantry could assist them.
what are you even talking about?
armored divisions in WW2 had their own mech infantry and artillery
thats the point of a regimental system, they are deployed as combined arms units from the get go
>armored divisions in WW2 had their own mech infantry and artillery
The lucky ones had mech infantry, anyway.
There's "combined arms" as in "our panzer division has mech infantry and artillery in it"
Then there's "combined arms" as in "we don't commit the tanks until everything has been pummelled from the air, then we will send them supported by mine-clearers, APCs, dedicated anti-air systems for countering planes, missiles, and drones, radars, MLRS striking targets in their path, and our own drones and satellites providing intel"
they are CLEARLY less independent than they used to be because of the litany of newer systems that can destroy tanks. Where a couple of counters existed before, now there are a dozen or so.
No I am not OP I just don't accept the idea that the usefulness of the tank has been completely unaffected by 80 years of increasing attempts to beat the tank meta. We already entered an air force meta long ago regardless, as should have been made abundantly clear in 1991.
>The lucky ones had mech infantry, anyway.
germans typically had 1 mech infantry battalion and the rest motorized
US infantry had 3 mech infantry battalions
>they are CLEARLY less independent than they used to be because of the litany of newer systems that can destroy tanks.
they are organized to be more independent than they ever have been prior
with the removal of regiments as a tactical unit and the move to brigades
so a division is capable of independently maneuvering on its own on the battlefield
OP is this your post?
In 1940 everyone was retarded. Armor was never independent aside from a one week period in France when Rommel encountered no resistance because the entire French army including reserves was busy in Belgium. Armored only thrusts failed in North Africa and Russia and were never attempted again past 1942 and only even occurred in Russia because of horrible coordination.
there is a spectrum between "armored only" and the current absolute smorgasbord of systems acting in concert for one little tank push.
In WW2 successful armored thrusts required combined arms support of the air, infantry, and artillery. In modern war successful armored thrusts require the combined arms support of the air, infantry, and artillery. War has gotten more complicated it hasn’t significantly changed. No less dedication is required to make the modern battlefield work, what has changed is the ability to actually fund the systems necessary for it.
>there is a spectrum between "armored only" and the current absolute smorgasbord of systems acting in concert for one little tank push.
modern armored brigade team very closely mirrors a WW2 combat command
the armored brigades are combined with the infantry battalions to form task-oriented combined arms battalions
and with FIST/air control to spot for fires
the main difference from their WW2 counterparts is that modern radios allow for every platoon to be able to call in a fire mission whereas in WW2 strike missions were usually pre-planned affairs
but artillery works almost exactly like it did in WW2, just faster since infantry can talk to batteries directly instead of calling a FO first
combined arms has always been a thing and its always been seen as a basic necessity to conduct a mission
militaries have just gotten a lot better at implementing it thanks to experience and technology, but its the same fundamental way war has been conducted
>retarded commie dictator was wrong about x
HUH! Wait till you read their high iq takes on agriculture.
> you're at the last line. when will it end?
It's already at the end. There are no more lines. The moment mass produced drones start carrying around AT missiles instead of kamikaze type explosives it's game over. Fly drone 10 km, kill tank or two, go back for two more rockets, kill two more tanks, rinse and repeat.
tanks will be obsolete when they are too expensive to use compared to any other vehicle; when & or if that happens, i have no idea
"tank" is already a subjective somewhat term, take the M10 Booker for instance, where they call it an "assault gun" meanwhile the M4 Sherman is called both an assault gun & tank; its meaningless at the end of the day
i feel like the term tank should be used only for vehicles that fit the current MBT role while still being used primarily to destroy other MBTs
i believe in the future, armored vehicles will become essentially a set of 3-4 chassis systems scaling from size to weight, utilizing modular armor & weapons, with the choice of tracks or wheels, and amphibious capability; we're already there, its just not fully embraced & standardized yet
Modular anything is a meme. You need to store modules somewhere, service them and have designated trained crews for each module. So adding tracks to these modules isn't that much expensive by and large.
It's far harder to adapt horses (impossible) to new threats (very limited weight limit). Even horses on steroids are worse than machines.
The tank is a concept that has been adapted continuously during the last 110 years.
There is no ending of the cycle, a tank is the pinnacle of ground combat and will always be that way. If you have no tanks you cannot advance unless you want to do russian style meat assaults. The very existence of it forces you to have countermeasures for it that put human lives in a greater risk than the crew of said tank just to have a chance of stopping it. If you have no countermeasures for it or fail to operate them properly you still die to the tank like the russians who missed with atgms which resulted in the tank just plowing through their trenches making flesh pancakes.
You will always need and benefit from having mobile armor.
Your definition of "obsolete" and the people who made those claims are different. Tank warfare, where the majority of your resources and R&D is put into them, is obsolete. There will always be some version of a tank but only a retard would think we are ever going back to WW2 style armored divisions.