In the future, there will be one vehicle that does everything.
We're already moving away from specialization in the air. The F-35 is capable of air superiority, close air support, bombing enemy industry, conducting electronic warfare, reconnaissance, mid-air refueling, and VTOL flight.
IFV's are already capable of scouting, reconnaissance, anti-tank activities, infantry support, transportation, delivering supplies, and commanding troops. The concept is continuing to be refined to encompass even more roles.
Someday, all vehicles will be condensed down into a single vehicle that can float, submerge, fly, and drive across all terrain, and do every feasible role. Warfare will be entirely down to who can produce more of this weapon.
That vehicle is called an SLBM
If we're gonna meme about it, the answer is actually nanomachines, son.
Lol quite the opposite as militaries tend to go in the direction of systems of small dedicated units instead of some independent do-it-all's. It only works for submarines but that's because of their nature.
If that were true we wouldn't be consolidating our vehicles into increasingly generic vehicles.
I dont see that. US just added new type of infantry support vehicle because neighter ifv or tank was good enough.
Wrong, IFV's are good enough for their role, but tanks are obsolescent given the only capapbility advantage they bring is the cannon with costs that out weigh the usefulness of redundantly heavy frontal armor. that's why the us is investing in new IFV's, and the MPF platform, but not a new abrams :/
you're retarded and everything you said is wrong. There's a new Abrams variant and the DLP program too
"We" - You aren't doing shit
As for why, Peace leads to multiroles and compromises in the name of cost - War leads to specialism as during war the cost that you cannot afford is experienced crews
Except multiroles are better for saving experienced crew costs too. Better to have an experienced crew that performs a dozen different jobs, than having to train 12 different experienced crews to perform one job.
Multiroles are way better for war, if we're talking about fighter aircraft. Air Forces used to operate 4-6 variants of the same damn jet, or different models altogether: air superiority/interceptor, attack/strike, recon, night fighter, maritime strike...
And that fucking sucked for many countries because of limited hangar space. What if you lost all your air superiority fighters but still had all your strike fighters left? you can't fly them safely anymore, would've been better to go all-in on air superiority. With 4th gen, jets became modular with podded systems. Now you can turn an F-16 or an F/A-18 into a strike or tactical recon craft just by temporarily mounting a pod to it. You've gained a much stronger air force because now all your recon and strike craft do air superiority by default. And an F-35 no longer needs pods at all. Faster turn-around time, don't worry about losing your precious pods on missions (as if!) and every mission is now a recon mission.
Nothing better than standardized wheeled everything, tracks for MBT only.
They can add tracks if need be, it's entirely dependant on order
high speed no drag gay future combat
High speed no drag is a retarded ideology. The average AFV costs how much? How much are the people in it worth? Not to mention the fact that the loss of a vehicle increases the burden on the other vehicles in a group, decreasing combat effectiveness.
Exactly.
>wheels
the RUSI report that just came out specifically identified bogged wheeled APCs (Maxxpros I think) as one of the causes for that tank photo, you know the one, of leos blown up in Ukraine. tanks went first, were fine, because tracks. wheels came after, instantly got bogged.
anything that's going to be at the tip of the spear needs tracks. simple as.
The problem is that all the various shit people hope that just a future MBT will be able to do requires equipment that take up space and have a weight. A fighter jet may be able to witch between air superiority and attack just by the weapons you hang on to its pylons, but so far at leats it isn't the case for ground vehicles. Odds are it'll remains so for quite some time too since, well, you usually want a lot of it all inside of the armour. The cost of aircraft also means it makes more sense to have a few vehicles with add on modules (recon pods, etc), whereas for cheaper ground vehicles you may as well give each module its own chassis so you'll always have something to haul it around with.
It also seems to me that the modern vehicle flora is pretty well cut down already, with further reductions being pretty hard.
Many roles are also near impossible to combine. Sure, a Bradley can do a lot, but try replacing your basic cargo truck or staff car with it and you're going to find that a significant overhead on maintenance does not make up for severe shortfalls in budget and fuel reserves. Which is actually rather similar to how it is in the air, the F-35 isn't going to replace the C-130 any time soon.
There's even some possibility of things starting to go the other way. For example with all the shit people really want a future MBT be able to do it's looking pretty questionable if all of that, and some room for future improvements, can be squeezed into an 80 ton weight budget. (It's hardly an MBT-specific concern either, things like the Boxer is starting to preposterously humongous) On suggested solution is to split the vehicle into multiple ones, meant to work together as single never-to-be-split teams on the battlefield. (No, I have no idea how they'd deal with losses.) Fuck knows if it's a good idea or not, the future will tell. https://youtu.be/iFs6LG0TEyU?si=KSHoca3gIMBYXkuV&t=931
>one vehicle that does everything
>pylons
Are all Gavins a one Kind?
M752 or M901 make for a capable family but definitely not as condensed as changing jdam for a fuel tank
>Are all Gavins a one Kind?
>M752 or M901 make for a capable family
I'm interpreting OP as looking for a single vehicle, not a family. Though even with a family there are certain limits, the drivetrain and suspension from your MBT will be quite wasteful both in money and weight on a 20 ton vehicle.
yes we all know what a Bolo is. well done OP.
Wasn't the chieftain commenting we are actually going that way, we explained due increasing requirements tanks are getting heavier and heavier, I suppose you can help through material science innovations but there is going to be a limit to what physics allow.
So a 5.45mm point defense gattling gun replaces one of the 30mm AGLs, mount a MLRS over the turret bustle, put drone launch pads on flip down boxes on the track guards and Best Korea is good to go?
And you could apply the same principle to having some kind of re-usable recoilless launcher for your infantry. You've got HEAT for antitank and HE for antipersonnel/anti-structure. But what if it was all HEDP instead that does both? The gunner's assistant can only carry 3 or 4 rounds, but now they're all always of the type needed most. And the supply truck bringing more ammo is also always loaded with the most ideal type of ammo, and so is the nearest depot.
(yeah, I know this is a bad example since HEDP is usually severely compromised in penetration efficiency)
unmanned alien tictac with focused radiation and sonic weaponry capable of atomizing matter at will with absolute precision.
this technology will involve arcane unheated liquid gold electromagnetic spherical centrifuge gravity-breaking engines beyond our current understanding of physics, as was revealed to me by tall whites in a sort of psychic non verbal car-salesman pitch in one of the most vivid, sober dreams i've ever had and written down/illustrated.
Total mastery of galactic scale infrastructure and macro-scale computation arrays capable of simulating infinite causality across all space time in an instant granting us ultimate guidance based on trillions of simulated failures and successes as consequences of simulated choices, trillions upon trillions of times over in mere human seconds.
The life-experiencing-itself learning machine that is DNA: purified into ultimate instantaneous self-simulation and experience by arcane circuitry.
DNA will have resulted in the simultaneous creation of both God AI and total obsolescence of itself, which will inevitably simplify itself back down to the optimal self-replicating, self-adapting efficient hardware of data infrastructure and calculation that is DNA once cosmic time scales are understood by it.
While you seem insane the "transmedia UAP" we've been hearing shockingly consistent stories about lately would in fact be an ideal all purpose combat machine
I know is probably just insane or joking but he actually has a point
In the (very very) far future, if manipulation of perceived reality itself is possible, for a necessarily advanced civilization, using and influencing fundamentals of physics there could be one „thing“ that can do „anything“ but only what we right now can understand as such
you don't need all that schizo shit. "just" make a strong interaction force material, coat your armor and projectiles in the stuff, and throw in some mass produced anti-matter weapons for good measure. boom murder fucker 9000 is born and now you're impervious to everything except reality warping hax.
I'm talking completely out of my ass, but I imagine the tank of the future to basically be a modular drone swarm.
There is a command vehicle, where the crew is safe, away from the action and they control a couple of drones with dedicated jobs. One for recon/ELINT, one with a main gun, one for AA, maybe one that carries the ammo. Something like that.
That way you have a modular setup you can tailor to the job you need and a single hit can't disable the whole system. If the ammo carrier cooks of, the rest of the drones can return to base and the crew doesn't get fried.
>Jap animators jerking off to a UN military
In the far future, the ultimate fighting machines that can do everything will take the form of young females