Why are tanks so easy to destroy. I've grown up with the idea that they've got some sort of invincibility until the day I saw them mogged the frick out in Syria by RPG7 a decade ago and the war in Ukraine is not only confirming my disappointment with tanks but also reinforcing it with Western made tanks only barely in better shape than their Russian counterparts. Did anti-armor weaponry get better or did tanks just fail to adapt
Panzerfaust did similar work in the second world war. All that's different is a lot of shit. But mainly quantity has a quality all its own.
Tanks have never been invincible, its just a lot better than trying to operate a field gun without armor and a self propelled tracked mount.
>I've grown up with the idea that they've got some sort of invincibility
Only during the Gulf War, tanks have always been wiped out in big numbers (even in successful battles) except in 1991.
Even in the Six Day War the Israelis lost 400+ tanks, and that's before the Arabs got the Sagger.
Tanks always were 'disposable'. Since WWI, most field guns designed in 1890-1910 could destroy any WWI tank.
The only deviation were asymmetrical conflicts were even the destroyed tanks could be ***recovered***.
During WWII ~100,000 armored vehicles were 'lost', a lot of them by the front line movement after a simple mechanical failure, mines.
Soviets lost a lot of tanks during COIN/rebellions because they simply didn't recover those old tanks.
Iraq was so lopsided that the only chance to disable a M1 was with large IEDs.
In first place the "destroyed" term isn't something well defined. Some countries would fix the tank of your pic... Another matter is crew survival.
Why exactly are modern countries unable to make tanks in any significant quantity anyways? Why were the Soviets able to produce 100,000 T-55s yet Russia can only make ~240 T-90Ms a year (not even sure if they make new hulls for them or just use T-72s) and I'm not even gonna touch on the laughable quantities thr US and Germany make
Because of the electronics required for modern things like stabilizers and thermals.
The T-55, T-34, M4, Pz-III were exceptions. For most MBT and mediums 5-10k per decade is the usual production rate.
Pre-1960 (ATGM) the only thing actually killing a tank was another tank/heavy gun, that's why tanks were more numerous. Nowadays the a MBT must be far better than any other AFV to exists, numbers are screwed in favor of complex and more expensive designs so they're fewer. Current CAS, ATGM makes comparisons using tank-vs-tank numbers kinda meaningless.
>Pre-1960 (ATGM) the only thing actually killing a tank was another tank/heavy gun,
Now you're limited by terrain to avoid the problem of accuracy, range and enemy arty. HEAT is only effective when it hits.
>HEAT is only effective when it hits.
As opposed to KE?
Compare the effective range of super bazooka, RPG-2/7 with a 100mm/90mm or the average engagement distance during WWII/Korean war.
They can destroy tanks, they're useful with a favorable terrain but you can't use them as basis for your anti-armor doctrine. GMs changed that in far greater extent than AT unguided rockets.
>super bazooka, RPG-2/7
and recoilless rifle*
>Pre-1960 (ATGM) the only thing actually killing a tank was another tank/heavy gun
NO
tanks were vulnerable throughout their history - at start of WW2 most/all tanks were were so lightly armored that ewen man portable rifle was able to pen them - later came AT grenades, drones (yes during ww2 - goliaths) panzerfausts bazookas... and of course do not forget about mines and artillery destroying/disabling tanks since day one
Tanks had 500~2500m effect range, anti-tank had 0 to 100m range unless it is completely immobile At-gun or total rng crapshoot with arty. A single Tiger or Kv-2 on a hill used to be operational level problems that can stall formations for a day.
Today any tank on a hill is simple to combined arm force larger than a platoon.
>larger than a platoon.
if you got javelins or other atgms not even that
Even with javelins, stryker companies get smoked by armored companies in exercises
>A single Tiger or Kv-2 on a hill used to be operational level problems
that's where attack planes (first dive bombers and later attack craft armed with missiles and/or at canons or simply artillery come in - at the end of ww2 Germans were truly terrified of allied airforce and planned offensives for when bad weather/overcast was expected (Ardennes fe)
they didnt need the factories anymore so they decommissioned them.
Because there was no need for them in the past 40 years so production facilities don't exist to produce them in such numbers anymore. Tanks in the west are, for the most part, built by private companies operating on the free market, if there are no orders for thousands of tanks they won't built and maintain facilities to produce thousands of tanks. Tanks are exactly the same as all other commodities, supply and demand. If you're not buying thousands of tanks then no one is going to make thousands of tanks.
>Why exactly are modern countries unable to make tanks in any significant quantity anyways?
smaller factories
> Why were the Soviets able to produce 100,000 T-55s yet Russia can only make ~240 T-90Ms a year (not even sure if they make new hulls for them or just use T-72s)
USSR is just much bigger than the russia economically
they also had strategic impetus to make so many, because a massive overmatch in army size was the only counter-balance they had to a US nuclear strike
> and I'm not even gonna touch on the laughable quantities thr US and Germany make
US isnt at full-time war production like they were in WW2
M4s were pumped out of multiple factories running 3 shifts a day
the M1s are currently only made at a single factory with a emphasis on refurbishing old hulls to modern standards, there simply isnt a war big enough to warrant 10,000 M1s in a single theatre
wartime economy is bad for the economy as a whole, so the US isnt going to go into it unless theres a serious reason
pressed car company, ALCO, FMW, lima locomotive all went out of business less than 10 years after the war ended because orders for their tanks disappeared with the reduction in army size
ford and chrysler kept existing only because they had massively diversified portfolios that allowed them to keep contracts after the war
Armies are much smaller today than they were in the past, and quality has largely replaced quantity as the deciding factor in war.
Well you need a huge infrastructure to build a modern tank and Putin stole most of the extra cash for 20 years lol
Tank is like saying aircraft. You can mass produce some cheap and others really expensive.
Cobson would never have such a garbage take on Tanks
Armor just needs to evolve.
>hard outer shell
>claws on front
replace the tracks with multiple legs and the final step of evolution (crab) will be complete
>Carcinization of tanks
It was inevitable.
>Why are tanks so easy to destroy.
they arent
> I've grown up with the idea that they've got some sort of invincibility until the day I saw them mogged the frick out in Syria by RPG7
think about the circumstances necessary to knock a tank out with an RPG
you need a side shot or roof shot, only possible at close range and in built up terrain and when no supporting arms are near a tank
now consider what it takes to defeat an IFV, an M2 bradley can only survive an RPG shot with ERA, and then only once
while you need RPG spam to even stand a chance of knocking a tank
a humvee doesnt even need that, it can be knocked out with HMG fire or enough rifle fire
>reinforcing it with Western made tanks only barely in better shape than their Russian counterparts.
russians are chimping out that they captured a single M1A1
russian T-72s are being knocked out in far greater amount
>id anti-armor weaponry get better or did tanks just fail to adapt
anti-armor weapons are getting better, but tanks have more than kept up
an M1A1 abrams is more resistant to RPGs than the M4 sherman was to panzerausts
Turns out you were mistaken. Maybe read a book from time to time?
>western tanks are only marginally better
True, but they are still better, especially at preserving their crews. They are by no means indestructible, though.
>T72 knocked out in greater number
Anon, there are orders of magnitude more T72s than western tanks engaged in this war, of course more get destroyed. Western tanks perform better in a lot of ways, but your reasoning is faulty.
The fact that you literally need specialized weapons just to deal with tanks means they work. Having anti-tank weapons is another logistical burden you and the enemy have to deal with, and not having them means you're fricked. Also, the Ukraine war being proof that the tank is dead doesn't hold any water when both Ukraine and Russia are jumping through fricking hoops just to get more AFVs.
> Also, the Ukraine war being proof that the tank is dead doesn't hold any water when both Ukraine and Russia are jumping through fricking hoops just to get more AFVs.
This. The same goes for people proclaiming drones are the biggest thing in the war while both sides frantically try to secure artillery ammunition.
It's a tale as old as time that a new technology will make everything else before it obsolete, instead of just being another addition to combined arms warfare. Even the humble spear arguably hasn't gone anywhere (bayonets), it's just a lot more niche now.
>It's a tale as old as time that a new technology will make everything else before it obsolete, instead of just being another addition to combined arms warfare
He's harnessing the power of his Mongol ancestry
Indonesian soldiers get slaughtered by native bows to this day even though the natives have plenty of automatic weapons.
>Indonesian soldiers get slaughtered by native bows to this day even though the natives have plenty of automatic weapons.
Yeah. At least they aren't blown to bits. I think it's not only that bows are silent but to send a message.
I should also clarify, this isn't necessarily true when said tech is a direct upgrade. Like horse drawn carriages vs motorized vehicles (altho you can probably find autistic use cases for horses if you try hard enough). People just mistake one thing for a direct upgrade instead of filling a new niche or complementing another thing.
There was one, as recently as the start of OEF. It was easier to use horses in the opening days than it was for motorized or mechanized platforms. It was a very limited use case. I believe Mules were also used at one point as beasts of burden.
The Ukrainians were hoarding arty shells for the kill box trap they just sprung. They were lying About shortages to confuse Russians and get more faster. They did this less before less than a year ago.
Russians just keep falling for it
/k/ has a weird belief system that the US privately produces tanks — it does not. The M1 is built at the Lima Army Tank Plant which is a government-owned factory controlled by the Department of Defense and managed by General Dynamics. It’s been almost closed down several times over the last 15 years and only kept alive with emergency political support.
MBTs have heavy front and turret armor. Killing one involves disabling the drive system or hitting the engine. Russian tank design wasn’t that clever and favored firepower over survivability.
>Russian tank design wasn’t that clever and favored firepower over survivability.
That's not entirely true, the problem was their survivability was in large part based on the fact they were smaller and lower profile and as such presented a smaller target, which might have been great before modern fire computers, gun stabilizers, laser range finders, thermal cameras, etc, became common and reliable enough.
Then the Soviet union took a nosedive and what came out was a Russian state with a bunch of tanks and no money so crappy modernised soviet tanks is the best you get.
>I've grown up with the idea
that's a (you) problem
Tanks.have always only been able to withstand punishment from the frontal arc.
FPV drones can now reliably target areas that were always considered as "if they hit you here you've already fricked up and there's no saving you" weak spots such as the rear of the turret, where even the most basic of HEAT warheads will be enough to penetrate.
Modern ATGMs have enough penetration to spare to wipe out any MBT in existence anyway.
The key to using MBTs is not giving the enemy the chance to employ the MBT-killing weapons effectively.
>The key to using MBTs is
having air superiority
> employ the MBT-killing weapons effectively
destroy their MTBs from air
air superiority won't kill those atgm and drone teams.
Air superiority inherently makes logistics hell, so those tank hunter teams are left without a pretty important thing - munitions and forward operating base.
And then get clustered all the way to Narnia.
ok that's true. but you will not have complete AS against a nation like ukraine that has a shitload of manpads or donated equipment. or russia.
True. Desert Storm was probably the last time true air superiority was demonstrated.
Towelhead deletions in Afghanistan don't count, and Serbia was straight up corpsecamped.
>what are air to ground munitions
If air superiority can kill single dude popping out of hide-y hole for 20s shot, air superiority can kill everything and you don't need a tank, certainly not one with 120mm APFSDS optimized gun to kill other tanks since the other side can not have tanks against this much airpower.
If you have air power, you get some namer or breacher-engineer vehicle or super MRAP because air power doesn't kill mines.
>air superiority won't kill those atgm and drone teams.
It literally will homosexual.
if it comes low enough to target those atgm teams, it's in the crosshair of a manpad team.
Keep in mind, for every measure there will eventually be a countermeasure. For every extinction of a category of systems, there are first a hundred evolutions.
>Why are tanks so easy to destroy
because engineers spent the better half of the last century to come up with more and more effective anti tank solutions.
>because engineers spent the better half of the last century to come up with more and more effective anti tank solutions.
which have been countered with advances in tank protection
yeah but anti tank is most of the time ahead of the protection. you can also eqiup your infantry way more faster with your newest tankfister2000 than you can equip all your tanks with the corresponding countermeasure. also if you use 60 year old tanks like the russians do all of that doesnt matter they just get fricked.
>yeah but anti tank is most of the time ahead of the protection.
tanks are currently far better protected against current threats than they ever have been in the past
> you can also eqiup your infantry way more faster with your newest tankfister2000 than you can equip all your tanks with the corresponding countermeasure.
infantry and tanks have been re-equipped at relatively equal rates
the M1 has actually been upgraded much more often than the M2 bradley has
with 3 different SEP packages in the 2000s and the E3 on the way
>tanks are currently far better protected against current threats than they ever have been in the past
against 60yo RPG-7s and even that can frick up modern tanks from the side
>current threats
zero protection against drones
>against 60yo RPG-7s and even that can frick up modern tanks from the side
RPG-7 can only defeat the lower side hull
side turret is immune, front turret is extremely immune
>zero protection against drones
main threats are ATGMs and handheld rockets
protection against them is good against a frontal 90-degree arc
this is very good protection
side-shots require flanking by enemy forces which is unlikely
>protection against them is good against a frontal 90-degree arc
>this is very good protection
i think you missed those fat ass tandem-heat atgms with 1200mm+ pen atgms or top attack atgms
>i think you missed those fat ass tandem-heat atgms with 1200mm+ pen atgms
M1A2 can frontally resist those
>or top attack atgms
M1A2 SEP3 has APS
in any case, it achieves extremely high protection against modern weapons
>M1A2 SEP3 has APS
No videos of APS actually working in Gaza.
>No videos of APS actually working in Gaza.
it has a 90% interception rate
the 10% was from people forgetting to turn it on because they were not expecting an attack
>it has a 90% interception rate
Believing what the israelites say.
>main threats are ATGMs and handheld rockets
Not anymore, stop coping.
>stop coping.
ironic, considering this is drone cope
the ATGM is still the primary anti-tank weapon at the regiment level and below
>Why are tanks so easy to destroy.
It's much easier and faster to mass produce the newest anti tank weapon than to produce new tanks that can counter it.
tanks were never meant to be sent alone in recon missions as russia and ukraine seem to do. Factor in the use of drones and you get an incredibly vulnerable, almost blind metal box rolling around. Also, you don't really need to completely destroy a tank in order to neutralize it. If you frick up it's mobility or optics then it's over. Most "destroyed" tanks are mobility kills, later finished off so they can't be brought back and repaired. All in all, tanks were always weak to lots of things.
tanks are 60 tons of steel, they aren't easy to destroy, some groups(russo's) are very sloppy with ammo storage though
same shit that killed ships in ww2
All that steel needs a hole the size of a dime to channel liquid molten metal. Or an open hatch for a drone-dropped grenade to fall into. IFVs are the future of 'tanks'. They'll get rekt too but costs much less and can carry troops.
>All that steel needs a hole the size of a dime to channel liquid molten metal
dime-sized hole leads to poor-post pen effects
>Or an open hatch for a drone-dropped grenade to fall into
no one keeps their hatches open when you have RWS and CITV
>Vs are the future of 'tanks'. They'll get rekt too but costs much less and can carry troops.
IFVs literally exist to support tanks
the future is MBTs and IFVs in a combat team
this is literally how US armored brigades operate, with 2 tank companies and 1 mech infantry company
the IFV is a complement to the MBT, not a replacement
>Why are tanks so easy to destroy
They exist for more than a century so the civilization had a plenty of time to come up with ideas of countering them.
Tanks are there to be major inconveniences to non-mechanized infantry and non-tank accompanied mechanized infantry. They're not worth a whole lote outside of the framework of combined arms to open the window of opportunity for war of movement exploitation & big gains as against static positional/attrition warfare. Drones are overtaking the aggressive recon role from armor and light infantry over in Ukraine, but push come to shove they will be a lot less of an issue once proper combined arms, SEAD, and deep strike on logistics/force concentrations prolapse the area of operations for an actually high tech (Western) strategic offensive is in play. Displace the drone operators (or shellack their operating bases) faster than they can displace, and they're not relevant (and all this is in isolation from EWS, and presumably a deficit thereof following such thorough battlespace preparation.
SPG & Assault Gun Infantry Tank baby sitters is just a feature the static positional war being fought by two second rate powers at best; direct fire support from the tank is handier, faster and cheaper than calling in artillery much of the time. Heavier automated mortar carriers will probably be favored by NATO powers over sitting expensive MBTs that could be held for proper attacks (or fire brigade reserves to plug holes) for places not using things like the US' Booker.
>Tanks are there to be major inconveniences to non-mechanized infantry and non-tank accompanied mechanized infantry
tanks are there to maneuver and breakthrough on the battlefield
the main destruction of enemy forces will come from the encirclement, which is done with fast-moving, hard-hitting, units liek tanks
>They're not worth a whole lote outside of the framework of combined arms to open the window of opportunity for war of movement exploitation & big gains as against static positional/attrition warfare
nothing exists outside of a combined arms framework
infantry exist to support tanks, artillery exists to hold enemy positions in place