I've noticed there aren't a ton of tanks in my area and I'm wondering if there's some dragon's teeth buried in my lawn somewhere. Might do some random digging to find out.
Are the tank traps also getting smaller as the result of shrinkflation? The 200g to 170g change in Toblerone bars is the first example in the Wikipedia article:
The ones which Russia is now deploying in Ukraine don't appear to be anchored in the ground, just laid on top of it - you can just push them away with a bulldozer or a group of people.
Former infantry here - One of the things that was drilled into my head, obstacles should always be covered by fire to deter these sorts of things. If you can't cover it by fire, then maybe it's not worth putting on obstacle on.
Also former infantry: To expand the point, in US Army doctrine, an obstacle has one of four effects, block, turn, fix, or disrupt.
Typically, you use obstacles in engagement area development as part of a defense. An obstacle that's not observed isn't valuable because it's easy to circumvent. You can probably use a bulldozer (guessing, I was light infantry, not a tanker) to breach the dragon's teeth relatively quickly so the obstacle doesn't have the intended effect. However, it's much harder to breach the dragon's teeth if someone is shooting at you. Now you need an armored bulldozer, or enough suppressing fire to cover the breach.
The way Russians teach it, obstacles and mine fields just buys you some time.
Crucial time to put your pull your reserves to the critical areas, sight in your artillery or call in air support.
Even worse, it buys you very little combat time for a lot of preparation time.
However, on top of the shame for what Russians are doing in Ukraine, the shame for how they are doing it is almost as disgracing.
Video description: Drone video of a Russian armored column advancing when a mine-clearing vehicle gets hit, suffers earth shattering kaboom when the mine-clearing charge goes up.
The idea is that for every 20 tanks the enemy has there's probably one RC bulldozer. Without the obstacles they would quickly advance over few hundred meters, now they are forced into a bottleneck, perhaps giving you just enough time to bring in the ATGM team.
I saw a video of a Russian tank approaching an anti-tank mine sitting in the middle of the road, and they just... drove over it, causing detonation. It wasn't camouflaged at all, it was just sitting there.
I'm not sure what the soldiers in the tank expected. Maybe they missed the "don't drive over obvious mines" day in tank school.
Tanks don't have all that great visibility, soldiers sleep a little in bad conditions, often eat a little + crappy food and are under high stress. Triple so in Russian army by all accounts I read.
Drivers in cars in best conditions fail to notice things, so it is not all that surprising that Russian army soldier would not notice things.
The defensive line is very long and it's going to be impossible to cover it with fire.
So the dragon's teeth are really just for show.
There's something very, very seriously wrong with the Russian military. Although that's really not a bad thing as far as Ukraine and the West are concerned.
Wagner group built that defensive line. Their leader might have political goals, maybe eventually succeed to Putin (which is 70.) Those lines, especially the one in Russia, could have little military meaning but a lot of political one.
The video in question is a kill zone intended to be covered by fire. The obstacles only need to impede movement. If you stop to remove them, you will get destroyed (if the plan holds).
If you know the exact location a tank will be in at a certain time, the term "sitting duck" comes to mind. There is nothing effektive to stop a human that wants to get from point A to point B. Except for another human.
Also if they don't actively defend them, the advantage won't last much; a few wooden boards placed vertically around a small area and a single truck pouring rocks and concrete over it can build a small bridge that would dry in a few days, unless the Ukrainians already have moveable tank capable bridges.
> unless the Ukrainians already have moveable tank capable bridges
I am pretty sure they've had them for a long time, not least because they did multiple river crossings, many successful. Their army is quite capable, and was already quite capable prior to the post-February wave of foreign support. For example in the air defense department, as far as Europe goes they were only second to Russia (though the missiles are starting to run out).
Ukraine was deeply integrated into the USSR and even Russian military industrial complex - shipbuilding (after Moskva sank the remaining best ships in the Black Sea Fleet are made in Ukraine, Mykolaiv I think), engines (both turbojet/turbofan and rocket), whole aircraft manufacturing (Antonov), assembly of armored vehicles ... The lead designer of R-7, the first serious space rocket and the reason why Russians think they won the space race, was a Ukrainian.
Right next to trenches where they can be pushed into and covered in dirt. I would laugh if it weren't for the fact that people are dying to these clowns.
I live in Aachen, Germany, and there are a bunch of these near the tri-border with the Netherlands and Belgium. I think most people don't even know what they are, and some of them are so covered with dirt and vegetation only a keen eye can spot them.
Yes, I tend to search for bullet holes around the city a lot, which is a weird thing to do now that I said something about it.
If you go town through Krefelderstraße there is a bunch of them on the buildings. The cathedral has some places with grenade shrapnel as well. Some iron gates around the city have little indents from bullets as well. There are a bunch of tanks abandoned in one of the forests to the south, near Brand. Some streets have "gaps" where houses were never reconstructed.
70 something years later and the destruction is still very much visible.
I suddenly feel the urge to spread a crackpot theory that the pyramids of Giza are really the remnants of a range of dragon’s teeth protecting against giant forgotten-ancient-civilization tanks.
Swiss have their own version in the western part, called now Toblerone line, built after WWI. Now a tourist attraction with hike paths around them, each block weighting 9 tons (and it runs 10km straight up to Jura mountains), the line basically cutting off westernmost part of country (basically Geneva) off the rest.
They don't treat it as something ancient though, there is also modern part of it integrated into road [1], but nothing I could notice on highway though. Bear in mind this would protect Switzerland from an attack from France, which these days seems... unprobable.
Curious from someone with more knowledge. Given some of the results from the war in Ukraine, what's the latest viewpoint on tanks in modern warfare?
All I can say is I would rather be an infantryman than a tank operator. Seems way too easy to be a sitting duck given the effectiveness of anti-tank missiles. Honestly I don't really understand the need for manned tanks in any case. Why couldn't they just be operated remotely, and then put your actual soldiers in more nimble forms of transport?
> Given some of the results from the war in Ukraine, what's the latest viewpoint on tanks in modern warfare?
You're only asking part of a question. It's not whether the tank as a piece of equipment is universally useful, but does an army have a battlefield doctrine that uses tanks well.
A tank in general is a useful piece of equipment. It's a bunch of firepower, sensors, and radios all under armor while being highly mobile. A tank can see enemy forces a long ways away, shoot at them, then coordinate with friendly forces to also shoot at the enemy.
Tanks however aren't invulnerable. They also end up with poor situational awareness when the crew is all buttoned up under armor. So tanks just sent out by themselves with no infantry support find themselves big obvious targets for enemy infantry with effective anti-tank weapons.
If an army's doctrine keeps tanks in good repair, well supplied, and uses them in concert with supporting forces they can be amazingly effective. If instead an army's doctrine doesn't value logistics and presumes tanks are invulnerable they can be laughably ineffective.
Russia has been demonstrating laughably terrible battlefield doctrine. They're losing as many tanks to their own ineptitude as they are to enemy action. Their performance isn't an indictment against tanks as a weapon but Russia's particular doctrine and military practices.
From a former tanker I know: This has proved that poorly driven and commanded tanks are vulnerable.
The Russians are really bad at doing the things necessary to protect themselves. They're all buttoned up. There are a ton of pictures where they're essentially ambushed while in parade formation, rather than how you'd be on a road in a hostile area.
If against an opponent with a functional military-industrial base, I'd want to be neither.
I feel like the next major war will be swarms of Slaughterbots[1] but with thousands of anti-materiel drones, as well as the hundreds of thousands of anti-personnel ones.
If you can't achieve a near-hermetic control of the airspace, anything outside, and much inside is minutes from bring speared by jets of molten metal.
And even then, the cost of intercepting them is far higher then the cost of sending multiples until the anti-drone ammunition runs out (and meanwhile any electronic warfare emitter is being hammered by radiation-seeking weapons).
It should be noted that we're not seeing large russian infantry formations walking around safely while the tanks and other armored vehicles are sitting ducks. Yes, tanks aren't invulnerable, but anti tank missiles are expensive, bulky, and require some advanced training. With advances in technology and western support, Ukraine is fielding more anti-tank weapons than the russians anticipated, but it still is nothing compared to the number of more traditional weapons like machine guns or mortars it could have pulled out of cold war stockpiles. The russians decided to send in mechanized units with minimal to no infantry support because 1) they needed to advance quickly since their logistics could not support a prolonged war, and 2) any russian walking through Ukraine's flat and open terrain without a few inches of armor around them is a dead man. It's Zap Brannigan logic - a Ukrainian squad can only carry a limited number of anti-tank munitions so you just need to keep sending tanks until they reach their kill count and shut down. This turned out to be a bad strategy which mostly has just resulted in lots of destroyed tanks with few strategic gains, but had they done things differently odds are there would just be a lot of dead infantrymen around those destroyed tanks.
As for unmanned tanks, these have been explored time and again but they don't really work well. Truly autonomous tanks are extremely difficult to implement compared to say UAVs because it's very difficult to navigate. Remote control relies on reliable communication which is pretty difficult to achieve, especially if your adversary is being supported by a more technologically advanced superpower. You basically need a tank crew in another armored vehicle very nearby. This armored vehicle is still vulnerable so you're risking soldiers lives and those soldiers are basically doing twice the work operating and maintaining two vehicles instead of one, plus consuming twice the fuel, without doubling the firepower.
> The russians decided to send in mechanized units because...
Because that is their doctrine, the rest is inconsequential. It's how they train to fight, how they are supposed to fight, what they produced to fight.
There is no infantry push in Russia doctrine, it is developed around crossing Europe in debilitating strikes. You push gaps with mechanized units, filtrate deep and leave town behind you, keeping the front moving and causing the enemy line to fragment, while infantryman behind deliver the siege to the cities as needed. It's built around being the aggressor, stocks deep and then consolidate.
What people see happening here it's just their doctrine playing out exactly as written.
It is quite outdated and it's receiving lot of attrition, but still.
I seriously doubt that russia planned this doctrine against ukraine, as this doctrine has lineage back from the soviet union, and they wouldn't plan for a ukraine war - ukraine would have been the staging point - and the doctrine matched the plan to cross the fulda gap as fast as possible irregardless of losses to capture strategic locations. the russian aggression of ukraine is not the war that the soviet doctrine was built for, and the logic for why they pick the doctrine cannot be the logic by which this war is waged, because the loop goes strategy > doctrine > production > training and not the other way around. they always had a mechanized force, it's not something contingent to this war and not even emergent in this century, bmps and btrs are 60s designs.
I can make as concession that their doctrine mutated in the 00s, incorporating parts of the full spectrum warfare system of battle, even if it's a partial adoption since there doesn't appear to be a full loop between the different corps, and it that they aimed at superior firepower integration with other corps. but while the operations are planned and executed in cooperation with differnt systems of weapons but without the flexibility of a closed loop between the infantry advancing and the other supporting weapons system
that russia planned it's doctrine around not being able to support logistic is, well, wrong. their doctrine focus on aggressive pushes to keep enemy weapons systems away from the major cities, which all are westward of it's territory, and aim to push away the front line so that russian defensive lines can advance and have time to intercept whichever threat the enemy launches. they don't have the luxury of oceans, so the idea is push aggressively irregardless of attrition, occupy with reservist and deploy forward defences, because otherwise the cities, along with the infrastructure and factories needed for the war effort would be at risk.
their doctrinal documents are available, btw, so one just need to find a traduction and read it.
> Yes, tanks aren't invulnerable, but anti tank missiles are expensive, bulky, and require some advanced training.
In general, I don't disagree with your post, but even "cheap" RPG-7 (or a more modern, NATO equivalent) would be an effective method of, if nothing else, slowing enemy tanks. In general, "boom wtf was that" is going to stop an advance even if it doesn't kill the tank.
That's only if the RPG hits the tank, which unless you can get pretty close it probably won't. They're useful for urban combat where a person can get close without being noticed, but for an open battlefield you really need a much more advanced guided missile system which can hit targets kilometers away. And even if you are in a circumstance where you can hit a tank with an RPG, there is a pretty big difference between slowing a tank for a few minutes while it evaluates the situation and disabling a tank. Finally, while an RPG is cheap, it's still bulky - each round is about 4 kg. It's not as bulky as a missile but no one is going to carry enough rounds at one time to threaten a coordinated group of armored vehicles, at least not without sacrificing other capabilities.
As always, there's a spread of views and we can't really know who's right. There are credible military theorists who believe the tank is or will shortly become obsolete, although I wouldn't say that's the mainstream consensus yet.
The premise of a tank is: it can move rapidly through almost any terrain, it carries heavy firepower, and it's armoured enough to be more-or-less invulnerable to a typical opposing infantryman. The first point remains as valid as ever. The second is more or less valid - there are more missiles flying around today's battlefields than ever before, but missiles are expensive; a tank gun doesn't make for cool videos but it can put fire on the target all day long. Artillery is also stronger than ever, particularly with drone spotting etc., but it's not really a replacement for direct fire.
So the big question, and the one that may ultimately spell the demise of the tank (at least in its current form), is how common weapons that can take out tanks are. Right now IMO the tank is still valid - anti-tank missiles are more common than ever, but it's not like they're standard-issue equipment. And defensive technology is improving too - modern ERA is very impressive, and can only really be fitted to armoured vehicles. If we reach a point where every infantryman carries a missile launcher then the tank will probably stop making sense, but we're not there yet.
Against an enemy with signal jamming capability remote operation is not a given. Plus tanks communicate in real time with infantry/other elements. The lag introduced by remote operation/communication would be a serious hindrance even if everything was working, which it often isn't. Tanks have to respond in real time, they don't have the luxury of seconds of delay like say an orbiting drone. There's also the case of not wanting disabled tanks to fall into the hands of the enemy. Short of rigging the tanks with a self-destruct system (which would likely just make them explode more easily when hit), you need soldiers to do that.
Keep in mind that anything operating in battlefield conditions must be resilient. The entire situation is a constant stream of edge cases.
Also, don't look to Russia in Ukraine for an example of how tanks are used. Tanks are generally not meant to act alone. Either they're operating with a lot of other tanks, substantial supporting infantry, or both.
Russia does, indeed, have many issues wrt tank/infantry comms. Not even because they get jammed, but rather because they often don't have working comms at all, or because tank and infantry radios use incompatible frequencies or digital encoding. Much of the army's communication gear is from 1970-80s, poorly maintained, and often without spare parts to repair it if it's not working. In theory, there were new gadgets adopted into service that should have fixed it... but, as with many other things, there are too few of them, and the ones that are there have teething problems.
There's a guy who has been fighting on the Russian separatist side since 2014, who is responsible for comms and drones in his unit. He regularly makes long-winded posts about the specific issues that they face, and he had posted about tank/infantry comms several times, even before the all-out war:
The guy discusses both the LDNR militia and the Russian military, since he has seen both in the field, and not just this year - to remind, Russia already invaded Ukraine directly back in 2014 to stop the Ukrainian offensive when separatists failed to hold on their own; it just didn't advertise that fact back then.
The title of the second blog post that I've linked to is literally, "The story of how comms (and UAVs) were stolen from the Russian army".
Is is an issue for airborne drones. And signal jamming isn't the only concern. Long-range drones mostly rely on communications satellite relays for remote piloting. In a major conflict with a near-peer adversary, those satellites will be the first casualties.
That's one of the main reasons why the US military continues to spend heavily on manned tactical aircraft. The Air Force is actually decommissioning some MQ-9 and MQ-4 drones in order to free up funds for purchasing more 5th and 6th generation manned fighters. Airborne drones will continue to play a role, but until we make some major leaps in AI they will only be able to handle very limited missions.
By all reasonable accounts, tanks are here to stay. The Russians are failing at operating shovels, let alone tanks.
The main point seems to be that it is not about vulnerabilities. It is about capabilities.
No current system can do what a tank can. A pickup full of Javelins can’t roll over, take, and hold ground. An infantryman is about as vulnerable it gets. And yet, humans continue to run about and will do so for a long, long time.
>All I can say is I would rather be an infantryman than a tank operator.
You still should be tank operator rather than infantryman.
If you are in a tank people who have AT missiles can shoot at you. If you are outside the tank ANYONE can shoot and kill you.
Yes there's a lot of videos of tanks blown up. But that's because of their high propaganda value and relative ease of capturing videos (new AT have command center further away = safer)
Tanks (I'm mostly speaking of Western tanks) generally have excellent optics with thermal imaging that is so good you can use it in the day time. The ability to see a couple miles away is better than an infantryman would be able to do.
Thermal etc is great, but it is not a good substitute for "head on a swivel" when it comes to rapidly detecting threats - with optics, you need to know where to aim them first. Tank commanders today still prefer to stay unbuttoned if at all possible.
Yeah, I was more comparing an 11B with binoculars versus a TC using all his sensors. When you add in the difference in communication suites, networking (is Blue Force Tracker still a thing?) the infantryman is at a serious disadvantage.
There's a whole space on Quora about that. Some people with actual combat experience, too. It almost makes it worth wading through all the auto-generated idiotic questions.
Also tank design is a factor. Is your spare ammo arranged in a ring around the turret (as in Russian tanks) or an armored container behind the turret (US M1)?
As an aside, it's been interesting to see the impact drones has had in the war. Reconnaissance, blowing up non-tank vehicles, bombing trenches and suicide bombers.
Maybe tanks will still have a place in warfare, but I doubt they'll be as ubiquitous as before?
machine guns are very effective against infantry. tanks are vulnerable but they can fight back effectively, and being able to go 40mph and be protected from small and medium calibers makes taking ground a lot easier.
I saw these in a forest in jižní čechy near the Austrian border, they preserved some of the old border defenses. I thought “oh it’s like the anti-tank things from Normandy” - had no idea it was originally Czech
Interestingly this is a very effective defensive tactic for factorio. Offsetting bollards channels enemies through choke points that leave them vulnerable and predictable, as well as slowing them down.
Reminds me of my Starcraft strategy (definitely not competitive, playing vs the computer) to build tons of supply depots as dragon teeth, worked also because advancing hordes would not only open a path, but want to destroy them all, leaving them vulnerable
I played competitive SC:BW and WC3 and when thinking about building placement and base design you always take in consideration paths of invasion to block weak points, e.g.: access to your workers gathering resources should be blocked as much as possible; create choke points inside the base to use as killing zones; use choke points to break enemy units' path finding; block off ramps with supply buildings to block vision and place a turret with range on the border of the killing zone on the ramp; keep a turret to defend against air drops or flying units coming for your workers.
That is used in competitive as well (usually a single depot or turrets) to mess up the path finding. Or as sim city where the whole base is designed to block paths or mess up the ai so that it funnels trough choke points.
Destroying buildings takes a lot of shots so it is often very hard to push those structures. Since the damage is not used on the more dangerous units.
Actually that is quite similar to the real thing because obstacles like dragon teeth need active protection from troops behind as well.
Otherwise it is quite easy to move some engineers up end place some explosives or dig dirt over them.
From watching pros play, an early wall-off can be vital. At their level of play, slipping in 1 to 3 combat units can have devastating early effect. Terrans can easily solve this by including a supply depot in their wall, which can be raised or lowered at the push of a button. Or a building that can lift off and reposition.
Another take: Especially in a Terran vs Zerg game, the Zerg's creep kind of acts like an inverse blockade. Since Zerg units move faster on it, and the Zerg player will have vision of what's on the Creep, the Terran will often prefer to slow-crawl their siege tanks and etc closer, and be forced to use resources to clear out the Creep before moving too far in. Stronger Terran players can often be proactive about pushing back Creep, and have an easier time applying pressure.
For those who don't know, Creep is a purple-ish goop that covers the map terrain (requires active effort to propagate), and Zerg are bug-looking alien things that grow out of eggs. Terrans are the humans.
Warcraft 2 had sole-purpose obstacles you could build for this. However, most people didn't use them. Farms were more cost effective in that role and also gave you army capacity.
I always thought this was why Starcraft didn't have those: why complicate things when people can just use supply depots anyway.
I agree, but IIRC Warcraft 2 hadn't sole-purpose obstacles which can be freely constructed by the player, only Warcraft 1 had those ones. Though in Warcraft 2 sole-purpose obstacles were available as a preexisting objects on the map.
I get what he's saying: the Maginot line was a pretty epic blunder.
But it's easy to over generalize what he's saying.
It's absolutely best practice for modern infantry to improve their defensive posture while staying in place. You can see this by the extensive trench system both sides of the Ukraine war have constructed whenever positions get fixed for even a relatively short period of time.
> I get what he's saying: the Maginot line was a pretty epic blunder.
What is often forgotten about the Maginot Line is that... it worked, it did exactly what it was supposed to. The failure was in French military leadership, largely for reasons that probably would have played out the same without the Maginot Line (e.g., refusal to believe intelligence reports, slowness in response, etc.).
Just adding to this for the uninitiated-but-curious: the German army invaded by going around the line. This meant taking tanks through the Ardennes, a bordering region consisting of mountains and forests, not quite the Panzer's ideal terrain...
Nowadays it's still used as a French expression to describe a "seemingly impassable defense that's useless in the end".
One thing I read recently said one of the aims of the maginot line was to delay the Germans (it did -- they had to go through NL/BE), and another was to ensure they went through BE and thus brought the British in to the fight (due to a UK/BE defence guarantee). It did that too.
Wasn't that that "Quiet war" ie, both france and great britain had guaranteed poland, and declared war, but didn't actually push out troops or really do anything until france was invaded?
Right—it's not like they'd have done better without it. Odds are they would have lost even sooner, in fact. The little air war after Poland was invaded would have instantly been a bloody ground war in the West, too, rather than most of the action on that front waiting until Germany marched through the low countries. Not like they'd have been better off with that border unfortified—it likely bought them some weeks or months, not that it mattered for the ultimate outcome. Hell, without it, Germany may have decided to attack West first, then turn East, rather than vice-versa.
While Patton's quote is open to interpretation, the Maginot Line is a case where he's dead on. What was the opportunity cost of building these giant and somewhat extravagant fortifications? Hindsight is 20:20 but maybe things could have worked out better for the French if they had used the massive amounts resources in a different way.
Who knows, but the plan itself was sound and it worked. It forced Germany to go via small route and thus made much less land that needed to be defended. They just didn't have a plan to defend that land - if they had a workable plan Germany would have been in real trouble - their troops were overextended on hindsight. It worked because France was incompetent not because Germany had a great battle plan.
Indeed, I believe the initial plan was to continue the line, but Belgium opposed it. And the Ardennes was thought to be difficult enough terrain that it didn't need to be strongly defended. It was actually the Ardennes that failed expectations as defensive terrain, not the Maginot line (though as you noted, it would have worked as defensible terrain if there was more competent leadership).
It's kind of like building a giant fence around an area, then leaving an opening in the middle of it, and then deciding that you don't need to have people guard that opening. And when people inevitably get through the large unguarded opening, you declare that fences are idiotic and useless.
The issue was that while Ardenne were a bad train to fight in, the French didn't contest the German advance there with fool reasons, so they kinda just traveled trough it. Hard terrain isn't that hard if undefended.
Continuing the line was an impossibility because it would have driven the low countries straight into aligning with the Axis.
Just because political concerns ruin your tactic, doesn't mean those political concerns aren't real. The Maginot line was great tactically, but worse than useless strategically, because it completely failed to achieve it's big-picture objective - keeping the Germans out of France.
The low countries were against it because they feared the Axis, and didn't want to be left on the other side of defensive fortifications. But in the end they fell to the Axis anyway, so I'm not sure how not continuing the long helped.
Either way it's a moot point. As I said, the Ardennes would have been an effective barrier if it was better defended. You can't leave an unguarded opening in your fence and then declare that fences are useless.
Yes, France still fell in the end. Static defenses weren't able to overcome weak leadership, but - importantly - it's mobile forces weren't able to overcome it either. In the end the mobile forces ended up being _much_ more susceptible to poor leadership than the static defenses, leading to a large chunk of the army getting disastrously cut off (and the need to get evacuated from Dunkirk).
For a little bit, anyway. But what does that actually mean? I often wonder what would have happened had Germany not pursued genocide, and just stopped at France. It's not like the French people would magically turn German overnight. Would the resulting entity end up like a confederacy?
Same reasoning with Napoleon, too. What if they had stopped before the Russia disaster?
Poland has treaties with France and England: both were in process of mobilizing after the fall of Poland. I think it is inevitable that England would have at least made some attempt at war.
Though I wonder if Hitler could have made things worth if he had not started the Eastern front. (I'm not clear on how that started, and Stalin wasn't to be trusted)
Quick summary: The French Army's high command was stuporhumanly slow and weak in their response to the German attack through the Ardennes (just north of the north end of the Maginot line). Especially considering how quickly the German Army had conquered Poland less than a year earlier. And had conquered Denmark just one month before. And was wrapping up the conquest of Norway at the same time as they started attacking France...
If you know in advance that your soldiers are solid (and the French soldiers were) but your military high command will be worse than useless - then relying on fixed fortifications is actually the best possible national strategy. Your good soldiers can hold out for a while in the fortifications, taking (mostly) not-too-horrible casualties, without needing any orders from or action by your brain-dead high command.
Militaries are always fighting the last war - it's really hard for some reason to get them to recognize changes in warfare, and blitzkrieg caught them with their proverbial pants down, and then they did nothing.
True...somewhat. But read a detailed history of the Battle of France. And compare the command performance of the B.E.F. (under General John Vereker, Lord Gort) with the command performance of General Maurice Gamelin (C-in-C of the French Armed Forces) and the next tier or two of French generals under him.
For Lord Gort - it wasn't his country, he'd only been appointed to command the B.E.F. the prior September, and he'd been shuffled through a lot of different jobs in the prior decade. (Including time spent in China and India - hardly useful experience for WWII in Europe.) Still, Gort and his immediate subordinates got their sh*t together, moved fast and made good decisions in very new, chaotic, and challenging circumstances, and did extremely well.
For Gamelin & Co. - it was their country, defending it against a German invasion had been their d*mn-obvious Job # 1 since at least the German invasion of the Rhineland (March 1936), and they'd been building the Maginot line since 1930. Yet their performance in the event was laughably slow and weak even by the 1914 standards of French General Joseph Gallieni. (Who had been recalled from retirement, was in obvious poor health, and had served most of his career in French overseas colonies.)
You also need to watch out for the geopolitical issues before the war starts. Imagine that country A and country B are rivals, but each has its own internally divided politics with Fighters versus Peace-niks. In country A the Fighters bully the Peace-niks into accepting an increase in "defense" spending. Country B isn't deceived, and country B's Fighters try to persuade country B's Peace-niks to agree to more defense spending. Having succeeded they still have to decide how to split the money between tanks and static defenses.
The naive analysis just looks at the military effectiveness of the options. But there may be political implications. Perhaps if country B spends the money on tanks, that gets noticed in country A. That changes the politics in country A and lets the Fighters there persuade their own Peace-niks that more "defense" spending is needed. Whoops! The money that country B spends on tanks doesn't help defend country B as much as you would expect, if in unleashes counter-spending in country A.
What about country B spending the money on static defenses? That could help Peace-niks in country A push for cuts in country A's "defense" spending. That would multiply the effectiveness of country B's spending on static defenses.
I don't think it worked like that with the Maginot Line. Nevertheless, what a General says about military effectiveness misses part of the story.
I'll take any quotes from one of the most self engranding generals of WW2 with more than a grain of salt. Especially one who ended the serving under one of his former subordinates, Omar Bradley. Patton did have a talent for PR so, including catchy quotes.
For those talking about the "3 hours under fire": Dexpan is an expanding cement that cracks concrete over a few hours.
Once placed into a hole or crack, you don't need to hang around to do anything.
The reason for the hammer drill is to make holes in the dragon's teeth to put the Dexpan into. For that, you only a minute per tooth, and it doesn't matter where you put the hole, so you can use the teeth as cover from defensive fire while you drill.
There are great videos of WWII American troops confused at Dragons teeth. They marveled how dumb the entire the obstruction is. Months of work, removed in minutes. They just reverse their tank, take a cable, remove 4 of them, take their ENTIRE tank column through.
That's an easy stone to throw when you are fighting a war on foreign soil. Particularly since the allies struggled to oust Germans from several fixed fortifications in Europe.
You realize that Patton's quote about fixed fortifications does not apply to dragon's teeth which are not actually fixed. He was more addressing the Maginot line and other such fixed defensive permanent positions.
The top image is in Wimmis in Switzerland at the bottom of the Niesen mountain. The mountain resembles a giant pyramid. That's nice: many small pyramids and a giant one. You see the mountain starting to rise in the background of the photo. There is a narrow side valley (Spissi) leading to Western Bernese Oberland and from there you can reach Valais and the Leman basin. Above Wimmis there is a small steep limestone hill (Burgflue) and inside it there is a military bunker with holes to shoot out of.
What a lot of people don't know: the standard NATO barbedwire - correctly deployed - is highly effective against tanks: It messes up the chains and is a nightmare to remove (eg blowing them up is not an option).
Off topic but I find it funny when a site shows a popup to sign up for the newsletter as soon as you get on the site but then has no newsletter sign-up at the end of the article.
Why tank can't simple shoot these with an onboard cannon, assuming they got clearance to move freely in this area, they can just lay one or two good shots and go thru
These things are basically huge lumps of solid concrete. You can blow them up, but a blast strong enough to reduce them to rubble requires way more explosives than a single tank shell can pack. Combat engineers can do it better and faster.
Difficult to see where tanks go forward from today. Still defeated by these basic WW2 obstacles, and currently completely overmatched by anti-tank weapons. The best chance of active protection systems from here rely on always-on active radar which means you're lighting yourself up.
Difficult to see where infantry can still be useful. Still defeated by basic Napoleonic-era weapons, and completely overmatched by... almost everything. Yet no one seriously proposes to eliminate infantry battalions, whereas people constantly do the same for things like tanks and aircraft carriers.
Weapon systems are not obsolete just because they can be defeated--warfare is not a case where one weapon system just totally creams everything else, but closer to a rock-paper-scissors scenario where nothing is truly dominant. Tanks are not useless because they are easily defeated in some scenarios, but rather, tanks are useful as "part of the complete package". For example, tanks proved to be a critical component to the successful Ukrainian operation that led to the Russian rout in Kherson Oblast a few months ago.
> Weapon systems are not obsolete just because they can be defeated--warfare is not a case where one weapon system just totally creams everything else, but closer to a rock-paper-scissors scenario where nothing is truly dominant.
Not really. War is unbalanced and the metagame is strict. Weapon systems do get obsoleted if they can be defeated cheaply and easily. But, when you have weapons, you tend to use them. The Russian meta is to hide behind a wall of meat shields and blow shit up with artillery from further back. The Ukranian meta is to... blow shit up with longer range artillery and then when the enemy is so weakened, demoralized, underequipped, and dead; rush them with vehicles and artillery.
In this war long range artillery is the thing that matters. In a war against the US, you would see a lot of elements downplayed simply due to a capable airforce.
"Blow shit up with longer range artillery and then when the enemy is so weakened, demoralized, underequipped, and dead; rush them with vehicles and artillery"
That was the primary tactical doctrine in 1919. In fairness it started with "rush them with infantry", but that was countered with static defenses. Which was then countered with tanks (your statement). Which was countered with anti-tank weaponry. Which was countered with infantry. Which was countered with mechanized infantry. Which was countered with mobile artillery. Which was countered by aircraft. Which was countered with.. Seeing a pattern here?
As I understand it, this is not quite accurate. Trenches are pretty resilient to artillery fire. Especially shitty WWI artillery. Trench rushes tended to be pretty effective, but it was very difficult to solidify any gains because the enemy would always have a second line of trenches to quickly counterattack while you were inevitably overextended. The modern precise artillery and intel of the west at least is effective on an entirely different level where supply lines far behind the front are in danger.
> Seeing a pattern here?
That military tech evolves? I mean, yeah, obviously. The claim being addressed here is that things don't become obsolete. Many things do.
Truly modern, "Western-style" warfare is more about the pace of battle and maintaining consistency in the "information space" than anything else.
You do everything you can to make your troops as mobile and fast to respond as possible, then you keep moving around and probing until you find a place where the enemy isn't ready for you. Exploit that, then move the battle somewhere else while the enemy scrambles to adapt.
Ukraine has been doing exactly that in this war. Russia has enough trouble keeping their units supplied when they're in neat deployments - expecting them to be able to respond to multiple probing attacks along an extended front while maintaining force in all the areas not currently under attach is impossible for them.
> Difficult to see where infantry can still be useful.
Infantry can disperse to defeat the weapon systems you're thinking about. That's where tanks currently really struggle.
Tanks have been overmatched for some time both in the open, and in the close, in both conventional and unconventional conflicts, and we don't really seem to have major ideas to solve that (with the exception of active protection, which only works against an unsophisticated enemy as you're broadcasting your position.)
Also - I said 'where they go forward from today' - I didn't say they were useless.
Where we go forward today is that tanks will evolve along the same lines as naval surface combatants (frigates / destroyers / cruisers) have, just a few decades later. Warships used to primarily rely on cannons for offense (with large gun crews) and armor for defense, but the advent of strike aircraft and then guided missiles made those designs obsolete. Now surface ships have minimal gun armaments and little or no armor. Instead they rely on their own guided missiles and aircraft (helicopters and drones) for offense, and speed plus active measures (interceptor missiles, EW, decoys) for defense.
I predict that the "tank" of the future will have a smaller main gun and thinner armor. Instead of slugging it out toe-to-toe with enemy armored vehicles and fortifications it will hang back and locate targets using it's own drones plus data links from other platforms. Then attack those targets using indirect fire missiles and suicide drones. Crews will be smaller, probably just two, with the option to operate temporarily uncrewed under remote control or with some limited autonomy. Survivability will be provided through high mobility, some low-observability (stealth) technology, EW, and updated active protection systems. Think of a mini "frigate" driving around on land.
This was the thinking behind the Leopard 1. It had really thin armor compared to peers because it didn't think it mattered. Later upgrades added spaced armor etc to help with ATGMs, and the Leo 2 had Chobbham so it was kind of a rejection of that theory.
Missiles on tanks have been a thing for decades and really don't add much value. Main gun rounds are much cheaper, and you'll always need something that can blow up fortifications. And crew size can't really get much lower than 3 (four is really optimal) because of pulling guard duty, maintenance etc. Replacing a tread with two guys leaves no one to pull security watch.
The design philosophy behind the Leopard 1 wasn't necessarily wrong, just too early. Air-to-air missiles on aircraft were a thing for decades but didn't really add much value at first. Until around 1990 when the technology improved enough that they started working really well.
Modern top-attack ATGMs have become so lethal that no amount of armor is going to be effective. So if tanks are going to continue having a role in high-intensity conflicts then they need to avoid getting hit. That means hanging back and using off-board sensors and stand-off weapons instead of direct fire cannons. This will be tremendously expensive, but still cheaper than the alternative. Again mimicking the evolution of surface warships.
Future armored units are going to contain a mix of manned and unmanned combat vehicles. So they're going to have to figure out a way to do maintenance on vehicles with zero crew. Probably by having extra maintainers follow behind in transport and engineering vehicles. Sure this will slow down some work, but what's the alternative?
Zero crew maintenance will never be effective. You'll just be doing what the Soviets are doing in Ukraine; abandoning $25M tanks when they throw a track. Or you'll be dooming maintenance crews to a quick death.
And you can't wave away the flaws of the Leo 1 as being too early for its time. The trend has been 180º in the opposite direction.
Focusing on top attack weapons is missing the forest for the trees. There are numerous weapons that can destroy a tank:
- Mines
- Artillery, both unguided and guided
- ATGMs, whether top attack or side. All can penetrate most armor if they hit.
- SMAW/RPG etc
- Air launched unguided rockets
- Anti-tank grenades dropped by COTS drones
- Ad infinitum
Yet no military (including Ukraine) is saying they don't want tanks, only armchair generals who see another RMA in the mist. There's a saying "Ships are safe in a harbor, but that's not what ships are for." Trying to make sure a tank is invulnerable ends up being a fool's errand. Use them appropriately, and they'll be fine.
I'm thinking of a "tank" more in terms of some continuity with the current concept of operations regardless of the exact hardware. Navy destroyers look completely different today than they did during WW2 but still perform the same missions. This notional future tank will probably share some components with a family of other similar AFVs, but will be optimized for striking hard targets rather than for troop transport, air defense, or whatever other AFV roles are needed.
>(with the exception of active protection, which only works against an unsophisticated enemy as you're broadcasting your position.)
Modern war (what NATO does, not what Russia does) has radar sharing, so one radar behind the lines, or in an airplane well behind the lines - shares the information to everyone. Just a few well hardened/defended radars it all you need, nobody else is using active radar.
That is a take I see often on Twitter and HN but actual military experts tend to disagree [0].
The truth is the tank was never meant to be invulnerable piece of military hardware but one that can withstand small and medium calibre arms and shrapnel/fragmentation while also delivering direct fire to a front line location. In that regard there is nothing that can replace it yet and will continue to be used.
Who uses small-arms fire against tanks? I'm sure tanks can withstand arrows and crossbow bolts too, but that won't help in an environment where the enemy has a healthy supply of Javelins.
When your weapon costs >10x more than the weapon needed to eliminate it with near-100% certainty, your weapon is obsolete. Tanks for the memories.
Nobody will use small-arms against a tank because it has no effect. That is the point.
Humans are also vulnerable to bullets yet we still use them on the battlefield. Cost of bullet vs human is probably a bit more than 10x.
There are no perfect weapons, tanks are vulnerable to ATGMs but if used correctly will overrun an ATGM positions. Ita a game of rock papper sciscors but with more than three options :D.
> can withstand small and medium calibre arms and shrapnel/fragmentation while also delivering direct fire to a front line location. In that regard there is nothing that can replace it yet
You may have meant an IFV, and in some cases those work. But that's like saying that a rifle and a machine gun both shoot bullets, so why would you want a machine gun?
Yeah many AFV are undergunned compared to a tank, and we can always want more firepower and more armour, but trade-off on support and things like that starts to break down.
The point is if you say you want ‘protected mobility and direct fire to support infantry’ then you don’t need a tank, you just need any AFV.
People normally want tanks for anti-tank - well that may well be better done by infantry for the foreseeable future - and for shock action, but that doesn’t seem to work brilliantly in the current environment either as in most environments it’s going to be the tank getting the shock not you.
What critique of tanks on the modern battlefield doesn't also apply to any other armored vehicle? The same weaknesses and weapons apply to all of them, and the payloads, troop carrier, big gun, etc, can also be supplied by other means if that works out. So I can't see why distinguishing tanks, AFVs, and IFVs helps this discussion...
Anti-tank can't be the only role for anti-tank, by the way, or they never would have been invented. I don't buy that line of argument at all.
Most AFV have some kind of integral infantry support (literally in the back) while a tank needs to be battle-teamed to do that. Battle-teaming is hard to do because inevitably the two vehicles don’t quite match capability.
I didn't say tanks only did anti-tank - I said they also do shock action. It's the only reason they exist in that it's the only thing that they are needed for that you couldn't do with another AFV.
> defeated by these basic WW2 obstacles, and currently completely overmatched by anti-tank weapons. The best chance of active protection systems from here rely on always-on active radar which means you're lighting yourself up.
does not apply equally well to AFVs? If the answer is "none", why are you talking about AFVs as if they're going to survive longer than tanks? Other vehicles than AFVs can be build to carry troops into battle, if it turns out armor is a bad tradeoff, just as surely as other machines could be designed to provide direct fire support. But a bunch of infantry in a can is always going to be a great target for a Javelin, right?
So when an AFV gets smacked by a Stugna/Javelin etc, the entire squad is killed?
The reason the Russians are getting sandbagged is because they aren't doing combined arms; In some areas they have tanks, and infantry, but no artillery coordination. Arty is the best counter to ATGM teams, but you have to have the barrels, the field observers to aim it, all in coordination with the tanks and infantry (so you don't smack them). In other areas they have tons of infantry and artillery, but no tanks so they can't really advance.
Russia's BTG design isn't really around tanks, but instead AFVs. They use tanks as fire support for infantry, but the average battalion only started the war with around 10 tanks (vs 40 IFV). Of course some units were understrength, (and now much worse).
This makes the BTG very brittle when opposing forces have matching tanks and good ATGMs. Combine this with poorly trained infantry, and all those IFVs are just wasted.
> So when an AFV gets smacked by a Stugna/Javelin etc, the entire squad is killed?
Like what do you think they should do? Walk everywhere?
> Arty is the best counter to ATGM teams
I don't think so. These teams are tiny and dispersed. How would you find them, and how would you fix them, in order to bring on guns? Ability to FFS these teams is a major issue (also not solved well by tanks!)
I'm just pointing out that IFVs have the exact same vulnerabilities as tanks, but no one seems to be saying get rid of them. Both are better than being WW1 foot soldiers.
Countering ATGM teams (whether crewed vehicles or dismounts) relies on scouting (both recon and UAV) to find them. That is hard. Often times you'll stumble into a cauldron where your advance turns into a reconnaissance by fire. Then you fix with artillery, and finally have your infantry kill them. This is hard when fighting a well-trained and well equipped opponent. But the Russians aren't even trying.
It's not like the Ukrainians have great gear. These are guys driving around in technicals and ATVs, lightly protected, and using ATGMs to great effect. They're not winning because they have great ATGMs, they're winning because they have the battlefield intelligence to be able to operate quickly and with less protection.
In areas where they have had less success (Kherson mostly until now) they've had trouble with scouting, and the Russians have been more fortified. As those defensive lines break down and they lose their LOCs, they become easier to exploit.
But if you go back to the start of the thread I didn't say that and I'm not sure anyone else did either! I said 'interested to see where they go next'!
> It's not like the Ukrainians have great gear.
They do have Western MRAPP for example (saw a photo of an Ridgeback surviving a Russian ambush.)
It's comparing like for like. You think tanks are obsolete for reasons XYZ, that all apply to all AFVs.
Yes, the West has been slowly supplying vehicles[1], but most of the St. Javelin success was early during the assault on Kiev where TDF units crushed the Russian spearhead, riding in ATVs, trucks, whatever they could find. Since then they've been getting handmedowns from the West, which is glad to be rid of their MRAPPs due to high operating costs.
[1] The West has been terrible in general about supplying AFVs to Ukraine. Other than old M113 and ancient Soviet gear, they seem hesitant to supply anything remotely modern. Germany has even balked at supplying Leo 1s that have been outdated since the late 60's/early 70's.
Whoah there. That's not what I said. I don't think I've used that word once. I said I was interested in seeing where they go next.
The UK sent Ridgeback MRAPP, and Ukraine seem happy, based on Tweets, with the protection they're giving in practice. Yes they were sent as they were being withdrawn anyway due to restructuring, but they were only about ten years old!
To the extent you meant IFV, while they are largely impervious to small arms fire, they are susceptible to heavy machine gun fire (especially if directed at anything others than the front arc of the vehicle)…
...and several classes heavier, more expensive, harder to disperse, harder to hide...
I (like a lot of people) don't see it adding up at the moment and are interested where they'll have to develop to add up again. I don't think that's even a particularly controversial opinion amongst experts?
Actually, (comparing an M1 vs an M2 Bradley), IFVs are often equal or larger than tanks. Israeli IFVs are often built from Merkava chassis (into Namer). And in this day and age of surveillance, both vehicles are easily spotted by UAVs etc.
Most experts actually believe that tanks are still valuable and that Russia's army is using them like idiots.
They are valuable - but some people with a well-informed opinion like myself, are interested in how valuable they are and how they're going to stay valuable as a core part of a division.
Well obviously it's a matter for reasoned opinion, rather than a mathematical fact, and you'll find opinions both ways. I'm saying I'm currently struggling to see it the positive for the situations we think we're likely to face next.
Other weapon systems do go completely obsolete over time - it's not a truism that all claims of obsolesce are wrong.
Also - I said 'where they go forward from today' - I didn't say they were obsolete.
> rely on always-on active radar which means you're lighting yourself up.
Because these systems have to work in formation without interfering with each other, they use pseudo random noise like signals and correlation based receivers. They're also mmw systems working at short range. It's not quite the suicidal beacon you're assuming, because it ends up the folks who design this stuff are in fact aware of the principle of emissions control.
Yeah of course they try to reduce the emissions as much as they can within physics. But the appetite for any emissions is extremely low in a peer or near-peer fight.
You always try to cover an obstacle with fire, so the idea is while they're milling around slowly piling up soil they're vulnerable to fire. You can see in some of the photos the troops looking down on the obstacle from I presume potential fire positions.
Dragon teeth alone won't hold against a tank for more than a few minutes, if the tank just has a bulldozer attachment. Not for bulldozing the teeth, but for pushing enough soil over them so it can effortlessly go over.
The purpose is to force enemy to spend time and effort dealing with the obstacle, while you direct fire on them.
The neat thing about earth moving devices is that they converge at a time and place in a manner in which artillery and nearly any other conceivable weapon can hit them very reliably
A tank battalion is going to have N engineering and M recon units attached (values of M and N and specific makeup of said units varies by country and service). The point of "inconveniences" like barriers is to a) make the enemy throw an engineering unit at them thereby tipping you off to a probable attack buying you time to mass force there b) just choose to attack somewhere else that is more conveniently defensible for you or where you already have more manpower.
> Dragon teeth alone won't hold against a tank for more than a few minutes
This doesn't seem accurate.
While searching for a video that shows a tank trying to go over (unsuccessful), I found a video showing three ways to get over them, and only the explosives would take a few minutes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRld768HDyc
Anchored concrete blocks can be made more difficult to move than the dirt under the tracks.
As with any fortification, they are not indestructible. A well prepared force can employ engineers to destroy the blocks with relative ease and create paths through the dragon’s teeth.
It's funny how they seem to understand how to display one photo at the top as html but then all the other photos don't display unless you execute their javascript. I call this a browser trap. This URL should probably be changed to something that actually has content like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon%27s_teeth_%28fortificat...
Fwiw the idea here is bandwidth-minimisation. I.e.: you only incur the image download cost if you choose to scroll. It's common practice on a lot of article/blog/content websites.
That said it's possible to implement this in a "graceful" way (where the mechanism only kicks in if JS is enabled & JS-less users just download all images at once), but this best practice is sadly rarely followed as it is admittedly somewhat more complex to implement.
> (where the mechanism only kicks in if JS is enabled & JS-less users just download all images at once)
This can fail and increase the bandwidth used if you only have a couple of images or have users on very fast connections.
I've seen it done by sending the image tag, and at the end of the document scanning the DOM for marked image tags and changing the URL specified to a low-quality copy (much smaller data size but looks a little like the image) or a small place-holder (perhaps even a data:url image) with the original getting put back when the image is visible (or about to be). The issue being that with a small number of images or a fast connected user the main large files start loading before the HREF attribute is updated and the transfer is not aborted when it is changed so the user always loads both the main and place-holder image. You can improve this plan a little by emitting the JS to alter each relevant image tag immediately after it, but that can cause multiple-reflow/-repaint issues.
> admittedly somewhat more complex to implement
Aye, and sometimes it is simply worth losing a few viewers to save a bit of faf. Though care should be taken with regard to collateral damage: as with all methods that exclude people who have chosen to have JS turned off this can easily exclude those with accessibility issues which is far less acceptable.
> where the mechanism only kicks in if JS is enabled
Of course there is now a commonly available method of doing lazy loading built-in so that is the best way to go, for those few with an ancient or otherwise alternative browser that doesn't support the feature yet the images just load immediately: https://caniuse.com/loading-lazy-attr. You can augment this is JS for those that have it turned on if you wish, perhaps on long documents implementing early-lazy loading (start the load when the user scrolls to within on display-window of content rather than when first visible) by removing the lazy attribute at an appropriate time detected using the same methods as you do for entirely manual lazy loading support, or using the replace-with-low-res-copy method in place of attribute based lazy-loading when JS is available.
That's not why these types of sites do it. They do it because they only make money if you run the arbitrary javascript from their advertisers. If you won't run their code they won't show you what you're there to see. It's a computational paywall.
