Is the tank becoming obsolete?

[Akim]

Though it is better to use buildings in Urban environment rather be sitting inside a steel coffin !

From hits shaped charge tank can be protected ERA, APS and circular screens. However, the sniper quickly makes a clumsy tank blind.

 

[asianobserve]

Can you briefly give the conclusions, as they managed to overcome antitank defense? Apparently they, the Israelis did not read. For fighting in the city need only light armor with an armor against bullets 7,62x51/54. War in the city - it is the war of special forces. Or you can have to wipe the city, as did the Russians.

You can read this material -

[PDF]https://sa.rochester.edu/jur/issues/fall2007/chang.pdf[/PDF]

An interesting quote from the article on how the US Marines used combined arms in the Battle of Fallujah:

During the search and attack phase in Fallujah, Marine Corps tanks advanced through the streets while riflemen cleared the surrounding houses. Marines would always call up tanks for direct fire support when they encountered enemy pillboxes in Fallujah. Forward observers and scout/snipers helped to guide the tanks forward into positions to fire at insurgent strongholds.4

The M-1 Abram tanks in Fallujah demonstrated superior armor protection against insurgents' RPGs unlike the Russian tanks.51 However, there were still things to be improved as the Army developed tank urban survival kits (TUSK) to ensure the survivability of the crews and the M1A2 tanks in the age of rapid urbanization. TUSK focus on providing better protection for the crews while manning the machine guns and better night vision/thermal/optic devices, which is similar to the Firepower Enhancement Program (FEP) Marines have for the M1A1s.52 While the tank-infantry phone on the Marine M1A1 FEP proved very useful during the Battle of Fallujah, the best way for infantry to guide the tank against identified targets would be either a M203 grenade launcher or a M-16 service rifle with tracers. Without direct guidance on target, tanks will have to risk the chance of firing at the wrong target, which creates collateral damage. It is also too risky for a single tank to operate by itself. Isolated tanks will be an easy target if the infantry fails to clear the surrounding buildings fast enough. Tanks in pairs can cover each other with fire power and rescue the disabled tank if needed. It is vital for infantry and tanks to coordinate and support each other for mutual survival in MOUT; good communication is the key.5 From experience, the 120mm main gun with High Explosive Anti-Tank (HEAT) is the best weapon for armor in MOUT to minimize collateral damage as the 12.7mm machine gun with armour piercing round often penetrate through too many walls. A 120mm gun with HEAT rounds can restrict damage to a single room while killing everyone in the room.

 

[Bhadra]

On the battlefield, the tank is an indispensable means of fire support. To hit the tank can only guns with APFSDS. Front projection of the tank can withstand up to 8 hits from the shaped charge. However, as far as the tank is strong on rough terrain, as it is weak in the city.

I totally agree with you. Tank can give fore support to facilitate movement of one element of manoeuvre or when it has nothing else to do or incapable of doing any other thing. Fire support though is part of maneuverer as doctrined in the principle of "fire and Move" .

However, India Army has very good experience in clearing very large cities such as Jaffna, Trincomalee and Baticaloa without using any heavy weapon such as artillery, tanks and BMPs. The opposing side that is LTTE were formidable guerrillas and had kept away Srilankan Forces who used every thing including air against them. For the Indians it was their share numbers and their multi directional attacks that carried the day for them without much collateral damage and civilian casualties.

Srilankan Army when finally stormed through those areas had to use every thing at their disposal including heavy artillery and armoured vehicle and were only able to achieve their aim after a massive massacre of civilians.

 

[Akim]

Marine Corps tanks advanced through the streets while riflemen cleared the surrounding houses

As I said before. War in the city - it is the war of special forces.

 

[Bhadra]

@asianobserver

Sir,

You are right but you are digressing into MOUT and use of tanks in MOUT is because tanks exist and should be used and not that tanks were designed for MOUT !! Now that MOUT has come into being tanks are undergoing massive changes as being brought out by @Damian time and again.

I am entirely focusing on tanks as a vehicle for classical traditional military operations in the light of development in technologies and newer war fighting plateforms that are threatening existence of tanks in tradional battle field arena.

That way, I can quote the example of battle of Stalingrad where the German air forces reduced the city to rubbles including Russian tanks, artillery and their ships on Volga.

Even the battle for Berlin was air dominated.

But LICO and MOUT under LICO is a different ball game called "operations other than war".

 

[Bhadra]

As I said before. War in the city - it is the war of special forces.

yes sir, provided the population is either neutral or not so hostile. SF have key role to play but they can not capture cities for what the US Army calls " Stabilisation Operations"...

 

[Akim]

That way, I can quote the example of battle of Stalingrad where the German air forces reduced the city to rubbles including Russian tanks, artillery and their ships on Volga.

Even the battle for Berlin was air dominated.

But LICO and MOUT under LICO is a different ball game called "operations other than war".

Air force in modern warfare almost leveled, because the enemy has a powerful network of air defense

 

[asianobserve]

@asianobserver

Sir,

You are right but you are digressing into MOUT and use of tanks in MOUT is because tanks exist and should be used and not that tanks were designed for MOUT !!

I am entirely focusing on tanks as a vehicle for classical traditional military operations in the light of development in technologies and newer war fighting plateforms that are threatening existence of tanks.

That way I can quote the example of battle of Stalingrad where the German air forces reduced the city to rubbles.

The significance of the US Marines experience in Fallujah is that MBT will continue to be relevant and a valuable weapon in urban warfare (which is more and more the kind of battle militaries now fight). It may be true that the tank was called upon in Fallujah because it was already in the inventory. But the experience also shows that it is suited for that type of warfare. I have quoted several passages of that material that points to its importance: 1) tanks are direct fire large caliber weapon that riflemen can call whenever they encounter enemies in fortified positions during house-to-house battles; 2) the armor of tanks (M1 in the case of Fallujah) affords protection against RPGs which with imporvements (TUSK) can even be more effective against bigger caliber RPGs; 3) 120mm HEAT is best suited for hitting enemies holed up in rooms of houses in urban combat since unlike armor piercing bullets of machine guns the 120mm HEAT round does not go through walls but only kills the people inside the target room/house.

 

[Akim]

yes sir, provided the population is either neutral or not so hostile. SF have key role to play but they can not capture cities for what the US Army calls " Stabilisation Operations"...

SF and should not capture the city. The city is captured quarter after quarter. The special forces (paratroopers, Marines) destroy enemy emplacements and then going is heavy military equipment. Therefore, to fight in the city need a quick, small and maneuverable armored vehicles, which is capable of high speed to break on the street, to suppress enemy fire and drop off a few people spetsnaz.
Under this scheme liberated cities in the East of Ukraine.
Tanks used only for the destruction of firing points on the outer perimeter.

 

[Bhadra]

The significance of the US Marines experience in Fallujah is that MBT will continue to be relevant and a valuable weapon in urban warfare (which is more and more the kind of battle militaries now fight). It may be true that the tank was called upon in Fallujah because it was already in the inventory. But the experience also shows that it is suited for that type of warfare. I have quoted several passages of that material that points to its importance: 1) tanks are direct fire large caliber weapon that riflemen can call whenever they encounter enemies in fortified positions during house-to-house battles; 2) the armor of tanks (M1 in the case of Fallujah) affords protection against RPGs which with imporvements (TUSK) can even be more effective against bigger caliber RPGs; 3) 120mm HEAT is best suited for hitting enemies holed up in rooms of houses in urban combat since unlike armor piercing bullets of machine guns the 120mm HEAT round does not go through walls but only kills the people inside the target room/house.

In recent times MOUT as a concept has its origins into Germany when numerous townships had flourished in West Gemany along the border and NATO was forced to think about fighting in urban areas and use of tanks therein. However, the same tank failed very miserably in Libya, Somalia, Mogadishu, Chechnya - Grozny. in Haiti, Bosnia, Kosovo, Macedonia, and Somalia, U.S. forces entered volatile urban areas, where the possibility of combat was high, equipped with outmoded tactics. In Somalia, this possibility became reality after American forces undertook military operations to eliminate the threat to United Nations' food deliveries. The climactic street battle in Mogadishu in October 1993 resulted and 91 American soldiers were killed or wounded when an attempt to apprehend a hostile faction's leadership went awry.

In Iraq the US not only used tanks but scout HMMWVs, Bradleys, many other heavy and hard skinned vehicles to protect infantry and Moved in a box of Combined Arms teams duly protected from all sides by walking infantry.

So far as your comments on the effects of tank guns in urban areas is concerned, I am sure you have no fist hand experience of it. Even an HEAT shot of 84 mm RL or RPG goes through six walls, leave aside neutralising a room. And the tank gun velocity is so much that any shot will penetrate ten walls and neutralise ten rooms away than the intended building.

When it comes to RCC, tank ammunition including APDSFS is just incapable of breaking through it. Only a good missile with tandem warhead may be of some use.

And lastly, only Americans can afford to use their tanks in cursed cities like Basra or Bagdad. Can the third world Armies use tanks and blast off cities dominated by insurgents in their own countries or in peace keeping operations ?

While assessing utility of tanks in modern environment why should I follow Fort Knox doctrine ? Why should one ignore that there were no tanks and anti tank weapons inside those cities. There was no opposing air power. They used tanks to kill mosquitos ! Use of tanks in the absence of formidable anti tank density. When the Chechens organised themselves only with RPGs in Grozny, they almost destroyed one Armoured Brigade and forced Russians to withdraw.

So the point is that later on it was the tactics that succeeded and not merely the tanks !!

 

[Akim]

I
While assessing utility of tanks in modern environment why should I follow Fort Knox doctrine ? Why should one ignore that there were no tanks and anti tank weapons inside those cities. There was no opposing air power. They used tanks to kill mosquitos ! Use of tanks in the absence of formidable anti tank density. When the Chechens organised themselves only with RPGs in Grozny, they almost destroyed one Armoured Brigade and forced Russians to withdraw.

So the point is that later on it was the tactics that succeeded and the tanks !!

In Chechnya tanks were destroyed in the upper projection. Error command was that tanks were used without cover anti-aircraft guns that could destroy the enemy on the upper floors.

 

[Kunal Biswas]

Re: MSPO 2012 Military Exhibition in Kielce.

Many of your post content contradict with your earlier post ..

Firstly, Armour or Mechanised forces are required in Ladakh because some portion of terrain permit their use on both sides of the border.
Secondly, because the other side, that is Chinese, have deployed their mechanised elements which they may use for carrying out deep offensive through the vallies and avenues of ingress..

Armour or mechanised elements would be employed there to launch a limited or meaningful offensives across the border through the avenues which permit use of armour.
mechanised elements would be used to block Chinese armour in counter penetration positions.

Armour will be used to launch counter attacks where ever terrain permits.

Armour will further be used to outflank or threaten the flanks of the Chinese forces.

Last point "Shooting In Infantry" is a term used when Armour is completely in support rule and shoots on the objective to provide fire support to facilitate approach of infantry to the objective.

What is the range / maximum effective range of T-72 ?

Maximum Aimed Range (m) 2,000
Max Effective Range (m)
Day 1,000
Night 800

of Tt-90 :
Gun - Max 2000 (day night same as above)
Missile Max - 4000

Now, those ranges are achievable with Artillery as also missiles : infantry missiles like Concurs or missiles to be fired by Namika or aviation. ( here do not separate Mechanised Infantry from Infantry)

Provision of supporting fire power is not the role of armour ! That is a very secondary and incidental task even for an area like Ladakh.

That job is reserved for others and can be undertaken by others at 1/10th of the cost.

Only "Shooting in the Infantry" at the cost of billions of dollars when that can be done by only few thousand dollars of missiles and artillery is not a wise method of conducting battles or wars !! Missile fired by tanks is not more effective than missile fired by an infantryman !!

 

[Bhadra]

Re: MSPO 2012 Military Exhibition in Kielce.

Many of your post content contradict with your earlier post ..

It does not. I have throughout maintained that the the third wave economies like India, China and Pakistan would continue to use their third wave products due to their inability to transit into shock wave or fourth wave technologies.

Other wise the tasks you highlighted can be effective performed by attack hepters.

I wonder if India would have 200 apaches, 200 drones and one airborne brigade deployed in Leh.

 

[Bhadra]

In Chechnya tanks were destroyed in the upper projection. Error command was that tanks were used without cover anti-aircraft guns that could destroy the enemy on the upper floors.

I think the Russians did modify their BMP and replaced the gun with 30mm canons so that those could fire in high angle but 30 mm canons also have limitations in terms of maximum elevation.

Tanks can never fire their main gun in that elevation.

 

[Bhadra]

The end of the tank? The Army says it doesn't need it, but industry wants to keep building it.


The end of the tank? The Army says it doesn't need it, but industry wants to keep building it. - The Washington Post

When an armored vehicle pulled down the statue of Saddam Hussein in an iconic moment of the Iraq War, it triggered a wave of pride here at the BAE Systems plant where that rig was built. The Marines who rolled to glory in it even showed up to pay their regards to the factory workers.

That bond between the machinists and tradesmen supporting the war effort at home and those fighting on the front lines has held tight for generations — as long as the tank has served as a symbol of military might.

Now that representation of U.S. power is rolling into another sort of morass: the emotional debates playing out as Congress, the military and the defense industry adapt to stark new realities in modern warfare and in the nation's finances.

As its orders dwindle, the BAE Systems plant is shrinking, too. The company is slowly trimming workers and closing buildings.

In York, there's "sadness that somebody that has worked here 35 years and is close to retirement is getting laid off," said Alice Conner, a manufacturing executive at the factory. "There's also some frustration from management and my engineering staff as we see the skills erode, because we know one day we're going to be asked to bring these back, and it's going to be very difficult."

The manufacturing of tanks — powerful but cumbersome — is no longer essential, the military says. In modern warfare, forces must deploy quickly and "project power over great distances." Submarines and long-range bombers are needed. Weapons such as drones — nimble and tactical — are the future.

Tanks are something of a relic.

The Army has about 5,000 of them sitting idle or awaiting an upgrade. For the BAE Systems employees in York, keeping the armored vehicle in service means keeping a job. And jobs, after all, are what their representatives in Congress are working to protect in their home districts.
The Army is just one party to this decision. While the military sets its strategic priorities, it's Congress that allocates money for any purchases. And the defense industry, which ultimately produces the weapons, seeks to influence both the military and Congress.

"The Army's responsibility is to do what's best for the taxpayer," said Heidi Shyu, the top Army buying official. "The CEO of the corporation['s responsibility] is to do what's best in terms of shareholders."

The Army is pushing ahead on a path that could result in at least partial closure of the two U.S. facilities producing these vehicles — buoyed by a new study on the state of the combat vehicle industry due for release next month.

But its plans could be derailed by a Congress unwilling to yield and an industry with a powerful lobby. They argue that letting these lines idle or close would mean letting skills and technology honed over decades go to waste.


The Pentagon has "really made a turn in that they are now trying to solve million-dollar problems without billion-dollar solutions, but Congress keeps redirecting them," said Brett Lambert, who oversaw the Pentagon's industrial base policy until last year. "This is a zero-sum game. For every dollar the Pentagon spends on something we don't need ."‰."‰. it is a dollar we can't spend on something we do need."

A boom, then decline

For decades, BAE Systems's facility in York has cranked out the Hercules, the Paladin and — most notably and most recently — the Bradley Fighting Vehicle, a 75,000-pound mainstay of the military's traditional weapons, a kind of armored vehicle that can hold up to 10 men, move at nearly 40 miles per hour and fire a cannon, machine gun and missiles.


(Although the Bradley looks like a tank, it is not technically considered one by the military.)

The factory got its start in the early 1960s, when Bowen McLaughlin York bought a local farm. The construction contractor's new business was military vehicle overhaul.

Business boomed for a time — but slowed in the mid-1980s. Eventually, BMY combined with another defense outfit to form United Defense, which consolidated its business into the York site. In 1997, private-equity firm the Carlyle Group bought United Defense and eventually took it public. In 2005, the company was sold to BAE for just shy of $4 billion.

In recent years, the contractor hasn't built new Bradleys but is running old versions through a refurbishment program. In 2008, 2,500 BAE workers at the York plant were pushing out about seven upgraded Bradley Fighting Vehicles a day.

Mel Nace Jr., operations manager at the plant, grew up in its shadow. In the 1970s, he rode his minibike around the BAE Systems factory, at one point even jumping the fence to take a spin on the test track used to put the Army vehicles through their paces.

After vocational school, he got a job at the factory in 1979 working in the machine shop. With tuition help, he went to college and received his associate's and bachelor's degrees as well as an MBA — all while working full-time and raising two sons with his wife.

In 2008, Nace was promoted to plant manager. That year was one of the site's busiest as it moved to refurbish vehicles that were sent to Iraq and Afghanistan and returned pummeled, sometimes with coffee cups welded to the roof.
"We basically had to hire 600 touch labor employees in a 12-month period," he said. "We had to recruit, hire, train and acclimate all of those people."

Not only was the plant rolling out Bradley vehicles, but it was planning production of the next generation of fighting vehicle. BAE had been tasked with building some of the combat vehicles included in the Army's expansive Future Combat Systems program, envisioned as a sprawling arsenal of drones, vehicles and robots all connected by a powerful network.

The York facility was readying for the boost, even installing — at an $8 million price tag — a hulking high-speed, high-precision machine able to mill, cut and thread almost any material, from steel to aluminum to alloys. The company had hired younger employees, bringing the age of its average plant employee down to 44, seeking to build a workforce to take over once older employees retired.

BAE — and the York facility — suffered a major blow when the Army canceled the Future Combat Systems program. The vehicles portion of the program, which was to be shared between BAE and General Dynamics, would have cost more than $87 billion, according to Defense Secretary Robert Gates.

Since then, the military has backed off vehicle refurbishment, too. The York operation has cut about half of its employees, the average age of plant workers has surged to 54 and lines are sitting idle at the facility, tucked into a swath of farmland. In December, BAE started another round of layoffs.

The home to the fighting vehicle has been a low, squat building — with tools in their places and signs reminding those on the floor to don hearing protection. A large "Partnering for the Soldier" banner was on display. Much of the Bradley equipment is being moved into another building as BAE consolidates.

"The reality of it is we've already started shutting down," Conner, the manufacturing executive, said.

If BAE does not get any new Bradley funding — or win new work from commercial firms or foreign governments, it will close the line in 2015.

General Dynamics, which runs its tank-building program out of small-town Lima, Ohio, is facing a similar dilemma.

Just like the Bradley plant, the Abrams factory bustled over the past decade. At its peak in early 2009, the plant, which is owned by the government but operated by General Dynamics, was pushing 21 / 2 refurbished tanks out the door each day.

For the first time in its history, it diversified, producing not just upgraded Abrams tanks but also Stryker vehicles and a prototype of an expeditionary fighting vehicle (able to travel by sea and by land), which was built for the Marine Corps but later canceled.

In 2004, the plant started spending millions to upgrade its systems, bracing to build not only the Marine Corps vehicle but also the ones planned for the Army's Future Combat Systems effort.

The factory added a $15.5 million machining line — replacing a system installed in the 1980s — that essentially cuts steel and aluminum hulls so that they are ready to be pieced together, much like a person would expect an Ikea desk to be ready for assembly.

But today the facility is down to about 500 employees from a peak of 1,220. Following union rules, it has laid off the newest employees and has worked its way back to those hired in 2005, said Keith Deters, director of plant operations.

Moving forward

Military officials say they've given careful thought to their strategy and they simply can't afford to pay for more upgraded tanks.

Gen. Raymond Odierno, the Army's chief of staff, made its case before Congress in 2012.

"We don't need the tanks," he said. "Our tank fleet is 21 / 2 years old average now. We're in good shape, and these are additional tanks that we don't need."

The Army has been emboldened by the new study, which considered whether suppliers who are key to building combat vehicles could be replaced.

The study, which was run by consulting firm A.T. Kearney and took more than five months, found only a small number of companies that are vulnerable to closure and could not easily be replaced.

Shyu, the Army acquisition official, said the military expects that vehicle makers and suppliers will look to other customers and kinds of work.

"There's obviously difficult decisions that every single service has to make somewhere along the line," Shyu said. "We have to figure out what's good enough."

But the Army has run up against congressional opposition. To keep these lines running, Congress has allocated well more than the Army requested for the programs — an extra $181 million for Abrams in fiscal 2013 and about $140 million more for Bradley.

Legislators say they don't want the money they've invested in building up the country's vehicle-making capability to go to waste. The several hundred million dollars it would cost seems to them a small amount relative to the billions spent on defense annually.


The industry, too, has pushed Congress to support its work. Last year, BAE convened its suppliers — it has 586 across 44 states — in Washington to storm the Hill, chatting up representatives about the jobs they provide and pushing for Congress to help the Bradley program.

Critics say the companies are trying to fight off what should be inevitable: a wind-down of a product that the country doesn't need.

"It looks like they're protecting profits and using scare tactics about jobs," said Angela Canterbury of the Project on Government Oversight. "It is really making us less safe when we're throwing money that's hard to come by at programs that don't meet what should be our current national security strategy."

 

[Bhadra]

See this simple tank destruction - enough to give shivers to tankmen



And this too: Tank can be as dumb as this.

 

[asianobserve]

See this simple tank destruction - enough to give shivers to tankmen



And this too: Tank can be as dumb as this.

That's not the fault of the tank but the defective tactic of the Syrian Army. Clearly, the Syrian military, which is trained according to Soviet conventional war doctrine, was ill-prepared for urban warfare.

You don't have to be the US to employ properly tanks in urban warfare. The most important thing is to have close coordination between the riflemen and the tank crew, they should protect each other. Tanks cannot go into urban areas without adequate support from riflemen who will do the house-to-house fighting. Snipers positioned on higher grounds play an important role in directing both the tanks and riflemen on the streets as they negotiate urban streets.

 

[Bhadra]

That's not the fault of the tank but the defective tactic of the Syrian Army. Clearly, the Syrian military, which is trained according to Soviet conventional war doctrine, was ill-prepared for urban warfare.

You don't have to be the US to employ properly tanks in urban warfare. The most important thing is to have close coordination between the riflemen and the tank crew, they should protect each other. Tanks cannot go into urban areas without adequate support from riflemen who will do the house-to-house fighting. Snipers positioned on higher grounds play an important role in directing both the tanks and riflemen on the streets as they negotiate urban streets.

What a sad day for tank that a rifleman is required to protect it !! Ha Ha Ha...

Well then, if a rifleman is required outside the tank to be around and protect the tank, one may as well not have the tank at all.

I was told by one of my friends - an infantry Officer that he refused to escort BPMs in Srilanka at the cost of being tried for disobedience as he was crestfallen with the idea that Mechanised infantry would need support from plain infantry .

 

[Akim]

I think the Russians did modify their BMP and replaced the gun with 30mm canons so that those could fire in high angle but 30 mm canons also have limitations in terms of maximum elevation.

Tanks can never fire their main gun in that elevation.

The commander decided that tanks for defense from the upper floors will be enough anti-aircraft machine guns mounted on tanks. But the machine gun on the T-72AV/B. too vulnerable to the sniper's aim. The machine gun on the T-80BV does not provide proper monitoring.

 

[asianobserve]

What a sad day for tank that a rifleman is required to protect it !! Ha Ha Ha...

Well then, if a rifleman is required outside the tank to be around and protect the tank, one may as well not have the tank at all.

I was told by one of my friends - an infantry Officer that he refused to escort BPMs in Srilanka at the cost of being tried for disobedience as he was crestfallen with the idea that Mechanised infantry would need support from plain infantry .

Battles are not fought using single platform/assets. The US MArines war in Fallujah is what they called combined ops using a lot of assets to fight in an urban conflict (the hardest area to fight in for tanks). These different assets compliment each other. In the case of the riflemen they would walk at the back of the tank while some of their units would go house-to-house. If they encounter a well entrenched enemy then they would call in the tank (that is slightly ahead of them to blast through the structure being used as pillbox by the enemy (direct fire mode).

This simplistic approach to war on a per weapon basis is not grounded in reality. That is why a lot of arguments from fanboys are thrown about how agile and best dogfiggter Russians SU27s are and how slow F18s are (and so on and so fort). But what is being missed is that the true fighting ability of a military force is not in the merits of each weapon they have but in how they combined it all into a single cohesive fighting unit.