Has it really happened this time? Is the tank on its way out? For several decades, the main battle tank has been declared obsolete. Like the battleship, another weapon that depended on big guns and thick armor, the tank was seen as inevitably done in by faster, cheaper and more numerous weapons that could destroy it. The first modern battleship was launched in 1906, but in less than half a century, aircraft and submarines made the battleship obsolete, and none were built after 1945. The tank has lasted longer than that. First appearing in combat during World War I (1914-18), the tank became a decisive weapon during World War II (1939-45) and continued to dominate battlefields to the present. That's over 90 years, twice as long as the battleship. But the tank, like the battleship, also became too expensive and too vulnerable to cheaper weapons.
The passing of the battleship is a fine example. But it was replaced by the aircraft carrier with sufficiently powerful aircraft. What has replaced the tank?
It can't just be that tanks are vulnerable to other weapons. Tanks have been vulnerable to other tanks, anti-tank weapons, air attacks, and infantry hand-held weapons as long as there have been tanks. Infantry has been vulnerable to other infantry (and every other weapon on, below, and above the battlefield) but infantry isn't going away. Infantry isn't going away because man hasn't been made obsolete.
So if tanks are obsolete, what has replaced them? Simply saying that other weapons can kill tanks tells us nothing. If tanks are vulnerable, our big infantry fighting vehicles, light armor, or soft vehicles are even more vulnerable. Are those vehicles going away, too? Is warfare to become two armies digging in frantically while organic and distant firepower seeks out and destroys everything that emits some type of signature that sensors can find and the battle goes to the side with something left at the end of the slaughter?
Tanks may need other weapons to suppress enemy precision firepower to survive long enough and in large enough numbers to achieve their objectives. And we may have to accept (again) that our tanks will be lost in large numbers in battle and must be replenished before the advance can continue. Having invulnerable monsters as our Abrams have proved to be in two wars of movement against Iraq is not the normal state of affairs for tank warfare. We may simply need more tanks.
We need tanks for mobile, protected, firepower able to advance into the heart of an enemy to take territory and destroy armies. What do we use for this if not tanks and other supporting armored vehicles? If you can't explain what has replaced the tank, the heavy main battle tank isn't obsolete yet.
UPDATE: More from Strategypage on how the M-1 Abrams has been updated.
So far, the only thing we have to replace the M-1 is a more advanced version of the M-1.
