The demise of the tank has been claimed many times over the last 50
years. So far the tank remains key for mobile, protected firepower. Judge whether they are worth the cost for the missions you want to achieve. And what do you use if not tanks?
Tanks have long been vulnerable. The era of tank near-invulnerability from the front is a modern phenomenon built on armor advances. Well, since German tanks went into Russia in 1941 and were shocked at the armor of the KVs and T-34s, anyway. We'll see if active protection works to maintain that edge in the face of new weapons.
For now the question is whether they are worth the cost for the missions you want to achieve:
Armour-protected, mobile firepower is a concept rather than a specific platform. One would argue that the debate is fixated on tanks as vehicles over concepts. Tanks can get bigger or smaller, carry more protection, or become uncrewed. Discussions about tanks should be rooted in trade-offs between concrete capabilities, not analysis of long-term trends. The present often makes it difficult to discern the future. As Jon Hawkes, Sam Cranny-Evens, and Mark Cazalet recently pointed out, no one piece of equipment or technology acts alone on the battlefield. As such, tanks must be viewed for, and judged against, their contribution to the totality. Threatened with an increasingly austere fiscal environment, it is necessary to focus on the relative value that tanks bring rather than their value as a stand-alone asset.
Yes, tanks fight as part of combined and joint combat teams. Used alone they will die. That was true in the past and it will remain true in the future.
And as an aside, I'm not sure why the fact that anti-tank missiles out-range tank guns is relevant. Where will battles take place where such line-of-sight engagement ranges matter? Terrain is a thing.
But I digress. As I can.
I think tanks are still important and that America can afford them. But when I imagine the actual end of the era of heavy tanks, Golden Horde swarming munitions are what I imagine causing that. "Ground-breaking," indeed.
God help whoever loses control of the air.
And how long before artillery batteries fire time-on-target swarming
artillery rounds? Fires capabilities that exist now already scare the Hell out of me.
Anyway, tanks aren't obsolete because they can be destroyed any more than infantry is obsolete because people can be killed. But are they worth the price? Should they be different? And how do you achieve your ground missions if you don't have mobile, protected firepower?
I took a stab at such analysis back when the Future Combat Systems was a thing, in Military Review (starting on pg. 28). Then I believed the tank was not obsolete. I still think that holds. But the race between firepower and protection may swing back to firepower, as it has in the past.
UPDATE: This post started with the British so let's end with them:
“The recent history of the British Army’s armoured fighting vehicle capability is deplorable,” the [parliamentary Defence Committee] wrote. “This report reveals a woeful story of bureaucratic procrastination, military indecision, financial mismanagement and general ineptitude, which have continually bedevilled attempts to properly re-equip the British Army over the last two decades.”
You can't really debate the effectiveness of heavy armor if the armor is in deplorable condition, can you? By voting with the budget, for two decades the British decided it isn't worth much to them.
Britain seems like it will modernize a much smaller heavy force as a supporting asset for their new (old) global focus.
