Is the main battle tank finally more effort than it is worth? I'm unwilling to conclude that based on Russia's poor tactics with vulnerable tanks carrying out a horrible invasion plan. But I'm now willing to be open to the possibility that the day is arriving.
The Army has wasted a lot of time and effort trying to replace the Abrams. So far nothing has been able to replace the tank's combination of protection, firepower, and mobility on the battlefield. It seems like the Army will again take a stab at replacing the tank. I wrote recently that it is likely futile.
I've defended the value of tanks for many decades despite repeated claims that they are vulnerable, and so obsolete. Thus far, the tank has endured despite those claims of obsolescence. They are mobile, protected, firepower and I don't see a replacement for that battlefield requirement yet. But weapons that can destroy tanks are proliferating under a thickening surveillance net. And protecting the tanks is more expensive than the threats that kill them. I'm starting to have doubts about the cost effectiveness of the main battle tank.
I've long concluded that aircraft carrier cost to build, defend, and operate them has exceeded its value for sea control missions.
And I've even admitted--in print--that low-flying expensive aircraft providing direct support to ground combat units is too dangerous with modern air defenses:
The Air Force is right that close air support for ground troops in a high-threat air defense environment cannot be achieved at low altitudes at an acceptable price in planes, crews and mission failures.
But I digress.
No weapon system lasts forever. We can't let emotional attachment to the platform, sunk costs, or our past positions drive weapons policy.
I do admit that current tanks may not be appropriate as the threat increases in the future. I thought we might need a much cheaper tank--a New Sherman. But the future seems uncertain to me:
I think ground and air drones will operate like clouds around manned tanks. But I'm starting to think that for campaigns against peers that the new tank will need to be a Sherman-like vehicle. Cheap enough to lose in large numbers and simple enough to produce in large numbers. The key for vehicle design will be helping a small crew survive hits that knock out the tanks. And seeing if our automobile plants can handle a conversion to such tanks.
Or will tanks survive in any form? But if not, what will provide mobile protected firepower to enable maneuver on the battlefield? Can we?
And against an enemy with robotic scouts too, can the primary manned combat vehicles take the enemy scouts out? Or will our scouts have to up-armor and up-arm to outfight the enemy scouts? That has been the lesson of light manned recon units when tested in combat. Will that scout arms race undermine the possible theory of cheap and expendable drone scouts? Where is the cross-over point for spending money on upgrading drones versus mass-producing them?
But with enemy heavy forces trying to do the same thing with detecting and killing enemies at longer ranges, how do our many light infantry forces survive in that kind of battlefield sensor-rich environment without the protection the armored forces will have?
Unprotected people and lightly or unprotected vehicles already seem like dead men walking to me.
I've warned that in a long war, expensive weapons and ammo will run out. And that any operational approach that relies on those now-nearly extinct weapons dies with them. Is hoping to win before the high-tech stuff is gone a fool's errand?
But maybe the cost of protecting, deploying, and sustaining in combat these behemoths is something that America is uniquely able to do, getting battlefield results that justify the high cost.
Still, I'm more open to the idea that we are seeing the extinction of the main battle tank. Maybe survivability simply cannot apply to any vehicle that uses direct fire to destroy enemies, putting them in danger from enemy direct fire or observation that calls in precision indirect fire.
Maybe we have to simply accept that narrow reality and move on without shoving money at the survivability problem that just drives up weight and costs.
Perhaps in this environment infantry regains its past dominance. When I wrote in Military Review when I dismissed two decades ago the Army effort to replace the tank (starting on p. 28), I took a side trip into the infantry carrier version of a replacement and addressed infantry usage:
Compensating for reduced numbers, Land Warrior project-derived systems will digitize even walking infantry. Individual soldiers will be lethal, in constant communication, and exploit real-time intelligence. Each soldier will have more survivability than current equipment allows. Infantry soldiers may even look forward to personal electronic shields that disarm incoming rounds by disabling their proximity fuses. Dismounts may fight with flying or crawling robots that will see and kill for the soldiers.
Basically, I felt that small numbers of infantry more spread out to protect them would be compensated by greater lethality at longer ranges for each individual soldier. After all, precision is getting cheaper and smaller, spreading down even to infantry personal weapons. We have to adapt to that, too, as I addressed on the Naval Institute Blog. Land Warrior with its sci fi feel didn't pan out as a whole, but components have made it into the field.
But the dominance of firepower-wielding infantry is a recipe for battlefield stalemate, isn't it? How does infantry advance in the face of enemy infantry wielding similar networked firepower? The infantry may have lots of firepower. And it may have "protection" from dispersal and digging in. But where is the mobility?
Hell, the Army's new light tank, the MPF, might be the basic design for a New Sherman tank despite my deep worries about its survivability. The gun is too small to kill enemy tanks from the front. But maybe that's fine. Maybe that hypothetical inexpensive, mass-produced New Sherman avoids direct fire. Perhaps it must be a missile shooter and sensor in a network that uses and calls in indirect fire. Including disposable boxes of missiles. And the New Sherman's 105mm main gun is its direct fire last-ditch self-protection option when it advances against weakened enemies or when the enemy advances through the friendly firepower.
But before I really look for a replacement for the main battle tank to provide mobile, protected, firepower--or even its abandonment in favor of infantry--I'd like to see how Ukraine uses its tanks on offensive to see if the failures are due to Russian training, tank design, tactical failure, and operational weaknesses rather than a crucial flaw in tanks themselves.
And even then, I'd want to study and wargame the issue. A couple Balkan wars on the eve of World War I seemingly taught the lesson that mobile warfare was still a thing. On the Western front, at least, that lesson would be dead wrong--with massive casualties to prove it.
We have much to ponder. I don't want to cling to the main battle tank from inertia. But I don't want to kill a useful system to seem trendy. And in an age of peer competition we must get it right.
NOTE: Winter War of 2022 coverage continues here.
