By Godlikeart @Shutterstock
The tank, once the centerpiece of every “real” army, has lost its dominance on the modern battlefield thanks to Turkish drones, the Javelin, and Switchblade kamikaze drones. David Johnson of War on the Rocks, writes (abridged):
Is the value of the tank in modern warfare zilch? That’s the lesson many observers are taking from a flood of images depicting Russian tanks mired in the mud, their turrets blown off, having been ambushed and destroyed by Ukrainian forces armed with cheap anti-tank weapons.[…]
Are the headlines coming from the Russo-Ukrainian War the final obituary for the tank as a viable instrument of war correct or — as with the Chicago Daily Tribune banner declaring Truman’s loss to Dewey in the 1948 presidential election — premature? Is the tank the horse cavalry of the 21st century? Or is it a useful supporting system, like the battleship in World War II? Or is it still, with adaptation, the weapon of choice for ground combat?
As with every other move in the never-ending wrestling match between offense and defense, unmanned systems and top-attack weapons pose heretofore unencountered challenges that must be met, or you will have to conduct a Monty Python reassessment of your military: And now for something completely different.
Before the rush to the funeral, however, the first question that must be addressed before one buries the tank is this: Is there a continued role for mobile, protected lethality on the battlefields of the future?
