RE: WW2 Tanks.... A question....
December 6, 2018 at 5:42 pm
(This post was last modified: December 6, 2018 at 5:48 pm by The Grand Nudger.)
Governments around the world have been letting their tank programs die for the simple reason that the tank is just not what it once was even though they've become exponentially more expensive to field. Small arms are more lethal than they used to be...airpower is cheaper (and also more lethal), and less and less of a conflict plays out where a tank could even conceptually shine.
Then there are the issues of engagements where tanks should have done well, but got rolled. Often enough by the far cheaper but just as lethal afvs and their infantry buddies, without whom tanks can't operate anyway.
It can't be stressed enough that anyone thinking about ways to fight the past engagement has already lost the next. In the mostly urban, low level, assymetric war of the future, a war that russia is itself pioneering, tanks are more tools of propaganda than instruments of battlefield superiority. They've become the sort of battleships of the land that they were always envisioned as....but, you know, see: battleship.
Then there are the issues of engagements where tanks should have done well, but got rolled. Often enough by the far cheaper but just as lethal afvs and their infantry buddies, without whom tanks can't operate anyway.
It can't be stressed enough that anyone thinking about ways to fight the past engagement has already lost the next. In the mostly urban, low level, assymetric war of the future, a war that russia is itself pioneering, tanks are more tools of propaganda than instruments of battlefield superiority. They've become the sort of battleships of the land that they were always envisioned as....but, you know, see: battleship.
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