“Tanks have ruled land warfare for more than 80 years,” a Military.com article says (here). But that era may be coming to a close.
Tanks made their first battlefield appearance in World War 1. After initial issues of mechanical reliability and tactics were worked out, they achieved some notable successes in that war’s later battles by “solving” the problem of breaking trench defenses. They were instrumental in Germany’s early World War 2 victories in Poland, France, and Russia, and armored units continued to be key elements in the European theater, on both western and eastern fronts, throughout that war.
While tanks can be used to defend positions, they’re primarily an offensive weapon whose main job, Military.com says, is “to punch through enemy positions so infantry can flood in and hold the newly gained ground.” And that’s how they’ve been used in past wars. Defenders tried to stop them with artillery, planes dropping bombs, their own tanks, and infantry anti-tank weapons like the bazooka.
Russia is primarily a land power, its tactical doctrine is based on armored warfare, and its army has about 12,500 tanks, far more than other country (and double the U.S. total of 6,000), of which about a fifth or 2,500 were committed to the Ukraine invasion.
Those tanks are faring poorly in Ukraine. As of March 30, over 300 have been lost there, according to one source (here), many as victims of a new generation of guided anti-tank missiles that smack into the tank from above, where its armor is weakest.
Russia’s military leaders expected to fight big pitched battles against massed Ukrainian forces, but Ukraine’s military has resorted to small-unit tactics, such as hit-and-run attacks against road convoys, against which tanks aren’t very effective. And in Ukraine, tanks are proving more vulnerable than they’ve ever been before.
The Russian tanks are getting slaughtered by those new anti-tank missiles, the best known of which is the U.S.-made Javelin, which is being supplied to Ukraine by the thousands. These shoulder-fired weapons are changing warfare. “With very little training, troops and even volunteers can defeat tanks” with them, Military.com notes.
The “ineffectiveness of Russian tank attacks” in Ukraine, coupled with their new vulnerability, has some military observers thinking “tanks could arguably be rendered obsolete,” the Military.com article says.
To be sure, military incompetence is contributing to Russia’s setbacks in Ukraine, and those who still believe in tanks “can rightly chalk up a lot of Russia’s ruined tanks to terrible tactics,” the article continues.
But the new munitions pose a “huge challenge” to armored vehicles, as the Ukraine war is demonstrating, and the role of the tank in future warfare appears destined to change from spearhead to something more approximating a spear shaft, e.g., as a launching platform for drones.
Other formidable technologies of war have disappeared, among them castles and fortifications, swords and longbows, mounted cavalry, and battleships. Tanks may be on the way out, too. When a military technology no longer wins battles, and becomes easy to defeat, its days are numbered. Just ask the cavalry horse (who, in any case, is happy to be retired — but do tanks have feelings?).
