Whether Tanks Are Obsolete 

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The answer is no, tanks are not obsolete. The answer is tanks without APS, gunner and commander 360 degree CITV and tanks with poor reverse gears are obsolete on the modern battlefield. Russia Has been fielding None with these characteristics.

0:42 The carrier made the battleship obsolete as the main naval platform not because it could sink it 1 vs 1, but because it could do everything a battleship did, but better (AA, fire support, naval strikes, etc). Systems don't go bad by themselves, they get replaced, and there is nothing that can replace the tank on its direct fire and maneuver role.

Tanks are not obsolete. Russias tactics and incompetence is obsolete.

Tanks are plenty effective when you fight a war properly. SEAD, followed by DEAD, then once air superiority is established you launch preparatory fires on enemy artillery positions and supply routes, then roll mechanized infantry forward supported by tanks to deal with entrenched enemy. Lastly be sure to have CAS and artillery on station to provide anti-tank and indirect fire on enemy armor and unprotected enemy positions. Of course, no fly zone enforced by friendly air ensures no enemy CAS to threaten friendly armor. And of course Russia has done little of this.

1918: Tanks survived flamethrowers and mines 1930s: Tanks survived the era of anti tank guns 1940s: Tanks could challenge tankdestroyers 1950's: Tanks could survive primetime of RPG's and Bazookas 1970s Tanks survived attack helicopters 1980's Tanks survived ground attack jets Late 2000's: Drones vs tanks, i guess tanks will survive that too. There must be a reason why nations still want MBT's, don't matter how many counter ideas the enemie has

Tanks are tools. Different tools are used in different situations. You wouldn't hammer a nail with a screwdriver and you shouldn't expect tanks in urban and static positions without combined arms support to be sucessfull. As long as manuver warfare plays a role in battle, so too will the tank.

A tank is a mobile 125mm gun on an armoured chassis. I find it difficult to see how that will ever be unusable. Sometimes you just gotta bulldoze an enemy with the direct fires from a BFG while under fire

If you had a solid supply line, Tanks are pretty scary. And oh, it'll be more useful if they can traverse fast from forwards to backwards, with that even being hit by an Anti-Tank projectile would be significantly lower, than just having Russian Tanks traverse just as fast as their babushka's top speed.

3:03 the mix of tanks reminds me of Germany in WW2 they had many different types of trucks, Pz I, Pz II, Pz III, Pz IV, Panther, Tiger, Tiger II, stug, jadgpanther, Jadtiger, and letter variants of each. too many different tanks made finding and reparing parts harder

"You can never not get the picture through to someone when using a giant metal beast with a huge cannon on it that you've named Sparkles" - Socrates

M1a2 sepv3 with trophy active protection system will be here well into the next decade. Tanks aren't going anywhere. What matters is using them effectively in combined arms operations.

Always a treat when a new CC video comes out 👏

The Tank was developed as a warship on land. It had all the qualities of the Dreadnought: 1 Mobility: Caterpillar tracks allowed it to go over trenches. 2. Firepower: It's main gun and machine guns 3. Protection: Heavily armoured. Today's warships have a very different and more modern design philosophy. They have missiles as the main weapon. They are all aircraft carriers (at least 1 rotary winged chopper) Their protection basically comes from anti-aircraft missiles, guns and decoy systems (not armour). Meanwhile, tanks have remained in a time warp (except adding active and passive protection). Tanks must carry drones, non-line of sight missiles to attack ground targets, anti-aircraft missiles like Stingers, Active and passive protection systems. If the armour is a little lighter and thinner, it's not a big loss.

Love the uploads Covert Cabal!

As usual a very thorough concise and logical coverage of the topic at hand 👏

The answer is no, tanks are not obsolete. Until there is something else that that can fulfill the role of "mobile, protected big gun" better than a tank can, it won't be retired. Capability determines whether a piece of military tech is retired, not vulnerability. It's like the death of the battleship. The battleship didn't die because it was vulnerable to aircraft, it died because the aircraft carrier fulfilled the role of long-range power projection on the sea better than the battleship. Edit: To emphasize my point, here is the Chieftain, former US tank officer and respected AFV historian, on why the tank is not dead: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-lI7T650RTT8.html

If I was making a armored fighting vehicle for the next few decades, I'd be focusing the armor on the top. I think that will be the big shift in tank design. Drones strike from above. Javelin strikes from above. A-16 strikes from above. Urban warfare threats strike from above. So I am really unconvinced that a zillion mm of frontal armor is going to define survivability going forward. That's pretty much focused on surviving front-on tank v tank battles, and those seem to be what's actually obsolete. So, I'd be doing my R&D on a fairly light "tank" with a small (probably sub 50 mm) main gun that can take out most IFV's and light tanks, and just carries a few Javelin style ATGM for the rare case when it encounters a heavy tank and can't just withdraw and call in a drone strike to kill it from a distance. Heck, the fighting vehicle may not even need the ATGM's -- a nearby infantry squad probably carries them already. Shift doctrine so infantry kills tanks, and light tanks mainly focus on everything less armored than the tank. Again, armor focus on top. Probably engine at the front so if something heavy does shoot the front, the 2-3 guys at the back might survive even if the tank is mission killed. No need for a dedicated loader with something like a 30mm autocanon. May not even need a dedicated gunner separate from the commander with good UX. Only needing to protect two people means a smaller area that needs the heaviest armor, and you can make a relatively survivable vehicle still be fairly light. Is it still a tank by the time it's a two man vehicle witha 30mm gun and negligible frontal armor? Dunno. But it would be a useful vehicle, and a lot more practical to acquire and deploy in significant numbers than "Super Abrams" type100t beasts with inifnity armor and 150mm canons or whatever some people are proposing to be big enough to scale up current doctrine and survive a javelin hit.

The Harimau/Kaplan Medium Tank is an interesting tank to consider.

7:30 I am surprised you didn't mention the weasel. Germany's paratrooper tank/tankette.

You won't see my in a tank. There's so many threats! Anti tank mines, anti tank missiles carried by jets, helicopters and even infantry! 🥴

They just need to be supported by infantry and other units

There's no way the turbine powered T-80 going to use a different fuel than the other diesel powered types.

The fact that Russias has lost more then 1000 tanks is so insane

The explanation that tanks are useful until something can fulfill their role better is only partially true. In WW1, cavalry became obsolete and nothing immediately replaced it. War just slowed down. In addition, tanks may become obsolete in different countries at different times due to cost. Until the widespread introduction of precision guided munitions, battleship guns were the superior form of naval fire support, but everyone but the U.S. had retired their battleships decades earlier because they just couldn't afford to maintain that rather niche capability.

The real question I want to know is Why is there no land based CIWS weapon system?

until large cannons have some other way of being mobile on the battlefield, tanks aren't and will never be, obsolete

During winter time, tanks are incredibly vulnerble because they stand out hot in the winter ... easy target for anti-tank missles.

Tanks are the only platforms which do what they can do. They will never go obsolete until that changes.

The use of armour won't ever go out of style, that is a armoured platform to bring a variety of weapon systems to engage the enemy. What is going out of style are expensive, heavy and slowly produced weapon systems that can be disabled or destroyed with far, far cheaper weapon systems. Using them effectively is no doubt apart of the equation but in a long term war, modern tanks cannot hope to remain prevalent throughout it's course and more then likely other, cheaper, lighter and faster produced tanks and possibly lower tech tanks will be produced to keep up with the rapid consumption of equipment and lives that is, war.

the griffin 2 looks like a robocop villian

Interesting that light tanks and frigates are making a comeback now

Up close and personal with a tank turret. 04:19 Pretty special.

Holding ground only works if the crew of the tank has a reasonable expectation of surviving. I suspect the next generation of tanks will be unmanned (along with all military aircraft). It’s become obvious that modern anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons are too effective (and cheap) to overcome.

A single bullet costing about 10 cents can take out an infantryman. Is infantry obsolete?

The best way to explain it to normies or people in the military who don't work at the strategic level is to boil it down to analogies or levels of neccesity that build up from the building blocks Armies need fast vehicles to transport soldiers long distances in a quick manner, with no fatigue and with a lot more combat gear, thus you can have civilian cars or technicals. But these vehicles are soft-skinned, they are very vulnerable to artillery shrapnel and will likely cause heavy casualties to anti-tank mines, they are also not great at going offroad in poor conditions, thus the demand for the APC is clear What if they have a chance encounter in the forward area? What if they want to utilise their speed to come upon the enemy with haste to not allow them to prepare? Then they would be expected to fight with these vehicles, but it wouldn't be efficient to simply have lots of little soldiers poking out of the top hatches of this vehicle as the primary means to fight from this vehicle, would it? Your soldiers would have a limited range and would be exposed to enemy machine gun and artillery fire to their top half. Thus the APC now becomes a Infantry Fighting Vehicle(IFV) with protected turrets with more effective guns/cannons. Okay, but what if we are to attack an enemy position that is fortified? Perhaps it has a trench system with small overhead wooden bunkers? Or maybe a small village with brick houses that contain enemy machine guns? Well now we need bigger guns in order to suppress/take out these enemy decences in order to facilitate our infantry to close with and engage the enemy. Now we have two options of overlapping but separate capability. Infantry support guns, IFVs with tank cannon calibre weapons such as Stryker MGS and Lynx 120. Tanks also directly fulfill this duty. But the enemy also has these vehicles, what if they mass their vehicles at the point of our attack to try to blunt it and reinforce their outnumbered initial defenders? That means the outcome of the infantry fight may depend heavily on vehicle vs vehicle combat, so we need to build vehicles that are really good at killing enemy vehicles and really good at surviving against enemy vehicles. Thus we definitely have the tank. This isn't necessarily the evolution of how HISTORICALLY these decisions were made and how the ACTUAL requirements were realised and evolved, for example the tank was arguably made before APCs and IFVs depending on your definitions which gets complicated. But this is how one should think about it if you were to take a first-principles approach to trying to justify how warfare works at this point.

Yeah, light tanks are an important development and I hope well see a lot more of them. I also suspect that we (as is the case with almost anything) need a lot more of them than previously anticipated. NATOs quality over quantity philosophy is all well and good, but we seem to forget that too few units simply wont cut it. This is maybe less true for the US but its defiantly a problem for a lot of EU nations

Hi, I joined the patreon but it seems the discord link is not working as it should be the one in the Patreon page. Are there any issues?

How. Much damage did the tank do before being destroyed? This is the real question

another reason for the losses is the lack of embedded comms experts to ensure that forward observing and spotting drones are ineffective, and for them to plan the comms plan along with the terrain to minimize radio presence to the enemy.

The future is unmanned tanks and fighting vehicles and high speed drones for recon.

4:21 special turret eject procedure

*The War in Ukraine breaks out* *suddenly, everyone on RU-vid is a defense expert* "tAnKs ObSoLeTe!"

Hmm, not a word on how the drone revolution will affect the role of tanks.

The biggest competitor for tanks is self-propelled artillery with guided long range precision shells and drone observers. SP guns also offer mobile protected firepower. Guided ammo and spotting drones give SP guns a level of accuracy that can compete with direct tank fire. ANd SP guns can fire from 20-30 km away. Putting out of range of most threats unlike MBT's. So the question is if SP artillery can take over the role of MBT's?

So, you basically need a perfectly executed war to make tanks worthwhile?

I feel like having a giant gun on the battlefield will always be useful. Having that gun be self-propelled will always make it more useful. Giving the self-propelled gun extra armor will always make it more survivable. Having infantry nearby will insure the Big Gun fulfills it's mission. The soldiers nearby may as well be using the extra armor for the giant gun. I just don't can't imagine that formula ever going away. That being said, I could see an improvement. If the tanks could be converted into giant remote-control drone might add flexibility. The enemy wouldn't be able to distinguish manned tank vs drone.

I don’t think the right question is being asked. It’s no a question if they can be used in battle, but the logistical challenges of getting them to the battlefield. And the problem is an order of magnitude greater when talking about a large unit like an armored division or a cavalry division.

Every weapon system has vulnerabilities. Carriers are vulnerable. Manned planes are vulnerable. Tank are vulnerable. Heck, infantry have been vulnerable since the inception of warfare and they're still used. The trick is to mitigate and limit the risk. Carriers have escorts. Manned planes have ECM planes as escort. Tanks need infantry support. Infantry need tank, artillery and air support. Etc.

what if army battalions include mobile cram platform with their tanks? and they won't go inside sub urban or urban location without fully decimating or surveying the location to make sure its free of ambush points since the only thing that can kill a tank sneakily is infantry with javelin like weapons so if they're in open area cram platforms are needed to counter those missiles rockets even artillery shells only tank to tank can contest those things

Greta video as always brother!! ❤

A ch53 if I'm not mistaken can carry a Stryker so I really dont see any issues with this idea. u basically make a light tank apc thing thats very modular with the option of 40mm, 105mm or 120 or whatever and u assemble it on the battlefield like legos using recovery type vehichles and heavy lift helicopters to ship the vehichle in large simple lego like chunks or as a whole. if two get damaged and ones a completely different model of the same vehicle, no problem just interchange parts or just ship in like 5 more using a few helicopter loads or toss it out of a plane or something. pros: can be used anywhere, cheap, easy to work on, modular witch is always a really good thing, u can just take it apart and put like the hull into one helicopter and the turret in another and ship it to a new area hundreds of miles away within a few hours. the enimy would have no idea as to what was going on as there could be dozens of tanks in one spot and now they've basically telliported across the country to another combat zone. cons: might not have great armor but that doesn't matter too much anyways as long as it can stop hmg, might just break into large chunks if in a sticky enough situation, probably not the most comfortable of vehicles due to it having to be simi lightweight, probably would have some reliability issues, without a large helicopter force the tank is limited to behaving like a regular tank or ifv.

Does the turret pop off like the T-90? Though

I have said it before, will say it again - GUNDAMS! Can fly, can shoot, uses swords sometimes, beam sabres, swims, go to space and are piloted by orphan kids usually. Cheap labour! Honestly though, for the military doctrine, for advancing on fortified positions and trenches, few things replace the tank. They are clunky, yes, vulnerable as of recently but still required for ground control and are indispensable for infantry support and overall advancement.

what your enemy has determines what is of lesser use: if they have no or limited AT then tanks are brilliant.

Depended upon tactics employed and what the military is being asked to do with those tanks.

Plenty of people have died with an AK in their hands, doesn’t mean AK’s are going outta style. Whatever equipment you’re running has a scenario where it can do some work, usually if you see some targets and you’re concealed, and said targets are vulnerable to you. A T-62 could potentially wipe out a dozen apcs and trucks in an ambush, but could also be potentially defeated by a 30mm grenade through the hatch. What’s going outta style is poorly trained and equipped infantry.

covert cable and battle order need to collaborate and do a whole series on the modern PLA. equipment, tactics, structure and doctrine. in great detail. please 🙏

Against any adversary capable of air supremacy or the use of drones for locating and laser designation, tanks are sitting ducks, the land version of sitting duck aircraft carriers

The tank as a concept have been around since the Egyptian figure out how to make chariot for war. There is always going to be a need for something faster than infantry on foot and then something to take out that faster something. Of course if we completely shift to just use flying drones for war then there is no need for infantry and no need to be faster than them.

Covert i dont think the Stryker MGS is the best representation of a big gun mounted to an IFV for anti-tank, wasnt the MGS made for infantry fire support roles and with anti tank as secondary/tertiary?.... what about the Centauro?

Yes. Replace the people and the armor with more effective systems. Drones with mobility and speed, capable of attacking both air and ground targets. That or low flying, inexpensive 'swarm' drones capable of loitering an area and detonating on any air/land target.

You know the best light time out there today would be in Sweden SVT-90..

mfs when they realize they need to actually occupy the city in question

Funny thing about tanks--the name came from a British attempt to disguise a "modern" siege engine, a device to battle through the World War One trench belts. Winston Churchill and the Royal Navy had a big hand in developing the concept. The French Renault FT-17 tank was the first modern tank and if you ever get to see one in the flesh, don't pass up the opportunity. The FT-17 was slow, its armor was more of a suggestion, and it carried either a machine gun or a 37mm low velocity cannon that due to lack of fire control lacked range. The tank commander/gunner was overworked and radios were still new--the most reliable way to sent a message back to HQ was with a pigeon. Today's tanks do more than break through defensive lines (when the tank can't simply drive around the defenses)--today's tank is speedy and has more driving range, the tank weapons are far more potent, and despite everything on the battlefield being aimed at tanks, those clanking tracked monsters are hard to kill. I don't know what's going on in Ukraine, but when tanks failed in Finland 1939/1940, or failed in the Middle East during the Fifties, Sixties, and Seventies, or failed in Vietnam, the tanks were not fully integrated into a combat team with infantry, artillery, engineers, air defense, close air support, and scouts. Sending unaccompanied tanks into a city is like the Lone Ranger sending Tonto into town to scout things out.

The sudden change of heart in this channel is amusing!

The late Galen Windsor said that the moment they made depleted uranium rounds for .50 cal rifles & put them into the hands of every dog's face they made tank Warfare obsolescence .

We need to think out of the box. We are still stuck with the same tank concept, what we need is a Gundam!

The T-72 and its variants are designed for open field, head-on shooting battles. Hence the low profile and heavy frontal armor. Anything beyond that renders them almost completely ineffective & vulnerable. Their propensity to explode (due to internal ammo storage) also doesn’t help.

A pillbox on wheels is a bit slower than a tank

Once I watched the drone footage from Azerbaijan - Armenia war, it seemed to me that all armoured vehicles are nothing more than targets for drones to destroy. That seems to their purpose now.

The next generation tanks will likely be unmanned robot tanks.

"In the last wars we saw a lot of soldiers shot down, this brings us to the question - are soldiers obsolete? Should we get rid of them in military?"

Top notch honest video.cheers Keep it on Pentehon hiring !

Sending tanks into battle is like sending warhorses during WW1. Tanks are obsolete when a team of atgm infantry in high mobility wheeled vehicles can simply drive around them and take the battle to the rear and that's why tanks are being abandoned, because they can't keep up with the speed of modern war.

While I've seen an enormous amount of footage of tanks being destroyed, I've seen a corrospondingly enormous amount of footage of tanks firing their main guns at the enemy. So it's clear to me that, as dangerous as the modern battlefield is for tanks, a lot of tanks are still surviving long enough to do their job. But I suspect that videos of tanks exploding tend to get more views than videos of tanks firing at treelines. I have also heard (second hand) on several occasions from people who have fought in Ukraine that tanks remain one of the biggest threats on the battlefield after artillery and drones.

I have an alternative idea to tanks what about Unmanned Ground Vehicles?? Like a drone tank??

Shame you didn't mention the CV90120 amongst the light tanks

Until somebody creates a city-sized block of armor and weapons that can mobilize and deposit entire armies, I will say tanks have not peaked.

Tanks with active protection systems

What are they connected to at 2:57 ?

This is a little bit illogical: he starts out by saying that mounting a gun on an infantry fighting vehicle is bad because it doesn't have enough protection, but then suggests that the light tank is the way to go, which will also have less protection than the MBT. I think the answer is a super-heavy tank with various counter-measures that is very hard to kill with shoulder-fired missiles.

I just see hundreds or thousands of drones sent out at once to take out and defend. Controller flys them to the spot and they fly back on their own.

Great video

I feel like the future may have very light, heavily armed vehicles for offense and super well armored and difficult to maneuver vehicles that can survive hits better and is armed with light weapons effective against the light heavily armed vehicles.

Mom said its my turn to announce that tanks are obsolete.

Tanks can take and hold ground so they aren't obsolete at all when they are deployed properly with appropriate support.

2:40 Small question: What is that ceef?

War is a bunch of cat and mouse so I don't see how a mobile cannon won't be helpful in the future. Even if it shoots lasers. A mobile cannon is a mobile cannon. Sure there are various variations but still.

Battle ship to aircraft carrier. Tank to drone carrier?

The video did not mention active protection systems such as Arena and Trophy, which are installed on tanks and detect and shoot down incoming missiles and rockets. Germany even has a system that uses a "directed energy" weapon. As for replacing tanks, it isn't the tank that will be replaced, it's the crew that will be removed. Tanks will be remotely controlled and/or autonomous. Not having a crew saves a lot of space, and the "mobile gun system" may become more expendable, smaller, and numerous. As for light armor on a tank, Germany tried that with their Leopard 1 main battle tank because at the time HEAT rounds could defeat any armor. That didn't work out. Armor evolved with ceramics and spacing. Robot tanks and active defense anti-missile systems are the future.

me in an abrams apparently dodging missiles??? wtf, "stryker failed because it didnt replace tank" like it was supposed to? it was meant to give infantry a big gun not to duel fucking tanks????

How about a crewless tank, operated from afar like a drone, but on wheels with big guns lol, the problem with tank today is that it can't protect the crew inside due to well developed weapons against it, but infantry can't push forward effectively either without tanks.

Tank will never obsolete until Metal Gear go out in Battle field...

The are antiquated. Drones and bots will see to it.

If something became obsolete because they get destroyed, infantry would be obsolete by now. Everything on tbe battlefield kills them lol

Heavy tanks? Obsolete! Tanks? As in mobile guns that protects against small arms and arty fragments? Never obsolete!

Are tanks obsolete? Are helicopters obsolete? What’s next “is infantry obsolete?”

After thinking about this over the last few months, I think a good replacement or addition would be a ground equivalent of a F-16, a ground-fighter. Think of it as an ultralight tank or tank-destroyer, operated by a crew of one or two or possibly remotely. It could have a fixed gun, or on a swivel or an external turret (mounted above the roof armor to protect the crew from cook-off if hit. It would need an autoloader, but doctrine might allow for limited ammo stores or single-type ammo stores. It would probably also have external hardpoints to carry ATGM and/or MANPAD class anti-vehicle and anti-air missiles. It might also be able to carry a 20-30mm autocannon and or a 40mm grenade launcher. Maybe that sound like a lot, and maybe one vehicle wouldn't carry all the above, but doctrine and tactics might allow for mission specific load outs. The goal of this size would be: lower mass, lower fuel consumption, higher speed, longer unrefueled range, better handling in mud, smaller size, and lower cost. The concept would be to field many more of these, in order to plug gaps in long lines of control, but have the ability to rapidly respond to incursions. It would escort mechanized infantry on Thunder Runs.

Interesting.