Are modern MBT's still capable of fullfilling the same requirements that such successful tanks as the Sherman/T34 did?

1. The Abrams is no heavier than most of its contemporaries
2. The "Tiger line of thinking" Isn't an actual thing

>Tiger line of thinking
Does it pain you that it was the future and came to pass?

Because they're video game nerds nostalgic for the days where entire countries committed themselves to a war effort because they think it would give them something worthwhile to live for.

"Modern War" is not Total War explicitly because we have not had a war where we needed to gear up for the sort of gigantic WW2 clashes.

Modern War has primarily been police actions and executive actions.

The last time we actually declared war was WW2.

Stopping the Nazi's from taking over Europe during the 1940s was pretty worthwhile to live for user. Many even thought it was worth dying for.

>Can be comfortably transported on railcars in large numbers
No. For instance the brits outright dropped the requirement for the Centurion to not fit on their then existing railcars because they realised that the weight limit will only drag the design down.
>Can be reasonably stored on cargo vessels in large numbers
Modern cargo vessels are absolute monsters, its definitely possible.
>Able to cross most bridges, or ford rivers where there are none (if need be with amphibious attachments)
As long as the bridge can take 80 tons of weight.
Ford rivers, yes.
>Can be easily repaired or slavaged in the field. A break down is not an instant mobility kill.
Depends on what breaks. I assume the turbine engine being fucked is an instant-kill though.
>is not "difficult" to maintain, ala the difference between Kv1 and T34
Maintaining will be easy so long as you don't have to dissemble shit to do basic maintenance work.
>Can be mass produced in large quantities, the tens of thousands
Not possible with modern MBTs. WW2 tanks are simple compared to MBTs.
>Can be produced from converted automobile or other civilian factories
Consdering that you need special metal composites for the armor and such, no.

Tank warfare changed throughout the ages and tanks changed with it.
It is not fair to use old criteria for WW2 tanks to judge modern tanks with.

But we haven't had massive scale tank warfare since WW2 though.

In the purview of a new global war, where nations send millions against millions, will it truly be any different than WW2?

>Can be comfortably transported on railcars in large numbers
Yes but that's rather vulnerable.
>Can be reasonably stored on cargo vessels in large numbers
Yes, but cargo vessels are different from WW2 era.
>Able to cross most bridges, or ford rivers where there are none (if need be with amphibious attachments)
Sort of. Most bridges now are designed with modern materials. There are variants of Abrams that have bridge devices specifically to help other Abrams across water or gaps. I'd imagine other countries have the same.
>Can be easily repaired or slavaged in the field. A break down is not an instant mobility kill.
Yes. There's an entire business around salvaging Abrams. I dunno about other tanks but I bet they have something similar.
>is not "difficult" to maintain, ala the difference between Kv1 and T34
Define difficult. By modern standard it's not too difficult.
>Can be mass produced in large quantities, the tens of thousands
Modern standards man. You don't need a shit ton of expendable tanks to get the job done. Thousands maybe, but ten of thousands is unreasonable.
>Can be produced from converted automobile or other civilian factories
Yes but no particular reason to right now.

Times changed OP. WW2 and the modern era have a fair amount of difference.

The modern world can not sustain a new "global war".

Every nation with the resources to theoretically sustain that would be shooting itself in the foot politically and economically. Every first world nation is so intertwined with each other by trade, they would face catastrophic repercussions not only for themselves but for the world.

We've achieved what people would hope would prevent the first world war, a world where any non-shitty nations having a full blown war of conquest can't be done anymore.

We declared war on Iraq.

We could have

But we didn't. Twice

George SR and George Jr didn't want to bother to wait for congress, and probably would have lost if they dragged their feet.

aww, it's retarded.

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T-72. Except
>converted automobile or other civilian factories
Because industry changed a lot.

>The M1 Abrams is quite obviously descended from the Tiger line of thinking
The M1 Abrams descended from the "We fucked up all deadlines and we need a cheap tank right here, right now or the Congress will fuck us with a flaming dildo".

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read

>drive Abrams across an American freeway
>freeway collapses and said Abrams plunges 100 feet, killing the crew and likely destroying the tank as well

They're great tanks and all but the Abrams is really just too heavy to use on unstable terrain.

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>Ruskies did so terribly during the opening of Barbarossa
Did they? German advance was slower than in Europe, German losses were higher than in Europe. If you take everything that happened before 1941 - Soviets were better than anyone at stopping the Nazis.

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>Soviets were better than anyone at stopping the Nazis.
>all of the country's major population and industrial centers along with the breadbasket fall within six months, leaving the Soviets to struggle on with only a fraction of their own resources

It's a miracle the USSR managed to survive the winter of 1941 at all.

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*nearly all

>Why did we let this ever become a thing

This is what happens when you give the Department of Defense a blank check. They start wasting gargantuan amounts of money. Which is why I consider slashing the defense budget to be absolutely a good thing.

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Desert Storm, while not quite WWII scale, involved a shit-ton of armor and all it's supporting elements.

Involved a shit ton of our armor at least.

It involved shit armor on Saddam's side

>What is the entire Ukrainian war in the East?
>What is Geo-politics? This video should be mandatory for anyone who wants to discuss world affairs seriously.
youtube.com/watch?v=feU7HT0x_qU&t=127s

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>Can be comfortably transported on railcars in large numbers
Yes, assuming your nation has large scale rail infrastructure. I have family down near Harrisburg PA, and we see M1s on flatcars in the marshalling yard pretty often.
>Can be reasonably stored on cargo vessels in large numbers
Again, yes. Cargo ships are fucking huge; pretty much the only thing a cargo ship can't carry in large numbers are other cargo ships.
>Able to cross most bridges, or ford rivers where there are none (if need be with amphibious attachments)
To a degree. Most large armored units will have an attached unit of bridge laying equipment at some level. Every modern MBT is equipped for deep fording with some degree of preparation though.
>Can be easily repaired or salvaged in the field. A break down is not an instant mobility kill.
This really goes back to your supporting units. Tanks break down; that's a fact. Trying to make a tank that will never break down is pointless. It's easier to make a tank as reliable as you can (which everyone does) and make something big enough to tow it away when it inevitably breaks.
>is not "difficult" to maintain, ala the difference between Kv1 and T34
Well the T-34 was far from an ideal tank to have to maintain, but let's not get into that. This is really up for debate, and there are a lot of factors to look at. For the most part, modern MBTs are designed to be fixed quickly and easily. Complicated engine systems like those used on the T-64 and Chieftain left a bad taste in many nations' mouths, and taught them not to over complicate such systems. Of course, it could also be said that autoloading MBTs are inherantly more difficult to manage, thanks to the addition of a complex loading mechanism, and the removal of an extra crewman to assist in maintenance.

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>Can be mass produced in large quantities, the tens of thousands
Some yes, some no. This is more down to a nation's industrial capability though; they'll design a tank that can be mass produced, but only to the degree that the need. A production run of Leopard 2s for Germany is going to be much smaller than a batch of M1A2s for the United States. The Soviet Union could manufacture tens of thousands of very dangerous T-64s, T-72s, and T-80s, but with economic troubles the Russian Federation will struggle to manufacture only a few hundred T-14s. There are a lot of factors at play besides the tank itself.
>Can be produced from converted automobile or other civilian factories
This is a serious wartime measure, usually resulting from the loss of actual tank factories. The US and Russia have enough tanks stockpiled that their existing factories could very likely keep up with losses of tanks in the field. Losing actual factories (ie, strikes on industrial targets inside the enemy nation) would likely set a precedent for a nuclear exchange, so at that point it would be pointless to think about tanks.

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Survive? The winter counterattacks almost encircled the Ninth Army and the Fourth Panzer group. The only thing turning it into a loss on the scale of Stalingrad or Kursk right there was Stalin's order to counterattack over the entire front instead of concentrating his forces.

>the M1 is the modern Sherman
It roasts its crew alive?