I keep hearing that tanks are outdated and will be phased out, but why are they outdated and what will replace them...

A goat herder with minimum training and given a modern guided anti tank missile that is 1/100th the cost of a single modern MBT can defeat said MBT which is crewed by 3-5 guys. It's economics. Light tanks that costs much less than MBTs will also die but at least can carry another 5-12 grunts forward plus needs less fuel too.

>there's quite literally nothing that can be done to make a sword viable again. Nano wire swords.
Nuclear warhammers.

>handheld ATs are too effective
Like panzerfaust in WWII?

Also, APS

Infantry isn't going to suddenly stop needing direct fire support. The only thing that's happened is that tanks are vulnerable to infantry again, like they were for most of their history.
They're still going to be the most survivable vehicle on the battlefield and the best way to get big explosions to happen right now very accurately.

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The grunts have a dollar value too, and additional value on top of that because a couple of those grunts are NCO's with extensive combat experience over multiple tours, forming the functional backbone of your infantry corps. To play devil's advocate somewhat, what I think it's really about is the trade-off between how valuable a given element is and both how much you lose if it's lost, in many different aspects (including raw monetary value, like you said), and also how easily it is to kill. I think the biggest thing in favor of IFV's, if you accept the men inside them holding a greater overall value than just their relation to the dollar, is that an IFV can still fulfill its purpose without engaging in direct combat. It can gather up some infantry, transport them across less risky terrain quickly, and then spit them out before it endangers itself overly. A tank has zero value unless it is directly engaging, and it's growingly easy to kill one with minimal potential expenditure.

I do think the era of the MBT is growing to a close.

There are... arguments, but not actual arguments for disgregarding tanks as an effective military tool but rathere as reducing their role or making it more niche and specialiced(like specialiced urban combat vehicles) but the reality is that those arguments only tend to work when you don't consider anything else and the military is and will be very conservative about it's doctrines(people's lives are at stake after all you can't just experiment for the sake of it).

What you will hear is that once you have very good inteligence and recon, artillery and air attacks along with special forces and mechaniced infantry can do the job of heavy assaults or inflicting heavy loses into a more land based force without the operational(no mountains, no urban zones, no dense forests...) constraints of tanks nor their logistical ones(tanks by today's standards are rolling fortresses that's expensive).

Also, tanks for counterinsurgency are simply overkill and can actually become a material burden because although they are not easily destroyed they can be "easily" inmobilized which is costly in time and money.

For example: Bosnia saw a heavy involvement of the air force and the air force special forces although there was also quite the presence of tanks and artillery pieces, and that too happened in the first days of the gulf war with the Iraqui tanks being easy prey for anything that flied, and as you know today drone strikes, gunships, air support and precision artillery is far more important than simply attaching an Abrams to every patrol or convoy moving in the sandbox.

But even if all of the above was to be true, tanks allow armies to assault entrenched positions fast and effectively which in a conventional war is esential and there is no way that any of the above can take on that role, you will probably see the appereance of the philosophy of the Leopard 1(fast, inexpensive and numerous) than the disapeareance of the tank in the battlefield.

Just that you don't need tanks when you have gunships and missiles.

Air support can definitely take out entrenched positions without those entrenched positions being able to strike back, that applies further to missiles, bunker breakers and and ICBMs.

Tanks are yesterday's news, great for holding territory against civilian though so you will see them pas into law enforcement duties rather than being a war tool.

>Air support can definitely take out entrenched positions without those entrenched positions being able to strike back

Entrenched positions can and will strike back if an entrenched position is particularly vulnerable to an attack then is not so entrenched, we only require an effective military with a respectable air force or good anti air artillery or both and both jets and gunships become giant paperweights(also gunships are specially vulnerable to anything AA like an SA-7).

Of course people have been trying to cheapen gunships(AC-235 is an example) and make them more stealthy and effective at higher altitudes(the whole point of making retractable autocannons for B1 lancers) and making planes less vulnerable to ground forces with stealth but the problems still persist.

And tanks haven't been stale, we have more a wider variety of active protection systems, more sensors for locating ATGMs and so on.

But in reality things haven't changed that much.

tanks are most useful against other tanks. Proportionate response and RoE that dictate the tank be vulnerable against surprise attack is just as bad as a Haji with an RPG or IED.

Your counter measures are what I am pointing out is making tanks redundant. You need something other than tanks to deal with gunships air force etc.

Also tanks will not be able to deal with said entrenched position better than the alternatives I have stated.

Also see you didn't refer to the rest of my point, like missile, ICBMs, bunker busters.

Things have changed, in as far as tanks are useless unless used on civilians.

> spam light and medium tanks
Sprey is always right

A goat herder with minimum training and given a beat to shit old rifle that is 1/100th the cost of a modern rifle can defeat a spec ops soldier.

That doesnt mean spec ops forces suddenly are all useless

On the contrary, better fires and sensors dictate more speed and more armor; which tanks provide.

The Ukraine and the Iraq invasion both re-proved the concept that tanks are needed for scouting and operational level maneuver.

Against a mechanized force, infantry supported with fires is only good for the defense; and even there, it can't pack enough long range fires to stay threatening over extended periods.

In real life and in the theoretical meta, tanks remain essential.

And then he gets blown up by a swarm of 120mm HE from the other tanks, or even better, a JDAM.

A suicide attack is never a viable strategy

The era of solders operating complex equipment is coming to an end.
Solders need simple and effective equipment, this ability of the solder to operate equipment can't continue as the equipment becomes more complex. Training will not help as the systems needs increase.
This will lead to AI taking over those systems.
War will be automated and winner take all.
One failure and the opponent will take out so many critical systems at once that there is no ability to recover.
So solders will have no place in contested zones.
That means all of the systems solders use are obsolete. Tanks included.

careful there grandpa, you might blow out all three of your remaining brain cells if you try to rub them together that hard

Again, ignoring salient points about relative effectiveness and why in the real world things have changed.

I told you two times already, tanks are useless unless used on civilians or for policing duties which is exactly what your example entails.

Just get over it user, tanks are surpassed and there is nothing you can do to make them effective again.

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Again, ignoring salient points about relative effectiveness and why in the real world things have changed.

I told you two times already, tanks are useless unless used on civilians or for policing duties which is exactly what your example entails.

Just get over it user, tanks are surpassed and there is nothing you can do to make them effective again.

Repost because I am retarded and replied to my own post.

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Aight cool, but that goat herder could still never stop a mechanized battalion advancing. Not even if he had hundreds of cousins

>Just that you don't need tanks when you have gunships and missiles
I disagree. Nothing makes the durkas get their heads down and rethink their lives faster than a tank rolling through with an infantry element.

I don't think there was ever a time when they weren't vulnerable. Artillery/reversed bullets, anti-tank rifles, panzerfausts/bazookas, firebombs, and then guided missiles have all been able to take out tanks. Just because they can still be taken out doesn't make them outdated and more than infantry still being human does.

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why is this thread filled with retards

SPLIT HER WIDE OPEN

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Because Jow Forums is full of neverserved armchair generals who can only think about battles prefofmed in total vacuum under ideal conditions

effective enough to withstand a tank? nah

Systems like Trophy make tanks nigh immune to contemporary ATGMs that aren't top attack. I wouldn't be surprised if work is being done developing APS that defends against 'fly-over' top attack. The tank is going nowhere.

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