Let’s say that a country with a relatively good equipment (but nothing too flashy), that has for example 200 tanks and 300 IFV’S and 10 mil. people and another country of the same area size, but a little more people, maybe 15-20 mil people, fought.
The second one has no tanks whatsoever, not even ifv’s (for example baltic countries don’t have almost anything, just a very small number of soviet tanks and apc’s (which don’t belong on the battlefield)), but let’s say that they do however have modern infantry weapons, including a lot of atgm’s like the new Kornet or Tow, a lot of rpg’s and more infantry than the first country, would they be evenly matched in that scenario or does the tank&ifv country still have the advantage?
I’m not a general, or even a former military man, but my suspicion is that competent generals on the side with the AFVs would seek to concentrate them and use them to punch a hole in the enemy forces via combined arms tactics, and thereby get into the enemy rear areas and tear them a new one. I don’t think that a bunch of infantry-portable ATGMs would make a huge difference, and that the mobility of the armored units would be the chief thing in their favor.
Classic blitzkrieg strategy and tactics, in other words. You’re basically posing a question that’s fairly similar to the Fall of France, or Operation Barbarossa in early WWII.
METT-TC dictates. METT-TC is a mnemoic used in the US Army to help commanders in the planning stage. It stands for:
Mission
Enemy
Terrain and weather
Troops and support available
Time
Civil Considerations
You’ve answered some of the Enemy and Troops available pieces but haven’t really covered any of the rest.
Terrain is going to be the big Deciding Factor. In the wide-open plains of Central Europe, those tanks are going to dominate. Move the action to Italy and the infantry will turn those same tanks to scrap metal.
It’s an important consideration. The smaller army could try to lure the tanks into the mountains, where they would be vulnerable to being ambushed on a single-lane mountain road using falling rocks and a swarm of infantry with grenades.
Lure the tanks into a city.
Israel lost its last go-round with Hezbollah, who are really just infantry and have no armor. I believe the fighting was in towns and broken terrain where the infantry had more maneuverability, and I remember reading something about the incredible volumes of concentrated fire the Hezbollah troops brought to bear–that wouldn’t affect the armored vehicles but it meant the Israeli infantry couldn’t operate. Don’t have time double check and give cites right now but no doubt someone else will know more than I.
As above, it depends on the situation. The Egyptians inflicted heavy casualties on Israeli armor during the Yom Kippur War. They had the element of surprise, significant anti-tank weaponry, and effective area-denial SAMs. Another good example is the Soviet invasion of Finland in World War 2, where the Soviets picked the worst possible terrain to fight on. They had numbers on their side, but absolutely nothing else.
I think what the OP is asking about is there now exist weapons that are a 1 shot, high probability kill against most tanks. (certain high end Russian tanks have defensive weapons to attempt to stop this but it is unknown how effective they are).
I’m referring to weapons like the Javelin anti-tank missile.
In principle, the terrain wouldn’t matter. A missile like this just requires 1-2 infantry to see a tank. Boom, it’s dead. Even in perfectly flat terrain, infantry could build concealed ambush positions and wait for tanks to get into range. Even if the infantry were killed by sibling tanks every time, 1-2 infantry + 1 missile is much cheaper than 1 tank with crew.
Note the missiles are listed at a quarter million dollars each. Still cheaper than a tank, though. If the side with infantry had, say, 2 missiles available for every tank their opponents have, what the OP is asking is if the side with tanks could still win or if they were likely to lose.
More commonly available, there are things like the RPG-32.
Instead of a 2.5 kilometer range, it’s only 200 meters and it doesn’t have lock on or the ability to hit a tank from the roof. But it’s really cheap and probably enough to kill most tanks if it hits in the side or rear.
RPGs? No. Anti-armour missiles? Absolutely. Irregulars in Chad (I think) ran rings around Libyan forces by using anti-tank missiles from the backs of SUVs.
It looks to me as if tanks are now outdated technology. Too heavy, too expensive and too vulnerable.
Remember that it’s not just the fighting, it’s the logistics. Getting the tanks and all their equipment, fuel and ammunition to the battlefield takes far too long these days.
A kid with a computer and a drone can knock a tank out.
Not that simple, bob. Read some blogs by tankers. The IR sights on the thing give you a lethal advantage - you can trivially spot people trying to approach at great distances, and the engagement range is several kilometers with the computer aided targeting.
The Russian tanks have anti-ATGM weapons, such as explosive armor panels and guns to shoot at incoming missiles. Basically, in the balance of things, if you have 3 soldiers, they are going to do a lot more damage to the enemy on average if you give them a tank than if you just give all 3 rifles.
In the OP, one army vastly outnumbers the other with infantry, just doesn’t have tanks. That’s a different situation entirely.
So, here’s the deal, with the development of the tank, it was discovered that infantry are squishy and tanks are actually pretty vulnerable to the squishies. Thus you have the development of the apc from lightly armored taxi (M113 in the US Army)all the way up to afv such as the US Army’s Bradley afv (also known as BFV) because infantry and armor work better together to cover each others glaring weaknesses. As has been noted, tanks have limited use in cities if you are trying to minimize the destruction of both tank and city.
damn, missed the edit window…
The IR sights on armored combat vehicles is a lethal advantage, but one that is very easily fooled
grrrrr walked away for a few and reread what I posted, NOT clear at all, the army with no armored vehicles does stand a chance, it just depends on the leadership’s skills, knowledge of how to conduct warfare, specifically anti-armor warfare. However, if your army doesn’t have armor of its own, chances are probably pretty good you don’t have that experience, training and knowledge for your leadership.
Another thing to consider is that in classic armored warfare, tanks aren’t really intended to smash fortified positions. The idea is to try and identify where your opponents are weakest, smash them there with a concentration of armor and mechanized/motorized infantry, and then get your mobile, fast moving troops into their rear areas to cause havoc, confusion, and all manner of problems, including destruction of supply dumps, cutting of communication lines, etc…
A lot of the thinking in the thread seems to be a weird combination of 1918 tactics and strategy with 2015 weaponry- like the tanks are just going to roll straight ahead against prepared infantry or something.
This is correct, though some would quibble that barbwire and machinegunsof no mans land in WWI might be considered light fortification for modern warfare.
At some point I’m expecting ExTank to come along and comment, unless he’s not around anymore, haven’t seen him in a while come to think of it.
nope he’s around, just not where I’ve been hangin out
People in motor vehicles can move faster than people on foot. Much faster than people on foot carrying ATGMs on their backs. See the problem here?
They make man portable IR/Thermal sights, actually most modern ATGMs incorporate them I think. The problem is that they are heavy, and you run into the same problem as Paragraph 1.
Sorry everyone, I was busy, so I couldn’t come earlier. A lot of you asked me to be more precise, what location and so on. Generally Europe (so plains and sometimes hilly terrain, but nothing extreme). Now I did say that there should be 2 comparable countries, however I am far more interested in a big vs small guy scenario, prolonged partisan war also counts, so ,the game" doesn’t end with the capture of the capital, but when the invading country retreats or the partisans get beaten. Now I don’t know how much they fit into this scenario, but it seems like exactly that was the case (entirely or partially) in the Vietnam, Soviet Afghan war and first Chechen war (where in 1996 Chechens managed to capture Grozny) .
Here are some hypothetical examples
- Russia vs Baltic countries (With no NATO support, except supply of atgm’s)
- Russia vs Ukraine (Ukraine does have tanks, a lot of them, but let’s say that they didn’t help that much and that the country was occupied from east to west in the end)
- NATO vs Iran
- NATO ground invasion of F.R. Yugoslavia. (This was spoken of a lot during '99 in case the air campaign ,allied force" didn’t do the job.)
Since I mentioned Yugoslavia, here is a interesting article about what Yugoslavia had in its doctrine in case of an invasion by USSR or US (*SFR Yugoslavia 1945-1991, not FR Yugoslavia (Serbia&Montenegro) that existed from '92, but I suppose that the second one also had this system) Territorial Defense (Yugoslavia) - Wikipedia , a few years ago I read that Iran has a similar force called Basij, which has a few million people in it.
Which country in your scenario is attacking/invading the other? That makes a huge difference. If the Army with more dudes but no armor is trying to do the attacking, they are going to be much worse off than if they are defending.