Countries continue to develop tanks, but the number of all weather aircraft has massively increased in the last 50 years. How exactly are tanks able to stay viable on the battlefield without air dominance? It seems as though tanks are slowly drifting into a smaller niche- open, flat areas in contested airspace.
They seem so vulnerable to aircraft these days; its not really practical to make a MBT a threat to aircraft the same way aircraft are a threat to MBTs. Will this get worse in the future?
Well
1)Armoured formations usually have their own dedicated anti aircraft assets.
Presumably the defending air force will contest the destruction of it’s countries tanks.
Terrain plays a major role. Air strikes are less effective when it’s pancake flat like the Saudi Iraq border. Far less effective in the Balkens.
You don’t need air dominance for tanks. Just to deny the same to the enemy.If the enemy has air dominance, you are in deep trouble anyway, tanks or no tanks.
IANA anything. I’m sure one of the genuine military folks will be by shortly, but in the meantime, here’s a semi-educated guess:
MBTs don’t attack/occupy in isolation. They are supported by the entire combined arms of their military, which would strive to achieve air superiority before the MBTs engage.
Wars aren’t fought tank vs tank but force vs force, and if you’re getting attacked by (say) an American tank, chances are you’re also dealing with simultaneous attacks on your command and control infrastructure, airstrips, bases, depots, maybe roads, blah blah. By the time the tanks roll by, the only things left should be the things that air power couldn’t or didn’t get to. Ideally, the enemy forces would be blind and unsupported your tank would have plenty of support from armored vehicles, infantry, aircraft, satellites, drones, etc.
Is a lone tank sitting out in the field vulnerable to attacking aircraft? Of course. But it should never have gotten to that point unless your side is losing badly.
On the other hand, in Afghanistan and Iraq, we have seen MBTs being complemented (partially replaced?) by cheaper, more nimble vehicles better suited for urban environments. If anything, a hostile civilian population has proven to be far more lethal than their country’s air force or tanks. And as for the future, it just depends on the kinds of wars your particular military expects to be fighting – the terrain, the purpose, the enemy, the budget, etc. Often you hear about defense programs or weapon systems being modified or cut and others being added to meet the new demands of war against newer enemies.
Another factor is that, even though MBTs have increased in complexity, they are still an order of magnitude behind tank-killing aircraft. In terms of costs to design, build, deploy, and train crews, tank hunters such as the Apache, Longbow, Comanche, and even the venerable A-10 still cost many billions more than any fleet of MBTs. Fact is only a superpower can really afford an effective, massive deployment of tank-killing aircraft.
Medium and heavy main battle tanks on the other hand, while still expensive, are still much much cheaper to manufacture or just buy from other nations. Cheaper & easier to train their crews too. So for the foreseeable future 2nd and 3rd world countries can just continue to compete for dominance with overwhelming ground forces.
After Gulf War I, but before the USSR broke up, they were absolutely scared shitless when they saw how the cream of their mechanized armor including their T-72 MBTs were simply decimated by modern American tank-killing technology (including both aircraft & our much more advanced MBT the M1A1).
The problem with that is it’s simply not true.
The Iraqi’s did not have the cream of Soviet equipment, quite the contrary.
One of the problems of selling (or giving it away to a fraternal comrade in the great struggle for socialism) your best equipment to a third party is it might end up in the hands of your enemies for analysis and study.
The Soviet solution to this problem was simple. They had two versions of their major hardware like tanks.
The good model with the latest tech they kept for themselves or allies they could keep under their thumb (Warsaw Pact forces essentially).
The export version, especially to friendly but non-communist states (Eg Iraq) was an inferior model with the same name but without the advanced armour/weapons/gear.
The unofficial designation for these was apparently “The monkey model”.
Further the Iraqis actually built some of their own T72’s under liscence with local equipment and tech.
The rounds they were shooting were obsolescent versions of what the Soviets had, perhaps more significant was the armour. Which was both thinner and again obsolescent non-composite armour.
After the USSR broke up the 90’s several russian tanks were Aquired in their proper soviet version for testing. These had advanced Explosive Reactive Armour which apparently was so resistant (some sources say immune) to the Uranium penetrator then in service that the round had to be redesigned to better defeat it.
They had that armour since 1985 which gives an interesting spin on third world war gone hot novels like “Red Storm Rising” etc where the advacing Russian tanks are gunned down in waves.
Really? Explosive Reactive Armor is designed to defeat HEAT rounds (technically, the ERA blast disrupts the superheated jet formed by the shaped charge). I have a hard time imagining it would be very effective against a kinetic penetrator, which would have tremendous momentum.
Kontakt-5 ERA was apparently designed to counter both HEAT and APFSDS, apparently by using metal plates which expand laterally to pinch the penetrator, breaking it or adding effective armor thickness that the penetrator has to work through.
I don’t know how effective Kontakt or its successors are in practice against KEPs, but it’s an interesting development.
Don’t forget, tanx ain’t just meant to take out other tanx - they can be used as battering rams, bulldozers, bunker-destroyers, and of course human-wave attack de-populaters. In the Pacific in ww2, Japanese tanx were inferior and often weren’t even around to face off against Shermans. The Shermans were still useful for the purposes mentioned above, aside from their flame-throwing ability. While air superiority is still crucial, tanx will still be an important presence on any modern battlefield for a while.
Want to clear the air of aircraft? Detonate a 50-kiloton nuke mid-air every 3 hours or so. No pilot in his right mind will dare go to that area.
Closer to MY point. In a nuclear war, a lot of warfare will revert to WW1/2 technology. Lots of electronic weapons and equipment will fail. It will be a fight among elephants, so to speak. Reliable mechanical weapons like guns and tanks will skitter around. Many of these will sucumb to the immediate and after-effects of nukes but those that survive will likely accomplish their stated mission.
Not completely. If we’re discussing a non-nuke war and you have tanks vs aircraft, you have a point. Desert storm 1 was basically that. But desert storm 2 was a differentstory. If MBTs are operating in a city, it’ll be very difficult for aircraft to neutralize them. That’s why they sent the Abrams’ in. They had a field day smashing t-72s inside Baghdad.
“How exactly are tanks able to stay viable on the battlefield without air dominance?”
Very few wars are between two major state powers where both tank fleets would come under frequent attacks by the enemy’s aircrafts. The vast majority of conflicts are major state power/minor state power, minor state power/minor state power, irregular/irregular or irregular/state.
Sophisticated heavy armor makes a difference when fighting a minor state power. E.g.: Georgia/Russia 2008 war, Israel/Lebanon.
Light armor makes a difference when fighting irregulars and sophisticated heavy armor is possible but difficult for them to defeat.
A tank parked on the runway is a pretty good deterrent to aircraft.
Surface to Air missiles are also a part of the aerospace industry and has advanced just as aircraft technology has. The American air force can do all right against countries that have no air force or air defense system, but just a few batteries of modern Russian SAMs will make mincemeat of any invading air force.