I know the original tanks in WW1 were designed to break through trench defenses, but I really don’t grasp their purpose beyond that. Not only that, but in the modern age of cluster bombs, attack helicopters, smart bombs, cruise missiles, anti-tank shoulder mounted weapons, etc. what purpose does a tank serve exactly? Wouldn’t whatever military has air supremacy be able to decimate the other militaries tanks pretty fast using missiles and bombs? They seem like extremely expensive easy targets. But that is why I’m asking, because maybe they are not.
I was watching a documentary last night about Israel and Syria in a tank war in 1973, and it reminded me of another video I saw of modern US anti-tank bombs. It seems like in modern times if a military has a large number of tanks in a confined area just dropping cluster bombs would destroy the entire fleet.
And artillery, my understanding is that is used to attack fortified defensive positions. But I’ve also heard it is used as an anti-infantry weapon. I don’t understand how that works in modern warfare. Maybe in napoleonic times when you could load artillery with grapeshot, but what value is a large caliber shell going to do to mobile infantry?
I’m under the impression artillery is used on the battlefield, not just to attack static fortified positions. What purpose does it serve there and what kind of targets does it aim at in a battlefield situation?
Artillery is used to soften up a potential target area, by helping reduce the number of machine gun emplacements, killing and wounding via shrapnel, and demoralizing defending soldiers. A sustained artillery barrage is a terrifying thing.
I’ll let a tanker explain tanks, but close support when attacking an occupied town would be one use.
Artillery has traditionally been used against infantry. Using either air burst or dual purpose munitions can be devastating against infantry or just about anything. In the last 100 years or so hardened targets are probably the least likely thing they would be shooting at.
As for tanks the most effective weapon against a tank is another tank. In a war of insurgency or low intensity conflict their role is limited. Still useful in some circumstances. But in war with another opponent with tanks and a large military they will be needed. Like Russia, China, North Korea, Iran hypothetically.
I understand the role of artillery is to 1) suppress the enemy’s defenses in the offensive mode and to B) repel the enemy’s troops in the defensive mode.
You’ve got a bunch of questions in there, so I’ll try to hit the most basic ones, but a lot depends on the type of conflict, as to how these weapons are employed.
The use of tanks or armored units has evolved a lot since WWI. If fighting an organized military, armored units are typically used in something called maneuver warfare which not only involves punching through the front lines but ranging far into the enemy’s rear area to disrupt supply lines, command and control, and to basically overwhelm their ability to cope in a cohesive manner. The use of armored units are but one part of this strategy, and it almost always requires that you have air superiority.
Artillery isn’t just for reducing fortifications, it is typically used as fire support for a variety of situations. Depending on the type of target, modern artillery units have a number of different shells at their disposal to accomplish the job, artillery is very effective against mobile infantry, as long as you have spotters directing and controlling your fire.
Again, the type of conflict determines how these weapons are used.
If you have lost air superiority, your tanks are sitting ducks, whomever you are. Plus, tank formations usually have organic air defence units attached which support them and make life very interesting (and short) for attacking aircraft.
Air superiority is nice but it’s not as all dominant as you’d imagine. A plane flying over normal terrain at a couple of hundred miles an hour or more is not going to be taking a leisurely scan of the ground. Here’s a video of what the ground looks like from an A-10. It’s a lot easier for a tank to spot a plane than it is for a plane to spot a tank.
Artillery’s value is it kills people who are out in the open. So firing artillery makes people stop whatever they’re doing and seek cover. If they’re your opponent and what they were doing was something useful to defending or attacking, stopping them from doing it is good.
There’s limits to how much attacking you can do with the aircraft or smart missile .
Relevance: you can see the rockets being fired from Gaza apartment blocks.
Israel can’t bomb apartments/basements in the larger apartment blocks… that involves too much damage and too many civilian casualties.
There’s only one way to get to the apartment block… On the ground.
Also, there is a wide variety of artillery, depending on how you define it, ranging from relatively small man-portable mortars to massive howitzers and naval guns. These all have a wide variety of applications, depending on gun mount, targeting equipment, and choice of shells. Quite a few guns can be dropped to zero elevation and loaded with canister shot (similar to grapeshot, basically very very very large shotgun shells) and used to engage enemy troops if they are bold enough to try and engage the artillery battery directly, though if massed enemy troops are getting close enough to your artillery to make that necessary, you might be having a pretty bad day.
Artillery rounds:
High Explosive - can be fuzed for delay, impact, near surface burst, proximity [ground or air].
Smoke - colored for signaling, white for screening/spotting/.
White Phosphorus - incendiary, fragmentation, screening/spotting. Can be solid fill with a burster tube or base ejecting with WP filled fiber sponges.
Illuminating - Visible light or IR if your folks have night vision equipment.
Armor piercing - with or without HE filler.
HE anti-tank HEAT - against armor, concrete, bunkers.
Dual purpose bomblet dispensers - rounds base eject DP munitions, HEAT and fragmentation.
HE bomblet dispensers.
Anti-tank mine cargo munitions - search RAAM.
Anti-personnel mine cargo munitions - search ADAM.
Anti-tank self-guided submunition - search SADARM and BAT.
Laser guided HEAT - search Copperhead.
GPS/inertial guided HE - see Excaliber.
Leaflet base ejection.
Radio jamming - search EX-Jam.
Nuclear - phased out US and former USSR.
Fuel-Air explosive - rocket artillery.
Canister mentioned above.
Toxic nerve agent/mustard gas/blood - destroyed US former USSR, maybe Syria.
CS and CN tear agent, historical mostly except in the 30mm to 40mm range.
BZ - historical and hysterical agent filler.
I’m sure I’ve left a few out.
Tank rounds.
HEAT rounds.
High velocity discarding Sabot anti-tank - see HVAPDS-T.
Anti-tank slug rounds - basically a hardened steel full caliber slug - historical.
HE - not in US use anymore.
Canister as above.
Advanced Multi-Purpose - search multi-purpose AMP round.
MPAT - multi-purpose, can be fuzed against ground targets and repurposed for engaging helicopters.
And that’s not including some of the really weird ones they’ve tried throughout the years, my favorite being anti-aircraft parachute mines. They’d launch a bunch of them from a mortar tube, and you’d have explosive charges hanging at the end of these long lines with a parachute at the end. In theory, a plane would snag the lines flying past and basically reel the explosive charge back up to it. In practice, they found that if the wind changed direction, the explosive chargers could get blown back towards the launchers. After a test launch ended up with the (non-explosive) practice munitions tangled in the launching ship’s rigging, the Royal Navy quietly got rid of the things.
I read recently, (can’t find the piece now) that tanks are pretty much useless in today’s wars. Too heavy, too slow, too expensive and needing far too much logistical support.
All those Abrahams and Churchills sitting in Germany facing East were fine. The ground support was built up over a long period and the engineers have strengthened all the bridges to take them. No one sent tanks to Bosnia or The Falklands. Even in the desert they have limited functionality and would be useless without air support.
In terms of bang-for-buck they are no longer good value compared with drones and all the other high tech stuff they use these days.
One tank needs a whole shed load of supplies and support facilities. They drink fuel, eat parts and the need a service every few days. If you want to put one in the desert, it needs a week in the shop to prepare it, if you then want to send it somewhere wet and muddy - forget it.
The other value is that it kills people who, if everything is going according to plan, have exactly zero ways of killing the artilleryman right back. And keep on killing them as long as munitions stockpiles hold.
Incidentally, basic artillery shells are dirt cheap to make or maintain.
[QUOTE=Wesley Clark]
Maybe in napoleonic times when you could load artillery with grapeshot, but what value is a large caliber shell going to do to mobile infantry?
[/QUOTE]
Mobile infantry is not very mobile. It’s exceedingly difficult to outrun 20 guns busily shelling your general area :p. Also, modern (i.e. WW2 and later) artillery can fire shells that explode high off the ground and cover a wide area with shrapnel from above. Think of it as a vertical*, *conical canister shell.
And those guns can cover quite a bit of distance much faster than you can just by turning on their center axis. For a gun engaging a target 5 miles away, they can cover about 4 miles of ground by simply turning the gun 45 degrees, which probably doesn’t take long to do for most field guns, let alone powered gun mounts (ship-mounted artillery or self-propelled guns, for instance).
False, infantry occupies and controls territory. Tanks support the infantry. It’s difficult to do bunker sweeps and building clearances from the inside of a 70 ton tracked vehicle.