# You have infinite money, how do you make unbeatable tanks? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [October 13, 2018, 2:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-have-infinite-money-how-do-you-make-unbeatable-tanks/822903 "2018-10-13T14:59:13Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Riemann](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/riemann/32/3133_2.png) [@Riemann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riemann)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2018, 6:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-have-infinite-money-how-do-you-make-unbeatable-tanks/822903/21 "2018-10-14T06:08:45Z")
> [@TSBG](#): > > Given an infinite amount of money, why not surround a tank–any tank at all–with an infinite layer of currency? But how will you pay workers to do this? As I pointed out, having infinity money means infinite inflation, so all money is now worthless. The first thing you must do if you find yourself with infinity money is burn it all to restore confidence in the economy. ---
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2018, 7:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-have-infinite-money-how-do-you-make-unbeatable-tanks/822903/22 "2018-10-14T07:37:40Z")
My WAG: Large quantities of “proactive” armor. Explosive panels that detonate outwards in the direction of an incoming enemy projectile (as detected by the tank’s radar) before the projectile arrives. That, and perhaps a multi-turreted tank with a much larger crew that is capable of gunning or blasting multiple enemies in multiple directions simultaneously. ---
**Author:** ![Asuka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@Asuka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Asuka)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2018, 7:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-have-infinite-money-how-do-you-make-unbeatable-tanks/822903/23 "2018-10-14T07:58:06Z")
Couldn’t you in theory get some of those anti-missile lasers and put them on your tank and put enough so you have 360 degree coverage? I know they’re still basically in their infancy but infinite money into their R&D could definitely get you some results within 10 years. Granted they won’t do much to non-rockets/missiles such as armor piercing shells since those fly at much faster speeds than rockets and missiles but I’m curious if you could deflect them with a strong enough laser defense system. ---
**Author:** ![JB99](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/439d5e/32.png) [@JB99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JB99)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2018, 1:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-have-infinite-money-how-do-you-make-unbeatable-tanks/822903/24 "2018-10-14T13:05:24Z")
> [@Asuka](#): > > Couldn’t you in theory get some of those anti-missile lasers and put them on your tank and put enough so you have 360 degree coverage? I know they’re still basically in their infancy but infinite money into their R&D could definitely get you some results within 10 years. > > Granted they won’t do much to non-rockets/missiles such as armor piercing shells since those fly at much faster speeds than rockets and missiles but I’m curious if you could deflect them with a strong enough laser defense system. Yes, if you had a way to generate enough power. The M1 has a turbine engine so that’s probably not a limitation (they literally put a jet engine in a tank). Even if the laser doesn’t destroy the missile, it could blind/degrade/damage the optical or laser guidance systems. Many tanks are already equipped with EW systems for the same reason. I suspect it’s just a matter of time before we need point defense lasers or miniature Gatling guns. And not just to protect against antitank weapons, but also to down explosive quadcopters. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2018, 1:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-have-infinite-money-how-do-you-make-unbeatable-tanks/822903/25 "2018-10-14T13:35:37Z")
> [@markn\_1](#): > > My tank has armor approximately 250 miles thick. The whole tank is therefore a hemisphere a bit more than 500 miles in diameter. Of course it can’t move, but the OP didn’t require that, merely that it must be “unbeatable”. I’m reminded of the anecdote where Abraham Lincoln asked his cabinet a riddle: how many legs would a donkey have if you call its tail a leg? And the members of his cabinet all said that, if you call a tail a leg, then a donkey has five legs. And Lincoln said no, the correct answer is a donkey has four legs. You can call a tail anything you want but that doesn’t make it a leg. If we accept the premise that anything we choose to call a tank fulfills the requirements of the OP then the task is easy. I can simply define the sun itself as a tank. We have no means of destroying the sun, so I have made an unbeatable tank. And I didn’t require infinite money. On the contrary; I did it without spending any money at all. ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2018, 2:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-have-infinite-money-how-do-you-make-unbeatable-tanks/822903/26 "2018-10-14T14:20:41Z")
I’d like to see some evidence that modern tanks _aren’t_ the best that modern defense budgets can buy. Did any of them have any expenses spared? Any corners cut? ---
**Author:** ![DavidwithanR](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/3bc359/32.png) [@DavidwithanR](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DavidwithanR)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2018, 2:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-have-infinite-money-how-do-you-make-unbeatable-tanks/822903/27 "2018-10-14T14:25:50Z")
If I really had infinite money, then building better tanks would not be my concern. Because if the money was truly infinite, I would buy the entire military establishment (indeed the entire government and the entire industrial production system) of every country. Everyone would be on my side within days (if not hours), and tanks would be unnecessary. ---
**Author:** ![DavidwithanR](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/3bc359/32.png) [@DavidwithanR](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DavidwithanR)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2018, 3:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-have-infinite-money-how-do-you-make-unbeatable-tanks/822903/28 "2018-10-14T15:31:07Z")
> [@Riemann](#): > > But how will you pay workers to do this? As I pointed out, having infinity money means infinite inflation, so all money is now worthless. The first thing you must do if you find yourself with infinity money is burn it all to restore confidence in the economy. Wouldn’t it only create infinite inflation if everyone knew you had it? If I - suddenly, by magic - had a billion billion dollars in cash **and no one knew it** , wouldn’t that allow the economy to continue as normal? ---
**Author:** ![Riemann](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/riemann/32/3133_2.png) [@Riemann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riemann)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2018, 3:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-have-infinite-money-how-do-you-make-unbeatable-tanks/822903/29 "2018-10-14T15:40:49Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > We have no means of destroying the sun, so I have made an unbeatable tank. Don’t be overconfident, still best to avoid parking it on a manhole cover. ---
**Author:** ![DavidwithanR](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/3bc359/32.png) [@DavidwithanR](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DavidwithanR)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2018, 4:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-have-infinite-money-how-do-you-make-unbeatable-tanks/822903/30 "2018-10-14T16:00:49Z")
Only something orthogonal to the sun can beat the sun. My mistress’ eyes, for example, are nothing like the sun. Tank - paper - sun - mistress’ eyes… See how it’s a total game-changer? 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2018, 4:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-have-infinite-money-how-do-you-make-unbeatable-tanks/822903/31 "2018-10-14T16:23:41Z")
> [@Ukulele\_Ike](#): > > I would equip each of my tanks with large beautiful butterfly wings, so they could flit off gracefully into the aether when danger loomed. > > A science problem with flying butterfly tanks, you say? Let me just throw some more money at it! ”I’m starting to like the cut of this man’s gibberish.” > [@JakeRS](#): > > “Not the reaction i expected but okay” , it’s a hypothetical scenario, no need to think about inflation and effect of one person having all money on the agriculture in Zambia, simply if you could afford any alternative to steel to use as a material, what would it be? As others have noted, modern main battle tanks (MBT) use ceramic armor (started in the ‘Sixties) and reactive armor (panels of explosive designed to blunt the impact of shaped charge warheads and disrupt kinetic penetrators) as well as active systems to disrupt or divert anti-tank missiles. At this point, modern tanks are rarely disabled by a direct frontal hit from another tank; they are either disabled by damaging treads or engine, or struck from above by a missile or aircraft cannon where the thinner armor provides less protection. You could make the top and side armor thicker to protect against this but that has the effect of making the tank much heavier and may not be terribly effective because there is no good way to angle the top to deflect energy the way frontal panels are. The engine compartment will remain vulnerable simply because you have to be able to access the engine for service and radiate away heat. There is also the problem than tanks are already very heavy; most MBTs have a combat weight in excess of 50 tons, and the Abrams M1A2 has a combat weight in excess of 72 tons. Although the large surface area of the treads provides floatation you are still getting to a point that the sheer weight of the tank limits its mobility; the M1 cannot go over many highway bridges without risking damage to the bridge, and will collapse large culverts or underground structures. Tanks are really flatland vehicles which fare poorly in urban and mountain combat which has characterized the wars of the last couple of decades. So, if you could make a tank out of a really lightweight unbreakable supermaterial, and power it with a compact power source that generates little waste heat, and make it hover using some kind of repulser technology to eliminate the vulnerable treads…you’d basically be Tony Stark. You would still have the problem that the crew inside are vulnerable to kinetic impact; even if the armor is not breeched, enough energy delivered will disable or kill the crew due to acoustic dynamics or shrapnel due to spallation of the inner surface. So you also need some way of absorbing the impact energy. Never mind about Tony Stark, you need to give the nation of Wakanda a call and talk to a nice young lady named Shuri. Just don’t let her film you testing out some new equipment. > [@Riemann](#): > > It’s shocking that nobody is taking a hypothetical involving diamond tanks more seriously. That was clearly a fop to the De Beers Group which is looking for a use of all of these diamonds they’ve been sitting on which are now devaluing rapidly. But really, who is going to want to drive around a battlefield in a diamond-encrusted tank like some kind of battle-pimp? That is just asking to get yoked, and you know those young tank crews are going to be scraping off that armor and trading for cash. Stranger ---
**Author:** ![TSBG](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/77aa72/32.png) [@TSBG](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TSBG)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2018, 5:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-have-infinite-money-how-do-you-make-unbeatable-tanks/822903/32 "2018-10-14T17:23:23Z")
> [@Riemann](#): > > But how will you pay workers to do this? As I pointed out, having infinity money means infinite inflation, so all money is now worthless. The first thing you must do if you find yourself with infinity money is burn it all to restore confidence in the economy. I expect people will volunteer for the privilege of helping to create an invulnerable tank. ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2018, 6:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-have-infinite-money-how-do-you-make-unbeatable-tanks/822903/33 "2018-10-14T18:27:45Z")
I suspect that the answer would be to go bigger, more than it would be to find some exotic material. If you make a tank the size of a city block, then the treads end up better armored than a modern day MBT’s body, simply by virtue of mass. At that scale, navigating around trees or other objects becomes somewhat needless, since they’re so small and crushable. You would have thicker armor than a modern tank by, potentially, several times and yet it would far thinner as a ratio of volume to surface area. You would probably need some sort of internal honeycomb structure to keep the thing up and most of the interior would be a nuclear reactor. But you would be proof against other tanks and pretty much everything out there except nukes. I think the only issue might be that the treads might tear themselves apart. At a sufficiently large scale, the metal will become like a clay, pulling and stretching at itself under all the weight. But there may be something that you could reinforce it with…some form of fiber… ---
**Author:** ![Magiver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/4491bb/32.png) [@Magiver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Magiver)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2018, 8:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-have-infinite-money-how-do-you-make-unbeatable-tanks/822903/34 "2018-10-14T20:19:11Z")
> [@TSBG](#): > > Given an infinite amount of money, why not surround a tank–any tank at all–with an infinite layer of currency? This was tried years ago but the prototype was stolen. ---
**Author:** ![harmonicamoon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/65b543/32.png) [@harmonicamoon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/harmonicamoon)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2018, 9:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-have-infinite-money-how-do-you-make-unbeatable-tanks/822903/35 "2018-10-14T21:07:03Z")
Ina previous life, I was member of a M-51 tank crew. Then came armor piercing rounds. Not real safe. The weak spot is the track. You would need a force field to protect a tank. ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2018, 9:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-have-infinite-money-how-do-you-make-unbeatable-tanks/822903/36 "2018-10-14T21:18:56Z")
> [@Alessan](#): > > I’d like to see some evidence that modern tanks _aren’t_ the best that modern defense budgets can buy. Did any of them have any expenses spared? Any corners cut? That’s what I was thinking as well. I would think if there was a way to improve tank survivability, it would be in the realm of speed and maneuverability, not armor protection. So I’d probably sink my money into what would essentially be remote control armored drones that are much smaller and faster than current-day tanks, and into AI to let them be autonomous if the control link was severed. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2018, 9:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-have-infinite-money-how-do-you-make-unbeatable-tanks/822903/37 "2018-10-14T21:38:13Z")
Wait, I have unlimited funds? I just make tanks at the current state of the art in unlimited number. Individually any given tank can be beaten, but I can send in a replacement - I win by attrition or sheer force of number. I have _unbeatable tanks_. ---
**Author:** ![Atomic\_Alex](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/atomic_alex/32/175_2.png) [@Atomic\_Alex](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Atomic_Alex)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2018, 10:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-have-infinite-money-how-do-you-make-unbeatable-tanks/822903/38 "2018-10-14T22:30:25Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > The temperature in the center of a nuclear explosion reaches one hundred million degrees [cite](http://www.atomicarchive.com/Effects/effects7.shtml). That kind of temperature blows the electrons right out of atoms [cite](http://aether.lbl.gov/www/tour/elements/stellar/plasma/plasma.html). I have a hard time believing a graphite and steel sphere emerged unscathed. At the very least, I want a cite that’s better than “according to popular lore”. I’m almost certain I read that in a physical book somewhere, but my memory and google-fu is failing me. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2018, 10:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-have-infinite-money-how-do-you-make-unbeatable-tanks/822903/39 "2018-10-14T22:37:52Z")
Infinite amount of money? 1. I wrap each tank in $5 billion in 1 dollar bills to cushion any impacts. 2. $10 million bounty on the head of anyone who so much as frowns in the direction of a tank. 3. I make the tanks out of that same stuff they make airplane “black boxes”. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2018, 1:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-have-infinite-money-how-do-you-make-unbeatable-tanks/822903/40 "2018-10-15T01:45:36Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > The temperature in the center of a nuclear explosion reaches one hundred million degrees [cite](http://www.atomicarchive.com/Effects/effects7.shtml). That kind of temperature blows the electrons right out of atoms [cite](http://aether.lbl.gov/www/tour/elements/stellar/plasma/plasma.html). I have a hard time believing a graphite and steel sphere emerged unscathed. At the very least, I want a cite that’s better than “according to popular lore”. It is mentioned [here](http://astroguyz.com/2011/06/02/declassified-the-true-tale-of-project-orion/), in the third paragraph on this Project Orion page. I’m not coming up with anything else, though. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-have-infinite-money-how-do-you-make-unbeatable-tanks/822903.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-have-infinite-money-how-do-you-make-unbeatable-tanks/822903.md?page=3)