Abrams.

This is coolbert:

Now, I am reading this article about the Abrams tank.

There is a reference that reads something like: "The Abrams, The Last Main Battle Tank?".

This reference is to another article written by a Stanley Crist, who is described as an armor battalion commander in his military career.

So you might think that this a person who knows what he talking about.

I go to read this article by Crist, the armor man, and find that it is about anti-tank guided missiles [ATGM]. Such as the Sagger, Swatter, Hellfire, Javelin, etc. Anti-tank guided missiles that really do their job, of destroying tanks. Do a very good job of it and have been successful where ever deployed in this capacity.

First were used effectively in the Arab-Israeli War of 1973. Israeli armor, hitherto invincible, where knocked out in enormous numbers by Sagger ATGM provided to the Egyptians by the Soviets. What was surprising was how effective these missiles seemed to be. Many pundits said at the time that this was the end of the tank, and that a newer approach to armor had to be found, and fast.

It has been thirty years since the war that was fought in 1973, and yet armor, in the form of the Abrams, still rules the battlefield and is going strong.

What is going on here?

Crist seems to be of the opinion that the tank is indeed dead, the Abrams being probably the last gasp of the main battle tank.

Read what Crist has to say by clicking here.

What the armor man Crist says is that the newest version of ATGM have the fire and forget feature which makes them not subject to human error [the first versions of the ATGM, such as the Sagger, had dual tracking, the gunner had to track the missile as it flew toward the target, and also track the target at the same time. This was difficult to do. A highly trained person had to be the gunner for the missile. And constantly refresh their training. How often refresh? Well, during lulls in the fighting between the Israelis and Egyptians in 1973, vans with simulators for training Sagger gunners were seen to drive onto the battlefield and the gunners would go inside to practice. And this occurring while fighting was going on, albeit at a lull period] as were the earlier versions of the ATGM. These newer versions ATGM have range and armor penetration capability that allow them to defeat any armor on the battlefield at will. Crist suggests that the armor vehicle of the future will not be the conventional tank with gun and turret, but an armored vehicle firing ATGM.

How does this analysis stand up under historical perspective? According to the defector Suvorov, not well. In his book, "Inside the Red Army", Suvorov devotes a short chapter to this very subject of tank obsolescence, titled, "When will we be able to dispense with the tank?". Here is what Suvorov has to say: [This was published in 1982].

"One day in Paris, I bought a book, published in 1927 on the problems of a future war. The author was sober-minded and reasonable. His logic was sound, his analysis was shrewd and his arguments unassailable . . . The author concluded . . . That the proper place for the tank was in a museum. . . His argument was simple and logical: anti-tank guns had been developed to the point at which they could bring massive formations of tanks to a complete halt . . . . The belief that the tank is reaching the end of it's life is surprisingly long-lived . . . The argument used by the tank's detractors is simple - 'Just look at the anti-tank rockets - at their accuracy and at their armor-piercing capabilty!'. But this argument does not hold water. The anti-tank rocket is a defensive weapon - part of a passive system. The tank, on the other hand, is an offensive weapon. Any defensive system involves the dispersal . . . over a wide territory, leaving them stong in some places and weak in others. And it is where they are weak that the tanks will appear, and in enormous concentrations . . . They [tanks] are an offensive weapon and they have the initiative in battle".

What Suvorov is saying is that the ATGM is a formidable weapon, and can defeat a tank, but it is a defensive system. Defensive systems by their nature must be spread out to be effective. The tank is an offensive weapon that can be massed to create overwhelming numbers by choosing the time and place for the attack, massing forces in such numbers that even the highly effective ATGM will not be able to deal with the onslaught. No matter how fast the ATGM's shoot, they will be unable to defeat the massed forces of tanks. As a consequence, even if many tanks are destroyed in the attack, the defenders will be overwhelmed and defeated. The tanks will then have created a breakthrough that can be exploited.

As I have said before, in warfare, some things never seem to change.

coolbert.