Following the doctrines established during the Second World War, the deployment of heavy armoured forces, such as Main Battle Tanks (MBTs) during the Gulf War, have demonstrated the usefulness of such equipment. Yet while tanks have been the subject of criticism and prophecies of extinction since their inception, their utility is once again in the limelight due to the war in Ukraine, where Russian tanks have proved vulnerable to modern weaponry.
The Royal United Services Institute’s (RUSI’s) Nick Reynolds has written a thoughtful report on how, once again, tanks will survive but must cope with the current paradigm shift.
Everyone remembers the images of columns of Russian tanks destroyed by Ukrainian artillery, ambushed by ATGM teams or hit by grenades delivered by drones. This quickly led to a rise in criticism of the concept of heavy armoured forces: in a near-transparent combat environment where low-cost weapons have made drastic advances in recent years, are tanks still relevant? Reynolds is quick to point out that, yes, tanks will be part of the future, as their strength and protection give them a pivotal role on the battlefield.
Equipped with defensive technologies, such as ERA blocks or hard-kill systems like Rheinmetall’s APS-Gen3, tanks can continue to withstand certain threats, while their presence in the field can change the outcome of a battle: if they are not properly equipped with another MBT or ATGM, it is difficult for enemy forces to stop such equipment in a close-range engagement. They are not only useful in counter-insurgency scenarios, as were the Canadian Leopard 2s in Afghanistan, but also in peer-to-peer warfare, as they require specific equipment to be matched.
An increase of threats that aren’t unsolvable
The major successes of ATGMs and precision strikes need to be put into perspective. Indeed, they have mainly been used in defensive positions in specific contexts and are not well suited to attack. The use of ATGMs in attack is particularly criticized, as they are used either on light or medium armoured platforms – which face the same risks as heavier forces – or by dismounted infantry teams.
As British and American exercises have shown, dismantling ATGM forces during an assault is very costly in terms of human lives, and when they are in defence, they are extremely vulnerable when discovered. Tanks or heavily armoured equipment remain useful, as they can maintain their momentum and open up a gap.
Reynolds proposes a number of solutions for dealing with ambushed ATGM teams, drones and artillery fire. Initially, modern engagement should focus on anti-reconnaissance missions, as it is often the transparency of the battlefield that leads to the destruction of a tank during an assault.
Counter-reconnaissance, again carried out on the enemy’s ISTAR (intelligence, surveillance, target acquisition and reconnaissance) assets, would blind him. As far as drones are concerned, aerial suppression missions should be carried out before and during the assault. In operational terms, this means combining heavy armoured forces with short-range air defence systems, possibly on UGVs (Unmanned Ground Vehicles), and destroying the ground control equipment and operators needed to pilot the UAVs.
It also means that tanks will have to be more discreet. This leads to greater use of active and passive camouflage, for example by hindering or accentuating a tank’s heat emissions (the heat shield of T-90s can sometimes interfere with ATGMs). Medium armoured forces, which are posing a doctrine threat to the survival of MBTs, can sometimes be a substitute of heavy armoured forces, but are then in need of close air support or artillery dominance when facing tanks in order to avoid mass casualties. This model is therefore viable, but it implies the certainty that troops in the field and support will have near-perfect coordination, which has proved difficult in the heat of battle.
Heavy armoured forces: still relevant if changed correctly
Reynolds’ first point for the future of battle tanks is that they should be lighter. Today’s tanks reach the 70-80 tonne threshold, which poses major problems: large logistical flows, transport limitations and reduced mobility. And yet, as the report points out, logistics and transport are two of the UK’s and NATO’s weak points, while mobility is set to become one of the survival criteria on tomorrow’s battlefield.
On the other hand, the war in Ukraine shows that Western tanks, heavier than their Soviet counterparts, have a higher survival rate when hit. This means both that their crews are more likely to escape unarmed (experienced crews being one of the main assets of a tank battalion) and that the tanks themselves are more likely to be repairable. This last point is important, as repairing damaged units is needed to preserve mass while heavy armoured forces have proved unreliable in the field: after 20 days of operations, research carried out in the Soviet Union showed that 82% of units had to be repaired. This leads to three points for improvement:
- the need to design the next generation of heavy armoured equipment with an emphasis on reparability and mechanical simplicity
- the need for better training of crews in repairing their equipment, so that small tasks can be carried out in the field without making the tank unavailable
- the need to think about reparability both upstream, with predictive maintenance, and downstream, by creating stocks of spare parts and setting up repair facilities as close as possible to the battlefield, in order to reduce transport time.
This last point, with modern artillery, missiles and drones enabling deeper strikes into enemy territory, will have to be translated into practice by the dissemination of small repair units instead of a centralised factory.
All these points are far from being implemented in the British Army and NATO, both of which need to incorporate these doctrinal changes as the basic design of their next-generation equipment, RUSI notes. Sensors will also have to be improved to better detect threats, particularly ATGM teams, which translates into “see-through-armour” augmented-reality, laser and radar warning receivers.
As for UGVs, they are still a long way from being deployed in the field, but they do offer some interesting developments. In particular, they could be a factor in outsourcing, transporting various types of equipment to lighten the load on battle tanks. However, the best solution for controlling them would be to embed a human operator in a battle tank, whose internal space is already a problem while facing possible electronic jamming. This means that the next generation of heavy armoured equipment will have to be progressively upgraded to accommodate drone control units, while UGVs won’t be useful without a powerful on-board AI. UGVs operating on their own are not considered worthwhile, as they will not be able to perform certain tasks themselves.
Written by ADIT – The Bulletin and republished with permission.
