Are tanks obsolete?

Vincent J. Curtis

31 Aug 22

Are tanks obsolete?  How many times has this question been asked?

Tanks made their debut at the Battle of the Somme in 1916.  Mechanically unreliable, they failed miserably.  Upgraded and improved, those modern day war-elephants performed much better at the Battle of Cambrai in 1917.  A mass tank attack broke through German defenses and saved a lot of casualties.  So impressive was their performance that a “Plan 1919” was developed in which a massively mechanized British Army would break through prepared German defenses, rampage the German rear, enable engagement in the open field, and ultimately drive a weakened German Army back over the Rhine.

The Hundred Days campaign, spearheaded by the Canadian Expeditionary Force, put Plan 1919 into the realm of speculation.  Speculation about armoured warfare made people like Capt. Basil Liddell Hart and Maj-Gen J.F.C. Fuller famous between the wars.  Some German officers, notably Heinz Guderian, paid close attention to these writings on armoured warfare, and German thinking on the subject was highly developed when Germany began to rearm in violation of the Versailles Treaty.

The Germans worked secretly with the Soviet Union on mechanized and airborne warfare in the 1930s.  The Soviets developed highly advanced tanks for the period, but as a result of Stalin’s purges of the late 1930s, they lacked the brains to operate them to their full potential.  The result was that despite the Germans slicing through Poland and France with Panzer Is, IIs, and IIIs, the Soviets bogged down in Finland while operating T-26s.  The Russians had the T-34 and KV-1 when Barbarossa opened, but superior German training and tactics more than made up for the chasm of capability between a T-34 and a Panzer III or short-barrelled Panzer IV.

World War II brought the tank into its own.  Immediately afterwards, however, the tank was obsolete again, easy prey to airpower, improved bazookas, and hollow-charge munitions.

Then Korea came along. Suddenly, old Shermans had to be pressed into service alongside M48 Pattons.  The Europeans were not keen on Europe becoming a nuclear battlefield should the Warsaw Pact attack through the Fulda Gap, and so tanks were developed to meet a Soviet onslaught featuring the T-54/55 tank.

Fast forward past 73 Easting to the Dark Decade of the CF: 1994-2004.  Our Leopard Is (the replacements of our post-WWII Centurions) are forty years old.  Our generals are inventing maneuver warfare doctrine without tanks (“medium weight”).  Trouble being, the AFVs were so light, so lacking in armour protection, that the recoil from a gun big enough to knockout a T-72 at range would knock it over.  Then came Afghanistan, 2006.

Canada put its Leopards into Afghanistan, and what a difference!  When Canadians showed up with a Leopard, the Taliban didn’t want to come out to play.  IEDs were not as terrifying.  And it was better for the environment – both human and natural – to punch a hole in a wall with a 105 than drop a 500 pounder into the compound behind it

Which bring us to the Ukraine.  What tanks offer is firepower, mobility, and protection.  It’s been known since WWI that tanks can’t hold ground and are vulnerable when shorn of infantry protection.  The American Javelin missile is destressing because it can destroy a tank at a range of 3 km.  The missile flies towards the tank, then rises and attacks the thin top armour.  The weakness of the Javelin is that it is sub-sonic, and therefore slow.  Technology and tactics have yet to be developed to cope with the Javelin.

But, where there’s a will, there’s a way, and somewhere boffins are at work devising the means of coping with the Javelin.

The mechanically reliable tank with well-trained crews and good doctrine of employment brings firepower, mobility, and protection to the battlefield.  It will be a long time before that combination is rendered obsolete.  The battle between gun and armour has stabilized, and a new technological war is opening.  But the tank will remain.

-30-