Tanks Forever By Major General Donn A. Starry One Cavalry

Tanks Forever by Major General Donn A. Starry Everyone is talking about tanks. Armor soldiers - users of tanks, examining modem battle, view the tank as a multipurpose weapon with a variety of essential combat capabilities. The October War confirms their views, and demands improvements in tank capabilities. Other observers - budget analysts, antimilitarists, skeptics - for a variety of reasons, view the tank as an anachronism, a system rendered useless by recent advances in numbers and effectiveness of long-range antitank systems. The October War, they say, suggests that tanks can now be replaced by large numbers of antitank guided missiles (ATGM’s).

Are tanks necessary, or are they not? In answering this question, two things must be said. First, modern war is a contest of measures and countermeasures. For every modem weapon system, there is an effective countersystem. For aircraft, there are surface-to-air cannons or missiles; for tanks, there are other tanks and ATGM’s; for artillery, there is counterbattery; for infantry, there is direct and indirect fire suppression by tanks and artillery. It is quite like the children’s game of “rock, scissors, and paper.” Rock breaks scissors, which cut paper, which, in turn, covers rock. The goal in battle is to apply the tactic which best utilizes the capabilities of each battle system, while minimizing its vulnerability to countermeasures. As in the “rock, scissors, and paper” game, a mixed strategy enables a win. We do not refuse to play the game just because each tactic has an effective counter.

Armor soldiers have never viewed tanks as a self-contained battle system, tanks have always been a part

- an essential part - of the combined arms team. We learned this leson at Cambrai; it has been reinforced by every tank engagement since. No one denies that on today’s battlefield, unsupported tank attacks face mass destruction from accurate and lethal ATGM’s, as well as from other tanks.

Therefore, the question really is - are tanks a necessary part of the combined arms team? complete index of titles and ideas. Officers could request specific information or a bibliography on a particular subject.

No magazine can ever be a substitute for experience. Many times also, the locating of a former solution to the problem could be more time consuming than the engineering of a new solution. Understanding these considerations, and mindful of the prime reliance on individual initiative and ingenuity, it seems that a more efficient system for exchanging ideas is certainly in order. I would be most interested in hearing the views of others on this matter. Again, the object of the exercise is to enhance combat readiness through the most efficient use of that most precious commodity - a man’s time. Second, tanks were created in an attempt to restore mobility to battle, enabling the side using them to seize the initiative from the enemy. Tanks were the first element of the combined arms team to become other than foot or horse mobile. However, the essential lesson of the need for and value of mobility as a means to seize initiative was drawn from lessons history taught about the effectiveness of mobile cavalry, dragoons, horse- or elephant-mounted infantry in battle. Therefore, the question really is -are tanks necessary as a part of the mobile weapon combination to seize battle initiative, or can some other systems do the job? How, in modern battle, would an army fare that did not use tanks? While the answer to this is a function of threat and environment, modem war games show that a force in which tanks are either not present, or present in insufficient numbers, simply cannot fight successfully against an enemy equipped with even a modest number of tanks. Light infantry units equipped with the latest ATGM’s are only marginally effective against armor. It is necessary to balance the combined arms team in order to have sufficient staying power, and enough mobile integrated firepower to wrest the initiative from the enemy. In summary, we don’t fare well without tanks in the combined arms team. Tanks are necessary.

Survivability Can the tank survive? Again, this depends on threat and area; but what concerns us all is the allegation that modem ATGM’s have driven the tank from the battlefield. There is no question that when tanks are employed alone against a combined arms force in terrain such as that in Europe, or the Mideast, their survivability is greatly reduced.

In the early stages of the October War, when the Egyptians crossed the Suez, and the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) was trying to contain the crossing, a pure force of 50 IDF tanks lost 40 in a local counterattack against an Egyptian defense based on dug-in Sagger’s and RPG-7’s.

When the IDF crossed the Suez, and attacked the well 47 may-june ,1985 German Tiger Heavy Tank, 1943 -prepared defense, it was with a combined arms force, using time proven combined arms tactics. In the breakthrough, the IDF lost 25 percent of its attacking tanks, destroying 30 percent of the defending Egyptian tanks. When the cross-Suez battlefield became fluid, the IDF, without ATGM’s, destroyed 90 percent of the defending Egyptian tanks with no IDF losses, sweeping up the canal banks, destroying Egyptian ATGM positions where crews had been de- ‘stroyed or driven from their positions by suppressive fires of artillery or by infantry. How well can an individual tank survive a hit from another tank, compared to a hit by an ATGM? We know that overall, our tanks have a higher probability of surviving a hit from a Soviet Sagger than from a kinetic energy round fired from a T-62. Bu the fact remains that the most lethal antitank weapon on the battlefield is the high-velocity tank cannon, and within range, tanks defeat tanks much better than do ATGM’s.

How well can an ATGM survive on the modern battlefield?

Studies tell us that a division subjected to a 45-minute artillery preparation can expect to lose 25 percent of its ATGM teams. The tank’s armor protection makes it relatively invulnerable to artillery fire. How effective are A TGMs?

Although antitank guided missiles are generally considered to have high hit probabilities at ranges from 500 to 3,000 meters, experience in the October War does not reflect a high hit probability. It is estimated that several thousand missiles were fired at IDF tanks, yet at most only a modest number of tanks destroyed were victims of missile hits.

Improved Fighting Ability It is becoming increasingly apparent that we could be much more productive were we to concentrate on how to improve the fighting ability of our mobile combined arms team, instead of spending the inordinate amount of time now dedicated to proving to antimilitary skeptics that we need tanks at all. Proceeding along this line of reasoning. what needs to be said? Traditionally, we have begun speculations about what to do next with any armament system with an analysis of what systems our potential adversary will have in the field. This global mindreading is called “threat analysis.” It tries to read the minds of a group of men who probably haven’t made up their minds yet. And so the further away from today one goes, the less useful this process becomes.

What is most instructiveis to begin a “whithertanks” study with a technical analysis - a systematic evaluation of state-of-the-art developments in a number of technologies. What is the purpose of this study? It is to sum up where we are, and where we might most profitably go by pursuing one or more technical approaches.

Let me be specific. In the field of gun-ammunition, it now appears that we have the technical capability to produce armor that can defeat chemical energy rounds which depend on the shaped charge for penetration, in diameters that can reasonably be used on a mobile weapons platform. True, with a 10- to 12-inch diameter cone, even advanced armor might be penetrated. But even the most voluble tank enthusiast would probably be reluctant to suggest a gun that large. So what this tells us is that our technical problem is now to optimize kinetic energy systems that can defeat modem armor. For if we have the armor technology, we must assume our major adversaries have it.

We also know that a kinetic energy system can be optimized using advanced penetrator design and materials technology, and that it can be done in calibers smaller than those now considered necessary. Propellant technology analysis suggests that we can exceed burning rate limits imposed by today’s powders, and by so doing increase penetrator velocities, and thereby penetration ability.

Therefore, technology analysis tells us it is both necessary and possible to build smaller, lighter, gun-mount combinations with much improved lethality. A look at fire control technology suggests that we can provide our smaller, more lethal gun-mount combination with vastly improved fire control capabilities, rounding out the range-lethality equation. If we can increase the hit performance of tank cannon in the 1,500- to 4,000-meter range band, then the utility of ATGM systems will have been considerably degraded, and the old “rock, scissors, and paper” game has to be played again - with new rules.

Further, if we can mount such a system as I have just described on a more agile platform, the system itself could be more survivable, and, therefore, more lethal. Again, technical analysis tells us that we have probably exhausted torsion spring technology, and that if we are to dramatically improve the way a vehicle meets the ground, some other technology has to be explored. We also know that technically, hydropneumatics, especially hydropneumatic energy storage systems, may offer a new agility dimension -hyperagility. For years, we have insisted on higher horsepower-to-ton ratios as a means to greater agility. However, in World War I, my father’s tank outfit marched to battle at speeds about the same as today’s tank battalions, despite tenfold increases in horsepower per ton. So we have to start asking the right questions -questions about agility and how it relates to survivability. Thus, we must explore battlefield intervisibility segments -lengths, discontinuities, silhouette heights, acceleration rates in the low speed band, and other agility related parameters, in the end describing survivability in terms of ability to escape enemy fire control systems. Once this is done we can perhaps marry up our new, more lethal gun-mount system with a more agile, survivable platform - a tank for the year 2000. While we are doing all this, we can reasonably expect others to be doing the same thing. So by the year 2000 we can expect to find ourselves, as we are today, with 48 may-june 1985