No More Tanks? – are tanks becoming obsolete?

The Marine Corp is shrinking - No More Tanks.
Not even Howitzers?

Does this mean the Navy is next – no more Aircraft Carriers?

Is everything changing to missiles and drones?

Visuals:

Marine:
www.youtube.com...

Navy:
www.youtube.com...

Qucik Reads:

Marine:
www.military.com...

www.thedrive.com...

www.military.com...

Navy:
www.popularmechanics.com...

nationalinterest.org...


Overview:

Marine:
www.google.com... =psy-ab.3..33i160.729342.736550..737933...0.1..0.125.2475.25j4......0....1..gws-wiz.......0i71j0i273j0i131i273j0i131j0j0i67i70i251j0i67j0i22i30j33i22i 29i30.dI29sqMTXzM&ved=0ahUKEwjHt_rA1bjoAhUIsJ4KHT2mAswQ4dUDCAs&uact=5

Navy:
www.google.com... y-ab.3..0.173016.178677..180563...0.0..0.135.2480.24j4......0....1..gws-wiz.......35i39j0i273j0i131i273j0i131j0i67j0i131i67j0i273i70i251j0i10i67j0i10j 0i22i30.94vILAR1eB4&ved=0ahUKEwiQ8eTd2LjoAhXTGTQIHe0wCoUQ4dUDCAs&uact=5


I thought Russia and China were building new tanks?
Have tanks become obsolete?
How about aircraft carriers?

What do YOU think?

a reply to: spiritualarchitect

Depends on what the Corps would use them for.

If only for fire support of the infantry, then yeah, other vehicles can do that work.

Cheers

I work for a company that manufactures tanks and howitzers. Business is booming. A lot of existing tanks are being upgraded and retro fitted, but new production is still going strong.

Marine armor and artillery support relies pretty heavily on Army support already. The official reason is that they want a force that can move faster and be more effective. Being armor heavy is the exact opposite of that.

No, it has nothing to do with changing to missiles and drones. They're trying to adapt to future battlefields and fights. That's probably going to mean island hopping at some point. You can't do that effectively if you need large cargo ships that are slow to load and unload.

The USMC make no bones an elite fighting unit. However their insistence on go it alone EVERYTHING is costing our overall redness big time.

They also have by and large a obsolete mission in that large scale amphibious assaults are a thing of the past. Nor is the huge gator navy needed. Nor do they need a 130 million dollar and counting chopper

Smaller force that as Zaphod said will be nimble and quick reacting. A 60 ton M1 precludes being able to do that

originally posted by: Zaphod58
Marine armor and artillery support relies pretty heavily on Army support already. The official reason is that they want a force that can move faster and be more effective. Being armor heavy is the exact opposite of that.

No, it has nothing to do with changing to missiles and drones. They're trying to adapt to future battlefields and fights. That's probably going to mean island hopping at some point. You can't do that effectively if you need large cargo ships that are slow to load and unload.

What exactly does the battlefield of the future look like? Who are its participants? Will my google search turn up a bunch of reputable results or is there specific info you suggest?

a reply to: sputniksteve

It would probably be more accurate to say they're going back to their roots. For a long time the Marines weren't a force designed to take and hold ground. They were a quick, fairly lightly armed force that went in first, hit hard and fast, and opened the door for heavier follow on forces. We saw that with the island hopping campaign in WWII.

Sometime between Korea and Desert Storm, the decisions were made that they needed their own heavy tank divisions, armored personnel carriers, air support, artillery, and they basically turned into the Army Light. Then some painful lessons were learned in Iraq. Among them, tanks and artillery suck in urban warfare. Unless you're prepared top level said urban area, what works for them in an open field battle, works against them in an urban area.

The biggest near peer threat right now is China. If we were to go to war with them, and it was conventional, we're looking at WWII redux. Only we won't have the luxury of weeks to move equipment. We're going to need a force that can roll onto transports, air or sea, arrive in theater, and be quickly ready to fight. And jump onto fast transports and move around as needed. If you're talking tank and artillery divisions, that's not happening. They also have the advantage of being able to move around in urban areas without a giant neon sign over their head pointing them out.

Anti-tank missiles are so freaking advance now that even Modern tanks needs anti anti-tank counter missiles(did I say it right?). Except for the fact that anti anti-tank counter missiles don't work against airstrikes. Yes, tanks are obsolete. The Warthog cannons can still penetrate the next generation tanks. We got mini nukes and rail guns which are the new anti-tank weapons.

a reply to: Zaphod58

That all makes sense. Is that predicting actions in SEA then or some other place? Is there some degree of acknowledged or unacknowledged tail between legs from Marines or is it all just timely?

a reply to: spiritualarchitect

Drones, Missiles , Guided weapons in-general and Satellites are all weapons of the modern battle field and they all look good in theory and on paper and in use against enemies with no technology that can counter modern weapons .

But if a war breaks out a real WAR , the first weapons that will be used are EMP's to knock out satellite grids and then all that tech is just scrap metal.

Then the war will be fought with Rifle men, artillery and tanks all of which are tried and true methods of war and all the major military powers know this, My opinion is tanks and other armored vehicles will always be used on the battle field.

a reply to: sputniksteve

I haven't seen any predictions. It seems more a reaction to China pushing events.

It's a little of both on the timing. I haven't really been able to follow their ground units, but the last few years Marine Air has been in really bad shape. They've had some very high profile accidents, resulting in multiple fatalities, involving pilots that shouldn't even have been flying, let alone flying the missions they were on.

They've always been about doing more with less, but lately it's almost been about doing more with nothing. I suspect the restructuring started with Marine Air, to try to get them more money, and grew from there.

a reply to: Zaphod58

"...more a reaction to China pushing events."

Is there any part of our military (or related industry) that is actually doing the pushing that causes a reaction in others?
I sincerely hope that we haven't become a purely reactionary force. Please correct me if I'm wrong but, regardless of the unmatched size of our war chest, perpetual reaction to external stimuli doesn't seem to be a sustainable strategy.
Of course, I've never been much more than a glorified grunt in my best of days so I might be talking from the wrong orifice.

a reply to: ChayOphan

Yes, but unless we redeploy fairly significant forces, China will always have the advantage and be able to do more than we can to push events in the region.

a reply to: Zaphod58

Not to mention our going-on 20 year distraction in SWA.

Cheers

We used to cringe when we would get word that Marine aircraft were inbound. Now I want to hit my head on the desk.

As part of the restructuring, the Marines are stepping back from tailor made aircraft. These include the F-35B, MV-22, and CH-53K. All three aircraft went well behind schedule, and majorly over budget. Trying to shoehorn the lift fan into the F-35 is one of the things that helped cause early development problems with that program.

www.flightglobal.com...

originally posted by: Zaphod58
Marine armor and artillery support relies pretty heavily on Army support already. The official reason is that they want a force that can move faster and be more effective. Being armor heavy is the exact opposite of that.

No, it has nothing to do with changing to missiles and drones. They're trying to adapt to future battlefields and fights. That's probably going to mean island hopping at some point. You can't do that effectively if you need large cargo ships that are slow to load and unload.

"island hopping"
that is a realy good idead.
but China got you beat!

you need lots of smaller subs.
you can fire all sorts of stuff.

a reply to: buddha

Subs can't take and hold territory. Neither can carriers or other ships.

a reply to: makemap

Oy vey...

I don't know how one post could possibly manage to pack in every wrong answer you could possibly give on this subject but you not only managed it, you made it look easy!!

First off on the atgm thing... Yeah, no not really. A great percentage of the most prolific ATGM types in service and circulation are older versions which are pretty easy to spoof and make miss without resorting to a kinetic APS option at all. Further, the kinetic APS systems starting to enter service deal with nearly all of the remaining atgm types with very simple blast frag warhead projectors... Aka nothing anywhere near the cost or sophistication of a full up countermissile. Even further than that, it's looking like even the first tranche of APS systems will get midlife upgrades at absolutely worst that gives them at least some ability to drastically reduce the effects of even a full up 1800 meter per second DU APFSDS dart!

I also wouldn't be nearly so certain about air strikes getting through as even current gun based C ram systems either already can or are a software patch away from being able to swat incoming air dropped munitions of the most common varieties. (Hell the only reason they don't do it already is we don't face anything in the way of air strikes!)

Further degrading your air strike assertions are the various IADS programs being fast tracked which should have at least decent ability against the most dangerous types of aerial munitions.

Your A10 cannon assertions are just plain laughable in the fact that BOTH AFV roof armoring of a type sufficient to nullify the HE rounds fired by the 30x173 cannon in the A10 are downright common and light AND in that even in desert Storm 1 it was dangerously foolish to gun run on anything resembling a competent enemy!

It's far worse now, and that's just legacy systems with slap on update kits... The A10 absolutely cannot and will not attempt to tangle with next gen anything using guns because it will die futilely if it tries and everyone but you knows it.

As far as the mini nukes and rail guns, you should stop reading sci-fi... It's not real and won't be any time soon.

Like I said, it's downright impressive how wrong you've managed to be in a single post.

a reply to: roguetechie

Good ol Roguetechie , cant argue with you my friend

a reply to: asabuvsobelow

Thanks.

It's a strange combination of entertaining and sanity breaking to read what normal people believe is true wrt military technology versus the actual situation.

It honestly kinda scares me though that the USMC announcement of their new policies would convince anyone who read the articles that it in any way could have been an indicator tanks were obsolete. Especially since every article I found said outright that the Marines still intend to utilize tanks and tankers from the army whenever they were necessary.

I also personally believe that the Marines are making a fundamentally good and long overdue choice here. It's unnecessary and financially untenable for us to keep using the Marines as a second army and has been for decades.