End of the Tank? - ATGMs and Shoulder Fired Anti-Tank Weapons in Ukraine
Before the outbreak of war in Ukraine, the popular narrative was that the Russian armoured and mechanized forces would cut a swathe through Ukraine in a matter of days.
A few weeks into the war, that narrative has flipped 180 degrees, with memes about Russian tanks exploding, and the Javelin missile system as the savior of Ukraine. So extreme has been the swing, that questions are again (aren't they always) being asked about whether tanks can survive on the modern battlefield.
I'm going to disappoint today by not advocating that all tanks go to the scrapyard. Instead, I'm going to give a brief history of the evolution of ATGMs, examine the evidence from Ukraine, and conclude that while missiles and shoulder fired rocket seem to provide tremendous opportunities, the tank's role isn't done.
There are paths for future evolution for the tank, they're just likely to be expensive and require extensive investment. But they're still needed, and so that development work will be done and the designs will be rolled out.
For legacy systems and armies that can't manage the combined arms tactics needed to protect them however...yeah time is probably coming up. The tank without combined arms has 80 years of stats piled up against it, and it isn't getting any better.
