End of the Tank Era?

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Will cheap anti-tank missiles mark the end of the Tank era? Raytheon and Lockheed Martin make the Javelin missile. The Javelin costs $178,000, including the launch system and missile and each replacement missile costs around $78,000. Tanks cost $1 million to $8 million each. Russian tanks are in the lower cost range of $1 million to $4 million.

Israeli and American tanks have anti-missile systems. The Israeli Trophy is a military active protection system (APS) designed to protect vehicles from ATGMs, RPGs, anti-tank rockets, and tank HEAT rounds. A small number of explosively formed projectiles destroy incoming threats before they hit the vehicle. Its principal purpose is to supplement the armour of light and heavy armored fighting vehicles. Developed by Rafael Advanced Defense Systems Ltd. of Israel and currently fielding over 1,000 systems to all major Israeli ground combat platforms (Merkava Mark 3 & 4 and Namer APCs), as well as U.S. Abrams M1A1/2, and tested on the Stryker APCs and Bradley AFVs.

Russia is supposed to have the Afganit and Arena anti-missile protection systems for their tanks. The Russians have lost about 400 out of 1200 tanks in Ukraine. The Afganit and Arena systems are failing against Javelin’s and drone fired anti-tank missiles.

It is the end of the tank that do not have effective anti-missile systems. It again shows that countries that buy cheap Russian military gear are buying garbage. This should have been apparent from the wars since the 1970s in the middle east.

The excuses for poor performance of the Russian gear over the decades was that the Middle Eastern armies were not well trained. It is now been seen multiple times that the Russian gear used by Russians is also vastly inferior. Russia would also come out and say the new Armata tank or the new jets were different and better. This is again being shown not to be the case.

Russia sells about $5-10 billion of dollars worth of military equipment every year. Exports from Russia surged 72 percent from a year earlier to USD 45.93 billion in January of 2022, before the invasion of its neighbor Ukraine and West sanctions.

Russia is losing customers for its oil and for goods because of sanctions. Russia will lose military equipment customers because their field demonstration is showing that their gear is garbage versus American and Turkish equipment.

Turkey is going to be selling thousands of combat drones.

The Bayraktar drones were sold to Ukraine at a cost in the single-digit millions of dollars each – but that the Russian surface-to-air missile system destroyed in the video on Sunday could be worth up to $50 million.

SOURCES – Wikipedia
Written By Brian Wang, Nextbigfuture.com

47 thoughts on “End of the Tank Era?”

  1. Simple, they need to install the hypersonic engines first. Then they can deploy globally. They will use wishes for fuel and will never have to land and re-arm. LOL

  3. An RPG is enough to destroy any tank if fired from the correct angle, $500 or less, the switchblade drone swaps the expensive rocket motor/actuators with a cheap electric drone, $6,000 for the “grenade-like” 300, the price on the 600 isn’t really clear, but it seems like a $10,000 cheap anti-tank version with 10 mile range isn’t impossible, and ought to be pretty effective.

  8. Why down vote this comment it is objective (if unpopular) fact.

    I am no fan of Putin but the Russian intervention clearly swung the war.

  10. Hahahaha funny guy! The USA could not beat a bunch of barefoot farmers after spending 2 trillion dollars and then leaving with its tail between its legs

  12. Armored vehicles will become invaluable as they also become host to anti drone, mortar, rocket and missile platforms.

  14. According to everything I've seen, because they haven't made more than a handful of prototypes.
    eg. Ye olde faithful wikipedia.

    In August 2021, Deputy Defense Minister Alexei Krivoruchko said that the Russian Armed Forces would receive 20 T-14 Armata tanks by the end of 2021. On August 23, a Rostec official said that the company had shipped an unspecified number of T-14 tanks in an "experimental batch" to Russian Armed Forces. In November 2021, state trials were in progress and expected to be completed in 2022, and a "pilot batch" of twenty tanks was yet to be delivered to the armed forces.

  16. I think the bigger headline could have been "End of the manned aircraft era", a few stinger missiles and Russia has been limited in the use of its expensive manned fighter bombers and helicopters.

  18. New Switchblade on its way over there, will b even more devastating. I'd say this is as far as Russia gets and its all retreat from now on.

  22. Despite all glaring incompetence they are quite strong. And since a long time it is a given fact that the tanks are vulnerable to ambush and fie from hand-mounted launchers. All the tanks.

    So yes, the tanks will be de-emphasized. There's a reason nobody is wearing knights armor anymore. I would guess richer armies will have swarms of self-organizing drones/quadcopters to target/correct and launch missiles. In the future there will be also a lot of unmanned armored vehicles. Too.

  23. Paper maps don't require batteries or electricity. Perfect for the Russian army which my not have either.

  26. French incompetence by massing their cavalry too close together and charging across muddy fields. The english spent the next 100 years trying and failing to fight the same battles.

  28. What about firing multiple missiles at the same time? Say, three at one go? Would that change the rate of success even against a more modern tank? You could do that with missiles that are cheap enough.

  30. Russia army did pretty well in Syria. The main difference is they used more modern and more powerful weapons.

  31. I haven't seen a single T-14 in the hours of Ukraine footage I have watched. I'm guessing the T-14s are hanging out near the Baltics.

  32. They are still good against civilians.

    Every weapon has a countermeasure, and the Russians have the stuff, just not enough to make a difference.

  33. The NLAW ATGM shown in the lead image is designed to be aimed a meter above the turret of the target and fires downward into the vehicle as it passes.

    So ground launched ATGMs can do top attack as well.

  34. The tanks that the Ukrainians are taking down are older models not protected by an active defense system. No indication that they are also hitting the T-14 Armata and whether it is in the arena at all as only a relatively small number of units has already been produced. The number of 400 tanks destroyed by the Ukrainians is their most updated figure and it is most likely an exaggerated one.

  37. Those missiles could be "value engineered", and mass produced for a few thousand per pop. Certainly for less than 10K.

  38. This leads me back to a question I keep asking. Where is the much-vaunted Russian T-14 Armata tank? They have said for years it's better than an M-1 Abrams and it looks really good on paper. Here's your war, Russia? Why aren't you using the tank?

    Consider, Russia's main reason for making the T-14 is export sales. If the T-14 performed well here, other countries would demand them. It would be in Russia's best interest to showcase them blowing up military facilities or withstanding drone attacks.

    Are they all in the shop? Were they props? Why aren't they using them?

  40. "the first generation of Soviet reactive armor"

    Time to update the old joke about what socialists used for lighting before candles.

    "What did Russia use for armor before scrap metal?
    Reactive armor."

  41. Oh and also digital maps are great. Much better than paper maps. I can't believe that the Russians are using paper maps.

  42. Oh its an arms race for sure. I'm old enough to remember when the first generation of Soviet reactive armor necessitated new anti tank missiles.

    Tanks, planes, cruisers, aircraft carriers- they are all just platforms and the platforms get upgraded. An Abrams is a relatively cheap platform as these things go.

  43. While you are at it, would be good to control the airspace of your theatre of operations.

    Also I've heard that it is good to give all your soldiers food so they don't have to ransack the local market.

  44. No, in fact there is almost nothing of value to gauge from this war besides incompetent military strategy and execution will get you slaughtered. Mobile armor is still extremely valuable when used correctly. And even facing drones and ATGM's, it's better to have some armor than no armor. If it was the US army instead of the Russian army invading Ukraine, the war would have been over in a day.

    To add to that, I think the M1 Abrams is the best tank in the world because it's pretty much invulnerable to ATGM's from the front and the sides unlike these lighter Russian tanks. Your only real vulnerability being the top allows you to develop effective counter-measures for things like drones or missiles.

  46. Given the price differential between the anti-tank missiles and the tanks, you could feasibly upgrade the anti-tank missiles quite a bit, and still come out ahead.

  47. Not the end of the tank era just the beginning of the "you must have active countermeasures" era.

    Tanks will do well against small drones that can wreck soldiers.

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