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- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
David Axe
He should stay in his lane, let’s hear what David Tank has to say about it next time.
“I can already tell you that his opinions about axes are shitty too”
The Lonely Mountain’s steel axes can plow through Moria goblins fortifications
The Lonely Mountain’s steel axes are the wrong weapons for Khazad Dum
The orcs just rolled out Smaug-400 system dammit.
Listen, the Khazâd had no reason to believe the goblins would pull an ancient Morgoth model Balrog out of mothball
NATOids when their new perfect wunderwaffe is proven to be useless:
(This has happened many times before and will happen again in the future)
It’s not useless, Alvis Vickers Ltd. gets roughly 4 million £ for each of these.
One of the only funny parts of this is watching western politicians realize how hideously expensive their equipment really is to just keep running
Like yeah, maybe it is the perfect weapon - if you have an entire mechanical arm dedicated to it, the fuel for it, the parts for it when they inevitably break in a couple weeks, bridges that can support the insane weight of them, and so on
Turns out if money is no obstacle, you can have seemingly powerful weaponry - but you need all of that money for it to work.
Just like those Nazis… hmmmmm…
Too heavy and still not enough armor? Oof lol
It’s near impossible for modern MBT armour to stop a good hit from an equally modern ATGM or APFSDS round. The best way to survive is to not get spotted and hit in the first place. That’s why Soviet doctrine had it right, quick low profile tanks with “decent enough” armour. Hard and soft kill APS can help with RPGs and ATGMs but after seeing how the Trophy system of the IOF is absolute dogshit I don’t think it’ll be enough.
I think if natoids wanted an effective combat platform over grifting money, they would develop a tank with good all around protection against autocannons, but just enough armour on the frontal arc to get lucky vs dedicated anti tank weapons. If you have a 70 ton tank that gets penetrated by Kornets, might as well make a 50 ton tank that gets penetrated by Kornets instead and can actually cross bridges.
the Trophy system of the IOF
In October 2023, Hamas used civilian DJI and Autel quadcopter drones, which dropped shaped-charge grenades to damage or destroy several Merkava tanks.
When your half ton multi million dollar state of the art tank defense is consistently defeated by $150 quadcopters available at Best Buy.
I remember when those quadcopters were super expensive too, stay winning China
if natoids wanted an effective combat platform over grifting money, they would develop a tank with good all around protection against autocannons, but just enough armour on the frontal arc to get lucky vs dedicated anti tank weapons.
That’s just a Leopard 1 with ERA bricks.
So yeah, you’re probably not wrong.
This is pretty much why tanks are being phased out for missile vehicles or personnel carriers, in the same vein why battleships are not made anymore
Missile vehicles? Like what?
I should’ve probably clarified that MBTs as we currently know them are being phased out for lighter armored tanks with capabilities from the designs of missile vehicles or personnel carries. But specifically the USMC are getting rid of their MBTs entirely to develop lightly armored rocket launchers like the HIMARS.
Also the US Army are still holding on to the Abrams, but they are also open about how future development is based on the principal that current MBTs have hit their weight limit. So in the next decade or so we’ll probably see Abrams variants with less armor but heavily incorporating some design of missile and rocket carriers.
(There’s also drones/unmanned vehicles, but I doubt we’ll see any concrete media about that for a while)
IDK if this has moved past the initial phase of development, but I know that one of the next vehicles the Marine Corps is looking at is a remote piloted HIMARS. The concept is that you have a command jeep that controls four to six of them at once.
Makes sense. We’re technologically at the point where armor can no longer keep up, so to be invulnerable you need to remove the only true vulnerability which is the human.
HIMARS is an MLRS, isn’t it? Like Grad and the like. I don’t really see how they could replace tanks in their original role
USMC are reorganizing their doctrine to be prepared for Pacific operations. Theres a lot to be said about red scare, racism, etc. but what use is a heavy armored tank on a beachfront?
Good point, but the beachfront is not the end of the operation. Pretty sure both USSR and USA had landing vessels (hovercraft?) that could transport tanks to the shore. Which suggests that the strategy people there had certain thoughts on the use.
The way I figure, it would have the same use as it did before - rapidly advance into breaches in defences (which are facilitated by artillery and aviation) and destroy support and logistics lines - fuel depots and such.
Now this, of course, is WW2 methods at best, I am not a military person, just a “sofa expert”. And nowadays such operations could likely be performed by different platforms, such as IFVs with high calibre guns. Something like a BMD-3 or one of those Italian things. But this is my take.
The US is not doctrinally representative of most militaries because it is almost exclusively focused on expeditionary fighting far away from its shores. The USMC is the most expeditionary arm of an expeditionary force so it is in particular a poor representative of world wide armored doctrine. Everything the USMC, and to a somewhat lesser extent, the US military, procures is expected to be transported by plane or ship to a warzone far away from the US.
If you look at land powers who actually expect to fight a serious peer-level land war, there is no overall discernable turn away from the MBT. Russia is still developing the Armata family (even if war time circumstances prevent Russia from adopting it), China has recently adopted the Type 15 light tank and is still allegedly working on upgrading the ZTZ-99A. India hasn’t abandoned the Arjun and has made no moves towards pivoting away from buying T-90s from Russia. Germany has (just last year) sold Leopard 2 upgrades to Sweden and Italy, and Rhinemetal has presented prototypes for upgunning the Leopard 2. Britain committed to upgrading about 150 Challenger 2s to Challenger 3s in 2021. Japan adopted the Type 10 in 2010. South Korea introduced the K2 in 2014 and is apparently selling them to Poland.
You might reasonably argue that many of the above pre-date the lessons of the Ukraine war, which is a fair point but none of these systems have been cancelled or further procurement delayed or replaced. Similarly, talk of missile based light vehicles to replace tanks have not really gone anywhere either so there’s not really any basis to say MBTs are becoming obsolete.
You might recall that there was a very similar debate during the Cold War which said that MBTs were obsolete because of ATGMs only for new composite armors, ERA and APS to significantly degrade ATGM performance.
Probably stuff like ATGM carriers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kornet-D, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HJ-9 etc
Well that was my first thought, but those things aren’t a new concept, so I figured I’d ask
Metal Gear?!?
Don’t make me rant
Hey at least they can plow. Tanks into plowshares or however that goes.
He’s technically not wrong: If you plow enough tanks thru a minefield, the minefield will no longer be there and you can then plow your tanks into the next and then you can plow your yanks into the next
Tank Wave Tactics
In NATO they only have enough tank shells for half their tanks. So they send them out in pairs, and when one tank falls the other one picks up its shells and continues fighting
and then you can plow your yanks into the next
I have kinda hard time to decide if it was a typo, because AFU is known for using both tanks and foreign mercenaries as mine fodder.
foreign mercenaries as mine fodder
It’s not like westerners are good for much, might as well make them useful for once
Russia using a cruise missile to merk the Reddit Brigade was probably a net win for Ukraine.
You see, minefields have a preset kill limit. Knowing their weakness, I sent wave after wave of my own tanks at them until they reached their limit and shut down. ~ Zap Brannigan
It’s the tank version of Ace Combat, endless tanks!
“Oh, sure, now that they’re ‘too heavy, lack protection, and need too much support’ they’re my Challenger2?”
Pump and dump
Succint
for a long time I thought this guy’s name was David Axehole because a user (72T? I forget) would always refer to them as such when posting excerpts of their cheerleading for AFU
Forbes Editor-in-Chief : Who made that man an op-ed writer?
Major Axehole : I did sir. He’s my cousin.
Forbes Editor-in-Chief : Who is he?
Colonel Sandurz : He’s an Axehole sir.
Forbes Editor-in-Chief : I know that! What’s his name?
Colonel Sandurz : That is his name sir. Axehole, Major Axehole!
Forbes Editor-in-Chief : And his cousin?
Colonel Sandurz : He’s an Axehole too sir. Senior Special Military Correspondant David Axehole!
Forbes Editor-in-Chief : How many Axeholes do we have here at Forbes, anyway?
[Entire editorial board stands up and raises a hand]
Entire Forbes Editorial Board : Yo!
Me building a tank rush in Command and Conquer vs me when my opponent hits them all with a super weapon.
When you thought you were playing Starcraft, but then it turns out to be Red Alert.
I write about tanks
Sounds like something Creamsicle, my plushie whale would say.
His brain has less fiberglass in it too.
“Yaaaay!”
Wahoo!
Comrade whale.
I’m not sure what Creamsicle’s political views are. He just loves everyone and everything.
If he loves all people then that locks him out of being a fascist, a conservative, and a lib.