The Tank and it's future.

[Decker]

Many good posts here on this topic.

The modern tank faces an ever growing number of perils. "Intelligent" artillery rounds with EFP, huge and sophisticated IEDs and mines, a wide array of guided rockets fired from the ground by man and machine and delivered by air, powerful kinetic penetrators and possibly an ABC attack. It is a huge strain on logistics because it difficult to deploy and needs huge amount of fuel, with all the cascading effects through the supply system. Still it brings unique qualities to a battlefield and profits heavily from modern technology. Hardkill defense system may shield tanks from a great part of its thread spectrum, better and more integrated sensor allow for greater agility, better situational awerness and combat effectivness. Modern rounds give them a fighting chance against helicopters and better abilites in Urban Combat.

I guess that in the future MBT will be number-wise a smaller part of a modern army, but still one of intrinsic importance.

Well put. I think, that like what you said, the tanks will make up a smaller force in most modern military's due to their cost and AT technology improving greatly. Infantry does play a larger role and I could see tanks being used to either support units stuck in a stalemate, or to exploit any breakthroughs in which the reason for them being created in the first place (think WWI). Though, I still think that the tank's effectiveness also depends on the other combat arms as we saw in WWII when the Allies ruled the skies.

Well, maybe tanks will be replaced by 'armoured suits', or even Mechs/big robots. Kinda depends on how technology evolves. If much better defensive technology is created, then they will once again rule the battlefield, but if offensive tech moves ahead then they may be just big targets, and smaller, more agile, and stealthier substitutes will be used. Or they may just put AIs into them and let them loose, oh dear.