21st Century Warfare Renders the Tank Obsolete
RIP: Army Tanks, 1915-2014
Monday, February 10th, 2014
See if you can identify the following pattern and guess what comes next...
A fist, a rock, a club, a spear, an arrow, a sword, a cannon, a musket, a machine gun, a tank, a _____.
Each of these is a weapon whose widespread use made the previous one obsolete. So what comes next? What is the next weapon that will make the tank obsolete?
"The manufacturing of tanks — powerful but cumbersome — is no longer essential," the
Washington Post recently wrote, citing U.S. military commentary. "In modern warfare, forces must deploy quickly and project power over great distances. Submarines and long-range bombers are needed. Weapons such as drones — nimble and tactical — are the future. Tanks are something of a relic."
The Tank's Demise
While the tank, the airplane, and the submarine all emerged at about the same time and were first used together in warfare in World War I, the tank quickly rose to become the dominant unit on the battlefield.
Although air superiority grew in importance throughout the 20th century in clearing the way for advancing troops, the tank remained utterly essential to storming and securing enemy targets and installations. In the Six-Day War in 1967, for example, more than 2,500 tanks were used between Arab and Israeli forces.
That dominance is no longer. Rapid advances in miniaturization and computer automation have produced the weapon of the future: the aerial drone.
It can be equipped with fearsome firepower while costing only $3 or $4 million — half as much as an $8 million Abrams tank, a quarter as much as a $15 million Blackhawk helicopter, and a sixth as much as a $25 million F18 fighter.
While ground forces will still be required to capture and secure buildings and territory, that task can now be performed by a much cheaper infantry platoon without any tanks at all — just a few inexpensive and well-equipped drones circling overhead.
Already in the U.S., two major defense contractors have been scaling back the production and refurbishing of tanks and armored personnel carriers. The York, Pennsylvania plant of British contractor BAE Systems (LSE: BA), which had been building and refurbishing the Bradley Fighting Vehicle for the U.S. Army, has already dismissed half of its workforce, with more layoffs last December.
"The reality of it is we've already started shutting down," manufacturing executive Alice Conner informed the
Washington Post. "If BAE does not get any new Bradley funding — or win new work from commercial firms or foreign governments, it will close the line in 2015."
In another defense spending casualty, General Dynamics (NYSE: GD), which builds M1 Abrams tanks — the most powerful tank in the world — is scaling down its Lima, Ohio factory. Over the past decade, the contractor's workforce has been slashed from over 1,200 to some 500 today.
The Army simply doesn't see the need for more tanks. Speaking before Congress in 2012, General Raymond Odierno, the Army's chief of staff, put it as simply as possible: "We don't need the tanks. Our tank fleet is two and a half years old on average now. We're in good shape, and these are additional tanks that we don't need."
In response, defense contractors and their over 500 suppliers have lobbied hard, convincing Congress to write them huge checks worth $140 million for Bradley vehicles and $74 million for Abrams tanks for fiscal year 2014.
The fear isn't just over the loss of jobs, but over losing the technology and manufacturing skills as well.
But experts like Angela Canterbury of the Project on Government Oversight criticized the move. "It is really making us less safe when we're throwing money that's hard to come by at programs that don't meet what should be our current national security strategy."
Just what should the national security strategy focus on? Many believe it's the weapon of the future...
the drone.
They are improving it further. We will sure have these quality tanks in numbers in few years.
