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will it? can't express views as arm strained

Not really IMO, they will be still around.

Once space lasers come around, all conventional weapons of any sort, even infantry, planes and parachute cavalry will be obsolete.

This is a tough one to answer. Military analysts have forseen the end of the tank for a long while now, but its still here. Anyhow, in urban combat, the tank is less than ideal (and we do a lot of urban combat these days), and also, helicopters are just too good at destroying tanks. The usefulness of the tank certainly isn't as much as it was in WWII, where there were no helicopters (and also, no guided misiles from planes), and a lot of combat was in the open. So it's possible that the tank will be phased out, but tank designers couldcome up with new armor that could defeat anti-tank helicopter based missiles, I dunno. It all depends on the kind of wars we willl be fighting in the future, as right now, in the open, airpower is reallly supreme nowadays, and in urban environments, infantry are the only thing that can combat infantry garrissoned in buildings.

The biggest advantage the tank has is ground control. Airpower, helicopters, orbital lasers, all that sort of stuff can't exert persistent advance and control of territory. Not only that, but if the enemy has good enough AA, then if you don't have tanks you're screwed no matter how may planes you bring. It's easier to build missiles than fighters, after all.

Tanks will always be more vulnerable to their enemies than their enemies are to most things, but all the same the role they play in actually establishing and moving fighting fronts is something that can't really be replaced. After all, if you get rid of tanks, what are you left with to fill their place? Well, nothing really. APCs are even more vulnerable, and you can't just drop infantry onto every enemy position and you certainly can't send them to assault fixed or dug-in positions. They still need to be supported, and tanks have actually been found invaluable in Iraq for providing overwatch to infantry teams while securing positions in urban environments, especially with remote weapons systems, and form very effective mobile cover.

Tanks are the most mobile, effective and heavily-armed aspect of ground combat, and I think their vulnerability is actually somewhat overestimated. Armour designers have come up with materials and designs of extreme durability, and there are tales of tanks surviving absolutely insane amounts of damage and making it back to base, then being repaired and ready to go a couple of days later. Active defence systems currently being rolled out like Shtora, Arena, Drozd, laser lock warning receivers and Trophy all have the promise of decreasing the effectiveness of ATGMs to a significant degree, tanks can support each other, and tanks are persistent. There's no other way to put it. For holding or driving a line, anything else isn't going to cut it. So while their designs may change slightly, I don't think we'll see the end of them for a long while yet.

The main point is that the modern tank isn't suited to urban warfare. Infantry and airpower are favoured. One day it will be obsolete so I voted yes, though not any time soon though. Tanks are still useful for the reasons CommanderJB stated.

Tanks will never be truly obsolete. They'll always have a niche to fill, unless we come up with weapons that can destroy anything, anywhere, at any time, remotely.

But tanks are fast, armored, and can dish out their own punishment very well. I don't think that will ever be taken completely from combat.

Wow. One did vote on the third selection! hahahaha!

@Topic:

No fixed defense can thwart an incoming division.

Most especially if it's mechanized armor.

Which include tanks.

So tanks will be around.

Until wars become things of the past (You wish!) :stickattack2:

what commander jb is actuaaly true. even though they are vulnerable to most missile attacks, they can do things that aircraft can't, and has the speed and armour to do things infantry can't. despite the fact that AT technology continues to advance, so will defences to protect tanks. as it is able to carry enough firepower equivalent to maybe a 3 squads of infantry, and is not as vulnerable.

IMO, the main battle tank will become obsolete because of the fact that urban conflict is the way of the future probably. but i think that the mechinized battalion of the future will be made up of vehicles like the Stryker, or the Bradly, whose main guns aren't completely useless. also, i beleive that there will be light tanks. but not any 90 ton Abrams like behemoth.

Yes, one day the tank will be obsolete. Up until only shortly before it's invention, nobody could have imagined it because the situation that required tanks had never really come about before. Once tanks were invented to combat the situation of "we need to break through the trenches and machine guns", the situation of "the enemy has tanks, we need our own to counter this" happened and things took off from there. Which is why I don't know what will replace it - the situation has not become enough of a problem for tanks that we need something else yet.

The day tanks become obselete will be a very sad day indeed and I hope that never happens.

Unless they get replaced by mechs. >)

 Overdose, on 29 Jun 2008, 21:31, said:

Mechs??

1.Simply run a strong wire on the mech's legs...
...and it will always trip. Once it trips, infantry will rush to the cockpit of the mech...

Mechs' legs are their Achilles' Heel.

2.Mechs have high profiles. So camouflage won't do. It will stick out of the crowd (like a dead nun on a snowy street). Unlike tanks, you can have it as low as possible, so it can hide on bushes.

So mechs will not be feasible.

So tanks will be around in many many many different variants to suit any operation.

I think considering the fact that we can drop huge bombs without even being detected and fire cruise missiles/ICBM's half the world i really do not think there will be any need to tanks as there will never be a "real" war that requires them.

mechs would be awesome but i agree with TPAM

Mike

One can never foresee great developments in technology. The tank will be around as long as man thinks he needs them. As for mechs, the point about visibility might be true but remember that you don't have to build a towering, Metal Gear style colossus. Mechs can also be very squat with a low profile such as the Timberjack walking machine, a hexapod tractor used in forestry. Sure, it's slow and clumsy but there has to be a start. Who knows what future developments can do to enhance the mobility of such vehicles. I wouldn't say that (military) mechs will always be science fiction......
Edited by Rayburn, 01 July 2008 - 10:09.

Frankly I don't think mechs will ever be adopted for use in the military not because they're impossible to make working - I have no doubt that if the military put their minds to it, after a few decades, they could plausibly come up with an AT-AT equivalent. It's just that they're so much more complicated and so much more vulnerable than tanks without almost anything to balance it out that there's just no need. What's the advantage in having legs? Terrain types? Tanks can cross almost every type of terrain, and for every obstacle the mech can clear the greater ground pressure under the feet will result in it tripping, sinking and becoming bogged in another. Plus the obvious profile problems already stated.

Mechs, while cool, just don't have an advantage. That's why we probably won't see them, at least not in the 'battlewalker' sense, in the foreseeable future.

Actually for mechs the only advantage i can see is that it can have a longer range and line of sight. And an advantage of a mech would also be the possibility to stand deep in water and yet blow up the opposition


however this a bit of fiction and in theory it is imposible to make a mech

 TehKiller, on 1 Jul 2008, 14:46, said:

*cough*

In terms of conventional land warfare, tanks will always remain useful as a means of destroying other tanks, as mobile artillery, and acting in terms of shock value. Then in World War I as is now, a massive armoured vehicle plowing through all obstacles and heading towards you is a disheartening sight for any soldier, even those trained to deal with them.

However lets consider this: tanks are massive targets. In a city environment infantry with any sort of anti-tank weapon will possess a much greater advantage. When operating in the field, there is a need to maintain aerial superiority or otherwise they will be destroyed by any number of air-launched anti-tank weaponry.

Though on the other hand, tanks have always found themselves under threat by various developments, even in World War I. So I will say this: tanks will in the foreseeable future, will always find a role in a conventional battlefield, but provided that...

a) Air superiority is confirmed

b) That fighting does not take place in confined spaces

 Strategia Inc., on 1 Jul 2008, 13:53, said:

Thats pretty awesome.
Typical of them though

Mike

We will always have some assembelance of a tank in all fighting environments, Though through technological innovation the tank of the future will be significantly different than the ones we have today.

Nothing is ever truly obselete. Without the old gunpowder rifles, we would never have the modern automatic firearm. So while the modern tank may sometime become "obselete", whatever fills the role of armored ground combat will at least have some roots shared with the tank. So yes, tanks will become obselete as they are now, but only through evolution of technology and strategic concepts, which, as stated, must build upon what already exists.

So what I'm saying is that they will change slowly into someting more useful, as opposed to just quickly and simply going obselete.

-Boidy

 markintellect, on 27 Jun 2008, 9:21, said:

They said the exact same about ICBMs, but do yous see us fighting with only missiles? Nope. Even then once someone gets an anti satellite weapon, there goes your satellite!

But I don't think the tank will become obsolete. There will always be advanced in armor, weapons, engineering and there will definitely be a role that a tank will need to fill. The tank will just evolve, like cavalry or infantry weapons or warships.
Edited by Cuppa, 02 July 2008 - 02:28.

 markintellect, on 27 Jun 2008, 9:21, said:

Former president Ronald Reagan will be pleased, if we have that now.(but we don't).

Don't be so sure, Mr President... I imagine there's at least some stuff up there which isn't strictly peaceful or even passively military. Just look at Russia's Polyus orbital weapons satellite - it had a laser to blind targeting sensors, a barium cloud dispenser to confuse incoming missiles with optical or infra-red homing devices, a nuclear mine dispenser, a recoilless cannon for even more defence against ASAT weapons, a laser comlink system allowing it to operate in radio silence and god only know what else. All this for the sole purpose of establishing a military foothold in space, because it couldn't effectively attack anything. What's more, this thing was actually built and launched. The only problem was that the positioning motor fired for twice the intended time, meaning when the rockets that were actually meant to push it into a higher orbit were fired they instead acted as retro-rockets, and the thing slowed down, fell out of orbit and burned up over the Pacific. Mikhail Gorbachev wasn't actually too displeased - he was basing most of his criticism of the west on Regan's increasing militarisation plans for space, and so expressley forbade testing of the Polyus satellite, and then didn't have to worry about it. At any rate, then the USSR fell and the military space program was put on hold. Russia does, however, still have the dedicated VKS (Military Space Forces) - the ones in my user title in fact - and the U.S. both maintains stocks of ASAT missiles and has proposed multiple programs such as the real-world version of Rods From God, so all it would take is a spark of conflict and I think you'd see space rapidly becoming the new battlegroud for both informational and physical warfare.