From: meharg@fraser.sfu.ca (Gersham William Meharg)
Subject: Re: Will Tanks Become Extinct?
Organization: Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, B.C., Canada
Date: Fri, 31 Jul 1992 03:55:37 GMT

tkogoma@triton.unm.edu (Gym Z. Quirk) writes:

>In article <meharg.712527067@sfu.ca> meharg@fraser.sfu.ca (Gersham William Meharg) writes:
>>The most significant use of tanks is to take terrain (and hold it)
>>quickly from an enemy. To take terrain you need a ground vehicle, unless
>>you have infinate fuel in an A/C. Sure helicopters can do damage to the
>>enemy in an area, but they will not be able to hold it. This is what
>>you need tanks for, to clear an enemy from an area and to keep it clear.

>No.  That's what infantry is for.  Armor is not very good on the
>defensive - Except when employed to counter-attack.  Traditionally, armor
>is used to concnetrate firepower on a relatively small front and create a
>breach in the defensive line.  It can then marauds behind enemy lines,
>shooting up supply columns and help to encircle enemy positions for the
>infantry to mop up.  (Yes, this is mostly WW II era doctrine, but look
>at Schwartzkopf's 'end run' and you can see that it's still applicable.)

>>Gersham Meharg
>>Simon Fraser Unniversity
>>Vancouver, Canada.


>-- 
>Capt. Gym Z. Quirk  (Known to some as Taki Kogoma)  tkogoma@triton.unm.edu
>  I'll get a life when someone demonstrates that it would be superior to
>                           what I have now...

True. I gues what I was trying to say was that GROUND forces are needed to
hold an area, that trying to replace a significant portion of the ground
force with A/C is not a good idea.

I do think that tanks will become less significant on the battlefield in
the future however. Take a look at naval forces and whats happened in the
last 50 years. The battelship could be analougous to the MBT, it used to
be THE power in the ocean, only opposable by another of its kind. Then
along came aircraft carriers and submarienes. Today the battleship is a
relic of the past, reduced to a artilery platform - much of its combat
capability is equaled in missile crusiers and frigates. 

This is a difficult question, to know if you need tanks you must know
what kind of war you will fight.

Lets make some assumptions and try an envision what a tank would be like
in 50 years.
1. Lighter chasis. Speed will be more important than passive armor.
2. Active armor. Reactive armor would be part of this.  Put a gun on the
tank that would be able to shoot down missiles and maybe projectiles.
This could be like the phalanx (sp?) or a directed energy weapon. I  
admit that shooting down a bullet would be tough but its going slow 
compared to a laser (secondary purpose of this weapon : antipersonnel).
3. Sensors. Mostly passive. Cover a wide breadth of the EM spectrum.
Have remote drones for the vehicle with instant data links. These would
let the tank have as good/better detection capabilities as a chopper.
Include data from all other tanks and A/C in the theater. This would
provide you with a consolidated view of the battlefield.
4. ECM. Active and Passive. Passive ECM is what is on current A/C,
jamming pods n stuff. Active ECM is when you try to cancel out EM
reflections from your tank by actively emitting EM radiation in sync
with the reflections. This is damn tough, but not impossible.
5. Reduce sig of the tank. Make the tank out of radar absoarbant material
Reduce the acoustic signature (easy). Reduce the thermal signature, this
would be somewhat tough to fully eliminate, maybe it would be possible
to eliminate for short periods of time, then release all the heat in
a major thermal show.
6. Main Weapon. Make this a SAM/SSM (dual purpose) Kinetic Energy kill
weapon. Verticle launch (perhaps by compressed air, linear accelerator)
then home on target (after reaching 100m alt) using no smoke high delta
vee engine.
7. AI computer. Put one in to controll the mess above. Throw in 2 or 3
crew to handle situations the AI cant (depends on your AI tech). 
8. Chaff, Flares, decoys & other neat things.

Well there you go, one hell of a dangerous vehicle to advance with the
APC's. (Course a wing of F15's would be cheaper).

This isnt an easy thing to predict. Im not convinced about the chopper,
those blades give off a healthy reflection when spinning. Possibly a
different engine (sustained endurance VTOL jet?) would increase its
effectiveness (and reduce its vunerability). 
One thing to remember in future combat is the data sharing that will
definately occur. Once one tank/APC/soildier/AC/etc knows an enemy is
there they all will. Of this I am convinced. Another thing Im sure of
is that its not gonna be much fun (guess it never was).

There some suggestions above...
And we havnt even considered personal (<2.5m) powered armor. THERE is
something that will revolutionize covert operations (with the right 
tech).

BTW. I run a rpg that started out as a traveller 2300 game, but then
mutated into a gmes with my own rules (very realistic gun combat system
and starship construction system, and char gen system), and own 
unniverse thats amoung other things cybertech enough to make cyberpunk
(the rpg) look wimpy. I have all my rules on the Mac in Canvas 3 format.
Totals 9.5 megs of rules & character sheets made over many years.

Gersham Meharg
A geomorphologist wannabe at
Simon Fraser Unniversity
Vancouver, Canada.