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From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer)
Newsgroups: sci.military
Subject: Re: Quantity versus Quality
Message-ID: <3300@cbnews.ATT.COM>
Date: 20 Jan 89 05:13:11 GMT
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Approved: military@att.att.com

>Tanks are far from obsolete.  Until something else comes along
>with their combination of firepower, mobility, and staying power,
>they will continue to have a vital mission.

Firepower, okay.  Mobility, okay.  Staying power, approaching zero as
infantry anti-tank weapons get better.  Tanks were cost-effective when
the weapons capable of disabling them were artillery and other tanks,
i.e. things that the average infantry squad didn't carry.  The mission
remains important, but tanks are increasingly incapable of doing it at
acceptable cost.

                                     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
                                 uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu

[moderator's reply: When I referred to staying power, I imply a bit more
than survivability, though that is certainly a major part of it.  I also
include things like loiter time; aircraft pack lots of firepower, but
have short loiter times on the battlefield. If you duck long enough,
the planes go away; tanks don't. 

Further, tanks offer improved survivability versus more generic weapons;
HE artillery, rifle fire, chemical rounds, even nuclear/biological attacks,
relative to infantry.

Finally, improvements such as Chobham armor and reactive armor have
put a big unknown in the tank/antitank equation.  Both systems improve
survivability against HEAT munitions, although the exact improvement
has not been publicized; certainly, the Pentagon claims that the Soviet
reactive armor jeopardizes the effectiveness of our TOW and Dragon,
while LAW is already a joke against modern MBT's.  Methinks it very
premature to write off tanks just yet...  - Bill ]