One interesting thing coming out of this war is how easily multi-million-dollar weapons can be destroyed and their occupants killed, by some guy with a shoulder-mounted missile, rocket-propelled grenade, or a remote-control drone. No doubt the US Military is watching this closely but the defense industry will learn little from it.
Big eye-candy defense systems are all the rage. If you can come up with a fighter plane that costs a hundred million dollars to make and is never used in battle, well, you can make a lot of money. But the lessons of recent wars - and not-so-recent ones - seems to be that the guy with all the high-tech weaponry isn't always the victor, and in fact, rarely is.
Tanks were thought, at one time, to be the next big thing, but other than fighting other tanks in wide open spaces, or acting as support for infantry (or vice-versa) they seem to be particularly vulnerable. In my 6th grade history book, we were taught that the introduction of the tank is what ended World War I. It was more complicated than that, of course. The war was bankrupting both sides and people in Germany got sick of it and wanted to make it stop. The tank thing was really tangential.
And even then, tanks became metal coffins for their occupants. A well-placed shell in the underbelly could destroy a tank - and still can. I wrote some Patents for Army Research Lab on armor-piercing shells, and it is interesting how shaped-charges are used to pierce several inches of heavy armor. In response, some armies added "slat armor" to their tanks, hoping to cause these shells to explode a few inches from their target and thus dissipate the shaped charge. Others used active armor - armor that explodes on contact, to disrupt the shaped charge. It is like any form of evolution - one side changes conditions and the other adapts to it. It is a never-ending battle, if you'll pardon the pun.
In the Ukraine we are seeing a lot of Russians dying in tanks and armored vehicles. Some blame strategy, others blame antiquated Russian equipment. Some guy in a foxhole with a tank-destroying missile can take out a tank and kill everyone inside, from a quarter-mile away. Maybe that is why tanks support infantry or vice-versa - you need "boots on the ground" to root out the insurgents before they fire on your tanks.
We learned the same lesson in Iraq and Afghanistan (and the Russians learned it in Afghanistan as well!). One "insurgent" with a rocket-propelled grenade or a shoulder-fired missile could take out a helicopter, fighter jet, tank, armored personnel carrier or whatever. The mighty Abrams tank was victorious in desert combat against older Soviet-era tanks deployed by Iraq. But in street-to-street urban fighting and in policing an insurgency, well, it proved to be a vulnerable coffin in some instances.
The security of high-tech weaponry is illusory. I would not feel comfortable or invincible riding in a tank, but rather realize that at any given second, the whole thing could blow up without any notice. If I was lucky, I would be killed instantly.
Years ago, I read a book about an all-black tank brigade that was sent to Italy during the war. They were given what were then already obsolete Sherman tanks - powered by gasoline radial engines. Against German "88's" or larger and more heavily armored Panzers, they were deathtraps. If the initial shell ricocheting around inside the tank wasn't deadly enough, the burning gasoline would do the trick.
The book tells the tale of one of the tank recovery crews, who was tasked with towing away the damaged tanks. Their first job, however, was to crawl inside the burned-out tanks and remove the remains of their fellow comrades, often in pieces, or who would fall to pieces as they had to lift them through the hatch. It was up-close and personal with death.
The images in that book stuck with me. Tanks are not invulnerable, or at least an invulnerable tank has yet to be invented. There will always be weak spots in any tank - the inlets for the radiators, air intakes for the engines, and of course the tracks, which, once damaged, render the tank a sitting target.
Of course, this effect is not limited to tanks, as I noted above. During Vietnam, we tried to carpet-bomb the Vietnamese into submission. The mighty B-52 superfortress seemed impervious to attack. But a single SAM missile could bring it down, leading to the death or capture of the crew, and another few tens of millions missing from the defense budget. Even if you don't kill off all the opposing army, you can bankrupt them simply by destroying all their expensive toys.
Seems to me that the future of warfare doesn't lie in building expensive targets. Tanks, planes, ships - they are all just sitting ducks for some jihadist with a dime-store improvised weapon.
Maybe we need less gold-plated superweapons, and more easily-concealable, readily transportable and inexpensive rockets, missiles and drones.
Just a thought. Seems like those sort of cheap weapons are winning wars, lately.
UPDATE: Apparently Taiwan has been paying attention. Let the drone wars begin!
