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[Strongpoint]

Your use of a list of British aircraft carriers and the inherent limited spectrum of threats and uses of a carrier in the North Atlantic and North Sea infuriates me and yet I'm pretty sure you're making a sarcastic point in agreement with me lol.

Sadly, Japan lost only about half of its aircraft carriers to submarines, which wouldn't be as impressive.

[Madman198237]

Japanese ASW was legendarily awful and by the end of the war they had almost no pilots on their carriers, hence high losses to anything that drifted by the Home Islands to take potshots at them (which means US subs). British ASW was better but they just had almost no surface opponents (Kriegsmarine being 95% useless) to lose ships to so of course their losses were to subs.

American ASW was about average throughout the war, we used a lot more carriers than anybody else, and we lost a fair few. Primarily to hostile air attack. And Japanese subs famously (and wrongly) tried to target only warships because that earned them more honor back home...yet air attack remained the cause of most carrier losses, by far.

[EuchreJack]

I would like to interrupt this debate on naval assets
not being used in the War in Ukraine to discuss Ukraine's Naval Drones. They kick ass.

You may continue your hypothetical discussions now.

[Strongpoint]

Yes, those drones are cool. And I am sure they, as a cost-effective tool,  made all existing naval vessels obsolete. It is how it works, right?

[Starver]

If you want my rather profunctory opinion, defence-in-depth vs. offence-in-depth still overwhelmingly applies to any field of conflict (and offence vs. offence, ditto both, when it's not really clear which way it's flowing/its ebbing and flowing for each).

There are very few "one trick pony is all you need"s in warfare. Roadside IEDs may represent a major and quite awkward threat to conventional forces in assymetrical warfare, but the forces employing them need to have guys with AK47s willing to put the oar in. Air-power may make  for a useful tool to extend naval operations, but you still need the other ship-types. Even in the age of nukes, and potential MAD, there was still necessary thought as to how (surviving) forces would operate between and beyond the nuclear exchanges.

Agincourt didn't actually make knights obselete (arguably, through iterations of gradual change in armour levels/types, the horse-charge survived until at least WW2 - and I have an inkling even later) and Russian hypersonic missiles clearly aren't preventing the need for hand-to-hand trench fighting. Balances may change, but 'new' elements to warfare are wedges, gradually adjusting the effectiveness of a particular leg to any given combat scenario.


And USVs, via various tos-and-fros in popularity, practicality and implementation are clearly the latest iteration of what started(?) in antiquity as the Fire Ship. A bit more subtle than a burning hulk, bit more long ranged than a torpedo and a bit more 'humanitarian' to its operators than the Kaiten of the Japanese. An amount of cross-polination between other platforms (guided missiles, in the air, the Goliath Tank-like solutions for the ground) and more ad-hoc solutions. Definitely very effective. Doesn't render an otherwise conventional navy obsolete, especially with the presumed failure rate[1], but useful. Expect to see more examples of this generation of the meme be deployed[2] by others, now that it has shown itself as a mature (or at least very capable adescent) example of this generation of the concept.


Darnit. This was supposed to be a quick pointing out of the "-in-depth" importance, but I drifted around quite a lot. I cut a few of my example paragraphs, as overkill, perhaps ought to have cut more/differently/all of it.

[1] Loss of success, more than waste of resources, I think it might be best to think of it - given that it seems 'easy' enough just to try again with the next produced units - though obviously it is a finite resource with replenishment limits.... But, as it is clearly effective enough to worry the Russians, like most(/all?) military elements even the failures (or the mere possibility of being out there, even when it isn't) serve a tactical purpose of their own.

[2] Surprised not to have seen whatever-the-Russians-have-had, yet, as their own pre-conflict speculative arms development. Someone in every major military power (and probably minor, and likely a number of non-state-actors) will have considered something of parity/equivalence. Amazing that 'any missile, of any generation they have' is being sent against Ukraine but the similar can't be said for the maritime domain. The lack of them is quite interesting, in fact, whichever one(s) of the (at least) three separate reasons it might be down to, that immediately come to mind.

[MaxTheFox]

Tank will be obsolete when and only when there is something that can replace them in their role and the only plausible thing is that it may be - tanks but unmanned.

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Literature/Bolo

[Strongpoint]

So, the Netherlands will transfer up to 42 F16As, a rather ancient version of F16, and this will still improve the Ukrainian airforce by an order of magnitude or so somewhere in 2024

[Maximum Spin]

Yes, those drones are cool. And I am sure they, as a cost-effective tool,  made all existing naval vessels obsolete. It is how it works, right?

No. I said a tool becomes obsolete in a specific role when it, not some other thing, is no longer cost-effective to deploy in that role. When it's no longer worth making any more for a purpose. This directly relates to how, as I said, tank echelons squaring off against each other are obsolete, but tanks live on as fire support.

Honestly, I've accepted that neither of you get what I'm trying to say, because all your counterarguments are talking about something completely unrelated from my perspective, and that this is my fault somehow for apparently talking in moon language, so I'm not going to keep pushing on it.

There are very few "one trick pony is all you need"s in warfare.

Agincourt didn't actually make knights obselete (arguably, through iterations of gradual change in armour levels/types, the horse-charge survived until at least WW2 - and I have an inkling even later) and Russian hypersonic missiles clearly aren't preventing the need for hand-to-hand trench fighting. Balances may change, but 'new' elements to warfare are wedges, gradually adjusting the effectiveness of a particular leg to any given combat scenario.

Yeah, see, both of these appear to be directed toward my position, but neither of them were what I was saying in the slightest. I don't really understand what extra words I was supposed to use that I somehow missed. I raised this conversation with some other friends who immediately understood my meaning, so I guess this is some freakish dialectal difference.
The technological and strategic milieu that developed in and due to the battle of Agincourt did make certain roles and tactics obsolete, though.
Oh yeah, also:

[2] Surprised not to have seen whatever-the-Russians-have-had, yet, as their own pre-conflict speculative arms development. Someone in every major military power (and probably minor, and likely a number of non-state-actors) will have considered something of parity/equivalence. Amazing that 'any missile, of any generation they have' is being sent against Ukraine but the similar can't be said for the maritime domain. The lack of them is quite interesting, in fact, whichever one(s) of the (at least) three separate reasons it might be down to, that immediately come to mind.

My understanding is that Russia had mostly been focusing on its blue-water navy in relation to its pretensions as an international great power, and the black sea was kind of a sideshow, both in terms of fleets and undersea vessels. The Montreux convention means that they're stuck with what they had based there already and anything they can build there now.

[Starver]

Yeah, see, both of these appear to be directed toward my position, but neither of them were what I was saying in the slightest.

Not really replying to/against you, as I hadn't really noted which people were asserting which, just responding to the hubbub bouncing both ways. But I wasn't replying-with-quote against any exact statements.

My understanding is that Russia had mostly been focusing on its blue-water navy in relation to its pretensions as an international great power, and the black sea was kind of a sideshow, both in terms of fleets and undersea vessels. The Montreux convention means that they're stuck with what they had based there already and anything they can build there now.

I'm not sure that'd stop them deploying "satnav controlled, jetski-powered TNT-packed kayaks", if they had them. And you'd think they would. I mean, they can still get things to the Moon! (...if not then land them safely. ROFL.)

A little mystery, is all I'm saying. We may see what they can/can't/do do later, but right now it appears not available to them. Or they're being extra sneaky about it.

[Strongpoint]

This directly relates to how, as I said, tank echelons squaring off against each other are obsolete, but tanks live on as fire support.

I actually don't understand what you are talking about. I have an impression that you have played too much WoT or something like that and misunderstand how tanks were used.

Tanks exist as fire support since day 1. Heavy tanks for fire support that can move to enemy lines and make holes in them and lighter tanks to have mobile fast fire support that can exploit holes in enemy defense OR quickly patch holes in your lines and counterattack. MBTs combined the roles of light and heavy tanks.

It is their only reason for existence since day one.  Tank echelons squaring off against each other is not really a thing, tank-on-tank action always was a minor part of wars*. A minority of tanks were lost to other tanks. Especially, if you don't count tank destroyers as tanks.

*Desert terrain may be an exception. But then let us wait for another Israeli-Arab war to see what changed in the most tank-friendly theater possible.

[Madman198237]

Spin, the problem is that every time you try to make a point your example is patently incorrect. Which rather obscures your point. Your basic point of "things stop filling roles when they are replaced by things that are more cost-effective at fulfilling that role" is basically correct.

[Maximum Spin]

I actually don't understand what you are talking about. I have an impression that you have played too much WoT or something like that and misunderstand how tanks were used.

I don't even know what that is. I don't really care for video games.

Tanks exist as fire support since day 1.

Yes. I'm not sure what your point is. I have never said that this is some kind of later development. I said that, out of two particular ways that tanks have been used, one effectively stopped existing, while the other did not.

Tank-on-tank battles had indeed been "a thing" in both WWI and WWII, where it was certainly important. It has continued to be "a thing" to some degree or another in every war between roughly comparably armored enemies since. It is not the only way that tanks are used. Nobody ever said it was. What I'm arguing is that it seems to be central to American (and therefore NATO) tank doctrine since perhaps around Desert Storm, probably because that desert terrain you mention is exactly where American military interests had predominantly been focused for the last thirty years or so. The result is that our increasingly fat brick tanks aren't doing so hot under new conditions, which you may have noticed, and so a change is needed. This is why lighter tanks, which are mostly older tanks, have survived noticeably better in Ukraine, and why Ukrainians have been welding grilles onto them and in some cases even removing superfluous armor - because no machine can do everything at once, and different measures are needed in different situations.

Spin, the problem is that every time you try to make a point your example is patently incorrect.

Considering that you haven't even been keeping track successfully of what examples are actually mine - I never said anything about molotovs - I don't really care.

[Madman198237]

The way you expressed "tanks as fire support" versus "tanks as tank killers" was phrased as to outright say that tanks were first designed to fight tanks and later picked up an anti-infantry role.

The heavyweight Western MBT is in fact fifty years old with Leopard 2 and M1 Abrams starting design in the 70s and both being very heavily protected. Obviously this is just a bit before Desert Storm, because the concern then was the masses of Russian tanks and IFVs and other threats that would face them as they did their job on the prospective battlefields of Germany, and elsewhere in the world.

Tanks killing tanks are doing infantry support, funnily enough. We've largely moved direct-fire artillery pieces (field guns) and emplaced machineguns out of bunkers and into mobile armored platforms, so the job of killing hard targets that an infantryman often can't now requires you to kill hostile tanks. And has for the last one hundred and seven years.

Why are light tanks surviving better in Ukraine? They're not, there's just a lot of them and they've been assigned to units that are A. not as good at intel security and thus post their vehicles and battles and such onto social media (where they are thus available to be seen) whereas the heavier, better-equipped line units notably don't B. not facing frontline service in the deadliest areas as much as the aforementioned regulars.

In no way is a T-55 superior to an Abrams, Leo 2, T-72, etc. in any battlefield role; the superior FCS, armor, firepower, communications, visibility, active defenses, etc. of the later models makes them superior in every role a tank can fill. But if you've GOT an Abrams or a Leo 2, you're going to send it first into the deadliest part of the fight, because you need some tank to do it and you'd darn well better believe that a Leo 2 is more likely to accomplish the mission than a T-55. Its size isn't even a huge advantage because it's got a bigger thermal (and noise) signature than the turbine-engined Abrams and thermals are the principle detection mechanism in this day and age. I suppose unless you're Russia who doesn't have many thermals and minimal capacity to produce them but, well, so much the not-actually-a-pity.

You replied to the statement about molotovs with the following

They were cost-effective then because nobody had figured that out yet. They aren't now because people have.

which certainly makes it sound like you believe that cheap AT weapons like Molotovs make tanks cost-ineffective. Hence the mention of Molotovs in a reply.


I have very much been keeping track of this discussion.

[Strongpoint]

This is why lighter tanks, which are mostly older tanks, have survived noticeably better in Ukraine, and why Ukrainians have been welding grilles onto them and in some cases even removing superfluous armor

Wait... What data makes you think that older and\or smaller tanks survive noticeably better? They don't. Sure, in the case of Russia, there are fewer of them lost because... there are fewer of them, they are kept away from the frontlines filling reserve roles, and they are less of a priority target. And Russia is generally losing fewer tanks nowadays than when they moved in with their best tanks.

Even Russians Generals are not incompetent enough to send a bunch of T-62s to try to break through a fortified defense line. 

And, looking at the known losses, Ukraine lost 15 Leopard IIs including damaged. And 0 Challengers II. Abramses are yet to arrive. In the same time, there are hundreds of T64s, our main pre-war tanks, destroyed.



As for field modifications of various kinds, it is completely normal and even typical. Tank crews of WW2 did many funny things to their tanks too. 

[Maximum Spin]

The way you expressed "tanks as fire support" versus "tanks as tank killers" was phrased as to outright say that tanks were first designed to fight tanks and later picked up an anti-infantry role.

As a general rule, I do not intend to say things I don't literally say in so many words.
I hope it's obvious that that wouldn't even make sense because tanks would have to exist before you'd want to invent tanks to fight them.

You replied to the statement about molotovs with the following

They were cost-effective then because nobody had figured that out yet. They aren't now because people have.

which certainly makes it sound like you believe that cheap AT weapons like Molotovs make tanks cost-ineffective. Hence the mention of Molotovs in a reply.

Again, if I didn't literally say it, you should not infer that I meant it.

Obviously this is just a bit before Desert Storm

You seem to have this weird problem where if I say "at least by X, Y was commonplace", you think I'm also saying "before X, Y didn't exist". It's entirely consistent with my position and expectations that very heavy, fat tanks would have been produced before that, for the same reason of expecting protracted tank battles; it's just not the time period I chose to comment on. Because Strongpoint had cited desert warfare specifically, so I wanted to make a point about that specifically. I get the impression that you would fail that puzzle with the four cards with letters and numbers.

Why are light tanks surviving better in Ukraine? They're not, there's just a lot of them and they've been assigned to units that are A. not as good at intel security and thus post their vehicles and battles and such onto social media (where they are thus available to be seen) whereas the heavier, better-equipped line units notably don't B. not facing frontline service in the deadliest areas as much as the aforementioned regulars.

This is not consistent with the information I've heard, which I have good reason to believe is accurate. The information I have access to is specifically that lighter tanks are surviving better "pound-for-pound", by which I mean, adjusted for equivalent circumstances, and as a proportion of the number used. I acknowledge that I can't prove this, but my impression was that this is widely known.
Battlefield roles also include important details like "actually making it to the battlefield", "functioning on the terrain in front of you", and "being able to source enough of them in the first place". Given that, talking about what is "superior" is kind of a category error. You deal with what you have. Importantly, I never said that a T-55 is superior to any other tank, at all - the only time I mentioned them is when I said, sardonically, that if I had to choose a tank to get blown up, I'd choose the T-55 because at least it didn't cost as much or waste as much resources.