I love the “Back to Basics” format for XLBS.

On the matter of the future of tanks. Well, my belief is that the Main Battle Tank as we know it is fast reaching its end. I have to side with Lloyd on this one. Future wars will be dominated by sophisticated drones, and the further we go into the future the more sophisticated and deadly they will become. It will inevitably reach a point in which it will be far more cost effective to saturate an enemy or target location with swarms of disposable drones rather than to engage said target with more conventional arms. Now, I’m not saying that the Infantryman’s days are numbered. There will be situations in which highly trained soldiers equipped with unimaginably advanced technology will be the best option. However, I do think that the days of large armoured formations duking it out in wide open fields are coming to an end, at least certainly by the dawn of the 22nd Century.

Even today tanks are faced with far more threats than their predecessors from the Second World War ever had to face. There are all manner of smart munitions that can engage a tank far beyond the range in which it can fight back. The helicopter alone has made the modern battle space a very scary place for the tank. Additionally, all manner of automated anti-tank weapons are being developed. Such systems can be left in the field for decades, deployed by aircraft or artillery shells, they lay dormant until a hostile vehicle or vehicles enters their “threat bubble” at which time they saturate the target or targets in a fusillade of projectiles. I see drones in the future being used in a similar fashion, and any active defence systems that the tank may possess will simply be overwhelmed by the sheer quantity of threats arrayed against it.

If we’re going to go as far as a century into the future, we might speculate that by that time space has become militarised. I understand that there are currently treaties that prohibit the militarisation of space, but treaties can be ignored or made invalid with the changing political landscape. So, any treaty that exists today may well not exist in the future. If space-based weapons do become a thing, and it might be a ‘big if’, I see all large scale warfare becoming a thing of the past. Imagine, satellites armed with inert projectiles launched at Earth-based targets. The resulting kinetic energy released would be like a tactical nuclear weapon without the fallout. With weapons like that, any large scale armoured formations would be wiped out in an instant, as would any naval armada. You could possibly even see the end of the modern Carrier Group. One strike, and your multi-billion dollar aircraft carrier, its planes and all its escorting and auxiliary ships destroyed in an instant. In a future such as this one, I believe drones of every description would be the dominant force on the battlefield. And when ‘boots’ are required on the ground, they would be small, elite teams transported to any point on the globe within hours via space planes. This would be warfare of pin-point precision lightning attacks utilising drones and elite soldiers like a doctor might use a scalpel to remove a tumor. The side with space superiority would have the advantage, and I don’t believe this sort of warfare would be suitable for tanks. However, this all depends on whether “we” ever allow space to become militarised and whether space-based weapons would ever be a cost-effective option.

Regardless, drones are the future, and the more sophisticated and versatile they become, the more elements of our modern arsenals will become obsolete. Think of it this way, in 1916, proponents for traditional horse cavalry were convinced that their arm would forever be a vital part of warfare. They held onto this belief even after its successor, the tank, had proven itself in battle. They were absolutely adamant that the horse would always be required in a fighting role. This belief in the superiority of the traditional cavalry was so entrenched in British military thinking, that it hampered tank development after the war and when the next war came around, the British found themselves scrambling to catch up. How often do you see horse-mounted cavalry on the frontline today?