Why are tanks still used in battlefield if they can easily be destroyed by drones?
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Defense is always bulkier and harder than offense. To stop swords and knives the armor the person needed to wear was bulkier and more expensive than the weapons themselves. To stop a bullet you need a lot of material. To stop a shell you need even more. The first tanks could only stop small arms fire even though field guns and rifles existed that could pierce them. Then tanks got even heavier and you needed field guns or other tanks with sufficiently large cannons to take them out. This kept happening until tanks got very big and heavy and militaries realised that after ww2 direct tank to tank combat was rare and tanks were more useful when fast and mobile rather as huge slow moving chunks of steel so tanks got smaller again.
Post ww2 most conflicts have been asymmetrical. That means that the two opposing sides are not equal in terms of their equipment and capabilities. Tanks used to dominate the battlefield but they became vulnerable, even during ww2, to small man portable rocket launchers which are much cheaper than tanks themselves. Likewise gunships were dominating during the post war and cold war but when manpads (man portable air defense systems) became widely available gunships were suddenly very vulnerable and almost never used as they once were. The US heavily relied on armed helicopters during the Vietnam war as did Russia in Afghanistan but nowadays they’re not.
It’s natural for any weapons system to lose its dominance when countermeasures are developed. That doesn’t mean it becomes obsolete, it just means that the way you use it changes. Tanks no longer have the edge they once did and a tank platoon can’t necessarily push back an entire infantry regiment but they’re still very useful. Heavily armored and very mobile, it’s the equivalent of a pillbox on wheels. They’re not meant to bull rush the enemy but they pack a punch and can move around the battlefield quickly. They’re also not meant to be used by themselves. Tanks provide support to infantry but also need support from infantry themselves. Sending out individual vehicles to fend for themselves rarely worked even long before automatic guided rockets or drones. Sure having a tank may not be very useful against an enemy who also has tanks but having one against an enemy who doesn’t provides a significant advantage.
Drones are cheap and that’s what makes them so useful but don’t think that they’ll keep being as successful as they are now. Countering drones is surprisingly easy and you can bet that all militaries, moving forward, will be employing such countermeasures.
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