In my case, I think it probably has to do with the fact that they’re flying in the air, and they need to be as lightweight as humanly possible in order to fly high and better, and that adding armor just weighs them down. Tanks, on the other hand, are ground vehicles, so they’re not as encumbered by their own armor as warplanes and whatever armor they could have equipped themselves with.
Right?
In: Engineering
You’ve got the right idea.
In general a plane survives by evading defenses, either by showing up too fast for defenses to respond, by flying too high or fast for defenses to react to, by hiding from enemy radar, or by being nimble enough to outmaneuver enemy planes (back when dogfighting was a thing). These days with modern missile technology they also survive by simply engaging from so far away that defenses can’t respond.
Tanks also try to be reasonably fast and hidden, but ultimately they’re much more likely to take direct hits that they need to survive. The armor they carry definitely impacts their maneuverability and range, but less so than aircraft.
Some aircraft roles can’t rely on all of the traditional capabilities of aircraft to survive so they do rely on armor. That’s mostly true of the “Close Air Support” role which is effectively a flying tank. The A-10 “Warthog” is the quintessential example of this role, and was designed with survivability in mind. You’ll often see references to a “titanium bathtub” that surrounded the cockpit. The rest of the plane was designed to survive enemy fire by building in redundancy and the ability to sustain damage without failure–fuel tanks were surrounded with a foam that would seal bullet holes. Close Air Support aircraft often have to spend extended periods of time flying over the same area, ready to engage enemies, then they engage at low altitude where ground-based defenses have a reasonable shot at returning fire, so all of this emphasis on surviving damage is important.
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