Why, in the advent of militarized drones, are tanks still in use?
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Because drones are really, really recent additions to suite of tools people can use to fight with.
People didn’t stop using horses the instant tanks were invented, either.
Because drones dont capture placeses. And when people go places to capture them they are vulnerable. So you would rather sit in a big box of steel and get hit by a drone than getting hit by a drone without a big box of steel. Big boxes of steel are often more useful if they can destroy things in their way that keep hindering from going further. So you still want tanks (and other armored vehicles).
Just because something has a counter, doesn’t make it useless. As an ELI5, just because paper beats rock, doesn’t mean rock is pointless and should never be used.
A. Its very early in the development of modern drone warfare, so things need to play out. To see what actually is changed.
B. Unless you are a soviet era tank, you are not nearly as vulnerable to small FPV drones. In fact most tank losses in the Ukraine war is to mines, not drones. It’s just that you rarely see it.
C. Eventually you can’t control an area without actually being there. If you want to hold ground or take it, you need actual presence. And tanks are still pretty effective at that.
D. Not everywhere is the drone very effective. In the Hamas-Israel war, for instance, drones were used at the beginning, and now a non threat in that theater for Israeli armor, which is used rather extensively. There is much more effective use of traditional winged armed drones than what you see in Ukraine.
E. Eventually there will be effective denial measures developed and drone warfare will become a limited tool in the arsenal to be used when appropriate.
One, because military procurement is a slow, slow thing.
If you’re referring specifically to the Ukraine-Russia War, it’s also because most of the tanks in use now were largely built during the Cold War, with less effective armor.
Also, Russia is not using its tanks remotely effectively. NATO emphasizes combined arms, electronic warfare, reconnaissance, and air superiority, Russia tends to just throw unsupported formations at a particular objective. It’s a lot harder to get a FPV drone with a range of a few kilometers when you can count on your opponent either identifying where you’re launching from and/or bombing it and/or jamming the radio frequencies used to control the drone.
None of which is to say that drones aren’t or can’t be an effective weapon, just that it’s not as cut and dried as one might think.
A drone strike is ultimately still just an air strike. Those didn’t make tanks obsolete so why would drones?
Tanks are best used in highly mobile warfare envirements. Whats happening in Ukraine is the opposite of that. You’ll notice that most the drone kills on tanks are coming mostly from tanks that are emplaced (stationary and guarding an area) and someone has left the top hatches open.
Because they have a bunch of tank sitting there and they may as well use them. Drones are fairly specific in their uses and are only really offensive, a tank or APC can protect the soldiers inside from most things
short answer, thier are things that tanks CAN do that drones CAN’T.
the fact that drones can, in some circumstances, kill tanks, does not make tanks obsolete, anymore than the fact a fist sized rock can kill humans makes infantry obsolete.
their are things that tanks do, that basically nothing else can do as effectively. tanks, even though they have vulnerabilities, are still very heavily protected and basically immune to anything that isn’t a purposed designed anti-tank weapon. they can deliver quick, accurate direct fire on a target, and get that fire support into firing positions over a wide range of terrains. it can sit in a defensive position for days with minimal resupply, and spring into action with almost zero notice. It can support infantry right up to and onto the objective.
some of those tasks can be done by other systems. basically nothing does all of them in a single package.
the tank will be retired not when some new weapon can kill it, but when some new system can do all its jobs as well or better than it.
There is a certain momentum to the companies that profit from a certain product being produced for the military.
In 1933 when AH came to power in Germany, he could have started converting partially-constructed ships into aircraft carriers, along with existing ships.
He doubled down on the Bismark and Tirpitz as super-battleships. During the war, he did commission two aircraft carriers to be built, but they were not completed in time.
In the final months of Germany’s war, they did develop a large steerable glide-bomb called the Fritz-X, and on its first use, it sank the Italian battleship “Roma”, which was attempting to defect in North Africa.
Now…heavy tanks can still be “useful”, But the days of the tank being the king of the battlefield are long gone.
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