The latest thing is to put active explosive armor on the tanks but…you can’t have infantry to protect the tanks if they are exploding.

If I remember correctly Hezbollah was using lots of RPG combined with crew machine guns. If troops came up, machine gun, if tanks, RPG. Combined with deep tunnels they could pop up from then scoot the Israelis got their asses handed to them.

In fact over time defense is getting stronger due to computers. Lord Rees-Mogg and James Dale Davidson predicted this in 80′s in a set of three books they wrote. They predicted this would turn around the centralization that has been going on since the gunpowder revolution which strengthened centralization away from the feudal ages.

They called this meta-politics and stated that governments and societies are based on the type and technological means of projecting violence.

A simple example is the rise of cannons and gunpowder. Before it took a long time to invest a castle so there was a lot of small lords about with their small areas in their castles. Cannons blasted the castles to the ground immediately and only those with larger resources could play in that game so territories became bigger and larger.

This is why I was so adamant that Taiwan could protect themselves from being taken over by China..if they were determined. China could not physically take them if they prepared and refused to give up. To do so they would have to go across a lot of water in boats which could all be sunk by the many different types of intelligent missiles we now have. Combine that with fast roads to machine gun and artillery placements all on the coast and I do not think it possible China could take them.

Look at this topo map of Taiwan. They could put artillery in the mountains and destroy anyone who landed on the coast and have roads in the mountains to move quickly about the whole Island.

http://maps.maphill.com/taiwan/panoramic-maps/physical-map/physical-panoramic-map-of-taiwan.jpg

Warfare history has been a laundry list of “complete game changers” that were supposed to change the face of warfare, but that were countered pretty quickly.

As for light, mobile tank destroyer groups, that’s hardly a new concept and it’s absolutely definitely and without question NOT something that would have somehow “stumped” the Soviet command.

Anti-tank guns were in use before the start of WWII. The United States had an entire branch of the army dedicated to light, fast, highly mobile tank destroyers. There’s no way that “three men in a jeep with a missile” would have been a surprise to anyone who witnessed “3 men in an M10″ during WWII. Some US TDs could hit 50 MPH. Given this, what is really the difference? One is a missile, one’s a solid shot from a cannon, I suppose, but they’re still LOS, so the effectiveness and the counter to both would be similar. And the counter to AT guns, and TDs was well established doctrine well before Clancy’s war started.

Davy Crockett, too, even as deadly as it was [all nukes must be thought of deadly], probably would take out at one instance only several tanks of a Soviet tank battalion deployed.

I mentioned the Longbow to refute the legend, the hammers in the muck did most of the killing, interestingly in recent film “The King” this is shown, along with the truth that the French dismounted.

“As for active defense systems, fire three missiles at the same tank, and at least one will get through.”

McChuck is correct. In fact, this is the practice now of, say, Hezbollah vs Israeli Merkava, one of the harder tanks to kill out there. So the actual tactics that work aren’t 1:1 missile vs tank but many to one tank. Variations include setting off the ERA [Explosive Reactive Armor] and active defenses with RPGs and Recoilless Rifles before the expensive Anti Tank Guided Missiles are employed. The RPG and RR wasn’t going to get through the armor; it’s to strip away the defenses.

Another certain variation is a massive IED dug into the ground that simply piles so much explosives that no matter what the vehicle it’s flying through the air, including MRAP.

Another IED variation is the EFP Explosively Formed Projectile, a copper or brass concave disc over the shaped charge that turns the shaped charge tongue of flame into a white hot mass of metal moving at hypervelocity, which cuts through any armor so far.

Another counter is the 30mm Gatling gun on the A10, which isn’t killing the tank with 1 shot but a burst that chews through the armor. The 25mm on the Brad was able to do so in Desert Storm to Iraqi tanks as well.

The W54 warhead used on the Davy Crockett weighed just 51 pounds and was the smallest and lightest fission bomb (implosion type) ever deployed by the United States, with a variable explosive yield of 0.01 kilotons (equivalent to 10 tons of TNT, or two to four times as powerful as the ammonium nitrate bomb which destroyed the Alfred P. Murrah federal building in Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995), or 0.02 kilotons-1 kiloton. A 58.6 pound variant — the B54 — was used in the Special Atomic Demolition Munition (SADM), a nuclear land mine deployed in Europe, South Korea, Guam, and the United States from 1964-1989.

The Taliban must dream of this! :)

The Tom Clancy story was describing the Jeep mounted TOW anti-tank missile. It was not man portable, but that’s why it was mounted on a Jeep that could (more or less) hide behind any tree or bush. The Soviet counter to it was to ignore the losses and drive forward until they got into machine gun range. (Sort of like Grant in 1864). At 30 kph, they could theoretically reach the Rhine in 12 hours.

But from what I can learn the longbow did not kill the majority of the French knights. A knight, once grounded (and the mud of the battlefield hampered them, without a shadow of doubt after a downpour the night before) was vulnerable to the simple weapon of the hammer. I understand the archers on henry’s side carried a hammer–swords were very expensive and an archer was a working man used to basic tools–and it was a simple job to use the hammer on the fallen French.

It was brutal and it was basic, and the technology of a helmeted head was unable to deal with a hard blow from a lump of iron.

And I follow the drone matter closely and am a big fan/worrier.

“Military Simulations” show, uh, yeah. They show BUY MY STUFF $$$

http://www.military-today.com/apc/stryker.htm

Because if there’s no way to really protect armor at any cost then you’re better off with something faster, lighter (so you can get more on the battlefield faster) and more maneuverable. There’s no real protection against modern anti-tank weapons. Now it’s said that if you have screening support (men who protect the tank by shooting at anti-tank weapons guys) then you will be protected but really, I mean can you totally protect against guys sneaking around and firing off a round at a tank quickly? No.

https://taskandpurpose.com/gear-tech/kinetic-bombardment-kep-weaponry/