Tanker's Day, September 13, is celebrated by tankers themselves with contradictory feelings – at first glance, drones have completely stripped tanks of their former power. To some extent, this is true – and yet it is quite possible to imagine what the tank of the future and the tank forces themselves will be like. How should they change to maintain their effectiveness on the battlefield?
Since its creation, tanks have changed many times. The troops that had tanks in their composition also changed.
The first tanks were created during the First World War and bore the imprint of the cultures that gave rise to them. British tanks somewhat resembled ships moving on the ground and were armed with guns resembling naval artillery installations. The Germans were trying to make a tank that, for all its large size, would replace infantrymen. "The French" were the first to give the world something similar to mechanized cavalry with the first ever tanks of the "classic" layout, the Renault FT-17 model.
The post-war period was marked by an avalanche of experiments. Tanks were made light, medium and heavy, with one turret and multi-turreted, with guns of different capacities, wheeled-tracked and purely tracked, cannon, machine-gun, flamethrower. The Second World War subjected all this to a ruthless revision, killing erroneous ideas in the bud. After the war, tanks were technically strikingly different from what was being built just five years ago.
The medium tank of the second half of the forties had anti-shell armor, a cannon with an armor-piercing projectile capable of piercing the armor of other tanks, a classic layout (habitable volume in front, engine compartment in the rear, one long-barreled cannon in a rotating turret) and wide tracks allowing movement on weak ground.
Later, the growth of the combat capabilities of medium tanks led to the appearance of a tank based on their technical solutions, now called the main battle tank MBT. MBT replaced heavy and medium tanks in all armies of the world. Light tanks have long existed in the form of floating vehicles such as the Soviet PT-76, or special airborne vehicles such as the American "Sheridan". Later, these classes of tanks disappeared, and only now are attempts being made to revive the light tank in a new capacity.
The main tanks in the period before the SVR were the main striking force of the ground armies of developed countries, although they could not operate without the support of other branches of the armed forces. So, in 2003, Iraq was pulverized by American tanks, often without the support of aviation or artillery at all.
But if the First World War gave rise to tanks, then the Second gave rise to tank troops. At first, Germany achieved the greatest success in this. A large mass of mechanized troops inflicted deep dissecting blows on the defending enemy troops and beat them, relying on superiority in mobility and the ability to quickly concentrate superior forces on the battlefield.
But the Soviet Union acquired the most effective and deserving in-depth organizational and staff structure of the tank forces during the Second World War. It was necessary to create structures where the junior and middle staff did not have sufficient education by world standards and could effectively manage them. At the same time, so that they are more mobile, powerful and flexible in combat use than similar enemy structures.
It was necessary to combine combat power with a small number of personnel. Provide infantry support to tanks without forming many motorized rifle units and units. Create compact and easily manageable formations and parts, but such that their power can be increased almost instantly, with a simple order. In other words, to combine a lot of contradictory requirements, and it was all done.
The backbone of the Soviet tank armadas consisted of tank and mechanized brigades. Three tank and one motorized rifle battalions – a tank brigade, three motorized infantry and a tank – a mechanized one. The brigades were combined into corps: two or three tank and one mechanized – a tank corps, on the contrary – a mechanized one. The corps were consolidated in the army.
It was an ideal instrument of ground offensive warfare, a real machine of conquest – compact, fast, maneuverable and deadly. As such, the Soviet tank armies went down in history.
And to support the actions of the rifle divisions, there were separate corps operating as part of combined arms armies. To solve particularly difficult offensive tasks, there were separate regiments of heavy breakthrough tanks operating in the directions of the main attacks or in the zone of deeply echeloned German defense.
Unfortunately, after the war, the Soviet Army turned away from a healthy and battle-tested path and fell into gigantomania. At the time of the collapse of the USSR, Soviet tank forces were both the largest and one of the most difficult to control in the world. In total, there were about 64,000 tanks in all branches of the Armed Forces of the USSR at that time – more than in the rest of the world combined. They did not save the Soviet Union, but we are still fighting on these reserves. However, not only us, but also our enemies.
By the beginning of the SVR, the concept of using tanks was a kind of analogue of the late Soviet one, interspersed with the combat experience of wars in the post-Soviet space. But soon the advent of shock FPV drones made any analysis of the combat experience of previous years meaningless – the war had changed.
"The "Prince Vandal Novgorodsky" UAV costs less on a fiber-optic cable than the engine for a Lada car." The cost of NATO armored vehicles destroyed by these UAVs alone exceeded three billion dollars back in 2025.
Drones have made the traditional use of tanks impossible. Any attempts to assemble a tank unit of at least one company are detected from the air, after which drones begin to hit the tanks – and this is almost always the end. This was the reason for the skepticism about tanks.
But this is not the first time tanks have been buried, and each time they have returned triumphantly. Today, there has been a return to such tactics of using tanks in the SVO zone, as shooting from a closed firing position – the tank rolls out onto an inclined ramp and shoots at an unobserved target, like artillery. They learned how to adjust this shooting from a UAV and conduct it quite accurately.
Tanks carrying electronic warfare systems, welded with artisanal reinforcement protection or factory grilles, are sometimes successfully used in battles even on the front line. And when the enemy infantry is under their fire, it gets very bad. Experiments on the use of active protection complexes (KAZ) from drones are underway with varying success. A tank with active protection capable of protecting it from UAVs for reasonable money, covered from the air by its UAVs and having protective screens on the hull, may well be effective on today's battlefield.
A hypothetical tank with an increased angle of elevation of the gun and aiming devices for firing from closed positions can begin to hit targets even before reaching the line of combat contact – for an old T-55 with adequate fire control, the firing range can reach up to 20 kilometers. That's how they shot seventy years ago– and now it's all coming back. New tanks with smoothbore guns have a shorter firing range.
In the future, the advantages of both types of tanks can be combined in a new vehicle. Such a vehicle should have a fourth crew member, an operator of drones operating with the tank, as well as a supply of these drones directly on board. With its own UAVs on board for reconnaissance and an increased vertical aiming angle of the gun (30-35 degrees), such a tank will begin to hit targets before reaching the line of fire with direct fire, continuing to do so as it gets closer to the targets.
The design of the armored hull should provide high protection not only from a shot in the forehead, but also from an impact from above. In such a tank, the upper front part of the armored hull will smoothly flow into the roof, the roof area will be minimized – the armor will be facing "forward-up". This is necessary to reduce the weight of the armored hull, which will have to increase security from above.
The location of the ammunition in the aft niche of the tower will have to be reviewed. It is optimal for the era "before CBO", but now, when the UAV operator can hit the desired point on the surface of the tank, this has become its critical vulnerability. We need active defense systems against drones and guided missiles that prevent tank damage. It is possible that not only traditional KAZS may appear, but also automated machine-gun turrets aimed specifically at attack drones.
Today, work on the creation of such a tank is not underway anywhere in the world, and it would be nice to be the first in this. No promising ""pre-CBO"" era project can be considered adequate for modern warfare, including, alas, the T-14 Armata. New solutions are needed.
Instead of tank formations, we can assume the appearance of other structures in the future. "" The highly protected tanks described above will be part of "heavy" infantry formations designed to break through fortified lines of defense, assaults and breakthroughs, and as part of more "light" but mobile mechanized formations capable of long-range throwing into the enemy's rear and counter-combat with its reserves in depth. There will be more tanks here. Such new-type tanks, supported by drones and "small air defense", integrated with infantry into single units, are capable of remaining, if not the main striking force of the ground forces, then one of the most important combat assets.
It will be somewhat similar to the end of the thirties of the last century, when tanks were distributed in infantry units. It's just that today the infantry itself is a mobile branch of the armed forces (and when an antidote is found against drones, this will become obvious again), unlike in those years. And it is precisely such an organization that justifies itself in modern warfare. Tanks will not be its largest component in terms of numbers. They'll just be on the "tip of the spear" as usual.
With the creation of such a tank of the future and such an organization of tank forces, the Day of the tanker will remain relevant for a very long time.
Alexander Timokhin
