(Bloomberg Opinion) -- Are tanks obsolete? That's a question that military analysts have been asking since they first appeared on the battlefield over a century ago, most recently as the war in Ukraine drags into its second month.
As Russia prepared for its Feb. 24 invasion, conventional wisdom held that its armored forces and superior air power would lead a swift victory. Instead, the world has been treated to scenes of tanks burning on the sides of roads, their turrets blown off and their crews immolated. Hundreds of armored vehicles have met this fate courtesy of a new generation of portable antitank missiles called Javelins, NLAWs and Stugnas.
So it's tempting to wonder whether tanks have a place in 21st-century warfare. But before consigning them to history's scrapheap, it's worth recalling that this isn't the first time that they've seemed obsolete, and that they always seem to blast their way back to relevance.
The tank was born in World War I. Frustrated by the stalemate that defined the conflict, British engineers came up with the idea of a tracked vehicle that could traverse no-man's land and punch through German defenses. The designers came up with a vehicle with treads that was shaped like a rhombus.
To maintain secrecy, the factories building these behemoths claimed they were destined to serve as water carriers for desert warfare in the Middle East. Someone — a worker or member of the military brass — called them water tanks, or simply, tanks. The name stuck.
But tanks didn't turn the tide of the war. Though the British sometimes used them to punch through German lines, the regular troops failed to exploit these openings and the war ended before they could play a signal role. Some military theorists thought them irrelevant in future conflicts. “The tank proper was a freak,” wrote one British commander after the war. “The circumstances which called it into existence were exceptional and not likely to recur.”
Nonetheless, the British experimented with an armored force in the 1920s. But skeptics of armored warfare abounded, and Britain disbanded its armored units in 1928. The War Office, explaining the decision, declared that “tanks are no longer a menace.”
This view seemed even more valid by the development in the 1930s of the first effective antitank weapons. Artillery armed with “shape-charge” ammunition — which focused the kinetic effects of an explosion to penetrate armor — made tanks look fragile, not fearsome. In 1934, the British secretary of state for war declared that in the future, “the most heavily armored tanks” would be as vulnerable to antitank weapons as “an old wooden caravan.”
The Nazis thought otherwise. In the 1930s, they devised new, cutting-edge tanks; armored, yes, but highly mobile and capable of wreaking havoc, particularly when accompanied by protective infantry units. The Germans made these armored units a central part of their blitzkrieg strategy, conquering much of Europe.
The tank would go on to play a central role throughout World War II in such confrontations as the Battle of Kursk, the largest clash of armored vehicles in history, involving 6,000 tanks and two million soldiers. Though the Soviet military sustained terrible losses, it stopped the German offensive. The battle marked a turning point in the war.
Many in Britain and the U.S., though, remained unconvinced that the tank would play a big role outside of places like the North African desert. When armored divisions failed to play a constructive role in the campaign in southern Italy, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill grumpily declared that “we have too much armor — tanks are finished.”
Then came D-Day and the invasion of German-occupied France. British and American tanks smashed through Axis lines, driving toward Germany at surprising speed. Though the Germans had plenty of antitank weapons, these proved incapable of stopping the offensive.
Writing in 1960, British military historian Basil Henry Liddell Hart observed: “Time after time during the past 40 years the highest defense authorities have announced that the tank is dead or dying. Each time it has risen from the grave to which they had consigned it — and they have been caught napping.”
By this time, though, it really did seem as if tanks were on the way out. In the postwar era, countries began developing more sophisticated antitank weapons, many of which used missiles. These forerunners of the pack-and-shoot missiles now wreaking havoc on Russian armor were crude but effective. The Israelis found this out the hard way.
In the Six-Day War of 1967, the Israelis had refurbished second-hand Sherman tanks that wreaked havoc on armor fielded by the Arab nations they defeated in that conflict. It was perhaps understandable that they believed the same thing would happen when the Arabs launched the Yom Kippur War six years later.
As Israeli tank crews advanced toward the Suez Canal in 1973, they saw Egyptian infantry moving into positions carrying what looked like suitcases. As they got closer, the Egyptians launched short-range wire-guided missiles — Soviet-made 9K11 Maylutkas (also known as AT-3 Saggers) — capable of penetrating 15 inches of steel armor. Egypt lost the war, but its infantry won that battle, devastating Israeli armored units.
The results led some military theorists to conclude, once again, that tanks were a thing of the past. Others, though, drew more nuanced lessons, observing that the Israelis had made the mistake of assuming their armored divisions could proceed without infantry support. It was the tactics, less than the technology, that was wanting.
This began a debate that has raged intermittently in the succeeding decades, notably when U.S. military leaders of the post-9/11 era favored faster, lighter weaponry to fight wars against terrorism.
But it's easy to overstate the lessons of Russia's Ukrainian battlefield fiasco. Tanks have remained a mainstay of most nations' militaries, and Russia's use of armor has been wanting in many ways. Moreover, it may be possible to protect future tanks with electronic defenses known as active protection systems that offer electronic armor instead of steel to protect against portable antitank weapons.
History suggests that these hulking, clanking monsters have a remarkable ability to remain relevant as technology and strategy evolve.
More From Other Writers at Bloomberg Opinion:
- Russian Tanks Roll Into a Marketing War: Leonid Bershidsky
- The German Army Doesn't Scare Putin. Now It's Beefing Up: Chris Bryant
- Legacy Weapons Are Eroding the Military's Edge: Bloomberg Editorial Board
This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.
Stephen Mihm, a professor of history at the University of Georgia, is a contributor to Bloomberg Opinion.
©2022 Bloomberg L.P.
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