I hate to say this but Tanks are obsolete.

[Kaczor]

The war in Ukraine is specific because one side actually has no air force to protect its troops. Additionally, the opinion is expressed based on drone videos of AFV destruction. Nobody uploads videos of NOT destroyed tanks

PS. Western tanks are sometimes destroyed, but in most cases the crew survives to fight another day. In Russian ones, after being hit, the crew flies to meet Gagarin.

[Woz]

The way drones are being used in Ukraine seems to have come as a complete surprise to most governments. Now that they're aware of the threat you can bet they're going to spending a lot of time and money finding ways to counter that the threat.

I think the use of wheeled vehicles is a bigger threat to tanks. As more nations switch to wheeled vehicles instead of tanks because they're cheaper to build and maintain. Then the tank building nations are going to be selling to an every decreasing market thus less tanks sold making every tank more expensive whilst the wheeled vehicles will be getting cheaper.

[michaelwhittmann]

Russian losses are estimated to include more than 3,000 armoured fighting vehicles in the past year alone and close to 8,800 since February 2022.
That's 11 a day.

[Tiger6]

You can't just point at loss figures and say "well there you go", without understanding the context around them. In the own words of Russian servicemen and disaffected war bloggers on Telegram, the current Russian operation is not, shall we say, "set up for success".

Additionally:
- A lot of the T series tanks you see in those drone video's have hit a mine and been abandoned with the hatches left open. If the crew had closed the hatches before fleeing, the drone dropped grenades would likely have bounced off onto the ground.

- An old RPG7 round strapped to a drone is not a serious threat to a modern tank, and you are not going to lift a Javelin like warhead with a cheap 3D printed drone any day soon. Most of the RPG drone kills are BMP's, MTLB's and lighter - and those things (and their Western analogues like the M113 and its derivatives) have always been terribly vulnerable to RPG's and mines, dating back to the 1960's.

- Larger drones like the Lancet have been defeated by study steel mesh - that is not a new concept by any stretch.

- The Donbas has historically been a terrible place to fight with tanks - German accounts complain of their tanks being exposed and picked off in those vast open fields, with anti tank guns 'hidden in every ditch and hedgerow'.

Current Western AFV's already have a greater focus on IED protection than they did 20 years ago, and those used in Iraq and Afghanistan were already covered in jamming equipment to counter remote detonated roadside bombs. We will simply see more and more jamming antenna mounted on vehicles going forward - electrical power generation capacity is currently a hot topic for vehicle powerpacks, and will be gaining ever more importance in the future. People scoff at the idea of hybrid electric drives for AFV's, but if you have a large battery pack on board in addition to the electrical output of the powerpack, you can surge a lot of power to a system for a short period.

Similarly in the short term we can expect to see renewed interest in SPAAG systems, either truck based, armoured or both - Oerlikon was touting the anti drone capability of its Skyshield system long before the current conflict. Longer term, laser based anti drone programmes for mobile platforms have been in development for a while, and you really don't need a Star Trek grade Phaser Array to knock down a small 3D printed drone...

[MrChef]

Not even remotely.

Absolutely nothing can provide the protected direct fire support that a tank can.

This is the pure and simple truth.

Most of the discussion, argument for and against has been mentioned previously. They've been claiming/stating and predicting obsolescence of the tank since it was introduced in World War I.

[tankme]

The M42 Duster or St. York anti-air guns were deemed obsolete due to the fact modern jets were just too fast for them to shoot down. Maybe we see a resurgence of anti-air guns or tanks simply adapting their anti-ATGM defense's to cover drones. The main issue I feel that has caused the Russians to lose so many vehicles, is simple poor tactics and planning.

We've also heard about all the "stuff" that has gone missing since the end of the cold war. It seems many of the "capabilities" they have claimed to have are not working as intended. There is also a sense of competitiveness with Russian units and units are rewarded based on effectiveness. If there are incentives to be better than other units, that incentivizes units to hold onto advantageous information rather than share it.

In the US, all soldiers get the same training doctrine no matter where they go to basic training. I've seen from reports that this is not how the Russian training doctrine works. Their basic training can vary a lot depending on where you get trained.

[michaelwhittmann]

The Russian tanks must have a design flaw. Too many "jack in the box" explosions making Russian tankers amateur cosmonauts.
Poor ammo storage?

[Kaczor]

The autoloader ammunition in Russian tanks is located mostly under the turret. In Western tanks, it is separated by an armored wall in the back of the turret.

[Mithras]

The assessment from the intel folks I still know seems to be different. If anything, the Ukraine War has shown the utility of competently handled tanks, and the utter stupidity (as has always been the case) of using them without proper support. The days of "tanks are obsolete" are nowhere near. So long as infantry plays a role in combat - and it always will- there will always be a need for well protected, armored vehicles. That's simply the trajectory of military history, and vice the reliance upon orbital strikes (unlikely: nobody wants to rule a slagheap), that's pretty much the way it's likely to remain.

I feel more and more like David Drake had it right;)

[Mithras]

The autoloader ammunition in Russian tanks is located mostly under the turret. In Western tanks, it is separated by an armored wall in the back of the turret.

This. It's the expansion of gas when the ammunition supply is hit. Interestingly enough, more tankers have survived this than you would think. Not without broken bones, bruises, and burns, but since the main explosion is usually located in the interior....