RC Tank Warfare community hobby forum

Honestly, it amazes me that some of you think that a $500 Best Buy Drone can be adapted to drop bombs to kill an AFV so simply and easily...
First off, what is the carry capacity of an off the shelf rotary wing drone?

Ukraine uses a quad rotor drone that can carry four (4) 3kg bombs. That is a payload of nearly 25 lbs. Please price out any multi-rotor drone that can do that...
They also use Parrots and other drones (both store bought and homemade) and add items like thermal imaging and such for recon/intelligence.
DJI Agras, a hex-copter (6 motors), which can carry 15kg, costs over $10K USD new.

I'm not saying that a 3kg bomb cannot take out a tank with a lucky hit (open hatch anyone?), but as was stated, how many 100's or even 1000's of bombs have been dropped and footage has been uploaded?
Take out personnel? Yes it can...

The Ukrainians have been very ingenious in adapting off the shelf technologies to great effect.

I maintain that the tactics have not caught up with technology. Only the Russians (maybe a few
other militaries) would sustain these losses. A NATO commander would be skewered.
11 ATVs a day. T-90s cost around 3 Million USD. Vrs $10K USD.

The Russians are taking a page from Gage at Breeds Hill or Grant at Cold Harbor or Cetshwayo at Rorke's Drift
. The metrics favor the Ukrainians.

It's amazing what you can come up with when your life is at stake.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/am ... r-AA1nIH0T

Even the American tanks are having trouble.
Tactics need to catch up with technology.
Until then it's a turkey shoot.

I do give them credit for admitting there is
a issue. Putin won't do it.

"Americans and Ukrainians now planning to review tactics for their use"

A rather more sober assesment - https://www.forces.net/technology/land- ... ine-losses
"Anonymous US officials told AP the tank had been taken off the frontline while US advisors try to "reset" the Ukrainians' tactics." -

TLDR: Inexperienced crews doing inexperienced crew things will lose you tanks.

Remember that the amount of time their guys have spent training on ANY kind of armour is miniscule compared with professional armies. Their vehicle commanders were civilians 2 years ago, and probably infantry men until 6 months ago (quoting a recent United24 interview with a Bradley commander). Combine that with the way they seem to use them - push AFV's in without close support - and it is not suprising that they are taking losses.

The Germans found the Donbas to be a horrible place to fight with tanks back in the 1940's - its the terain, not the weapons, that is the source of the problem here.

I am no expert but I think tanks are far from obsolete but they must be used in a combined arms fashion with especially air power helping to support them and infantry etc to but the Ukrainians use the tactics of tanks on there own or just out in the open with hardly any support of any kind as it was,we would use our tanks differently ie bein supported by everyone else.

I do think the Ukrainians goin on the offensive was a massive mistake earlier in the year they should have just used the new weapons to destroy Soviet offensives it seemed Ukrainian generals learned nothing from ww2 ie Kursk which bled the Germans dry,same thing for the Ukrainians,anyways just my two cents but a tank must be supported by everyone else,if not,well you see what's happening in Ukraine.

At the risk of retreading old ground I think the issue here is that tanks are frequently presented in media as these unstoppable behemoths (which to be fair if you have no anti-tank weaponry they might as well be) sweeping aside all that lies before them as opposed to being a weapon system that is just one piece of the overall puzzle, so its a bit of shock when people see one easily destroyed by weapons and tactics specifically designed to knock out tanks. In addition those of us in the west have perhaps gotten rather accustomed to seeing modern MBTs easily taking out vast numbers of old badly maintained Soviet export models crewed by poorly trained and motivated crews, as opposed to tanks taking part in a peer conflict.

Ultimately the tank is not obselete unless something else comes along that can do what a tank does but better. Just because something can be killed by something else doesn't make it obselete - afterall infantry are very squishy and can easily be killed by a single bullet. Infantry are far from obsolete. Plus when you take into consideration the cost to a nation of not just recruiting and training someone to serve as infantry but the societal cost of raising and educating that person from a baby to an adult versus the cost of a bullet its probably an even larger relative cost difference of an anti tank drone vs a modern MBT.

World War 2 was the war shaped by tanks and aircraft and both were being lost in huge quantities all the time, its just one of those unfortunate things with peer conflicts.

Ukranian and Russian tanks are now donning "awnings" made of welded rectangular metal plates to protect tanks and tankers. Evolve or die.