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Subject:
The future of the LIGHT tank
Thomas
6/2/2003 4:54:53 AM
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| The MBT is the queen of the battle field - no doubt about it. But there are limitations.
As MBT gets lager, better armoured with bigger guns, there is an increasing part of the terrain they can't go to. Which to an extend defeats the purpose of the tank: Go anywhere, kill anything and in one piece afterwards.
There are two factors here weight and physical size. It makes it difficult to use tank in for instance heavily wooded terrain: Range is cut by trees, mines easy to hide, easily stopped by wood chopping.
Secondly the bigger tank the bigger the supply-problem: If the tanks themselves are not vulnerable, the trucks carrying the fuel and ammo are.
Thirdly: as the tank get bigger, they get more expensive all around: Purchase, training, and maintainence: You'll have fewer of them.
Fourthly: The bad guy's withdraw into cities, mountains and woods - as they have allways done. The answer to that appears to be more (light) infantry, but that to some extend means giving up the advantage of a balanced force.
Proposition:
Can we make a light tank with enough protection to stand off RPG and small arms and mines. With a smaller caliber gun, with shorter range to make automatic loading a viable choice, to reduce crew, to reduce size. I've always liked the british Scimitar/Saracen series for such scenarioes - maybe I'm wrong.
I would like to see the usual creative and informed comments - hope You will too. |
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