The Pentagon has taken a step back from supporting research and development of robotic land vehicles. The goal was to be able to move firepower on the front lines without risking the lives of tank operators.
Recently, setbacks to tank operators in the Ukraine conflict, on both sides, have sidelined any major combat use of tanks. Changes on the battlefield have led to heavy tank losses of Russian and Ukrainian tanks in combat.
Drones, air launched mines, anti-tank weapons such as the Russian Kornet and the US Javelin (and many others), have slowed down tank assaults and forced tank operations mostly into hide and seek operations.
Modern tank warfare was largely invented by the Germans, starting in the 1930s. Heinz Guderian is credited with what were known as Panzer tactics and the use of blitzkrieg to rapidly gain ground against an enemy. His book, Achtung-Panzer! (1937) outlined a new type of organization featuring tanks and a motorized corps capable of rapid movement in the battle area.
The theories were put into practice in World War II to good effect. The idea was revolutionary: instead of the use of armor to support infantry, armor and infantry were both mobile and integrated for the first time. Eventually, the German Panzer Gruppe formula formed the foundation of Soviet (now Russian) and US (and allied) approaches to armor warfare.
The problem in Ukraine is that massing tanks is an invitation to disaster as modern weapons, including drones, make now-classical tank warfare operations difficult, inviting heavy losses impacting not only hardware but also manpower. Skilled tank operators are in short supply.
The Defense Department was so suitably alarmed by the changes on the battlefield in Ukraine that a major upgrade of the Abrams main battle tank was canceled. The Pentagon said that it would develop a new version of the Abrams, one that incorporated lessons learned. Exactly what the new tank will look like, and why it would be any better than its predecessors, we do not know.
The Abrams tank proved to be a beast to operate and support in Ukraine. It is a very heavy and fat tank, and it became even heavier and more ungainly after the Ukrainians welded on layers of reactive armor, lifted from deceased Russian T72s, and built iron cages to help protect the turret and engine compartment from anti-tank weapons and drones.
Even so, two thirds of the Abrams tanks shipped to Ukraine have been destroyed or disabled, and a handful of them have ended up in Russia both as trophies and for exploitation. The German tanks, different versions of the Leopard marketed by German industry as better than the Abrams, ended up the same way: Neither the US nor the German-made tanks were wunderwaffen.
A robotic tank would appear to be cheaper and lighter, but perhaps even more vulnerable than the current generation of main battle tanks. It is true they would consume less fuel and be easier to support. But such tanks would need to operate autonomously on the battlefield, using onboard sensors, artificial intelligence and pre-selected targets in combat scenarios.
DARPA, the Pentagon’s advanced research operation, has been able to get an autonomous vehicle to navigate in open fields, but making it combat-capable and fully integrated with machine vision and sensors is still a task for the future.
Meanwhile, for today’s manned tanks, NATO is tending in the direction of bigger tank guns (at least 130mm smooth bore), up from the current 120mm, automatic loaders (the Russians have them but the Americans do not), better topside protection, better armor for the crew (including moving them out of the turret),and active protection systems like the Israeli Trophy.
Unfortunately this means heavier tanks, harder to use than even current models, especially on soft ground or land punctuated by stream beds. The support problems will stay the same or even get worse, engines will need to be more powerful (with high fuel consumption), and the tanks’ communications will be vulnerable to jamming and spoofing. The Pentagon push to true net-centric warfare needs solid communications for success or technology that allows autonomous operation, probably both.
One of the factors in Ukraine, seen as far back as World War II, is enemy jamming. Today that is much more sophisticated than blanking out radio transmissions in the earlier war, because we are talking about the transmission (both ways and interactively) of megabytes of data and precision targeting that could be transferred by satellite.
Systems such as Elon Musk’s Starlink are, so far at least, resistant to jamming, but Starlink is not yet in tanks or other US-made combat gear. Sensor integration, situational awareness, target selection and maneuver information, all of which are time sensitive, are terribly important, as are ways to spot threats from drones and other anti-tank weapons.
It would be a worthwhile idea, before the Army gets going with another tank design or a modification of an existing one, to start testing how any of this might work in a real war. While the Ukraine war might not last too much longer, perhaps there is time to test out some of these ideas.
Similarly, some tests of autonomous operation and sensor integration, along with active defense systems, should also be platformed and tried out, both to see what its capabilities and limitations are, and to find means of improving operations.
The pathway to a robotic tank should be kept open, but doing so also will entail a significant doctrinal revolution on how to use armor on the modern battlefield. Sticking with the old paradigm and trying to fight off the furies won’t cut it in this day and age.
Stephen Bryen is a special correspondent to Asia Times and a former US deputy undersecretary of defense for policy. This article, which originally appeared in his Substack newsletter Weapons and Strategy, is republished with permission.
