One of these days one of you will have to explain to me why these 50 million dollar tanks are more effective than spamming SD90MACs on treads.

They aren't.

But the price here isn't really an arbitrary decision. A 2010 tank, a truly 2010 tech one, is going to cost around a hundred million. It really is, you are going to need HMC, complex shapes, countless subsystems, complicated electronics to make it the best. The cost in tanks is kept down by using older and/or cheaper technology whenever possible. M1 was admittedly a bit ahead of the time and so were T-72 and T-80, but that was the last actual technological leap for this kind of weapon. Any modern MBT is in essence just M1 or T-72 with a few tweaks. Even NS ones, they're still just M1s on steroids.

You start making tanks the best they could be, you get them to cost like fighters, which in fact used to be the case in WWII.

And they just plain aren't worth it. Tanks are, for the most part, an obsolete weapon. They still have their uses, but they don't really decide anything, a helicopter, an attack plane, or just a missile platform will have a shooting range day on a tank battalion. ATGM teams blow them out, IFVs can kill them, artillery no longer aims at barnsides, it's hard to find anything on a modern battlefield that can't kill a tank.

The only reason they haven't gone the way of battleships yet is because a battleship built on the cheap is going to be a reef in a blink of the eye, while cheap tanks remain very much effective for the roles still left for them.


Not that planes aren't gradually starting to go the same way, since the spread of low-cost fighters and the prolongation of B-52 service life is a solid indication, but they're still just green newbies on the road to obsolescence, while tanks are weary travelers and battleships bodies on the roadside.

lol tanks are obsolete lol lol lol

In NS, even infantry equipment can matter. But IRL, a situation where the type of tanks used would have significant effect on the course (not even outcome) of a conflict is extremely improbable.

A while ago pretty much the only such situation I could imagine would be post-nuclear warfare, when aircraft are rendered inoperable by EMP, but even that possibility is fading rapidly as tanks increasingly rely on their electronics and they aren't all that much less vulnerable than avionics. So there you can in fact be better off with an older RL tank that works fine anyway than some NS tank with cameras instead of periscopes and an unmanned turret.

You can make supertanks with superguns, superarmor and leopard pimp hats with today's technology, but it's not like you can't make nanocomposite sword bayonets with telescopic carbon fiber poles, and while one looks like it makes incomparably more sense than the other, it only looks that way.

I agree with you to an extent On today's modern asymmetric battlefield, tanks are of far less importance then they were in a conventional battlefield.

A lot of argument against tanks is the use of air power and helicopters that negate their advantages. This is true, but in a Cold-War type situation neither side is likely to gain air supremacy for the first few days or weeks of the conflict. Under these conditions, tanks still have their advantages. Defense against helicopters can be achieved using SAM's on tank chassis.

Thus, we can conclude that tanks remain important on a theoretical large-scale war against two opposing superpowers, but remain less important in compentary warfare. In short, I agree with your quote that they are "the blunt of the blade" rather than the tip. In my opinion, the tip if the blade today is intelligence and special forces units.

And defense against tanks can be achieved by firing RPGs at them. Defense against predators can be achieved by growing horns. But the lion is still the predator and the antelope still the prey.
SAMs on tanks can only prevent helicopters from flying about in a mocking fashion and playing with them. Instead of a shooting range with bullet traps you get a shooting range with ricochets, so wear your goggles and don't fool around.


In a war between two superpowers, tanks, beyond the boolean flag of their presence, still aren't really important , because both will have enormous arrays of weapons to choose from, as well as major air power.

It doesn't take air superiority to be able to pick tanks out from the air, all it takes is the enemy not having air dominance. And if the enemy has air dominance, you're better off drafting the peace treaty while you still can settle for less than an unconditional.

Besides, aircraft are not the only highly effective weapons against tanks, there is quite a lot of armament. Requiring constant support and having limited range (actual cross-country radius != straight road range, count 1/8...1/5), tanks are tactically limited in what they can do, not to mention that per above they are restricted to areas where air superiority has already been achieved.
In a very short summary, they don't decide the war. They are there to hold the ground once the actual key weapons made their advance.


As for who decides the war, I agree that intelligence is to be included there (though air force and ships are still on the list as well), but spec ops no. Special operations are just that, special, most times they are about small things to make actual advances easier, but they definitely don't win the wars.

NS isn't an asymmetric battlefield.

If anything it's the other way around: IRL the powers that can afford tanks don't plan on fighting people who can deploy all the new modern anti-tank conveniences.

And defense against RPG's can be gained by APS and mounted infantry. There's a rock-paper-scissors approach to everything, sometimes the tank has the advantage with lethality and protection, sometimes its opponents.

World War II is a good example of rough air parity between two opposing superpowers. I understand that modern aircraft are much more advanced and lethal, but so are air defense systems. I imagine a hypothetical confrontation between the Warsaw Pact and NATO would be similar, neither side gaining supremacy, and with both sides attempting to destroy each others armored thrusts with CAS sorties.

Likewise, it only requires local air superiority to protect them. It's a bit different than theater-wide air superiority.

Afghanistan was unique in that it was conquered using ingenious fighters and Special Forces/CIA operatives. There was no massive invasion. In Iraq, they used ingenious fighters ( the Kurds), to keep an entire Iraqi Corps focused on the north, and kept them from attacking the real of the coalition's advance. In today's wars, intelligence and special ops wins them. You told me a T-72 would work just as well as a MCA-7, well, in an insurgency like we see today, an F-15E works just as well as an F-35.

Ingenious fighters!

But yes you can conquer a country with a handful of bandits and spec ops if it has no real army or like roads. That's not a description of a major conventional war.

But warfare isn't a game of rock-paper-scissors. In warfare, the rock tends to tear through paper, the scissors still cut paper well after being dulled a bit, and a thick enough folded paper stops either.

World War II is the very example I should have quoted somewhere above, if I haven't actually (I think I have). In WWII, tanks were the top dogs, with aircraft not having much against them. They even had similar costs. Today, aircraft cost a lot more, and for good reasons, for the capabilities of a plane compared to those of a tank are like those of an assault rifle compared to a mace.

You are right on the way to becoming a general - they also always think the next war will be similar to the last one.
Pardon the sarcasm, but it was called for.

Which brings us to the question, "Why bother with supertanks", if what decides whether they live or die is who has local air superiority, not how thick their glacis and how long their barrel is.

Afghanistan was won by throwing money and equipment at locals who, while undeveloped, knew their priorities well and in particular never overestimated the importance of who gets to puppetmaster the king of Kabul.

Afghanistan has never been conquered, neither by the Soviets, nor by the US right after, nor by the US the second time. Conquest implies having control outside the palace walls. Though there isn't really anything to conquer there, Afghanistan's only export commodity is drugs.

Not really. Show me one system that has had complete dominance over every other system, save nukes.

That's not what I meant. I used it as an example of two superpowers having rough air parity. Specifically, I was referring to the Eastern front. And some aircraft were very effective against AFV's. Maybe not like today, but still effective.

Not really I'm not even sure what this was meant to accomplish, other than being a rude snide remark. You failed to address the argument, but that's fine, sarcasm is a nice substitute.

You know what I meant.

Actually even that is doable - guns over everything that isn't guns, in the time between the flintlock and the tank.

But note that I've been accurate: in the quoted analogy, rocks are defeated by thick folded paper.

Why not go straight to WWI then? The powers also had somewhat of an air parity.

Read the first post. Times change. Spears (contrary to the popular belief, no form of sword has ever been the key military weapon) were supplemented by bows and crossbows, they were replaced by guns and artillery, then supplemented by tanks, then replaced by aircraft. At sea, rams were replaced by ships of the line, they by dreadnoughts, they by carriers supplemented by subs and destroyers.

That the phrase "I imagine the next big war is going to be similar to the last big war" has been said so many times and turned out to be true so few times, that it is already a part of the folklore.

I'm not entirely sure what point you're trying to make. I think you're trying to say that the airplane is the "Key weapon" today, like spears or cannons were in the past. Well, actually, nukes are the "key weapon". Airplanes and helicopters cannot hold or take ground, and we have yet to see two modern air powers squaring off. The performance of modern aircraft have been so great because they were used against countries like Iraq.

Israel, too, thought that aircraft had surpassed the tank. They were surprised against the Egyptian SAM's. Your aircraft aren't magical war winners, not in a large-scale conventional war, and not in an asymmetrical war, either.

Sorry, but I'm not going to keep reiterating, we're way off the topic already. While the world may appear to have not changed much in the last 43 years, there is an alternate school of thought, and I'm a follower.

And discussions about whether nukes are the main weapon of war today fall into the same category as whether the next big war is going to be similar to the previous one. I think of that category as being more of NSG and NSD material, and at least definitely not that of discussing pricing.

Yep, just get up on that stool of yours like you always do and act like HT is 'better then' NSG or NSD or is if 'irrelevant' material belong there.

And you're an admin, split the thread.

Stop acting like a fucktwad.

By that category I mean extremely long discussions with ten page long posts consisting of point-by-point debating of a hundred loose tangents and irrelevant detail, from which everyone ultimately walks away with the exact same opinion they came in with.
NSG loves them, it hardly ever has any other kind of discussions. NSD isn't completely impartial to them either.

HT is not necessarily inherently better, I just view it as a forum more focused on technical matters than on general debate for debate's sake. I can split the thread, but I personally don't have any intention of discussing these points, preferably ever. (Maybe if I get an eternal life, but then I'll consider these discussions my payment.) If anyone else does, just keep going here, I'll split the thread at once.



P.S. Also, this is a rant thread, I'm entitled and obliged to.

I hate to say it, but I think you've got no idea what you talk about in regards to arms V10. I am going to go out on a limb and presume your alternate school of thought involves air power being dominant, correct? If not, don't bother with the stuff below, just say so and I will start over.

The problem is, air power isn't shit alone. The primary, decisive weapon of not just the last century, but the future, is combined arms. The adaptive nature of combined arms is what makes it so effective, it includes tanks, planes and artillery, but it also includes psyops, intel, and political aspects. It is truly combined arms, and the issue is not with it, the issue is with people forgetting that it includes everything, not just the traditional stuff. This is where you go wrong, airpower is an aspect, included in a tailored-force to a specific mission, not an overall winner. Using airpower where your enemy has none is super effective, but the same goes for anything else. The modern (RL) battlefield is dominated by irregular, low-intensity conflict following a base-destroying campaign. This is a vastly different thing then other types of warfare, even a potential nuclear WP-NATO fight. Even presuming you expect to fight the previous war again (Which, although quoted often, has been torn to shreds quite a bit in doctrine journals, both by military men and civilian writers, it is instead often the expectation that the next war will be nothing like the previous one that is wrong.) you are going to be stuck in the terrain/climate of your expected fighting area, and your expected objectives. The WP objective was to take Europe, plain and simple, to do this they needed to secure land movements (So as to take the land...), and thus they need land maneuver elements, tanks and IFVs. Air power plays a secondary role to this because air power can not, and never can, take and hold ground, police and pacify it, nor secure it. It can bomb the fuck out of stuff, and do many other things which are absolutely essential to the ground war, but it can not undertake the objectives of the ground war. NATO forces had a simmilar, although different, approach. They intended to hold Europe, to keep it. This is why they went heavy on strike aircraft, to keep WP land formations down. But in addition to this, they needed to be able to plug gaps and take back that land, hence the tanks. Germany is even more slightly different, as it was very tank heavy for a reason, and not one of history. Germany (West) wanted Germany (East) back, as such they needed to wage a land war, and as such needed land maneuver elements. Vietnam and OIF are completely different from this, the role was never about taking ground. It was about the population itself. About forcing the people to play your game, to be what you want, not to take the land they are on and have them and their land become you. Air power and light infantry are kind here, because you want presence (LI) and force (Air), at least under the doctrine used. Beat them in to submission.

The real problem here being that you have forgotten that your doctrine, that very mission your military is intended to undertake, defines what you need and how you do it. There is no end-all solution, and the wrong choices in doctrine will limit your options, if not your able objectives. The US has progressively switched to the Vietnam/OIF people-focused orientation, because those are the conflicts it intends to fight. Prior to this, it was about land, and prior to that the US focus was economic projection on trade. They're actually less capable now, even without the troop commitments to Iraq and A-Stan, to fight a WP-NATO fight, because it is no longer their focus. Much like Iraq was not prepared to fight a population fight, it intended to protect its territory (Which it did completely at that), and lost to a completely different approach.

And as an aside, I felt it useful to answer this.

Because, plain and simple, the tank must do its job. Any tank designed to do a specific job as doctrinally intended, is a super tank. The T-34, for example, is a super tank, even today. The tank still needs the tools for the job, as does the fighter bomber, fighter, AWACS, and the guy who analyzes SIGINT. If you're not preparing your troops and equipment to to the job you hand them, you are failing and will be unable to complete that job. This doesn't mean the best armour, electronics, or gun, it means understanding the role you need to, and intend to, play. If this means the best gun and armour and electronics, then so be it, but if that is not a part of your role, then why are you wasting your time on it? To put it in an air power view, if your doctrine needs loiter and payload on a small package, why are you using Tu-22Ms when you should be using Su-25s? Likewise, why would you use a Su-25 for long-range interdiction when a Tu-22M is better?

When Sun Tsu said "Know your enemy, know yourself", he meant it in this way. Know your doctrine, as in what your objectives are and how you intend to achieve them, be prepared to do so. Know your enemy's doctrine, their objectives, and how they intend to achieve them, and with what. Hitting them where they least expect it no longer has a spatial aspect to it with all the recce capability and satelites and all that, it's about going deeper. If your enemy expects to fight a war for land, attack their people. If they expect to fight a war for industry, take their land. If they expect to fight a war for their people, take their land. It's about going where they're not planning, and changing the nature of the objectives, and thus the doctrine. Everybody on NS settles too much in to a singular thought and has no idea about it. Which is why none of us are real generals.

And for reference on the RL post-cold war tank thing. That's the very subject of my major paper I am trying to get published. I will tell you guys where to look when I do get it accepted. The basic premise is a look at the gun tank/CS tank/infantry tank concept in whole, and applying this to the post-cold war world, where LIC is the norm.

Well, I certainly didn't expect you to support the importance of air power - everyone has their bias.

You are perhaps misunderstanding, though, what exactly I mean by "obsolete weapon". I don't mean a weapon that is no longer useful, I mean the weapon that is no longer the most critical component in the system.
Perhaps "obsolete" is far too strong a word for it, but it is a way to phrase pushing aside. Like a TV show where the character focus has shifted, and the old lead now is in the supporting role. That is what I consider tanks to be - the once lead character who now gets less air time and attention than the new kid.

Combines arms is a doctrine. But it still doesn't mean 25% troops, 25% AFV, 25% planes, 25% ships. Not all components are equal. There are priorities, and some forces have shifted down in importance, while others have shifted up.

The difference here is that the advantage gained by using airpower when the enemy's is at least locally and temporarily disabled is far greater than the advantage gained by using say light infantry in the same situation. The ability to target and destroy enemy objects at extreme ranges with high reliability. Air superiority gives one the ability to hit the enemy pretty much anywhere, and quickly. Superiority in other aspects doesn't give a similar advantage.

With complete air dominance, you can take out enemy command centers in the first day of the war. Land dominance would take a lot more time to accomplish that goal, and that is if it's not stopped by air forces, and naval dominance, unless these centers are within range, wouldn't work at all.

They do need land maneuver elements, that is without the question.

What is in question, however, is the importance of equipment capability. WP in fact went with the strategy of producing a lot of tanks at lower costs, rather than investing into cost-no-object ones.

In the end, it's all about the cost-efficiency. The unit with the best cost-efficiency is the cheapest unit that fulfills the requirements put before it. If a job is normally done by 100 standard tanks, for a twice more expensive (in total cost) tank to be cost-effective, 50 of them should be able to do the same job.
And this is quite unlikely with tanks. While with aircraft, it's quite likely for a force of 50 F-22 to actually be more effective than 100 F-15.

Then we differ in the definition of a supertank. I define a supertank as a tank on the extreme upper end of the cost scale, with a suboptimal price-performance ratio due to having capabilities significantly in excess of those actually required. In very simplified terms, a tank that goes to extreme lengths to be able to penetrate 3m of armor, when no other tank has more than 1m anyway.

This is a good point. However, it goes outside even the scope of warfare strategy, and towards victory for victory's sake alone, the means defeating the ends. If a nation starts a war to liberate the people (however dirty the term has become), should it genocide them with biological weapons just because it's what the enemy is least ready to?

That actually is my point.

I might be biased towards air and missile forces. However, my bias appears to be closer to what is currently the view IRL. There are reasons US is still running 1970s tanks with few plans for a new one, while flying 2005 fighters and introducing a 2015 one, and there are reasons most other countries don't distribute the innovation emphasis equally either.

A tank built with all the latest and the greatest tech for the sake of being the greatest will be amazing in shows, but will simply not pay off. Planes do.

I'm not saying tanks shouldn't be designed, or make no sense, or we shouldn't make the optimal tanks for the job. But the optimal no longer necessarily means stuffed with all the best innovations, now it means the lowest bidder that still does the job right.
In case of US, that bidder remains M1. If US intended to fight Russia or EU, perhaps a slightly more advanced tank with an edge over them could pay off, but maybe not, and in any case M1 would still work fine.

Because it's just what you've been saying earlier: combined arms. Not one-upmanship. You don't have to have a bigger gun and a thicker glacis, because it's a fight between your combined arms and enemy combined arms, not your tanks and enemy tanks.
In case of aircraft, combined arms have limitations, because they are on the top of the food chain: the greatest danger to them is other aircraft. In case of tanks, combined arms have a greater extent of application.

If this is the basis for your argument, then you need to know that this has never, ever, been the case. A few examples from WW2:

Eastern Front - Arguably the most tank dominated area of the war. The tank was less critical an aspect then partisans, infantry, or air power.

North Africa: Logistics (Shipping) and artillery were more critical.

Italy: Infantry, artillery, and air power.

Europe: Air power and logistics.

South Pacific: Infantry and artillery (Naval gunnery).

Central Pacific: All navy and air baby.

East Asia: Arguably the only theater the tank played a critical role, alongside infantry, and it was mostly the Brits, Aussies and Japs who did it, and not in massive sweeping maneuvers.

How about others?
Vietnam: Infantry and air mobility (Not exactly air power).
A-Stan: Infantry, artillery, and air mobility.
OIF: Infantry and air power.

The problem with focusing on the tank is that it never was a critical single player, but a member of the orchestra. The infantry and artillery, and even air power, have had more critical roles the the tank. But that's missing the point of the tank entirely. Falling in to the trap of presuming it is the most critical piece on the battlefield, or ever has, is how you fail with them, hardcore.

Actually, combined arms is not a doctrine. It's a formula for doctrine creation. And on top of that, I pretty much covered the fact that it's not 1+1+1, but rather approaching things. To think it's anything but a way to view things is, again, missing the point entirely.

First off, complete air dominance doesn't exist. Or rather, it only exists in LIC, and we're not fighting LIC in NS, so it's not even worth considering.

Second, air power gives you no greater advantage then light infantry. This is a hugely failed assumption. You can do no more (But less...) then infantry in a given area if you have local air superiority and commit, say, strike elements. The infantry can take that ground, and hold it. They can provide supply lines and protection to them, they can provide many things. None of which you can do with air power. It provides overall advantages to the fight, but it is still nothing to what the infantry, the basic building block of war brings to the area. Command centers, as you pointed out, are only useful to that area, and to a centralized military. Like Iraqs. Something like China however, is going to shrug it off, because they've decentralized a lot to a more serious level then most people realize. Same with Iran. And this skips over the fact that you need that local air superiority over/near the target to hit it, which means either it's right near by (Unlikely except for Israel and small nations), or you have to fight a ground war to get yourself a corridor there.

See, the problem is, you seem to think war is about hitting targets. Beyond that you presume your aircraft are immune, while the enemy has no air force. That doesn't happen in NS. And in real life, the target-hitting doctrine doesn't work in a lot of cases (See Vietnam). It works great if you want to cripple a central government which is unable to contest the air space seriously. Works horribly when you actually want to win a war.

That's actually a complete farce perpetuated by people like Tom Clancy, who know jack shit about the subject. Soviet (I will elaborate why I did not say WP at a * at the end) military planners and industrial planners built the best, most technologically advanced tanks they could. Until the Leopard 2 came along, they actually held the field in advanced tank design and construction. They did this purposefully because they know they needed it. The leap frog only comes about with the tail of the Brezhnev stagnation, where production dropped, and then Gorby's stuff where priority shifted heavily. The T-72 was second only to the T-64 when it came out (This was political, I can explain if you want). In 1980 the Soviets had more top-end tanks in both number and percentage of their total forces then all of NATO combined, and singularly of the US, Germany, and others. So that idea they went cheap and mass produced is complete shit. As is it for WW2 (The T-34, while crudely put together, is anything but not advanced, especially technologically.)

I have to question where you feel it to be quite unlikely that 50 tanks of double the price can do the same job. We can look at ODS, where despite being very very close in cost, US Abrams were pretty more cost-effective then Iraqi-built T-72s. The cost effectiveness isn't in the machine, it's in the crew. And an M1A2 SEP still costs, brand new, half what one of its crew costs for five years of training and experience to be able to use it effectively. And if you add in maintenance and the rest of the crew, for say 20 years, you're looking at still a fraction of the cost of the four crew, their training and livelihood for 20 years as opposed to the tank, even with a 10 year rebuild. Aircraft are even worse at this, and you know it.

Well, you've shown you can't even apply a price performance ratio properly to a military unit, so how can you thus define a super tank? The M51 ISherman is a super tank, despite being a Sherman, of all POS', because the crews that used it were capable with it.

I certainly agree that going to excess to penetrate 3m of armour when you won't find more then 1m is absurd. But that isn't even the case most of the time (I admit, there are idiots). For one, a 3m armour equivalent isn't hard to find on NS. For two, often that design ability is a side effect of another requirement. For a NS example, the greater power of the MCA-7G's 140mm gun over the 115mm gun of the B. It wasn't done for more KE power, it was (And I repeat this a lot) done for greater GLATGM capability and HEAT rounds. Getting more power was a side effect of applying these needs to the situation Sumer intends to fight, an open ground war.

You have missed the point I have been making entirely.

First, a nation almost never goes to war under the goal of liberating its people, almost never. I can name some instances, and they'll all be like OIF, as in they will be populous centric wars. Therefore, if you go to war to liberate, say, TPF's people, you are most likely to be fighting for his people, not for his land. You will be deploying like OIF. He, on the other hand, will likely be expecting you to go for his land, and will instead be intending to fight a land war, for his land. You've just taken him by surprise with the entirely different approach.

Your genocide extrapolation simply proves you've paid no attention to what I have said, as it has nothing to do with it.

You are biased, and we all know it.

But you are only following the path of RL, as you say. However, and this is major, RL wars of the future are expected to be populus-centric. That is, repeats of OIF, not for land, not for industry, and not even for ideology. At least not by major powers, those powers that expect to fight like that are poor third world states. Unfortunately, this is NS, and that expectation is unrealistic here. On NS wars are fought for land, industry, and any number of things (Including penis size I bet). There is no luxury of focusing down like that. Any state that does so puts itself in the same situation the US was in WW1, switching the focus of the fight, or even worse, where they were in Vietnam, again having to switch their focus.

Prove this statement..

Your only saving grace there is the criterion of "just because they can", but that applies to planes too. A plane built with all the latest and greatest technology just because it can be, will likewise not be cost effective to a plane built for the job. So you've undermined your own point.

This isn't even true RL. Optimal means knowing your objectives, and how you intend to undertake them, and building to that job, it always has meant that. The question you seem stuck on is what the objectives are, and they change with your focus. The US right now has different objectives then the US 30 years ago. Much like it has different objectives from most NS states.

That's because the M1 is still par for the course in the world. I hate to tout the US horn, but the M1 is no slouch of a tank, nor is it cheap. And on top of that, it's still in the top of the game. Its a poor example of cost effectiveness, if you wanted that the Us would have stayed with the M-60A3TTS. A great little tank, in the same league as the T-72, T-64 and T-62, and only slightly inferior to the T-80 and T-90. And which is why, for example, they were kept in service until after the USSR fell, and it had been secured that nothing serious (CIS doesn't count) would reform that could counter the US might.

The problem is, when you speak of individual design, those details are important. Its your tanks versus their tanks that aids the overall combined arms. More specifically its your employment of your equipment, properly designed to achieve the objectives you intend, against the objectives you intend, better then your enemy's which wins the combined arms fight. Again, I feel you have missed the point of not just combined arms, but the concept of doctrine all together.

This is naieve and you know it. The danger t or aircraft includes other aircraft, SAMS, artillery, and beyond that anything that touches the even more fragile logistical situation. Tanks are in the same boat, other tanks, missiles, and artillery. In fact, in terms of sheer numbers in RL, the aircraft passed the tank in the game of "who's got more out to get it on the battlefield" only about 20 years ago, and that gap keeps widening. This is made especially true because the doctrine focus has shifted, at least for the US and Europe, to populous centric warfare, not territory-centric, which has brought the aircraft further to the forefront of war, and made them the big baddies on scene that everybody wants dead. When it was territory-centric, the tank held this spot. When economic-centric, the battleship (Or any warship really).

The key part is "is not the most critical", not "no longer".
Though note that you've yourself mentioned that tanks used to be the big baddies on the scene everyone wanted dead.

Complete air dominance is an extreme. Same as complete land dominance. However, considering extremes is a way to illustrate.

There's a misunderstanding here. I'm comparing superiority in air power versus superiority in light infantry, not them as components per se.
Infantry can do a lot of things, it's necessary, but it's not being disputed here anyway.

Since we're discussing equipment, the comparison is having your air power a generation ahead versus having your light infantry a generation ahead.

...not the idea which I'm arguing for.

There is advanced and effective yet with cost considerations, and there is just as powerful as it can possibly be.

No one did the latter, at least IRL, excluding certain Hitler's ideas. But they came to different lengths towards it.
The German Tiger was a heavy tank, and the Western M1-generation tanks are similar in weight. The Soviet tanks, from T-34 to later ones, remained lighter.
Lighter meant certain compromises. Less protection, for one. In this case, lighter doesn't mean less advanced, it means that they chose to set the protection vs. weight (and cost) compromise point further to the left than the West.

First, you've missed the quoted part (bolded). I was specifically referring to the total cost of fielding and maintaining the unit, and not just the lifetime cost of the tank, but the entire corps with all their personnel.
Second, terms are about communication, not who is cool enough to define them. I'm not sure that Sherman is among the things that come to mind, in near-NS circles, when one hears the term "supertank".

It is, however, impossible to find IRL.

The argument started with me addressing why are not [RL] tank costs skyrocketing the way aircraft and naval equipment costs are. And the reason is that the way they are used IRL (which this thread is primarily concerned with), a lot less emphasis is put on superiority in tanks. There are no tanks with 3m armor or 3m-penetrating guns not as much because they are impossible as because the focus has shifted and the escalation cycle (bigger gun->thicker armor->bigger gun) has been broken.

However, this is not entirely a matter of choice and picking a surprise strategy. If the purpose of the war is fighting it for the people, you need to do that, whether it is the optimal strategy or not the optimal one.

Yes. And that is part of the reason why the priorities IRL are the way they are.

Only part of the reason though. Even with different priorities, due to the advancement of aircraft, I don't think tank escalation would happen IRL the way aircraft escalation did.
A 1942 tank cost $33,500, while a 1942 fighter $50,000. Today we have $150+ million fighters, but not $100+ million tanks. We wouldn't have them even if the wars IRL were about the land like in NS.

Mostly penis size and land. However, there are all kinds of wars in NS, including more cynical versions of OIF.

For the second part, they already have. I'm referring to the new US fighters. And even B-2, criticized as it is, found some uses where it works.

For the first part, proving something will not pay off could be somewhat difficult. Could you explain, just explain, not prove, how would MCA-7M pay off if put into US Army service? Or any other army already equipped with M1-generation tanks for that matter.

To an extent. There is a point of how expensive keeping on a your tanks versus their tanks race can get, beyond which it aids combined arms less than if the money was spent elsewhere.

Beyond which it is more practical to deal with enemy weapons with a different weapon rather than the same one. To take a rather insane example, escalating tanks through 9->18->35->40->50 million a piece would not be worth it IRL, because there are other ways to defeat a 50-million tank besides deploying a 60-million one.

But most of all, as of today, other aircraft. SAM are limited in their areas of coverage, and relying on SAM as the main defense rather than supporting them with a strong air force is a solid way to ensure enemy's air dominance. Effective air defense relies heavily on aircraft, with AEW and patrols providing warning and interceptors giving the ability to react. Without aircraft, SAM alone can be more than a nuisance, but still not a stopper.

Not sure what you mean by artillery, AAA or shelling airbases. The former has been mostly displaced by missiles, and for the latter artillery's range is quite limited.

And as for destroying bases and logistic chains, the primary and the best tools for these jobs are - aircraft again.

Which is one of the reasons for the fighter race still going on IRL.

Which actually has nothing to do with criticality on scene, and has everything to to with perceptions. Artillery is still one of the most critical elements to a battle, and yet it's never been in that same spot as tanks, everyone wanting it dead. Or the flamethrower, which has limited impact on battles, yet again, everyone wanting it dead.

A poor way to illustrate. And at that, complete land dominance was never mentioned. Local superiority has been mentioned for everything, and I consider it a compelling factor in anything, but not complete dominance. Thinking like that is pure fantasy.

Then you would know that the generational analysis is pretty vague, if even applicable. Since 1910 we can count three generations employed of infantry capability, and one of them was the existing pre-1910 generation. We can count much higher numbers for air and tanks. If we want to make it fair we're comparing, say, a current CF infantry section to one deployed 1914, and say the F-22 to F-4, or in tank terms, LeClerc to M60A3 TTS. There's huge differences across the board.

Weight and cost are not interchangeable. In fact if you study any of the A-20's competitors for the contract, you'll note that the A-20 (Which turned to the T-34) was the heaviest and most expensive. It was also the one that filled the doctrinal requirements most thoroughly. Because, unlike all of NS, the Soviets had a doctrine of objectives and approaches, and they defined what they wanted to get it done. They continued this, and weight was a factor of objectives, not cost. It never has been for the Soviets.

NS circles are full of people who have no understanding of mechanized doctrine. the closest I have seen is Lyras, and even he goes far out from it. Technically the term "supertank" doesn't exist, and as such we should define it if we intend to move further on it. If you define it by cost, then you show a complete lack of information on doctrinal value, and if I define it doctrinally, I show a complete lack of care on the economic end.

First, the cycle has hardly been broken, it's more complicated then that.

Second, you can not make a topic regarding RL, but constantly reference NS without being presumed you are comparing the two. If you wish to discuss exclusively RL tank developments both technologically and doctrinally, I'd be happy to, I'm writing a paper on it after all. However, we are considering completely different situations between RL, and NS, and they simply can not be compared in terms of development.

Optimal strategy is one which achieves your doctrinal objectives best, not one which beats the enemy best (Unless that is, in fact, your doctrinal objective...), so your point here is actually irrelevant.

You seem to presume technological application is equivalent between them. What makes fighter cost go up is not necessarily what can be applied to tanks. Consider autopilot, radar, fly by wire, all this. It's only been recently radar has found a useful role on a tank, and there are many other aspects which simply do not carry over. I can agree we won't see $100 million tanks, because there is no way to make them so expensive at the moment. You seem to jump to the conclusion that because fighters gained much necessary technology, and their cost inflated rapidly, that those technologies and subsequent costs must be applicable to tanks, when they simply are not.

Although I would love to know where you got those cost numbers, as I have very different ones. In 1919, a tank cost $30,000 to build, and more to sell (And that number comes from inflation-adjusted numbers provided from the APG for the Mk.VIII "Liberty" in case you want to know).

Remind me when I have time to start a war with that as the reason, and to state it obviously. Just for the lulz.

Actually you haven't proven anything. You simply say the US has proven it, and as I have said, you are likewise not understanding the Us doctrine overall, which dictates why they have done so.

The problem is, you're presuming US Army doctrine is applicable to the MCA-7M. The closest RL counterpart to Sumerian doctrine I can give you is the South Koreans. If we throw terrain out the window and focus on doctrine, then the local armoured superiority provided by the M is a game winner to hold their territory. It's the same reason they're going to the K2, which was designed around the same basic doctrine, with vastly different terrain in mind. The other way would have been to ask how the M1 would fit in to Sumerian doctrine, or how cost-effective it would be in doing so. But the irony here is, you won't find more then SK in the RL world who have a similar doctrine to Sumer, with high resources and none with the same terrain. Much the same with most NS states, even if the players don't know it.

Depending on how your doctrinal focus is. If you have a more evenly spread focus, then you should thus evenly spread your cost considerations. This is not the case for Sumer, nor is it the case for V10, and we both know this.

There are always other ways, and always have been. This is simply no0t the point, as you design for the intent. The fact that artillery has been able to destroy tanks consistently and without break since they came out, and do it at the fraction of the cost, has also had no effect on tank development. For, just as there are other ways to destroy tanks, there are ways to destroy artillery. The intent is to give your commanders the best tools for the doctrine, and let them use as they need.

And, by the way, historically the only examples of there being better ways to kill a tank then a better tank, are those where the concept of combined arms has failed to be employed by one side. When combined arms is properly considered, then the best and most practical weapon to kill a tank, is a tank, because everything else which can do so is having problems with other arms.

And without effective SAM support, patrols, EW, and all that, the aircraft is unable to keep the enemy from gaining local air superiority. It is a system, not an isolation as you seem to believe.

For the first, it still exists, and especially on the battlefield is a huge issue. You have to be completely ignorant of modern warfare to believe AAA no longer has an effect on the battlefield.

For the second, that focus on range is an issue for you. Especially when artillery, including shelling, can include everything from ballistic missiles to mortars, and range is dependent on your enemy's ability to force the ground war upon you.

Not completely. Sabotage and espionage have actually proven better at that job in recent conflicts. Much of the Iraqi logistics chain in OIF was taken out by SpecOps, sometimes in cooperation with aircraft. Artillery, too, has had a major effect, with mobile minefield laying systems abound, and the ability to deploy random mine fields, it has seriously fucked up logistics.

Only because the RL situation is one of a very different doctrinal focus, as I have said. And that very different doctrinal focus is brought about by circumstances which simply do not exist for NS, most of the time.

I'll grant that you know WWI-WWII land war history better, but I still feel that the sides actually did and do want artillery dead. Perceptions might have a role, but it's rather that the artillery, even SPH, remains in relatively fixed positions and doesn't wander everywhere. The chances of meeting it occasionally are relatively low.

You need ATGM teams everywhere because tanks can go to most places. You need Stingers everywhere because aircraft can and do go everywhere. But artillery is what you go after, and the weapons against it aren't particularly specialized.

Generations are mostly a post-facto and arbitrary concept. Sometimes there are gaps, like between F-4 and F-15, other times there aren't. I prefer to compare war epochs, but that would indeed give a (very much fair) comparative advantage to aircraft.

So let's do it your way.
Side A has roughly WWI generation infantry, with Winchesters, machineguns and very occasional SMGs, without body armor, side B modern. But side A has a modern air force with F-22, while side B has F-4 and other Vietnam War era stuff. In other forces, i.e. ships, tanks, central command, they are equal, say Soviet Afghanistan era.

Geographically, ethnically, etc. they are similar, with large size and good economy (good<EU), and have average pop density and geography. In fact they're the same nation that has split a while ago over the methods of breaking eggs and now have decided to sort it out by fighting until the per-war average amount of blood per war has been spilled. Servicemen are distributed equally across the branches, men per unit counts match real life. They also have average mental retardation rates, so they do realize which of their equipment is obsolete.

You're at the bookie, no odds, and all you know is what's said above. Who are you going to put your money on?

And, should it be side B, how exactly do you expect said advantage to bring it victory?

Yes. I guess the pornography definition isn't good enough (we all know it when we see it)? I prefer to call it "ubertank" then, though, to underline that it does not apply to good real-life tanks.

I would propose defining it as an always fictional tank, designed with complete disregard for maintainability, ease of construction, cost, logistics, and other "too real-life" design criteria.

The ultimate ubertank then, perhaps, would be the latest proposal for AAT, which would cost well in excess of 100 million, serve no military purpose whatsoever, never be actually deployed, in fact be impossible to deploy for any purpose other than guarding the Kennedy Space Center due to its thirst for liquefied hydrogen, wouldn't even work in the fictional nation of V10 as there's nowhere to drive it around, and exist for the sole reasons of mental exercise and showing off.

But, of course, that's in my case, since a lot of people in NS utterly loathe practicality concerns and do deploy less extreme but similarly overcomplicated tanks in roleplaying.
Although, NS is not the ubertank's sole pasture, since Maus and Ratt do qualify as RL ubertanks.

To make things clear, I'm by far predominantly concerned with RL in this thread. Application of conclusions from RL in NS is a point, but the intent was to base it strictly on RL.
It's in no way a comparison of RL to NS, because I consider RL to be infinitely more relevant as a reference source than NS.

I should add the continued existence of this slightly naive belief to the reasons for actually going through with AAT (as of now, having realized the ridiculousness, I've decided to shelf it as a mental exercise of a design).

Of course there are ways to make them so expensive, and right at this moment.
Just for the salad, consider autopilot, AESA radar and drive by wire. Now replace all view with hardened high-def cameras and monitors. Add a sensor suite beating any fighter, with high-def IR and laser sensors all around. Fit a small supercomputer, spice it with AI, and make it triple-redundant.

And to make sure not all costs are in the electronics, build it out of tit... better carbon fiber, which is $100-$300/kg just to buy. When still using metals, go for the most exotic alloy available. When using ceramics, stop at nothing, use the hardest, even if it costs $3,000-$15,000/kg (hint: cubic boron nitride), and do the same with polymers. Your rounds must be propelled and loaded exclusively by the most efficient exotic explosive (would be octanitrocubane if it worked), and yes, your HEAT rounds have to use gold liners. Stealthify it, too.

That's all 1980s-1990s technology, of course, because I'm considering ways to make a $100 million tank in good faith (i.e. no golden toilets, only what can actually improve performance) by 2010 IRL, which means considering the technology development lag.
Chances are good that at the point of making all the above you'd already be actually well past the 100-million mark.

But wait, it gets better if you start developing it in 2010, and I won't even name the technologies for the fear of someone deciding to actually use them, and not necessarily someone unaware of this board. And these are all RL technologies.


A billion per tank is in fact where the actually interesting stuff begins. Where you can begin actually introducing new things and not stuff stolen from aerospace.

Forget stopping at the radar, spread thousands of self-diagnostics and self-repair devices across the whole hull and turret. Put a computer into every bearing, make it monitor all surfaces and radio to the central command when a ball needs to be replaced, and perhaps give it something motorized to automatically compensate.


If you give the same priority to performance factors in the design of a tank as in the design of a plane, it will cost like a plane and require as much logistics and maintenance as a plane.
And hey, B-2 weighs 72 tons, RL MBTs closely approach 70 tons, there's room above, so why should they miss out on all the fun. A billion per tank is just the beginning, bachelor level, it still has the whole postgrad and doctorate ahead.

The aircraft and naval figures are solid. The tank figure comes from the internet, for the Sherman tank. But if you say it actually cost significantly more, well - then it means tanks in WWII did cost even more than fighters.

I just happen to like the US doctrine.
But this is indeed a nice question. So why would the M1, or the Leopard 2, or another Western MBT not fit into the Sumerian doctrine?

What about the anti-RPG slates and ultimately APS, then? Yes, we're talking about man-portable rockets and missiles, not exactly artillery, but they're also not tanks.

Not an illogical view, but it requires a very perfect world to work, two powers perfectly matched in each branch of their forces. And a very picture-perfect war where tanks never advance too much in front of other forces. And even in that case, they'd need to share minds and focus at the same part of the frontline, because if just one of them makes a local breakthrough, it can begin the slaughter.

You're actually not as much contradicting me as telling the same story with a positive spin: a tank is the best weapon against another tank as long as nothing else can get to said tank.
But deprive one side of fighters, just locally, and that "as long" no longer holds true.

Why would I call interceptors part of air defenses if I believed it's not a system? Of course it is a system.

But I have to strongly disagree with the statement that without SAM support (because patrols and EW can be airborne) aircraft are unable to keep the enemy from gaining local air superiority. They are able to even gain local air superiority without any SAM on the ground, we have seen it, it is done IRL on a regular basis.

Not just that, but a large part of the very reason aircraft fly is to be able to operate where ground forces haven't gotten yet. Air superiority fighters can, do, and are designed to gain local air superiority without any on-location support from ground forces.

Everything works better as a system than in isolation, but there are forces that require all combined arms supporting them on the spot, and there are forces that are effective even when that luxury is not available.

We have seen aircraft successfully work over enemy territory since the air war between Britain and Nazi in WWII, through the US bombing raids of Japan, and up to the modern-day air campaigns, where half the planes were even flying all the way from overseas.

Well, we can even construe ICBM as artillery, but then we can also consider aircraft to be reusable manned missiles and a carrier's armament, i.e. naval forces.
Missiles are a somewhat specific weapon, but if we don't consider them separate, then at least long-ranged ones are a subclass of aircraft or occasionally spacecraft.

These are even more dependent on the current-day, people-centric as you describe it, warfare.
You can take out an Iraqi base in a country torn by a civil war this way, but disable the strategic airpower of a comparable-level nation in an intercontinental conflict, not so much.
At least aircraft are needed and effective in nearly all kinds of warfare.

However, these circumstances existing in NS not necessarily makes that focus worse than the other one. And NS isn't even one and the same. In Havenic NS, power projection capability is the most important, while in the NS II, with its fuzzy geography, the war tends to start at the door.

Never forget.

When it comes to artillery, more often then not it's the tanks and planes going after it. And, unlike those two, it doesn't actually have physical presence on the battlefield, just effect.

Eh, not quite. I actually picked the F-4 and F-15 because I feel they are separated by an intermediate generation. Which I will cover in more detail below in your flawed analysis.

Side B. For numbers in the aircraft, for one. And most importantly, because the infantry you described is little different from modern infantry, with only body armour being different. The generational start you're looking at here is with the introduction of automatic rifles to the infantry squad, the Mondragon, Madsen and Chauchaut, and then BAR. The subgun was an extension of this, but that is the key transition there. The next key transition comes with intermediate caliber weapons, which is where we are.

I could agree with that, although the Maus and Ratte had doctrinal values. And I would rather ammend the definition as being a tank designed with no regard to doctrine, but instead designed for the sole purpose of "being the best" with no real understanding of what that is. Which, I think, would remove the AAT from that list, provided you've come to a solid doctrine for it like I encouraged.

Well, then you need to remember the sole driving factor behind the shift in military technology focus RL, is the shift in doctrine focus. There's nothing else to it.

To be perfectly honest, I would be surprised of V10 as a nation did not base the AAT on aircraft technology. I would even go so far as to expect obsolete tanks being bought, and rebuilt using aircraft tech. Which, now that I think of it, would be a fun exercise.

I wanted to snip this, but I do see your point, and I can agree there. Of course, you're not actually building a tank with better performance. In fact, you're looking in a bad direction. Tank performance increases come more from looking for new ways to increase things, then anything. Accuracy increases due to greater sensory input (Not better sensors, we have those already), and faster processing of more complete ammunition types and FCS solutions. Especially when one can network sensory data and allow platoon-wide coordination here. I mean, reality is there is little reason for super-high-end radars on a tank. MMW AESA can be useful, for many reasons, but it's not going to be as major (Or as high end) as people on NS think.

Depends on a lot. For example, what particular aircraft are the numbers for? What year? Sherman cost, for example, varied widely, to the point where you could, in reality, buy three M4A1s for the price of one M4A3E8, or more for the price of an M4A3E2. That's why I want to know the specifics on the numbers, otherwise they're empty and meaningless.

Ignoring the hole for some tanks (One of my other medium tank designs, we'll talk only the role filled by the MCA-7?). Hunter-killer capabilities, and close quarter battle. To be honest, the role the MCA-7 fills is more akin to what the Conquer and M103 used to hold, and modern tanks are unable to bring about the same level needed. This, coupled with battlefield staying power. The K2, as I have said, fills the role the best, but it can not compete in a flat, near-featureless open area. I could, in many ways, shoehorn them in, the Leopard 2S may be the closest fit, but even then unlikely. The Arjun's design intent is closer, open-field, staying power, and hunter-killer capability with accuracy and munition variety for engaging a variety of targets.

US doctrine is great, for their situation. If you want to play in that situation, go for it. Personally, I'm more a fan of Canadian doctrine (Which is a far cry from Sumerian doctrine).

I don't understand the point you're trying to make. Slats and APS are just another step in the protection-firepower waltz, how are you applying this to artillery?

Unfortunately, by definition, doctrine deals in perfect worlds. You expect to fight that. When you hit the ground and reality is different, you have competent commanders to adapt as needed. You're not getting you design to doctrine, not "reality", because what constitutes "reality" changes all the time.

Except there are problems there. When we look at, for example, air campaigns, interceptors and fighters do not completely dominate the ground. Operation Zitadelle was crushed pretty quick because Soviet aircraft were able to mostly tie up German interceptors, and even when there were no Soviet fighters around, Soviet ground attack aircraft would slip in low-level and do devastating effect, even with nominal German air superiority. I'm quite adept to remember stories of ODS Iraqi ground attack aircraft mauling coalition ground forces in areas where the coalition had air superiority, and even more such stories from the Iran-Iraq war.

Going to finish the rest tomorrow, got to get to work.

Wait, are you serious, just confused the sides, or misunderstood the scenario?

Side A has a light infantry force of 250,000 with equipment time-snatched from WWI and a 250,000 strong air force equipped with F-22 and other modern planes to the best extent that a 250,000-strong air force can be equipped today.

Side B has a light infantry force of 250,000 equipped to the best extent that a light infantry force of 250,000 can be equipped today, and a 250,000 strong air force with equipment time-snatched from Vietnam.

It's not a case of the side A sitting around a single airplane while side B has them in spades. Both have as many planes as they can reasonably maintain, and don't lose anything in return.


------

BTW, speaking about generations, we perhaps could replace WWI versus modern with WWII versus light PA+Balcoth+R2+etc, which would put a sizable price tag on the equipment.

Is the sole reason the armies aren't using uber-armor, uber-helmets, uber-rifles and uber-everything that these things can not be made - or is it rather that the money would bring more effect if spent elsewhere?

That generation being? F-4 is pretty much the poster boy for the third generation, like F-15 is for the fourth.
Certainly there were a few intermediate fighters, but none has seen significant use, at least not in US.

Well, a tank can be designed with regards to the doctrine, and still come out a failure, like Maus did. You make an ubertank when you disregard the economic factors, i.e. what it costs to build and most importantly keep in service, in terms of manpower and not just paper money.

As for the AAT, at this point my doctrine for it is "Build a few thousand and put them on display in museums, recruitment commercials, and anywhere in the actual wars where media is present". A morale booster, a poster boy for the underappreciated ground forces, a tool for covert missions where the tank count has to be limited.
Or, OOC-wise, put it up for sale, but refuse to actually sell it other than to a few loyal customers, however providing links to products that I do actually sell. Then let it provoke heated debates about whether it is really possible, because there's no such thing as bad publicity.

As for the reasons to do it, the main one is that it is far, far easier to design an ubertank than to design something effective within strict budget constraints, so the only way for me to enter tank design without the first design being a flop is to disregard the cost and overcome skill limitations with the brute force of technology. Besides, I want to build up a reputation in II/GE&T NS as "possibly the best, but the prices are insane", because it's always easier to come down from the high end into the mainstream than vice versa.

And as for what my actual doctrine in regards to offensive land warfare is, that would be "let the mercenaries do it" IC and "let the allies do it" OOC.

Can't agree with that - there is. During the Civil War, the military tended to completely disregard aerial and tank warfare, and not for doctrinal reasons alone.

This is an extreme. However, the capabilities of aircraft have improved enormously both in absolute and in relative terms over the course of the 20th century.

And the reasons for a shift from melee supported by ranged units to entirely ranged combat were also not doctrinal, but rather technological, namely the invention of gunpowder and then the advancement of firearm technology.

That could in fact be possible to some extent. Although it would be not as much buying obsolete tanks as buying a mid-range NS tank and then "pimping it up".
Actually, the reasons behind the base vehicle for tank tuning being the MCA-7 rather than the Nakil are predominantly OOC ones. (And the reason behind it not being M1 or Merkava IV is that there is no legitimate IC seller for them). That of course restricts the extent of modifications possible, but still, these tanks would get some changes.

Greater sensory input, networking and faster processing aren't cheap either. They require, well, processing power and very steady communications. They also increase the dependence on combined arms, which means more forces have to support the tanks for them to function properly.

A node for Lyras' Cromwell 3 could in fact be made IRL today, but it's supercomputer, Blue Gene level of performance, and it will be a very long while - or a moderately long while and an enormous amount of money - for it to be able to fit into a tank and work there with acceptable reliability.

And all this also needs more personnel to maintain. As you make tank electronics approach avionics, the tank:manpower ratio will come closer to the aircraft:manpower ratio.

P-51, 1942.
As for the specifics, I didn't really look into the tanks, because the only point made is that in WWII tank costs were on the same order of magnitude as fighters, while now the difference is more than 10-fold.

So... If by close quarters battle with tanks you mean urban warfare, what would be particularly wrong with M1A2 with TUSK? And how specifically does M1A2 lack hunter-killer capabilities to satisfy your doctrine? These are actual questions to understand your doctrine, not rhetorical ones.

Assuming the enemy is not "NSified", e.g. limited to T-72 and T-80 for tanks.

---

Also, as a sidenote, you know this of course, but let's not forget that a real military would not be pondering the question of "Do we buy a $40m tank or not?", but rather the question of "Do we finally introduce the F-22, but keep using [your best pick out of RL tanks], or do we introduce the MCA-7M, but remain without stealth aircraft?"

This is not meant to criticize your NS policy, but rather to point out that in RL, which I'm more interested in, things boil down not to giving every unit the best you can, but rather to sacrificing one thing for another.

I'm applying them to infantry. The point is that it's not true that non-tank methods of killing tanks "had no effect on tank development". They had quite an effect in the situations where tank development could provide an effective response.

At the same time, a doctrine has to consider the world's imperfections.

It's not hard to imagine the NS tank race to continue. Let's go - 4.5, 9, 18, 35, 40, 100+... let's go up to a billion, because I can imagine a good faith billion dollar MBT still in MT, above that it has to be PMT.

And now let's assume that for all that time they evolved solely to fight one another, which is consistent with the idea that the tank's main purpose is to fight other tanks.

Which left them in the same position of shooting range inventory when something airborne comes near and starts lobbing top-attack missiles not limited by human carrying capacity, so they remain easy prey for the 20-million Ka-50, in this scenario.

Would you consider such tank development sensible, even if the doctrine presumes that there will always be fighters around which successfully protect them from helicopters and the supporting ground forces will always successfully clean the woods of (NSified) Javelin teams?

There are problems here as everywhere. For the most part, though, air superiority succeeds at greatly reducing enemy aircraft operations. Note BTW that it was again aircraft that did the damage, i.e. they can work without air superiority. And it is quite possible that aircraft could do the damage in many cases even if SAM and AAA were there. There are reasons the term "SEAD" exists.

Continuing where I left off...

Well, in Suviet/Russian doctrine, they are. That's why the Kuznetsov has those AShM launchers, to be the strike element of the "air wing" of tyhe carrier, allowing the Su-33s to fly exclusive CAP. And also because they used a ski jump and were limited in take off weight making the Su-33 less then ideal for strike flights anyway.

American doctrine looks differently, which is why you always have idiots (Especially in NSD) going "why do you have missiles on the carrier when you can have planes?"

Eh, espionage and planted spies/saboteurs were a major part of any WP/NATO war. Both side had them thoroughly set up, with the idea of considering them disposable Spec Ops for single missions within the first week or two of the war. I had read a comment regarding SAC once in one of the nuke-warfare books at the Queens University library that, according to the author, there were more Soviet agents around most US SAC bases then there were lawyers, doctors, and police combined. And I would expect the same to be true in Europe.

Oh no, RL doctrine in NS is fine, as long as you are following it and not trying to jam it in to some more NS-typed doctrine, like in Haven. Square peg, round hole.


Now to the second post...

So in reality, you're defeating your own cost argument, because Side A, having equal numbers of far more expensive aircraft, is going to cost far far far more then Side B. Reality is I still go with Side B, because either Side B is so over-matched in terms of expense that either Side A has exhausted itself economically and can no longer fight, or we're looking at a US versus Panama style fight. Or, we could consider equal cost and remember that Side B can put up three or more times of everything.

So in the end, yea, Side B is more cost effective.

It's more complicated then that, and as I have said, WW1 actually spans two generations worth of infantry set.

Heavy armour and uber-everything isn't used because it adds zero advantage in the end. It's weight intensive for light infantry, space intensive for mech infantry, and infantry have not operated as core maneuver formations for a long time.

As much as I hate to say it, Hienlein's PA would actually replace the tank, as it takes over much of the role of the tank as a primary, core maneuver element. Although do it highly inefficiently. Which is part of why you don;t see serious powered armour systems being seriously considered on any time frame by RL militaries. Although Sci-fi sticks to it like glue.

Doesn't matter to me if it's seen significant use, as it is intermediate. It's not uncommon for nations to skip generations of weapon systems to keep ahead of the game. Especially when they pioneer that generation.

Don't let anyone on II know this or we're all doomed, but the Maus was far from a failure. The only thing that doomed it was Hitler's changing whims, and the Soviets.

In that case then, really, go nuts with the gadgets, especially the stuff that isn't really needed but is flashy. Like a full 3d-rendering graphics engine which provides the crew with a 3d rendition of the outside world as displayed on sensors, like a video game. If that's the doctrine of the AAT, then go nuts.

Which civil war? The American, where tanks didn't exist and the only air power were balloons? Or the V10 civil war, where you make it up as a story and it's not a realistic military perspective to consider?

Not really. The primary assault weapon remains the hand grenade, and the infantryman, both close range weapons. I think you;d do well to read J.F.C Fuller's theories on this, as as crazy as he is, they're the singular basis for all modern warfare on land and in the air (And, really, at sea). Under this premise, the longer ranged weapon is always defensive to the shorter ranged weapon, and its sole purpose in this relationship is to allow the closer ranged weapon to do its job in the offensive. The ultimate expression of this, in modern times, is that strike fighters are acting in a defensive role towards ground formations, where the strike fighter's role is to secure the ability of the land maneuver element to achieve its objective of bringing the fight to the enemy and defeating them. If the enemy surrenders before that happens, well they suck.

Greater sensory input is actually cheap. I don't mean better or more powerful sensors, remember that. I mean looking at other effecing factors, like vehicle cant, like wind, like temperature. Part of the reason I am quite proud of the MCA-7's fire control is that it involves surface and air temperature measurements in its FCS, which is incredibly important to me in my terrain. Completely useless in MassPwnage for sure, but useful on hot open plains.

Dependence on combined arms is a pretty shaky reasoning. As, since the beginning of the tank, it has depended completely on combined arms. What you should be considering is that it involves the diversification of combined arms core units, which is pretty much what should be happening on the modern battlefield anyway. Combined arms diversification = the way of the future. You can quote me on that.

First, you know my feelings on Cromwell, so I won't bother discussing that.

Second though, they already are approaching those manpower ratios. The M1A2SEP requires the same number of support personnel to maintain then aircraft using the same generation of electronics did, maybe only a few less. The difference is, some of those personnel can be the crew (Pilots in the RL don't fix their own planes), and you can double-duty others better.

Where's the number from? In 1942 the P-51 was a POS, and its cost increased quite a bit when the engine swap happened and a number of other mods. Or, nominally, when the D came out. The number you have is probably for the A, which was quite cheap, but also a worthless fighter. And the best P-51 variant was the H, which cost quite a bit more then any other variant.

The problem with claims like that is you forget models, and instead pick a number that fits you best. Your source should either give you the model, or it's worthless in such an argument. I can take that logic and say a tank cost ten-fold what a fighter did in WW2 because an M26 Pershing cost ten times more then a Brewster Buffalo or Hawker Hurricane, despite being separated by more then six years.

Actually, I don't. Quite far from it actually. So let me explain in brief.

The tactical doctrine of Sumerian armoured formations involves closing to very close ranges with tanks. The idea is to get to ranges not seen between opposing tanks since Kursk, less then 200m. And the idea is to force the enemy to want to do this because the alternative is to engage in a long range shooting war with AFVs (Tanks and tank destroyers, artillery, and even planes outside of AFVs) in flat, open terrain. So the choice is fight in the open with everything, or close range and fight with the tanks, because artillery and planes can not be used in such a close range fight without serious friendly fire incidents. That's the primary reason behind the heavy-as-fuck side armour on the MCA-7 series.

To go to the rest without quoting it, and noting that the M1A2 is still a generation ahead of the T-80, I'll go on. The M1A2's HK capabilities are very centric to European conditions. It's incapable in the close range situation with dealing with all that happens. It's also incapable in the long-range fight, mostly due to the gun. It's an excellent medium-range platform, but it falters in the extremes, where I try to force the fight.

More often then it it boils down to which needs replacing first, the worn down tank chassis, or the worn down airframe. South Korea, for example, is replacing its tanks with more expensive ones, because their alternatives are mostly older. The US has newer tanks in service, and older aircraft. Sweden was in the same boat as South Korea, and did the same thing, but then was able to turn around and replace the fighters too. And Israel is doing yet the same thing, it's M60s and Merk I and IIs are worn to nothing, and need replacing, so the Merk IV comes out. Their air force doesn't need replacing yet, so their next-gen aircraft can wait. They're looking at the F-22 and F-35 because it will be available when they need to do it.

Of course they had an effect. The armour-gun cycle isn't restricted to the tank platform. It's better expressed as the survivability-firepower debate, which is what it's normally talked about. Armour-gun is just simpler. The AMX-30 and Leopard 1, for example, were armour advances, despite being less well protected in terms of armour then previous vehicles, but they were quicker and harder to hit due to area. When the Soviets went to the 125mm, and especially to the better FCS of the T-64, the next update had to be made, and it went to the Leopard 2 (And LeClerc), which kept the mobility/area survivability, and added thicker armour. The US actually skipped this generation, and the M60 is not in the same generation.

Not really, as the doctrine is the ideal. Your officers consider the imperfections, and apply around it. That's why you have them. Or you work on the obsolete model of rigid control, and then you're fucked against a modern military.

It is hard to imagine, because I can not see much more applicable technology that can continue to raise the cost.

Except part of the tank evolution is using top attack munitions on each other, and as such if they did so evolve, they would have been prepared for a top-attack by that nature. KSTAM didn't come about due to aircraft, it's for the K2 to use against North Korean tanks.

Noting the flawed presumption in evolution and how such evolution would go, it is sensible. Any threat infantry or helicopters can being to the tank, the tank is already bringing to itself, included guided munitions, top attack, and cluster munitions.

And until recently, SEAD is costly. And, as pointed out, air superiority does not have the same effect. If your enemy needs to make a land move, because they need a land objective (Which are still key to warfare, no matter what you want to think), they will (As in Kursk), make the operations. If they need it bad enough, they'll step them up despite your air superiority presence.