Is the Tank Obsolete?
Or just going through a slump?
As an old Marine, the prospect of turning mothballed battleships into shore bombardment platforms occupies of a place of particular honor in the cockles of my green, amphibious heart.
As someone who watches far too much YouTube, I have enjoyed many videos that tell tales of old-timey weapons that proved useful long after their sell-by dates. (Many of my favorite examples of this genre feature the Fairey Swordfish, the mighty sinker of Italian warships of the early days of the Second World War.)
As a student of the history of armored fighting, I remember three occasions - in the 1930s, the 1970s, and the aughties - when writers on military subjects announced the impending demise of the tank. (In the last of these eras, I joined the picayune parade of pundits predicting that fiber-optic guided missiles would do to steel-covered caterpillars what early-modern cannon did to medieval castles.)
With these things in mind, I approach the question at the top of this post with a great deal of trepidation. (Note, if you will, the bemused expressions on the faces of the angels watching yet another fool rush in.) Nonetheless, reports from the battlefields of the past five years, especially those of Nagorno-Karabakh and Ukraine, have convinced me that the main battle tank - that is, a fully-tracked, heavily armored vehicle optimized to kill others of its ilk - has gone the way of MySpace.