Expert Article: Tanks and Their Usefulness in Relation to Drone Warfare

    Picture this in your mind. You are a soldier, and you’re in a squad with eight other soldiers. You only have a rifle, seven magazines with 30 rounds meant to take out another human, and two of your squadmates have grenades. You are patrolling through a forest, but just as you almost make it out of the clear, your squad leader pulls you back with sweaty palms. What you didn’t realize among the cracking branches and brushing leaves were the sounds of tracks and squeaking. You peek and see a metal behemoth with treads spun beneath the turning wheels with the main gun that is capable of sending out projectiles that can turn you into fine red mist out of its gargantuan barrel. You and your squad would have been wiped out had the enemy tank spotted you. Coming face to face with what is known as one of the most dangerous machines of war is considered an instant death sentence. Tanks, since their creation, have always been a subject of fear and deadly force, but in recent years, the countermeasures to dealing with them almost seem trivial. Now, the machine of war that draws even ethical concerns comes into view, the drone. With the drone dominating tanks and all around the battlefield, just how useful are the wheeled metal behemoths now?

    It has been 79 years since the United States has been in an officially declared war, so we have not yet since to actually gauge the effectiveness of tanks in the time of relative peace with today’s arsenal. However, there has been a war unfolding before us for the past few years between Russia and Ukraine. There’s a saying that promotes the usefulness for tanks: “If Infantry is the queen of battle, then Armor is the one that prevents her from getting ****ed.” That has held true since their development and deployment in 1915. They were a force to be reckoned with and must be dealt with using high risk anti-tank tactics and required specialized equipment just to take down a single tank. With the Russo-Ukrainian War, it shows that armored units are easy to take out via drones armed with explosives. “When an unarmed drone, such as a Puma or Orlan-10, finds an enemy artillery unit, a kamikaze drone is then launched to destroy the gun or radar” (Pettyjohn, 2024). It’s not even armored units that are taking heavy hits, but artillery units as well with their mortar emplacements. 

    The development of commercial drones into machines of war were unexpected due to the abundance and price of said drones. Ukraine was the first when it came to developing the first-person view kamikaze drones created from cheap racing drones that were originally meant for commercial use, but Russia followed suit quickly and soon overtook them in the production of cheap weaponized drones that would only run for about $400. The anti-tank tactics used by drones go as follows: A durable surveillance drone would spot targets in which a fast kamikaze drone with short battery life would then charge towards its target and explode. The initial attack is not meant to completely destroy the tank, but to kill its mobility. These drones are not to be mistaken as a replacement to anti-tank weapons, as kamikaze drones must work in tandem with surveillance drones or existing weapon systems in order to be effective since they carry a smaller explosion capability at a long range in contrast to the American Javelin, a team-carried rocket launcher that costs approximately $250,000. Kamikaze drone attacks focus on taking out tank mobility, then follow up with focused drone strikes on the tanks’ weak spots such as the back of the turret or gas tank. Due to the effectiveness of these strikes, Ukraine had to force their “forces near the frontlines to eschew the use of vehicles in favor of distributed dismounted maneuver and assaults” (Pettyjohn, 2024). 

    What these drones cannot do is reproduce the amount of firepower and suppression that artillery salvos and armored units are able to produce. When looking at artillery in particular, the basic 155mm shell used by the US, it carries 24 pounds of explosives that can be fired at a sustained rate of fire to rain hell on the enemies. Drones can only carry 3 pounds and must be manually coordinated with other drones due to electronic interference and such. As a result, drones cannot produce the same rate and amount of fires. Tanks, specifically the M1 Abram, carry a variety of armaments on them, their main gun shooting 120mm shells and machine guns that hold 900 rounds of 7.62. These tanks are able to provide cover from direct gunfire for ally forces while being able to dish out an enormous amount of direct fire onto the enemies. In the instances of having to seize and/or deny advantageous ground in a counter attack, armored units will prove to be a key factor to its success. “Kharkiv was followed by substantial Ukrainian advances in northern Kherson in early October and the recapture of the rest of the oblast west of the Dnipro in mid-November. Tanks and other armored vehicles played a major role in both offensives, and further gains look likely” (Biddle, 2022). Ukraine, even though there was a time where most of their tanks had to be sidelined out of safety, has made efficient use of their tanks as seen with the Kharkiv Offensive and how they were able to recapture over 6,000 square kilometers of Russian ground. 

    It is not as if drones are invincible. Like all machines of war and special units, there are counters to them. There are already quickly developed countermeasures for tanks such as small arms fire, counter drone droning, cope cages, jamming technology, and obfuscation. Skilled drone pilots are also such a niche group compared to tank operators and mortar teams, who are trained by qualified people in a system that has been improving since the unit’s creation. With the sudden use of drones, there are not nearly enough skilled drone pilots that are actually in the military to operate in a war. The tank is not obsolete, but our tactics and designs are. With the battlefield evolving and “the proven cost effectiveness of increasingly lethal systems designed to defeat modern armor with top-down munitions or precision fires”, how we use tanks and how tanks will be improved upon must also be changed (Hoffman, 2023). Doctrinal tactics on all levels must be revised in order to keep up with a battlefield that evolves in both innovation and violence.

Works Cited

Biddle, Stephen. “Ukraine and the Future of Offensive Maneuver.” War on the Rocks, 21 Nov. 2022, warontherocks.com/2022/11/ukraine-and-the-future-of-offensive-maneuver/.

Hoffman, Frank. “American Defense Priorities after Ukraine .” War on the Rocks, 2 Jan. 2023, warontherocks.com/2023/01/american-defense-priorities-after-ukraine/.

Johnson, David. “Would We Do Better? Hubris and Validation in Ukraine.” War on the Rocks, 31 May 2022, warontherocks.com/2022/05/would-we-do-better-hubris-and-validation-in-ukraine/.

Pettyjohn, Stacie. “Drones Are Transforming the Battlefield in Ukraine but in an Evolutionary Fashion.” War on the Rocks, 12 June 2024, warontherocks.com/2024/03/drones-are-transforming-the-battlefield-in-ukraine-but-in-an-evolutionary-fashion/.

Watling, Jack. “The War Will Grind on: Reflecting on a Year of War in Ukraine.” War on the Rocks, 27 Feb. 2023, warontherocks.com/2023/02/the-war-will-grind-on-reflecting-on-a-year-of-war-in-ukraine/.