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Will tanks survive future warfare?

global.espreso.tv
Tue, 08 Jul 2025 16:32:00 +0300
Will tanks survive future warfare?
1. The United States, Germany, Poland are buying armored vehicles2. Technological changes on the battlefield3. Hunting for tanks: how to overcome vulnerability4. Armored vehicles of the future and ways to improve themIn early July 2025, several developments emerged directly related to the future of tanks. As known, the appearance of the heavy Nemesis drone in Ukraine’s Defense Forces in summer 2024, nicknamed "Baba Yaga" by Russian forces, marked a turning point. With a range of over 20 km, Nemesis forced Russian armored vehicles to retreat more than 20 kilometers from the front line, significantly expanding the danger buffer zone for enemy tanks and armored vehicles.Overall, 2024 cast serious doubt on the future of tanks and light armor. Yet leading Western defense developers continue to act as if tanks haven’t faced a strategic challenge, treating the current tactical issues as easily manageable.A return to the armies of the 20th century?The United States made an unexpected decision to buy passive protection systems for its armored vehicles, especially tanks. This move was directly influenced by lessons from the war in Ukraine. The U.S. Army plans to purchase 1,500 upper-hemisphere protection kits that closely resemble the metal grilles and nets used on the battlefield in Ukraine to defend against drone attacks.Germany's decision is even more surprising. Berlin is now preparing to buy up to 2,500 GTK Boxer infantry fighting vehicles and 1,000 Leopard 2 tanks as part of a joint European effort to build new brigades to deter Russia. The total cost could reach 25 billion euros.In addition, the Bundeswehr has received approval to buy over 1,000 Finnish Patria armored personnel carriers for up to 2 billion euros, replacing its outdated Fuchs vehicles.Berlin’s new decisions mark a big step up from last year. In July 2024, Germany agreed to spend about 6 billion euros on various weapons and military equipment, including just 105 Leopard 2A8 tanks worth 2.93 billion euros.Meanwhile in Poland, where the military buys tanks by the hundreds from the U.S. and South Korea, tank crews have unexpectedly started learning how to assemble FPV drones.The contrast is clear. Poland openly connects its efforts to the fight against drones, while Germany acts as if drones don’t dominate the battlefield.The French and British are taking a more cautious approach. France plans to upgrade just 100 Leclerc tanks to the new Leclerc XLR version. The order was quietly placed with KNDS France in late December 2024.Britain, on the other hand, is moving closer to a major shift in its military strategy. Since May 2025, London has been leaning toward a force structure made up of 80% drones — unmanned and autonomous.So, will tanks survive in the wars of the future?Vulnerability on the battlefield: what happened to tanksThe widespread use of drones from 2022 to 2025, especially strike variants, has drastically changed the role of tanks and other armored vehicles on the battlefield.On January 18, 2025, the OSINT project Oryx reported that Russia had lost at least 20,000 pieces of equipment during the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. This included at least 3,708 tanks, 5,366 infantry fighting vehicles, and 1,863 armored combat vehicles.Some losses are especially striking: in just one year of fighting near Pokrovsk, Russian forces lost at least 554 tanks. In only two months of battles in the Kursk direction, they lost another 45.The situation has become so desperate that Russian troops have even started using outdated BTR-50 armored personnel carriers on the front lines (including the BTR-50PK and the command version, BTR-50PU).Since summer 2024, Russia has mostly stopped using tanks in assaults. While some tanks still supported infantry, these attempts failed. On the Ukrainian front, tank attacks have become suicidal for Russian forces. In January 2025, Forbes reported that small strike drones have made large-scale armored assaults nearly impossible. "Every time Russian regiments try to attack with vehicles, the result is zero," the article stated.But it’s not just Soviet-era and post-Soviet tanks that are vulnerable. Modern warfare has exposed the weaknesses of even the best Western models, including the American Abrams, German Leopard, and British Challenger. By early 2025, tanks and armored combat vehicles — large and easy to spot — had become prime targets for drone operators. As a result, their ability to support infantry and lead assaults has sharply declined.During the war, the American Abrams tank showed several weaknesses that raise doubts about the effectiveness of such armored vehicles. According to the Ukrainian military, the Abrams lacks enough armor to withstand modern weapons and fully protect its crew. It has become the "number one target" for Russian forces. This vulnerability applies to almost all other tanks and less protected combat vehicles as well. However, the military acknowledges that Western equipment offers better crew survivability than Soviet-Russian models. This advantage could be the starting point for a new future for tanks and armored vehicles.Over three and a half years of large-scale war, the role of armored vehicles has changed drastically. The widespread use of drones, anti-tank minefields, and precision weapons has made life very difficult for tanks on the battlefield. Now, tanks must be protected with anti-drone nets, metal grilles, and electronic warfare systems — but their survival remains uncertain.Military commanders at the battalion and brigade levels still lack a clear, unified strategy for using tanks or coordinating tank and infantry operations. Both sides, using reconnaissance drones and loitering munitions, have turned tank operations into dangerous "hunts." Today, using tanks is even riskier than flying helicopters.Improvement and protectionFor the main European powers, it is clear that they need to rethink the design and future role of armored vehicles, especially tanks. Signs that Europe is "waking up" and speeding up efforts to solve the "tank problem" appeared in early 2024. In March, Western media reported a major breakthrough in updated agreements between France and Germany. Their joint company KNDS (formed by French Nexter and German Krauss-Maffei Wegmann) agreed to develop the tank of the future. This shows they recognize the need for new battlefield solutions.The poor performance of Leopard tanks and others in Ukraine made this obvious to developers and manufacturers. All tanks tend to burn easily when hit by modern weapons — from anti-tank missiles to Lancet-type swarm drones.The modern combat vehicle concept must change significantly. It should integrate electronic warfare, anti-drone defenses, and the latest weapons like lasers or electromagnetic ammunition. The MGCS project is not just about building the next-generation tank — it is about creating the Main Ground Combat System, the core system for future ground combat. Although the project officially started in May 2020, it gained real momentum only in 2024.The focus will likely move beyond bigger guns or unmanned turrets toward a deeper redesign of how tanks fight and survive on the battlefield.Another important aspect is synergy — working together to achieve results. This includes Italy joining the ambitious plan to develop the next-generation MGCS tank. When Italy joined, it was expected that the new tank would be based on the promising German KF51 Panther, which is essentially a modernized version of the Leopard 2A4.In June 2024, KNDS revealed a new version of the Leopard 2 with an unmanned turret. This reflects a clear trend toward improving vehicle survivability and protecting crews. The crew size was reduced to three, who sit safely inside a specially protected capsule. The turret has a very low profile, making the tank harder to spot. Its loading system can fire three rounds in 10 seconds, and it can fit guns of 120mm, 130mm, or 140mm caliber. The turret also supports a remotely controlled combat module and can integrate anti-tank missiles and drones. The tank’s hull features extra dynamic armor, and it can be equipped with an active protection system.Europe’s commitment to tanks shows in KNDS’s January 2025 announcement about testing the ASCALON dual-caliber 140/120 mm tank gun, a project first revealed in April 2021.Increasing the gun caliber is one trend in future tank development, but it’s not the main focus. Experts noted that recent test videos showed firing a multi-purpose cumulative projectile and demonstrated how the 140 mm barrel can be quickly swapped for a 120 mm one, as both use the same breech. They also revealed a new 140 mm armor-piercing fin-stabilized subcaliber round designed for this gun.German developers made an interesting move by planning the Leopard 3 with a new gun and automatic loader, serving as a “bridge” to the MGCS. This upgraded tank will get a larger-caliber gun with an automatic loader, a new engine, and improved protection.In February 2025, Germany sped up development. KNDS Deutschland, Rheinmetall, and Hensoldt began technical research to build a more powerful engine, create various types of 130 mm ammunition, develop a new protection system, and design an automatic field correction system for the main battle tank.Experts believe there’s a need for an “intermediate” Leopard 3 tank because the MGCS likely won’t appear until the 2040s. However, the rapid pace of technological advances during the 2022–2025 war suggests this timeline might be wrong. Real solutions could arrive in just 2 to 3 years, or even sooner. Otherwise, tanks and armored personnel carriers risk being pushed off the modern battlefield and losing their traditional roles.In 2025, some new developments hinted at a possible return of tanks. For example, in May, Germany took an innovative step to fight drone dominance using drones themselves. The company TYTAN Technologies developed the Interceptor S, an AI-powered drone designed to protect Boxer wheeled armored vehicles from FPV attack drones. The interceptor carries a one-kilogram warhead.Armored vehicles of the future and ways to improve themThe dominance of various types of drones on the battlefield of Russia's full-scale war against Ukraine has not been able to "bury" the tank as a type of weapon. Several conclusions from the assessment of the current situation are quite obvious.The main battle tank and lighter combat vehicles at the current stage of battlefield transformation, under the pressure of the rapid development of new (often quite cheap and massive) means of destruction, primarily unmanned systems, have significantly reduced the weight of weapons, which played a key role in supporting infantry in the offensive in the conditions of a modern full-scale war.In the current conditions, it is often about atypical roles of tanks and armored personnel carriers. For example, in April 2024, it became known that in the 37th separate marine brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, French AMX-10RCs were used as self-propelled guns for firing from closed positions - while an artillery compass had to be installed on the machine in field conditions. And these are forced decisions that indicate a certain loss of part of the traditional role of tanks and infantry fighting vehicles.At this stage, a number of world manufacturers are trying to solve the issue of protecting tanks and armored personnel carriers in various ways. The concept of using influence on unmanned systems, including means based on new physical principles, has some development. Although experts believe that the issue of using laser devices has not been fully worked out, India's decision in June 2024 to produce the latest generation of American Stryker armored personnel carriers, including laser systems to counter drones, may indicate some development in the direction. Also in 2024, experts from the specialized portal The War Zone proposed a similar concept - to install small-sized lasers on tanks that could "blind" the optical elements of the guidance systems of strike drones, thereby reducing the effectiveness of this type of weaponry.The United States, Britain, China, South Korea and some others are betting on lasers. In June 2024, a US Army laser shot down a drone for the first time in combat conditions. In this regard, the United States began to say that lasers could probably become the main means of countering drones. The US military currently has approximately 31 different combat laser programs.In early 2024, the United Kingdom conducted tests of the DragonFire laser complex, which confirmed the possibility of effective use of the system against aerial targets such as quadcopters and military drones. During one of the tests, the British 50+ kW energy laser installation intercepted an artillery mine fired in flight.In 2025, Britain decided to install these extremely expensive laser complexes (two complexes cost about $ 326 million) on Type 45 missile destroyers. However, key developers are implementing the intentions of strengthening tanks and armored personnel carriers with lasers along with the installation of combat missile modules to combat air targets.The existing solutions proposed in Europe for improving tanks seem to be "intermediate" - such that at this stage they do not completely solve the problems, but only indicate promising areas of development. In this regard, it is not excluded that Ukraine may be the one to get closer to breakthrough solutions faster. In particular, we are talking about the fact that both in building offensive tactics and in building protection for the most important nomenclature of weapons, a multi-level system will have to be built. At the same time, the evolution of the development of drones themselves has already proven that the principle of "like treats like" is quite effective here. That is, the best countermeasure to drones is the drones themselves, the interceptors. There are suggestions that drones, for example, "tied" to tanks and infantry fighting vehicles on fiber optics, may be one of the most effective ways to protect tanks, or even modern ground combat platforms, and have already had some practical development. So, most likely, we will witness how, as early as 2025, new system solutions for protecting attacking armored vehicles will be built, as well as technologies for attacking armored vehicles will be polished - in the end, the better-trained teams and those who will be the first to integrate state-of-the-art programs, i.e. elements of artificial intelligence, into such systems will win.That is why the military emphasizes: tanks and armored vehicles in general, despite the fierce pressure from unmanned systems, are still too early to write off today. In this context, the opinion of a professional military, a career tanker is quite interesting: Deputy Chief of the Main Directorate of Doctrines and Training of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Colonel Yevhen Mezhevikin (Hero of Ukraine, full holder of the Orders of Bohdan Khmelnytsky) believes that "tanks will continue to remain a technique that can decide the outcome of the battle." The commander of the tactical group "Adam", which has been fighting since 2014, made a very simple and logical statement in November 2024: "The use of armored vehicles will increase when there is an effective defense system." Naturally, in response to any type of weapon, there will be development of defense against it: this is a classic confrontation of weapons. Means are needed that can fight drones, anti-tank complexes of various types. The defense forces in this situation need to constantly play ahead.The material was prepared in cooperation with the Consortium for Defense Information (CDI), a project that united Ukrainian analytical and research organizations and aimed at strengthening information support and analytical support in the field of national security, defense and geopolitics.
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