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Not a soldier here, so I'm asking out of ignorance:
What does "support the tanks with infantry" mean?

I'm trying to wrap my head around it and not getting very far.

The way it looks to me, is that the opposing infantry unit(s) will likely spread out their missile systems.  You probably won't have one in every squad, but maybe every platoon?  
Regardless, the infantry will be scattered about and as soon as a missile crew has line of sight on a tank, I'd expect them to fire, out to 2 or 3 miles or whatever the javelin or equivalent system's range is.  Even with a disparity in budget, the opposing infantry should be effectively saturated with anti-armor systems and able to deploy them anywhere.

How does infantry support tanks against this?  
Sure, you can push infantry out and screen the tanks, but the enemy can still effectively fire on/kill your tanks as soon as they have line of sight.  If you keep your tanks back and out of view, then the missile teams can't fire on them, but at that point, are your tanks even in the fight?  The traditional tank has to be up close with line of sight to employ the gun and engage the enemy.

Just pulling numbers off google: if an M1 Abrams costs $6.2 million, and a javelin about $80k, you could have over 75 missiles for the same cost.  For a fraction of the cost of a tank, the opposition can be swimming in anti-armor weapons.

Do you screen the tanks with infantry, but keep your tanks close enough to the fight to see and fire on the enemy?  It seems that in this case, you're hoping that the missile crew(s) don't see & engage before your tanks?
That's talking current systems.


I expect near future and next gen anti-armor systems to eliminate the need for the missile team to put their eyes on a tank to engage it.  We've already been testing NLOS systems, but I could see a slightly smarter javelin gaining the ability to fire over terrain/buildings and enage a target.  Spotters with GPS connected rangefinders could designate specific targets, or, a near future system could theoretically blind fire over terrain or obstacles and pick its own target.  At that point, you'd just need a guy, drone, or security camera to give your missile crew a rough direction to shoot.
If we're talking future systems, do we just rely on active protection systems and ECM?  Hope APS ammo is cheaper than missiles, and that the opposing infantry doesn't ripple fire and overwhelm the APS?

I'm not going to jump out and say tanks are obsolete, but I'm having trouble seeing how you effectively employ them against a near-peer who's invested in anti-armor weapons instead of their own tanks.

ETA:
Saw a few posts while I was typing that.

If we're opening this up to combined arms and laying waste to everything with artillery and CAS, what's the point of the tank?  If you're not pushing it up and shooting people with the tank, it's not in the fight.  If it's not in the fight, why'd we bring it?

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If we're opening this up to combined arms and laying waste to everything with artillery and CAS, what's the point of the tank?  If you're not pushing it up and shooting people with the tank, it's not in the fight.  If it's not in the fight, why'd we bring it?

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I’ve kind of wondered this myself. Is a tank still useful if your enemy possesses a weapon useable by infantry on foot that can reliably destroy tanks for a minimal cost?

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It weighs 60 pounds and travels at 85mph and you think Raytheon and Rafael won’t figure out how to shoot it down?

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Tanks and infantry can support each other, but of course it isn't perfect.  They can still get hurt, but its probably better than sending them in alone.  The idea that infantry screening in front of tanks is still sound.  Infantry can flush out missile teams that are close and put pressure on ones firing at longer ranges.  Tanks can support the infantry by providing direct fire to enemy positions and screening for enemy armor.  Artillery (lethal and smoke) helps as well.  Air support, same thing.  

The main thing that tanks can do that infantry can't is penetrate and exploit behind the lines.  If you can break through the lines, you need an armored mobile force with firepower to tear up the rear areas where the supplies/artillery/and support troops are.  You can attempt an encirclement as well if you can get enough forces through the gap and then take lightly defended areas.  Of course, without air superiority, this isn't easy, but its still a viable strategy.  Encircling your enemy denies them resupply and stop them from retreating.  You can take out an entire force in one fell swoop.  It worked well for the Russians in Stalingrad.

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So? Battleships figured out how to shoot planes down, did that make them relevant?

GD has talked about strategic consequences of long range drones - hitting oil refineries, or US troops as they get off a ship before driving hundreds of miles overland to attack. Consider the tactical consequences of short range ones. Drones bring what America proposed with Assault Breaker - using smart weapons to kill Soviet follow-on echelons - out of the division or corps level to the squad level. To the individual, if he has an alarm clock and a technical.

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That mobility mattered when it was necessary close with the enemy in order to make contact and destroy them.  Now you can target the enemy with drones and destroy them with precision guided fires.

ATGMs aren't new, but man portable 4km+ range fire and forget ATGMs that can be fired from confined spaces are, and operating tanks in a way that minimizes their risk to such ATGMs likely means limiting their tactical mobility.

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Were Sagger missiles any good?

https://www.military-today.com/missiles/malyutka.jpg

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Since the Javelin Missile has been so deadly with a 93% reported success rate.  Does this make tanks obsolete moving forward?  Ukraine didn’t have many tanks and due to this missile, has given them a huge edge.  Javelins appear to be plentiful and cheap compared to outfitting your army with tanks.  

I wouldn’t want to be in a tank facing an adversary that has tons of javelins.   The sheer amount of Russian tanks destroyed is amazing.  Their tanks don’t seem to be an advantage and they are huge magnets.

Am I wrong?

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That's what the nlaws are for.

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A tank isn’t like a battleship. What made battleships irrelevant wasn’t their vulnerability, it was their short range.

A drone is mostly a cheap, slow missile. The advantage is it’s cheap, the disadvantage is it’s slow.

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Missiles can’t take or hold ground.

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Were Sagger missiles any good?

https://www.military-today.com/missiles/malyutka.jpg

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People forget that one of the number one roles of a tank is to reduce enemy strong points.  Bunkers, guns, any kind of emplacement, the main gun will make short work of it. It's not just to bust other tanks.

It also has coax 762 and a 50 Cal on top that can be operated from inside. Not to mention anti-personnel loads for the main gun. It can also chew up enemy infantry.

The tanks support the infantry in the infantry supports the tanks. When it's done properly the sum total of both is greater than the individual components by far.

The Russians problem is they don't know how to dance and we do.

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Tanks are short ranged like battleships. LOS sensors, LOS dumb weapons. Tank designers optimized tanks for a Lanchesterian world - first armor to survive dumb indirect, then more to survive dumb direct, culminating in the T72's tiny turret and carousel storage safely out of LOS.
A technical with drones is like a nuclear carrier. Its drones fly faster than a tank can drive and see farther. The drones fly over terrain the tank can't and the technical drives farther than the tank can.

The precision electronics in drones also go in ballistic missiles for penetrating to kill enemy support/supplies/artillery. You can look down from the sky with radar and perform a virtual encirclement.

IMO, today tanks are for scouting and HE in cities, and mostly because we already have them.

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Thanks (everyone)
I'm learning, but I still think the price differential will allow anti-armor systems to saturate the battlefield and seriously hamper tank usage.

Why wouldn't the support, supply, and artillery units have a javelin or two handy, if there was potential for them to encounter armor trying to break through?
How does the tank reduce a strong point or machine gun nest when said strong point/mg nest launches javelins at it?

In 5-10 years, the javelin equivalent will have enhanced non-line of sight capability, and missile teams located anywhere within 2-4 miles can engage the tanks.

I'm still hung up thinking that the traditional tank needs line of sight to engage, but any unit with line of sight can engage back with a less expensive, super easy to use, and extremely effective weapon.  
Then, once NLOS capabilities roll out, any enemy having line of sight on the tanks can communicate it to missile teams located almost anywhere to engage and kill.  At this point, wouldn't being seen by anyone get the tank killed?  (Barring effective APS)

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Why would artillery use a Javelin when they could use heat seeking munitions in their weapons?

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A tank round is cheaper than a drone that can destroy a tank, it can be used in weather and lighting conditions that require expensive drones rather than what you’re talking about, and most importantly, a tank can hold ground. It can work with infantry to crawl into places drones aren’t effective in.

The solution is a mix of all of these things. They call that combined arms and that’s something the US is really good at.

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I was referring to a self defense role in event of armor breaking through the main line and directly engaging the artillery, as alluded to by other posters, but directly loading anti-armor munitions in the artillery makes more sense to me, at least if we get away from the towed and manually operated artillery that traditionalists seem to love.

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Before counting the ammo, you have to buy 6 million of tank to shoot it; which balances against a hundred drones and a technical. So you're a couple thousand more expensive with every round. Then there's the fuel - those drones can hit yours faster than you theirs, at which point you're holding ground the Russians-in-Ukraine way.

IMO, you'd still need infantry to walk around after the combined 5 or 6 layers of different drones and sensors search and report to 3 or 4 kinds of artillery. So they'd have an IFV with APS to protect their first-world lives from survivors down to their AKMs and last drones. But the scouting and killing functions of the tank are replaceable.

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Oh so you trust systems to keep your IFVs safe but tanks are fucked?
You don’t think there’s any future in counter UAS systems? Interesting.

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Serious question can a javelin middle be jammed mid flight?

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There is an article called, "Why Arab Militaries Suck" or something to that effect.

The US military is not like pretty much any other military on the planet.

You can kill the general and there will be ten people who can take his place all the way down to the platoon sgt. The amount of ability that US military people have to overcome casualties and continue to be effective is truly mind boggling.

The Russians and Arabs specifically have effectively zero capability to sustain higher ranking casualties and continue being combat effective. Their militaries are basically kingdoms within kingdoms. In almost all cases, you can lose most of the officers and the U.S. military people will still function at near full capacity, and in some cases operate at a higher level without officer fuckery where most officers nowadays are more concerned with getting their next bar, bird, or star than they are actually developing leadership ability and leading their people.

The last time I was in Qatar we were tasked with helping Lockheed train Qataris on how to maintain their J model C130's. All of us that went were astonished when we realized that the people we were training were Qatari mid level officers and they were essentially lower enlisted as far as the amount of power and responsibility they had. The Qatari regular enlisted were, as a rule, barely literate in 90% of cases and were absolutely not allowed to do anything more complex than sweep floors and move shit around. Literally we had Qatari officers learning to do engine changes and turn wrenches.

Their middle officers were basically our version of lower NCO's, and whenever we taught one of them something, that guy would try to order us to not teach what we just taught him to anyone else and would get all assmad when we would anyway. He wanted to be the answer man so that he was essential. Now let that guy take a bullet to the head, who would be able to do his job?

American military people tend to teach their job to everyone else so that knowledge is spread out so that there is always someone to take their place.

The Russians, for as much as I see them, operate very similar to the Qataris.

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And when the sky gets turned into a microwave and they are all dried? What then?

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LOL because throwing out a signal that powerful isn't like putting a spotlight on yourself at night in Minnesota farm country in the middle of July and wondering why you have a billion Mosquitoes after you.

The amount of power required for that is basically the entire output of a nuclear powerplant.

So not feasible for a lot of reasons.

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IIRC back in the day they used to put cages around vehicles to detonate RPGs before they hit our vehicles.

Seems like something like that may also protect tanks.

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It would also hinder the main gun.

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People forget that one of the number one roles of a tank is to reduce enemy strong points.  Bunkers, guns, any kind of emplacement, the main gun will make short work of it. It’s not just to bust other tanks.

It also has coax 762 and a 50 Cal on top that can be operated from inside. Not to mention anti-personnel loads for the main gun. It can also chew up enemy infantry.

The tanks support the infantry in the infantry supports the tanks. When it’s done properly the sum total of both is greater than the individual components by far.

The Russians problem is they don’t know how to dance and we do.

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When competent CAS turns the missile operators into pink mist, then tanks are GTG.  Add in some aimed artillery / mortars and those missile operators will be long gone.  

Add in reactive armor that works...  

But all the Armchair generals will say "Oh, we are all EXPERTS now, since we watched UKR defeat Russia from our Lazybois and know what to do!!!"

LMFAO, go drink another beer and mow your lawn.

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Are we regressing to horse and mule or are soldiers going to walk everywhere?

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We couldn't dance in that environment either. You're talking moving troops, tanks, and soft targets with more than a mile and a half on either side as a buffer zone.

This is, in the simplest terms, known as, "Impossible" and we would be taking pretty grevious losses too. I do commend your faith in combined arms, but think you're not really basing this in reality. John Woo doesn't direct war, so most infantry isn't just going to get to knife range before engaging, they're highly unlikely to get shot by the main OR the coax, and worse for you is that they might just say, "Fuck You" and go beat up on the fuel trucks. Ask any group of military officers what it would be like to move infantry with as little as 600 yards on either side as a buffer and they'll likely tell you that that situation is just as difficult up to impossible as doing so with a mile and a half on either side of your armor.

The Javelins have little to no launch signature, and even if you saw where it came from, there is no guarantee that the launch team is going to be there when retribution arrives. From the time that you saw a launch to the time artillery arrives is measured in minutes. If they aren't shooting and scooting, they're fucking idiots who deserve to get nailed by artillery anyway. That means you're going to have to send in infantry sans armor to make it safe for the armor, and they're going to have to cover areas measured in square miles to do it. I don't want to be a guy walking into a hostile urban environment because fuck that.

You have to realize that the Russians are getting shat upon while they're OUTSIDE the cities in the open in pretty much flat terrain.

I mean, if you're talking about just leveling entire cities with artillery, great! We are likely to get to see that eventuality in The Ukraine.