The tank isn’t dead, but its old battlefield playbook may be

For more than a century, armies have relied on tanks to smash through enemy lines, opening the way for forces behind them to exploit the breach.

Now, U.S. Army armored units must develop new tactics for a battlefield upended by drones and sensors if tanks are to remain viable, according to a new analysis from the Modern Warfare Institute at West Point that examines lessons from the war in Ukraine.

Instead of tanks initiating the breakthrough, other forces may increasingly need to create an opening for the tanks, according to the report, titled “Maneuver Isn’t Dead, Armor Isn’t Obsolete.”

Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, military analysts have debated the future combat role of tanks, with some military observers questioning whether large armored formations will continue to be relevant.

Drones, sensors, precision weapons and electronic warfare have made large concentrations of armored vehicles easier to detect and attack, challenging a model of warfare built around massing armor at a decisive point.

Although some critics have argued tanks are becoming obsolete due to such vulnerabilities, the Modern Warfare Institute report argues that armor can remain critical so long as it adapts to the new reality.

“It is true that armor and combined arms maneuver face significant challenges in the contemporary operating environment. Yet, while these challenges are formidable, they are not insurmountable,” wrote Lt. Col. Alan Hastings, Maj. James Casey and Capt. Elijah Leroux in the report published Aug. 28.

Cheap drones now allow enemy forces to bypass longstanding Western advantages in the air, the report said. Combined with pervasive surveillance, enemy forces can frustrate the Army’s ability to maneuver armored teams effectively.

“As a result, a new, contested dimension of the battlefield has emerged, in which the future viability of combined arms maneuver will be determined: the air-ground littoral,” the report said, referring to a low altitude zone where drones blur the boundary between air and land warfare.

Dominating that zone will be paramount before armored formations are committed to the fight, the authors wrote.

The report contends that dense reconnaissance and strike networks seen in Ukraine are not impenetrable and can be exploited, but units will need to look for openings in the seams. 

“Enemy reconnaissance-strike complexes and their ability to contest the air-ground littoral are neither monolithic nor arrayed uniformly throughout the battlespace,” the analysis said.

Rather than massing tanks at the outset to overwhelm the enemy, forces could use electronic warfare and drones to carve out temporary windows of opportunity in which the enemy’s ability to detect tank movements has been degraded, the report said. 

That would represent a more tailored approach to tank warfare than the massed formations of the 20th century.

Tanks emerged in World War I as a means of overcoming trenches and machine gun fire. By World War II, massed armored formations were vital, enabling the Army to blend mobility and firepower to rupture defenses.

That approach persisted through the Cold War and into the modern era.

But the war in Ukraine has complicated how ground forces fight. Both Russian and Ukrainian forces have repeatedly struggled to mass armored formations without being detected.

“Today’s armored brigade combat team, armored division, and armored corps cannot combine yesterday’s arms to solve the problems posed by tomorrow’s battlefield,” the report said.

The Army has already invested heavily in incorporating drones and air defenses intended to support operations on the modern battlefield in connection with the service’s ongoing transformation efforts, the report noted. 

However, the future relevance of armored units could hinge on how well the Army shares lessons from its training centers across the force.

“Armor’s continuous transformation will be incomplete if it is exclusively driven from the top-down ... Junior leaders of the armor branch—lieutenants, captains, and noncommissioned officers—must lead this charge from the front. Waiting for doctrine to catch up to the realities on the ground risks descent into irrelevance,” the report said.