Future Tank Capabilities

In the previous post, I took at look at whether tanks will continue to exist for the foreseeable future (yes) despite improvements in weaponry.  In this post I’ll take a look at what sort of capabilities I think such a vehicle will have — onboard UAS, defilade engagement munitions, and closing the standoff gap with ATGMs.  I’m not sure whether active protection systems will eliminate the need for heavy armor, but I lean towards “no”.  These increased capabilities will make four-man crews ideal even with an autoloaded main gun.

Note on Autonomy

The ability to operate in a degraded or contested EW/low-altitude air environment will probably be a defining characteristic of a future tank, because in a completely permissive environment it will always be safer and more cost effective to fire a networked standoff munition.  So while a future tank will be integrated into battlefield networks just as they are today, it should never rely on this to kill the enemy or deny terrain.  In this way it is the inverse of an artillery piece which attacks from standoff under direction from a third party but has a non-central direct fire capability.

In a completely permissive environment, a battle tank will also be a less cost-effective sensor than something stripped of a tank’s protection and firepower.

Protection

The biggest question about protection of the future tank is whether it should dump its ultra-heavy armor.  This could happen because new munitions make armor useless, because of the availability of more effective alternatives to heavy armor, or some combination.

M1A2C / SEPv3.  Visible: Standard side-skirt ERA, more turret front armor, Trophy APS.

I assume that APS is the replacement for heavy armor.  Even if some breakthrough in materials science occurs that allows a drastic increase in the protection:weight ratio of armor, which I don’t think likely, there is the perennial problem of lightweight equipment: when the weight of something decreases, you usually just carry more of it.

Reliable APS being a relatively new technology, no one appears ready to strip the armor off their tanks in favor of it.  Even an ideal APS will require much more attention from the crew than armor does now and will sometimes not be working.  Will future commanders allow their tanks to go into battle with an inoperable APS?  If tank armor continues to provide the level of protection against likely threats that it does today (pretty good), then probably yes.  If a vehicle is in little better shape than a jeep without its APS system, then probably not.

If antiarmor munitions continue to improve and proliferate, this decision could eventually become pointless, but I don’t think that we will get there.  The HEAT warhead has probably reached its maximum penetration-to-size ratio, so further improvements will probably be in guidance and, eventually, counter-countermeasures.  Regarding the latter, as APS systems improve, more of a munition’s payload will be dedicated to counteracting active defenses, which could actually make armor more effective in combination with active defense.  The current situation of a protection spectrum with battle tanks at the top will then continue.

Another consideration for protection is the increasing importance of urban warfare.  Urban environments and restrictive terrain in general counterintuitively favor a very heavily armored tank because the canalization and restricted fields of fire inherent to such environments imply that a tank will ceteris paribus be less able to survive through maneuver or standoff firepower.  Antiarmor attacks there will occur at shorter ranges (including “zero-range” emplaced explosives, and implying a greater angular range) and will be harder to simply avoid.  Because urban warfare will only become more common in the future, there will still be a use for heavily armored tanks, and nations that prefer a more-or-less one-size-fits-all approach to tanks will continue to use heavily armored tanks.

My guess would be that a lightly-armored, APS-protected tank could be useful for a mechanized force oriented towards maneuver warfare, but less so for urban combat for the reasons stated above — anyone who decided to build an APS-protected medium tank would still probably keep a few of their older, heavily armored vehicles as infantry-supporting urban combat specialists.

Another aspect of protection that I want to mention is CBRN defense.  Armored vehicles with CBRN overpressure systems are just better (can operate for longer with fewer casualties) in a contaminated environment than light infantry wearing protective suits.  Also, ultradense tank armor provides excellent protection against radiation.

Armament

The tank’s basic suite of weapons: a cannon, a coaxial machine gun, and a heavy machine gun — won’t see a serious change.  The only major disruption I can see is the installation of an autocannon basically designed to saturate or otherwise disable an enemy’s APS system (a heavy machine gun doesn’t have the range and might not have the power for this).  I don’t think this will happen — more likely a single antiarmor round will carry counter-countermeasures with the goal of maintaining one hit/one kill  — but I think it is possible.

A larger gun is unlikely because of the resulting decrease in ammunition load.  The decreasing ammo load of tanks with increasing gun size has not been too serious a problem because it has been accompanied by greater accuracy and greater lethality — an Abrams may only carry half as many rounds as a Sherman, but more of those rounds hit their target and more of those targets are destroyed.  A 140mm or larger gun will only be adopted if new protection schemes prove insurmountable by advanced 120mm ammunition, which I doubt.  For instance, while installation of an ammunition data link on the M1A2C is nominally to allow use of a programmable airburst round, it could also work with a selectable top-attack munition, maybe based on the canceled XM943 STAFF.

The future tank will be able to match the range of, at least, any ground-launched line-of-sight ATGM.  Entire battalions are wiped out at NTC at standoff by tank destroyers armed with simulated Konkurs and Kornet missiles, and the performance has been repeated several times in combat albeit not against Americans.

This can happen to you.

This is obviously absurd, unacceptable, and unnecessary.  Extended-range guided shells will be available for every tank in the future.  For 120mm guns, the LAHAT/Nimrod is already available, although it’s probably worth developing a high pressure/high velocity missile.

In addition to increased range, the future tank will have some non line-of-sight (NLOS) or “anti-defilade” capability.  The guided munition mentioned above will have the capability to be directed onto a target by a third platform.  This could be a separately deployed sensor but in keeping with the importance of autonomy mentioned above will include an onboard small UAS with a short-range, high-bandwidth data link.

While the UAS’s video output will need to be visible to the vehicle commander, its actual operation will be the responsibility of the fourth crew member (“loader”).  Task load on the other three members of the crew is already too high.  Three-man crews will be only be found on limited-purpose support vehicles like the Stryker MGS.  Yes, this means that Eastern tanks with three-man crews are headed down the wrong path.  Most likely, operators of T-72s and derivative designs will make ineffective attempts to reduce crew load by automation or introduce a second platform, increasing vulnerability to EM disruption.

Other Considerations

All of these new capabilities will require yet more electrical power.  This is a well-known fact, just about every upgrade to every armored vehicle currently in service includes increases in onboard electrical generation, but I wanted to point it out anyway.

Aside from the integrated small UAS mentioned above, non-targeting “situational awareness” cameras will be common with the goal of making the vehicle “transparent” as with the F-35’s helmet display, and minimizing the need to fight with hatches open.  My experience with experimental cameras of this sort makes me doubt this goal will ever be completely realized — mud and other terrain hazards will frequently obscure the sensors, which will probably have rather small apertures.  Still, it will continue the long trend of improved awareness inside armored vehicles.

Electronic warfare equipment will become more common if not standard, although this may be considered an extension of a vehicle’s active protection system.  Disrupting an adversary’s tactical datalinks in order to avoid succumbing to the logic of “sensors and dispensers” will become so important that even the most trivial employment of combat power won’t be done without it.  And based on the logic of autonomy as a defining characteristic of a future tank, they will probably need an onboard EW suite including  a more powerful jammer than the very short range counter-IED systems that have been deployed in recent wars, rather than completely relying on separate platforms.  Tankers already need to reacquaint themselves with passive measures like EM signature reduction anyway, so management of a 3kW jammer wouldn’t be out of the question.  I don’t think that a tank chassis will be used as a dedicated EW platform since such a vehicle wouldn’t need the same level of protection as a tank.

Crew training standards will increase, and may approach those of flight crew although I don’t think they will ever actually reach that level — flight is inherently less fault tolerant than ground movement.  Standardized schools and qualifications not just for initial entry but for each crew position might become a reality.  Unit leaders now can get ahead of the curve by instituting stricter crew qualification standards on their own initiative.