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    Costruire carri armati mentre gli ucraini padroneggiano i droni

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    1. Alikont on

      What people need to realize is that the point of MIC is not to make weapons, it’s to make money.

      And who are they selling it to? Usually the ministry of defense.

      And what is the main incentive of MoD? To get reelected.

      So instead of what will work and doctrinal experimentation, the thing that wins the contract is something that looks cool and has jobs in swing districts for the next election.

      And that’s why MIC is not interested in war (like a lot of people assume). Because when the war starts, you will need to make things that actually work, and deliver them yesterday.

    2. McBifana on

      A journalist visited a Rheinmetall plant and spoke with the CEO:

      When I brought up the drones that Ukraine has used so effectively against Russian tanks, the company’s chairman and CEO, Armin Papperger, was withering in his dismissal. “This is how to play with Legos,” he told me. He did not expect them to disrupt his industry. “What is the innovation of Ukraine?” Papperger asked. “They don’t have some technological breakthrough. They make innovations with their small drones, and they say, ‘Wow!’ And that’s great. Whatever. But this is not the technology of Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, or Rheinmetall.”

      It seems reminiscent of the German automaker’s hubris, hopefully it goes differently this time

    3. __shobber__ on

      German arms showed very poor performance on Ukrainian frontlines. Especially Leopard tanks and Panzerhaubice2000 SPG. 

      Meanwhile, German anti air systems like Gepard and IRIS-T performed very well. 

      Anyway, of course he’s salty, no one gonna buy his shit worth millions when it can be destroyed by $10000 FPV drone. 

    4. MainIdentity on

      drones are just a new part of the toolkit required. it does not replace anything. tanks, fighter jets, etc will still be needed in future conflicts. drones work extremely well in ukraine because neither side can really overwhelm the other side. so doing the most damage with the least effort ist the goal. i dont want to take anything away from ukraine or tank manufacturers, they are both partially right. but both things will be/are needed, everything else – at least imo – seems reckless.

    5. Palora on

      Short Version: The Drone has not killed the Tank. The Tank isn’t going anywhere. It is still the hardest thing to neutralize on the battlefield and there are still things on the battlefield only a tank can do.

      Long Version:
      The most effective weapon against tanks in Ukraine remains the Anti-Tank missile.
      The majority of modern western tanks – Leopard 2, Challenger 2, Abrams – were taken out by Anti-Tank missiles not drones.

      The reasons drones are so effective in Ukraine is because neither side is capable of deploying modern equipment in large quantities properly supported by enough mobile anti-air and artillery.

      I hope you’ve noticed how the videos of Russian armored columns getting taken out by drones don’t have a Shilka, Tunguska or Pantsir along which would give them cover.

      And no, there is no 20 dollar drone in use in Ukraine anymore let alone taking out tanks. Off the shelves drones need heavy modification to make them usable. They can be easily jammed, taken over or show their start location to the enemy.

      What many people are calling drones in Ukraine are in fact loitering munitions (Switchblade), and they are expensive, or TV guided missiles (Lancet), that are also quite expensive. And they are more expensive than artillery shells. But they are accurate, and that’s what both Ukraine and Russian are lacking and NATO is not. Which is why they are using expensive “drones” in the place of cheap artillery shells.

      There are also plenty of effective anti-drone systems in inventory with many nations and even more cost effective systems on the way.

      Those systems will more easily be carried by tanks.

      Nothing else can do the job the tank is still doing. Pushing IFVs and APCs to do the job will only lead to more losses, as we’ve seen to be the case.

    6. GremlinX_ll on

      Yeah, it’s shit and sticks, but this CEO is just salty that he is not selling those drones for 10k euro / unit and make production of his company somewhat obsolete (for some time of course, until proper counter FPV / CUAV will be implemented), can’t blame him.

    7. DefInnit on

      It’s not either-or — as “drone masters” Ukraine (and Russia, too) themselves have shown as they continue to use and procure tanks and IFVs and artillery.

      It would be foolish for companies like Rheinmetall that produce tanks and self-propelled howitzers or KNDS with the Caesar to convert their factories that produce far more complex machines into factories that produce simple drones.

      The large companies can either have smaller divisions do that if they want to, or there are new drone companies like Helsing and many others springing up in Europe that specialize on these.

      If Russian and Chinese companies want to stop or minimize producing tanks and artillery so they can focus almost exclusively on drones, sure, they’re welcome to do so.

    8. idee_fx2 on

      The tank problem is not about the tank itself.

      The tank was a tactical solution to a three fold problem :

      * attacking on foot was too costly against machine guns and artillery (protection)

      * there was a need for direct fire weapons that were too heavy to carry for infantry along for the assault (Firepower)

      * even when managing to break the frontline, the infantry was too slow to transform a tactical success into an operational one. (Mobility)

      The tank was the solution to this problem by combining protection, mobility and firepower in one package although at the cost of a large logistical footprint, be it in spare parts, amminition and fuel.

      Now with the advent of drones, the modern tank has issues with the first two points : it is vulnerable to swarm of drones and there is a lack of worthy targets (other armored vehicles) for its powerful main gun.

      But does that mean the end of the tank ? Because the three problems listed above remain relevant.

      Yes the tank is vulnerable but there is not really anything else that is faring better. Going very light like the russians did with bikes and quads result in massive casualties.

      In a battlefield that is so transparent and lethal, you need armor if you want to go into the offense.

      The question should rather be how much armor is worth it. Our Main Battle Tanks (MBT) are very armored to be able to fight other powerful MBTs but tank to tank combat seems to become the exception rather than the rule.

      Before the MBT became the go to solution for tank fleets, armies experimented with light, medium and heavy tanks.

      Perhaps it is less tanks becoming obsolete than the MBT having become too heavy, too costly and with a weapon caliber that is too big.

      Perhaps the future lies rather on fleets of Infantry fighting vehicles (IFV) like the CV90, some with 105mm guns, other with rapid fire 30 or 35mm autocannon with still enough armor to take multiple drones hit and survive artillery fire while being more adapted to drone warfare by being a bit stealthier and cheaper. Or the opposite with heavy tanks with active protection protected by anti drones vehicles.

      I don’t know but i wouldn’t say that the tank is dead yet until we have found somerhing better for performing and exploiting a breakthrough.

    9. mekolayn on

      No-no-no, he is right – the EU should not invest into their drone manufacturing and instead opt out for buying Ukrainian drones

    10. RealSuggestion9247 on

      Every conversation about ‘old tech’ that doesn’t acknowledge that drones currently are in its infancy does not have credibility. The second condition one has to acknowledge is that currently drones as a system, in particular the smaller strike drones, that there are no suite of effective countermeasures available. That technology has not been developed and fielded. A part of that is because of the pace of drone evolution. But also because it is a harder problem to solve.

      Once drone defence catches up in the technology race old assets such as artillery, mortars and tanks are again kings of the battlefield. It is significantly harder to intercept 155mm artillery or a 120mm tank round than a drone…

      Drones are currently a menace to anything on the battlefield in a way that hardly have similar historic precedents.

      Once the drone defence on the squad level, individual vehicles and so forth things will get interesting.

      There is no reason why a drone swarm cannot be countered by a layered defence that starts with a counter drone swarm and ends with automated, ew, energy, kinetic or other options.

      Give it a decade and we might see where this matures into. To claim the death of the tank now is premature.

      Combined arms using tanks and mechanised infantry, supported by classic air assets and artillery, with both offensive and defensive drone measures is likely very potent. It will be different but similar.

    12. Thernungulator on

      Tanks arnt going anywhere. They still fulfill a vilad part of military action.

      Instead we will see a redevelopment of armor protection. Including most importantly, anti drone active protection. I.e. shotguns with a radar.

    13. Darkfrostfall69 on

      Drones won’t make tanks obsolete, at least not for a long time. horse mounted cavalry existed alongside firearms for hundreds of years before the machine gun eventually rendered them obsolete. to actually render tanks obsolete you’d need a lightweight rapid firing weapon that can be easily carried and operated at the section level, capable of piecing the equivalent of half a metre of steel from any angle or distance.

      Every few decades a new anti-tank weapon comes around that can cheaply kill tanks and every time people say the same thing about tanks being obsolete. in WW1 it was high calibre rifles, in WW2 it was shaped charges, then guided missiles, then top attack munitions and now drones.

      In every single case countermeasures were developed, for instance the technology required to protect tanks from drones and missiles has existed since the 90s in the form of active protection systems, capable of shooting down munitions before they reach the armour. There just hadn’t been the need nor the will to develop them further until now.

    14. BoltersnRivets on

      both have their uses. traditional infantry was not rendered entirely obsolete by tanks just because they popped up in WW1, the same will happen with tanks and drones.

      I expect a small arms race of development between drones and portable anti-drone defenses that can be mounted to tanks before things settle into a new norm, at least until the next big development comes along and shakes everything up all over again, then we’ll get a new string of clickbate articles articles proclaiming XYZ established technology as completely dead and irrelevant.

      my money is on the next development for tanks being some form of electronic warfare package with things like directed lasers and signal jammers being refined enough that they can be passively powered by the tank, failing that give the soldiers a very big net, “it’ll be ‘reyt”, as they say in Yorkshire

    15. McortezLSU on

      I’ve been observing the war in ukraine for a while now. The tank as it existed pre 2022, is obsolete. Thats obvious to anyone who paid attention. Tank on tank battles are exceedingly rare, it generally is Tank vs ATGM, Tank Vs Drone, Tank vs CAS, Tank, vs mines. It reigns surpreme as Infantry support, but as the dedicated breakthrough weapon, it fails without total air dominance.

      The tank has too many counters and these just cannot be compensated for against a semi competent and minimally equipped enemy.

      What needs to happen is a greater emphasis on top armor and active defense systems against ATGM’s and drones. Getting rid of the mounted machine gun in favor of a automatic anti drone / missile shotgun would be probably the cheapest approach to refit old tanks. But no ones will have to be designed around the learnings from this conflict. Fighting was never the same after WW1, but WW2 was fought with those learnings. The ones who failed to adept to them where overun by the nazi’s

    16. 0xnld on

      Papperger is losing out on a lot of defence contract money, and the stock price is performing accordingly. Of course he’s going to talk shit like “housewives with 3d printers”. As someone put it, it’s milanese/gothic plate maker complaining about the cost of bullets.

      Thing is, Rheinmetall is also trying to build UAVs, but they’re massively overpriced, have an airplane-sized RCS and exist to impress Bundeswehr old farts, not an adversary with grown-up EW capabilities.

      FPV with a retranslator or big fiber spool outranges almost anything a NATO land force has access to by a wide margin, except rocket artillery, while also doubling as additional recon. It’s BVR combat all over again, but on land.

      And he’s vastly underplaying the software R&D going on here with COTS components. Who cares if you pair a speedboat with a satlink if it ends up sinking a large landing ship?

      The tank isn’t quite dead, but it really needs a serious overhaul for the battlefield of this day and age. Different armour profile, active self defence, that kinda thing.

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