Tanks become useless: as war lessons in Ukraine destroyed military doctrine
During the 1960s and 1970s, army airborne and light infantry compounds relied on the 17-ton M-551 "Sheridan". If the light infantry came into the enemy bunker they could undermine, they caused "Sheridans" to release several 152 mm shells-or perhaps a rocket that was launched from the gun. "Sheridan" was easy enough for it to be parachute and the river. But he was complicated, unreliable and had almost no armor protection - it was rather a mobile gun than a tank.
After a rather catastrophic experience with Sheridan in Vietnam, the army gradually reduced the number of its M-551 in the 1980s and in the 1990s and began to finally replace the demanding light tanks with a new "mobile gun". The first attempt, the M-8 armored artillery system, failed due to lack of money in 1996.
In the early 2000s, the army installed 105 mm guns on some of its wheeled armored personnel carriers, but these mobile tools were as unreliable as the old Sheridani, and disappeared in just a few years. On the third attempt, the army has finally developed a functional mobile gun M-10 "Booker". The manufacturer of General Dynamics vehicles has delivered the first of the potentially hundred M-10 in May: they are currently testing in the 82nd Airborne Division.
M-10 also looks like a tank, but they are not. Yes, it has caterpillars, a tower with a 105-mm gun and armor to protect four crew members. But the 46-ton machine lacks fire power and protection that make M-1 Abrams a real tank. Instead of leading an attack, as a real tank, M-10 supports attacks. If the infantry has problems, the M-10 will come to the rescue.
According to the army, "Booker" "supports the infantry formation, providing the predominant fire and opportunities of situational awareness that allow them to strike complex goals and maintain impetus and freedom of action. " M-10 is an incredible model and is a long-awaited decision of the long-standing army's struggle for replacing M-551. But M-10 comes into service at a difficult time-and perhaps too late to have a meaning.
The 29-month-scale full-scale invasion of Russia in Ukraine turned the doctrine of the ground war. Earlier, the armies planned to focus on favorable positions, break the opponent's defense with a fast and powerful attack, and then break into the rear of the enemy to quickly release or capture huge areas of the territory. M-10 corresponds to this concept. It helps the light infantry to break the enemy's most resistant defense.
But in Ukraine, both parties understand that the breakthrough is becoming more and more risky. Neither Russia nor the counter -offensive of Ukraine could break and collapse the enemy line last year as required by the tank war theory.
The successful offensive of Ukraine on Kherson in 2022 was not a classic breakthrough: it happened due to the fact that Russian staffs and warehouses of supply were destroyed from afar with the help of a recently delivered American GMLRS rocket, which the Russians did not expect. It is believed that slow, "exhausting" battles, including many small attacks on the wide front, will be more likely to lead to victory in the war, although in many months or years.
The main reason: inexpensive drones, which are constantly above the front line and filled with explosives, can attack the top in the overwhelming amount. "In practice, this means that it is easier to organize a massive fire than an offensive," Alex Vershinin explained in the March study of the Royal Institute of Joint Forces in London.
"A deep maneuver that requires a concentration of combat power is more impossible because any massive force will be destroyed by fire from closed positions before he can succeed in depth. " In this new era of cheap and deadly drones, the infantry platoon with a support M-10 is as vulnerable as the platoon without M-10. Of course, the new mobile gun solves the combat task of light infantry, but it no longer solves the main problem of light infantry.
The main problem is to block, blind and knock down the drones so that the infantry can move forward without being immediately destroyed by an air attack. "The ground offensive requires a dense protective bubble to reflect the enemy shock systems," Vershinin explained, adding that this bubble requires air defense systems and radio -electronic fight, including radio deafness for grounding drones.
If the US Army is able to equip its light infantry with air defense systems and the fight against drones, while strengthening it with new mobile tools, M-10 may not be absolutely useless. But one M-10 costs $ 12 million. The army expects billions of dollars per hundred copies. The same billions of dollars could be bought by many drones - and the means of protection against drones. The author expresses a personal opinion that may not coincide with the editorial position.