Too heavy and still not enough armor? Oof lol
It’s near impossible for modern MBT armour to stop a good hit from an equally modern ATGM or APFSDS round. The best way to survive is to not get spotted and hit in the first place. That’s why Soviet doctrine had it right, quick low profile tanks with “decent enough” armour. Hard and soft kill APS can help with RPGs and ATGMs but after seeing how the Trophy system of the IOF is absolute dogshit I don’t think it’ll be enough.
I think if natoids wanted an effective combat platform over grifting money, they would develop a tank with good all around protection against autocannons, but just enough armour on the frontal arc to get lucky vs dedicated anti tank weapons. If you have a 70 ton tank that gets penetrated by Kornets, might as well make a 50 ton tank that gets penetrated by Kornets instead and can actually cross bridges.
the Trophy system of the IOF
In October 2023, Hamas used civilian DJI and Autel quadcopter drones, which dropped shaped-charge grenades to damage or destroy several Merkava tanks.
When your half ton multi million dollar state of the art tank defense is consistently defeated by $150 quadcopters available at Best Buy.
if natoids wanted an effective combat platform over grifting money, they would develop a tank with good all around protection against autocannons, but just enough armour on the frontal arc to get lucky vs dedicated anti tank weapons.
That’s just a Leopard 1 with ERA bricks.
So yeah, you’re probably not wrong.
This is pretty much why tanks are being phased out for missile vehicles or personnel carriers, in the same vein why battleships are not made anymore
I should’ve probably clarified that MBTs as we currently know them are being phased out for lighter armored tanks with capabilities from the designs of missile vehicles or personnel carries. But specifically the USMC are getting rid of their MBTs entirely to develop lightly armored rocket launchers like the HIMARS.
Also the US Army are still holding on to the Abrams, but they are also open about how future development is based on the principal that current MBTs have hit their weight limit. So in the next decade or so we’ll probably see Abrams variants with less armor but heavily incorporating some design of missile and rocket carriers.
(There’s also drones/unmanned vehicles, but I doubt we’ll see any concrete media about that for a while)
Probably stuff like ATGM carriers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kornet-D, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HJ-9 etc
