at least during the cold war you didn't have to know about weather patternes. then you knew that if 1 nuclear weapon was launched both sides would launch all of their weapons and the earth would be no more. what ever happened to those simpler days.
[quote]an nuke sub. Once India's submarine program expands, they will have nuke subs that are virtually undetectable and can launch ballistic missiles[/quote]
All MBTs are dated in their conceptual as much as specific engineering approach.
In a forced entry condition (such as they 'live fire practiced' during OIF) I would rather have six Bradleys than one Abrahms which a C-5 could bring to the theater.
Eric Shinseki blackmailed the 'tracks for tons' club into taking the Medium Brigade semiseriously by threatening to show a LOSAT video in which the missile went in the front glacis of an Abrams and came out the back engine grille, more or less in the same shape.
Such is what happens when you put a high impulse rocket behind a DU penetrator rather than using old fashioned gunpowder. Instead of a 70 ton MBT firing 10-12 aimed shots per minute (max, normal is actually closer to 8) you have a lightweight track like the Buford or even a Hummer firing a 177lb weapon which has _more impact kineticism_ because it's round velocity doesn't begin to decrease as soon as it leaves the barrel. LOSATs impact velocity being on the order of 35MJ at upwards of 6km, most longrange (the only survivable kind) of tank shots coming in at 9-10MJ. More importantly, if I have five Buffords with eight rounds onboard, I can _be assured_ of all 40 rounds going down range /before/ the threat force can disable my own 'light armor' because the LOSAT has no reload interval and is so fast that very little guidance correction is required. There is simply no sense in pretending that a tank is valuable in the modern environment. As a protected volume its mass, area and flatbottom render it vulnerable to both topattack by LAW and mines. It cannot (with one exception) carry troops under armor in a manner sufficient to battle taxi them to a deployment point where MOUT conditioned warfare /lets them protect it/. And it's ability to engage threats with it's main armament is itself grossly overkill restricted to the nature of destroying whole floors of houses or tenements when single 25-35-40mm rounds would do the same from an IFV. Myself, it's all about the cost and the deployment factor. If it takes 6-8 million bucks to buy a modern M1A2SEP/TUSK, how many UGVs with _completely autonomous homing_ can I buy in trade? If that number is anything like the 30-40 vehicles. And it would only take 20 of those to form a modern day Goliath (German WWII suicide tank) force in survivably charging the tank to put 10lbs of explosive bomb through both treads and under the hull, then the tank itself is worth more than than the value of it's immediate, cheap, and easily created countermeasure. Indeed, IMO, the reality is that _in modern war_ any force which is stupid enough to share a common horizon line with it's opponent in a manned volume (literally thinning the armor to enclose enough space as would be required to carry a human internally), they deserve what they get. And once you abandon the 'protection' element of the equation inherent to hefty armor and the tracks to carry it, you can instantly leverage mobility and firepower _plus_ NCW features to enable smaller, more survivable, WHEELED alternatives. Something like this MULE for instance-
Ironically, it is only when you return to an 'infantry support tank' for use in post occupation policing efforts that the considerations of 360` armor protection as an unavoidable (too close to deny) threat response become paramount and even then there are serious MRAP type alternatives to traditional tracked options. As to Arena and Drozhd and Trophy and SLID and all the other APS wannabes, let's see one defeat a self forging fragment that airbursts at 100-500ft over the target and drives a slug at 5,000fps through the turret roof. Then let's see it pull the same stunt against 4-5. Massed Firepower almost always beats either active or passive defense, the only thing you can do is so distribute and value-lessen your individual vehicles that it costs more to target and saturate them, 1v1 with a smart munition, than they can counterfire the launch source.
