Canada's tanks

[KevinB]

Regardless of the number of tanks mobilized isn't likely that there will be more ground to cover than there are tanks to cover it? And that there will be open flanks?

Keep in mind that generally no Western Army acts alone.

The there are slightly more than 2000 NATO 4 Tank Troop/Platoons last time I looked at the numbers of Armor available (9,000 plus MBT's).

The Estonia, Lavia. Lithuania border with Russia and Belarus is approximately 1,000km
The Polish border with Belarus is ~310km
Then the FInland/Norwegian boarder with Russia is another ~1,400km - but most of that isn't tank country -

 

[PrairieFella]

Talk to the Taliban, the Viet Cong, heck, even the Ukrainians. They started out training with wooden rifles and preparing Molotov cocktails.

The Russians could bring more tanks to the fight than the Americans. And look where we are today.

Kuwait, half the size of Luhansk Oblast engaged two or three Corps and a bunch of air forces for
the best part of a year.

Russian tactics of driving in straight lines playing bumper tanks is why their tank attacks fail often. Penny packeting out tanks the soviet way also contributes to this as you cannot achieve the massing and shock action for successful attacks.

 

[Kirkhill]

Russian tactics of driving in straight lines playing bumper tanks is why their tank attacks fail often. Penny packeting out tanks the soviet way also contributes to this as you cannot achieve the massing and shock action for successful attacks.

You are both still arguing for concentration and concentration necessarily means focusing effort on one patch of land. This means that the rest of the land is uncovered.

It assumes that you can find and dominate the singular and unique schwerpunkt that will cause a house of cards to fall.

Dividing the world up into countries and assuming that political borders result in secure flanks works in a relatively stable political environment. It can even work in a campaign in a geographically proscribed theatre like NW Europe between June 6 1944 and May 8 1945 (11 months of engagement). Or Italy, July 9 1943 to May 2 1945, (21 months). Ukraine has already gone on for 45 months and over an area twice the size of Italy with a frontline 5 times the size.

You might be able to replicate the 1860 and 1900 attacks on Peking with a Baghdad style thunder run but I doubt you would get that far or that it would resolve any conflicts.

And I doubt if you would be able to replace the tanks lost in any time soon.

 

[PrairieFella]

You are both still arguing for concentration and concentration necessarily means focusing effort on one patch of land. This means that the rest of the land is uncovered.

It assumes that you can find and dominate the singular and unique schwerpunkt that will cause a house of cards to fall.

Dividing the world up into countries and assuming that political borders result in secure flanks works in a relatively stable political environment. It can even work in a campaign in a geographically proscribed theatre like NW Europe between June 6 1944 and May 8 1945 (11 months of engagement). Or Italy, July 9 1943 to May 2 1945, (21 months). Ukraine has already gone on for 45 months and over an area twice the size of Italy with a frontline 5 times the size.

You might be able to replicate the 1860 and 1900 attacks on Peking with a Baghdad style thunder run but I doubt you would get that far or that it would resolve any conflicts.

And I doubt if you would be able to replace the tanks lost in any time soon.

I dont think you understand the principles of armour and how its an force multiplier on the battlefield.

 

[Kirkhill]

Which battlefield? Which singular, in place and time, battlefield?

Why do you think we are being outflanked by hybrid warfare? By economic warfare? By political warfare? And by non-tank technologies?

Our enemies are not meeting us on the ground on which we want to be met. They are doing the other thing...whatever that may be.

Tanks have their place. Just as Hobart's Funnies had their place and left an enduring legacy. But in a dispersed, netted, multi-nodal environment you are going to find it increasingly difficult to find lynch-pin targets against which to concentrate.

I don't think the enemy is going to create useful targets by massing effectors or allow you the opportunity to mass your own.

Now, massing effects on targets of opportunity, that is likely to be something else again.