While war is as old as human race, its weapons have been undergoing constant changes. When tanks first lumbered out of the smoke of an artillery barrage at the battle of Cambrai in 1916, battle-hardened German veterans fled in horror and the British scored a major tactical victory. But in the way of these things, within a few months, the Germans had produced a high-powered rifle capable of penetrating the armor of British tanks. The advantage was already slipping.
It has ever been thus. The heavy armor of mounted knights was rendered useless by the crossbow, the once impregnable thick walls of medieval castles were torn apart by gunpowder, the massive steels hulls of Dreadnaught battleships were ripped open by torpedoes.
Now the British, who invented the main battlefield tank, look as if they will be the first to abandon this once-feared weapon, just over one hundred years after it was introduced. The British Army has just announced that it will not develop a replacement for the powerful front-line Chieftain tanks. In 20 years from now, when they will be withdrawn from service, British top brass confidently expect that the nature of warfare will have changed radically. Already, a relatively inexpensive missile can destroy of $3.5 million Chieftain tank. When the Chechens gave the Russians a bloody nose in the street fighting in Grozny, they demonstrated time and again how lightly armed, but highly motivated, fighters could turn lumbering tanks to blazing piles of junk, in the confusion of bitter urban warfare. During the liberation of Kuwait, US A10 tank buster airplanes and other Allied aircraft “brewed up” the flower of Saddam Hussein’s armor with heavy cannon fire and missiles.
History may well see that the power of the tank was always more psychological than anything else. The panic in the German trenches at its first appearance on the Western front is a case in point. But warfare inside a tank is brutish, unpleasant and extremely hazardous. However tough the armor, tanks have always been vulnerable at their tracks. If a track is broken a tank cannot move. It and its crew inside, become a sitting duck.
The British and the Americans have now developed tanks largely made of plastic. Not only are these lighter and therefore have a greater operating range, but they are considerably cheaper than the lumbering steel monsters they are designed to replace. It is likely that the tank of the future will be a remotely controlled cheap, small and fast plastic vehicle, packing a ferocious punch, which will be operated from miles away, maybe even from an aircraft. Ground troops will still need armored vehicles in which to move about, but they themselves will have sophisticated body armor, will be firing rifles with guided bullets and calling in precise artillery or air strikes, simply by pointing a laser ranging device at a target.
Warfare becomes ever-more destructive but also remote. In time it will probably be simply unmanned machines that battle it out. Wholesale murder will be easier, cleaner and relaxed. The only circumstance likely to affect the morale of the troops operating robot tanks of the future, is the horrified discovery that the batteries have run flat. Progress, isn’t it?
