Are these abominations a glimpse into the future of armored warfare? Or just one offs to meet the specific demands of the Ukrainian battlefield?

[Mr King]

I am sorry if this has already been covered in depth on here, but from an outsider looking in with only a layperson's understanding of armored warfare it seems like the propagation of drones has had as big or bigger impact than the wide spread adoption of the ATGM. 

 

 

 

[Manic Moran]

Those are just short-term solutions. There are more... elegant solutions to the problem around the corner. At least, trials in the US are progressing well.

[Edro 1811]

Yes! Drones are a new threat. Think of them as a cheaper ATGM. 😁

The use of drones has certainly changed how tanks are being used, at least in this particular war. Of course, the use of drones has also opened up discussions about the future of tanks or if the age of the tank has ended. I say, yes, drones will have an impact on the future use of tanks, but their role will not change and so long as combined arms and mobile protected firepower is needed, tanks will remain relevant for the foreseeable future. These are examples of such. Despite the threat of drones, tanks are still being deployed on both sides. They have been heavily modified by resourceful soldiers to ridiculous levels, to extend their survivability. 
 

Edro

[seahawk]

This is only temporary. The attack drones are fielded, the defence system not yet, but they are coming and then the cages and hedgehog style looks will go away. 

[Stuart Galbraith]

There is a video doing the rounds, where a tank mock up is attacked by something like 6 or 7 drones at once. That is concerning ot say the least, assuming of course they can do it to a tank on the move also.

Its not that I think the tank is immediately doomed by whats happened. But you are seemingly headed towards a tipping point where tanks are going to be so expensive you arent going to be able to field enough of them to achieve the tactical effects they did historically. And if you can achieve most if not more of the tactical effects using drones a lot cheaper, then you may see the same slide away from tanks that occurred from the Battleship to the Aircraft carrier.

Its less that I think the tank is doomed in excusion. Im beginning to think if we get longer ranged drones, autonomous, perhaps even delivered by artillery, the only thing that may be moving on the battlefield of the future are SPH or rocket artillery dozens of miles away from the FEBA, or light infantry in thermal suppression gear which seems to be a thing right now. Presumably the superior side will after achieving ascendency then need armour to take advantage of its victory, but even if it does, then it probably doesnt need 70ton machines optimised for tank killing. In that kind of environment, something in the region of the M10 would do just as well.

Well, maybe lasers will be cheap, and they will be far more effective than the cynic in me believes. They rather need to be.

[Olof Larsson]

6 hours ago, Manic Moran said:

Those are just short-term solutions. There are more... elegant solutions to the problem around the corner. At least, trials in the US are progressing well.

Longer term I think the effects of FPV style drones will be far greater for rear area units, then for front line mechinized units. Because those drones might as well be deployed from LACM's, UCAV's in various sizes and with various ranges and manned combat aircrafts. Protecting every tank and MICV with APS, CIWS (kinetic and/or directed energy), microwave weapons, fighter drones and so on is one thing, but protecting the entire logistics train, all transformator stations, all railroads, all airfields, all harbours and so on, is a entirely different matter.

[bojan]

1 hour ago, Olof Larsson said:

Longer term I think the effects of FPV style drones will be far greater for rear area units, then for front line mechinized units...

Types most "hit" (pardon the pun" by drones will be logistics, rear area including HQs, any kind of electronic equipment and light infantry.

Yes, you can gather AD assets to protect some of those, but battlefield will stay transparent despite all efforts to contrary and such concentrations will invite artillery.

 

2 hours ago, Stuart Galbraith said:

There is a video doing the rounds, where a tank mock up is attacked by something like 6 or 7 drones at once. ...

Way it was shown is not relevant, because with such close spacing explosion of first will wreck most of others.

[Stuart Galbraith]

Yes, thats plausible also.

I remember in the aftermath of the Iraq war, the US military was looking at systems that could achieve the same victory, but smaller forces and cheaper if possible. One Discovery channel documentary showed them wargaming a major engagement in the war (Khafji I think) but unstead of destroying supply trucks, they sprayed a chemical on all the roads that rapidly broke down the tyres. A good idea, the problem of course is how would your opponent tell the difference from it being chemical weapons, and if it turned out to be carcenogenic, you are opening yourself for untold lawsuits decades down the line.

Anyway, the point is, if you could get drones that could travel that deep (or at least be carried by a weapon that goes that deep) and go after those supply trucks in anything like a targeted fashion, then yes, I guess you could see a situation where the mechanised units are too hard to attack, but the logistics too difficult to protect.

Awkward. Maybe those robot trucks that the DOD were looking at in the Iraq war would finally have a point.

[Stuart Galbraith]

1 minute ago, bojan said:

Types most "hit" (pardon the pun" by drones will be logistics, rear area, any kind of electronic equipment and light infantry.

 

Way it was shown is not relevant, because with such close spacing explosion of first will wreck most of others.

Fracticide you mean? Hmm, fair point, though I suppose you could vary the speed of the weapons from the delivery vehicle so they arrive outside each others explosion. APS would find that difficult to deal with, and perhaps even a laser would struggle to recharge in time.

[bojan]

Lasers suck for a myriad of reasons and are not suitable for final layer of defense, period.

If they are more spaced reasonably automated protection system can fight them. Even if not. Again... don't think about current APS with few shots, think belt fed, automatic "shotgun" with 150 rounds (50 engagements), it would weight less that 100kg and have reasonable dimensions, so you could even put two on high priority targets to enable  simultaneous protection from two directions.

But such defenses are just final layer, if 100+ drones is attacking single tank that tank will die, but that is not a failure of tank and it's APS, it is a failure of the system at level higher than individual tank.

Integration, integration and more integration, and targets like small attack drones don't need MW or laser at all.

[Stuart Galbraith]

Just now, bojan said:

Lasers suck for a myriad of reasons and are not suitable for final layer of defense, period.

If they are more spaced reasonably automated protection system can fight them. Even if not. Again... don't think about current APS with few shots, think belt fed, automatic "shotgun" with 150 rounds (50 engagements), it would weight less that 100kg and have reasonable dimensions, so you could even put two on high priority targets to enable  simultaneous protection from two directions.

But such defenses are just final layer, if 100+ drones is attacking single tank that tank will die, but that is not a failure of tank and it's APS, it is a failure of the system at level higher than individual tank.

Wasnt there something about 20 years ago, where they had a lot of rounds stacked up in a box with their own tube, that would point towards an enemy? It had some wacked out name like Metal storm.

Ah, I see China has already fastened onto it.

https://www.china-arms.com/2025/05/metal-storm-chinas-answer-to-missile-and-drone-threats/

[bojan]

Metalstorm, but it is IMO just worse way to do it because muzzle velocity variation issues that are inevitable with such weapons.

[seahawk]

18 minutes ago, bojan said:

Lasers suck for a myriad of reasons and are not suitable for final layer of defense, period...

Integration, integration and more integration, and targets like small attack drones don't need MW or laser at all.

👍

[Olof Larsson]

33 minutes ago, bojan said:

Metalstorm, but it is IMO just worse way to do it because muzzle velocity variation issues that are inevitable with such weapons.

And glacial reload time compared to a autocannon. And obviously getting 16 barrels to converge, with asymmetric heat build-up, with different amounts of rounds in each barell, different barrel-whip for different barrels and for different projectiles out of the same barrel and so on. Then there is the issue of more mass, further from rotation axis, slowing down target transisions. The Metal Storm tech could be useful for some low precision applications, like ejecting chaff, flare and smoke, and for ejecting submunitions. But that is about it.

[Tim Sielbeck]

2 hours ago, Stuart Galbraith said:

Wasnt there something about 20 years ago, where they had a lot of rounds stacked up in a box with their own tube, that would point towards an enemy? It had some wacked out name like Metal storm.

 

 

[Manic Moran]

5 hours ago, Olof Larsson said:

Longer term I think the effects of FPV style drones will be far greater for rear area units, then for front line mechinized units. Because those drones might as well be deployed from LACM's, UCAV's in various sizes and with various ranges and manned combat aircrafts. Protecting every tank and MICV with APS, CIWS (kinetic and/or directed energy), microwave weapons, fighter drones and so on is one thing, but protecting the entire logistics train, all transformator stations, all railroads, all airfields, all harbours and so on, is a entirely different matter.

I'm inclined to agree with this.

It's pretty easy to install an RWS on an armored vehicle or having escorts in the battle area for self defence, it already has various sensors, but the supply convoy traveling scores of kilometers in a lower-asset-density area is going to be a trickier proposition.

FWIW, I think a standard M240 or equivalent will do fine in the point defense role. The trick is acquiring and cueing, not killing.

[Burncycle360]

Yep. And area systems are good, but there will be no substitute for every vehicle, to include rear echelon vehicles, having its own counter drone suite capable of detecting and defeating threats in series and parallel. 

 

The good news is that capability can be achieved very quickly on the technical side with a crash program, the bad news is that it won't be cheap. I don't mean cost per kill but cost to equip the fleet.

 

Detection is the difficult part, but the pipeline is straightforward; borrow from the active protection system world and have both active and passive detection systems (Ku band radars and staring multi-spectral electro optics suites paired with AI aided classification)  along with legacy threat components (ELINT and jammers) and pair it with a RWS with counter-drone mode (software update) for threats in series, and a drone interceptor dispenser (ie Kreuger 100) for future threats in parallel (drone based submunitions)

That's your 90% solution right there for vehicle based units and nothing there is revolutionary or high risk development, the cost is scaling and integration. Compared to the cost of an MLRS battery killing everything above room temperature in a grid square with future brilliant drone based submunitions though, it starts to look like cheap insurance.

 

Dismounted folks operating away from vehicles for prolonged periods will have a little more trouble, but manportable solutions are still plausible (ie drone interceptors and a manpackable detection suite)

 

If I had my own defense contracting company and andruil deep pockets, this would be my passion project 

Edited December 11, 2025 by Burncycle360

[Sinistar]

armored vehicles might overmatch under local, specific conditions: urban pacification or against very low level opponents or poorly armed opponents

assuming that the rest of the support chain necessary is there to keep them supplied and operational

while the drones were showing in earlier conflicts what coodinating with hit and run raids on vehicles could do to exposed positions against the syrians and turks or the saudis could look like

 

the thai army is using tanks and you do not see anything like what is going on in those conflicts or in ukraine since the cambodians are not regarded as capable in the area of drone warfare or do not have them in numbers if at all

you see overhead video of some of these actions which indicates there are drones in the area likely on the thai side but nothing like what is going on in ukraine where there are massive numbers of these things on both sides- yet

 

as drones provide a cheap and easy way for even low quality opponents to overcome specific problems from intelligence gathering to resupplying to long range attack it is a matter of where the leading and lagging indicators and where it is catching up and where it is not anywhere near there yet

 

in the ukraine war long supply lines and a large battlefield under surveillance on both sides does something that you would not per se see the same way elsewhere 

even if the tanks were somehow protected the logistics and support and maintenance trains and crew rotations and ambulance and evacuation efforts are under attack all over the place which still could stop the tanks just by those effects

it is also amplified with the heavily mined terrain and long seasons of some of the worst mud in the world where everything is canalized into kill sacks-  which might not look like that at all in a different battlefield with different opponents

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[seahawk]

https://www.edrmagazine.eu/nordic-air-defence-and-volvo-defense-partner-to-integrate-anti-drone-technology-into-volvos-vipro-protection-systems-for-military-vehicles

[Sinistar]

you also see the cambodians moving around t-55 tanks by rail without much sense of being under attack which may indicate the local conditions are not yet susceptible to drone warfaret

 

in a prolonged conflict the longer that goes on could buy outside parties time to start supplying and arming up both sides with drones and then that might figure into it in a future date

 

so my general sense of it is that it all depends on what the local conditions are 

the tank is 'dead' so to speak in ukraine but not per se in the thai-cambodia conflict where this is yet to play out

 

even in the ukraine conflict it might be the case that the parties are witholding reserves for the time being as it is mostly an infnatry / drone / artillery war until some conditions are met where a breakthrough occurs and conditions start developing rapidly for armor again- which is speculative

[Stuart Galbraith]

2 hours ago, Tim Sielbeck said:

 

 

Thanks. Used to like that program, he was a great presenter.

[Olof Larsson]

2 hours ago, Manic Moran said:

I'm inclined to agree with this.

It's pretty easy to install an RWS on an armored vehicle or having escorts in the battle area for self defence, it already has various sensors, but the supply convoy traveling scores of kilometers in a lower-asset-density area is going to be a trickier proposition.

FWIW, I think a standard M240 or equivalent will do fine in the point defense role. The trick is acquiring and cueing, not killing.

I could see UAV's being used to protect the supply lines. Lighter drones to scout ahead for scattered mines and drones lying in ambush, and fighter drones to hunt down enemy drones in the air. Especially the winged reece drones. But still supplying the maneuver units at the front will be harder. UAV attacks on the supply-lines, might do more to reduce the volume of mechinized forces (or the weight of tanks and MICV's) then direct UAV attacks on those mechinized forces.

As for cuening, I wonder if accustic sensors to be used to get the RWS to look in the right direction.

And I'm still waiting for at VTOL-UAV that is just large enough to carry a wounded soldier from the "front" to a safer rear area. That and supplying forward troops with ammo, water, food, batteries, drones and so on. Something like a miniature Chinook, that can carry a stretcher. There are allready agriculural drones close to that weight class, for spraying and fertilizer.

[Burncycle360]

The mini chinook style UAV evacuation idea and resupply is already pretty straightforward they've been tinkering with it for a while (dp-14, fwh-3000 and a variety of others).

As far as moving humans on these things... the technology is there in the sense that ESC based approaches (fixed pitch variable speed) scale just fine, you can DIY a flying bathtub in your garage with the same basic software that you use to program a handheld racing drone, the software is all open source, you just need to scale up the electrical subcomponents and motors to handle the currents and the ESC for such duty cycles, but for life safety it depends on what kind of risk tolerance you have.

 

 

 

Such approaches cannot autorotate for instance so redundancy in the electrical systems and ballistic parachutes are your only viable options. Likewise, fixed RPM/variable pitch approaches scale down just fine and have some advantages (ie autorotation), as does scaled down helicopters, but if we're talking unmanned systems it increases mechanical and software complexity driving up costs and maintenance considerations.  In any of these  approaches there will be some flight regimes in which a malfunction there means you just die, but I suppose such is the case even in manned aviation.

For evacuation of wounded one of the biggest hangups is that there will be critical patients that cannot be without provider care even if an unmanned ride was waiting, or they'll immediately go downhill no matter how brief.  I'm not saying we shouldn't consider UAV evacuation in some cases but the range of patients who this makes sense for is IMO narrower than most people probably imagine, and manned medivac is going to remain the gold standard 

Edited December 11, 2025 by Burncycle360

[Edro 1811]

10 hours ago, Stuart Galbraith said:

It’s not that I think the tank is immediately doomed by whats happened. But you are seemingly headed towards a tipping point where tanks are going to be so expensive you arent going to be able to field enough of them to achieve the tactical effects they did historically. And if you can achieve most if not more of the tactical effects using drones a lot cheaper, then you may see the same slide away from tanks that occurred from the Battleship to the Aircraft carrier.

……. Im beginning to think if we get longer ranged drones, autonomous, perhaps even delivered by artillery, the only thing that may be moving on the battlefield of the future are SPH or rocket artillery dozens of miles away from the FEBA, or light infantry in thermal suppression gear which seems to be a thing right now. Presumably the superior side will after achieving ascendency then need armour to take advantage of its victory, but even if it does, then it probably doesnt need 70ton machines optimised for tank killing. In that kind of environment, something in the region of the M10 would do just as well.

Well, maybe lasers will be cheap, and they will be far more effective than the cynic in me believes. They rather need to be.

Yes, tanks are expensive but they provide a capability that at present nothing else could replace. In a nutshell, a tank is mobile protected firepower that can take and hold ground, challenge enemy tanks, destroy fortifications, and lay down enormous amounts of hot lead. Some vehicles may provide but a portion of this, thus there really isn’t a suitable substitute. The price a nation pays for tanks is proportional to how much they value the life of their soldiers, as without tanks, the role of the infantry soldier becomes exponentially tougher.
 

Sure! Drones are cheaper than many other weapon systems, but FPV drones are pushing the limits of their design and like all weapons must evolve to remain relevant. And that alone is going to drive up their costs. When you factor in the technology they contain now, such as thermal imaging, jam proof or frequency modulation, extended life batteries, drones will have to adapt to new threats, while also being capable of lifting larger payloads, while providing a decent amount of range. The future drone may have autonomous capabilities relying on AI, but it will come at the cost of battery life. Like everything else, there is no free ride, and this will apply to drones. 
 

Edro

[Damian]

The problem with drone lovers, is that they ignore the fact, that protection solutions against drones, also evolve. We have Active Protection Systems, like Trophy that already can defeat drones, from small FPV's to larger jet powered ones.

And then there are non kinetic energetic systems, like Leonidas, Epirus is right now working on miniaturizing Leonidas so it can be mounted as APS on tanks and other vehicles.

Even in Poland we work on system similar to Leonidas.

Also recently it seems, in Ukraine, they started to experiment with bliding drone cameras, now it's only temporary but enough for drone operator to not hit a target or abbort attack, while I believe we will return to lasers to permamently blind drones. It happens already with systems like BAE Terra Raven.

In Poland we also make a lot of analysis of Ukraine war, more and more people start to get the impression, that Ukraine overinvested in drones, and this is why they are loosing the war, because there is not enough infantry, not enough heavy vehicles like tanks, and Ukraine in general made many, many fatal mistakes. While Russians excell in static attrition warfare.

IMHO It is a grave mistake, within NATO, that so much emphasis is put by many on drones, only because it is fashionable these days. Another problem is, that many politicians and decision makers in the west especially, have a fetish to do everything cheap. War is not cheap in itself, and half baked cheap solutions also do not work as advertized.

 

Edited December 12, 2025 by Damian