Nathan Gabriel S. Hao

How Tank Designs Impact their Effectiveness

Tanks—hulking, tough, and virtually indestructible steel machines. When a tank advances, nothing can stand in its path, or so it seems. With Russian tank columns in disarray and wrecks towed by tractors in the war in Ukraine, people have begun to question the effectiveness of tanks on the modern battlefield. So, what are the main considerations in designing a tank in order to make them still effective in this day and age?

History and Uses

Tanks are armored vehicles used to extend the range and effectiveness of weapon systems. The first tanks were designed by the British and French in the heat of the static trench warfare of the First World War to protect soldiers as they crossed No Man’s Land. As warfare progressed, tanks did too. By World War 2, their designs and uses had already branched out into three main categories. Light tanks were quick with minimal armor and were used for scouting, skirmishing, and fire support. Heavy tanks had greater firepower and more armor, with the drawback of being slower and having a higher chance of breakdowns. Medium tanks could fulfill both roles albeit not as well as specialized tanks could. In the Cold War, tanks were despecialized and many armies adopted main battle tanks (MBTs), which had the mobility of light tanks but the firepower of heavy tanks. With MBTs being ubiquitous in most modern armies, let’s analyze their design concepts and see if they are still relevant.

The American M1 Abrams is the quintessential MBT, in service since 1980

The Trifecta

The effectiveness of a tank lies in three main factors of its design, namely the firepower-mobility-protection trifecta. Firepower refers to the ability to identify, engage, and destroy targets such as buildings, vehicles, and other tanks. One forgotten aspect of this is the ease of aiming the tank gun itself and not just how big or powerful it is. The systems for stabilizing a tank’s gun, for example, have become so advanced that the West German Army was able to balance a whole glass of beer on the gun of one of its latest tanks in the 80s. Second is mobility, which refers to the tank’s ability to move and be shipped across the battlefield; this often requires travel through different terrains such as bodies of water, mud, and hills. Tank tracks contribute to mobility by increasing the area of contact between the tank and the ground, making them more stable; today, most tanks are able to ford rivers. Not only that, certain tanks are able to cross rivers by going underwater with snorkels. Finally, there is protection, which refers to the tank’s ability to protect the crew and other vital components such as the engine and gun. A lot of Russian tanks have boxes on the turret and front, which protect the tanks by prematurely detonating explosives on contact. Tank armor itself is not the only aspect of protection, as camouflage, the size of a tank, and its mobility can make it harder to detect.

Russian tanks demonstrate the unique ability of a tank to traverse difficult terrain

Additional Factors

There are other aspects to consider in a tank’s design, such as crew ergonomics, the cost of procurement and maintenance, and the doctrine behind developing the tank in the first place. Tanks should be designed with the well-being of the crew at the forefront in order for its entire operation to run smoothly. Like in group projects, the crew members of a tank have their own specialized roles, and so they need to communicate well in order to do their job correctly, which is why many tanks have headsets that counteract the noise of the engine. Another important factor is the cost of procurement and maintenance of a tank. If a tank has the maximum performance in each part of the trifecta, it will possibly be so complex that selling price and maintenance cost would override effectiveness. The South Korean K2 Black Panther has one of the most advanced munitions on the planet and utilizes technology from all throughout the Western world. However, it is hard to export due to its exorbitant $8.5 million dollar price tag. Lastly, designers also need to consider the doctrine of the military of the tank they are designing for. For example, a lot of Soviet tanks were designed with the intention of being used to rush Europe in a blitzkrieg. As a result, they were smaller, cheaper, and required less manpower (3 instead of 4) than their Western counterparts so that they could be more easily mass-produced and harder to hit on the plains of central Europe. A large part of this doctrine was accomplished by installing autoloaders which replaced human loaders and made loading the cannon faster.

Weaknesses

Despite having very powerful guns and strong armor, tanks have their fair share of weaknesses. Mountainous, jungle, and especially urban terrain can impede a tank’s effectiveness by confining them to bottlenecks. These chokepoints can then be exploited by the enemy to blow them up using anti-tank guided missiles (ATGMs) or rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs). Doctrine can also lead to defects. Although autoloaders are faster and more consistent than human loaders, by the way autoloaders in Russian tanks were designed, shells had to be placed in a ring around the inside of the turret. There was no way to prevent an ammunition explosion aside from reinforced turret armor nor any means to shield the crew from this aforementioned explosion. The Ukrainian Army uses modern-day Javelin and NLAW ATGMs, which are able to focus their attacks on and easily penetrate the relatively weak top armor of tank turrets. This, combined with the aforementioned vulnerability of Russian Cold War-era tank ammunition storage, leads to turrets flying sky-high in a phenomenon known as the jack-in-the-box effect.

A Ukrainian soldier stands in front of the corpse of a Russian tank gripping its killer - the Swedish-British NLAW

Conclusion

Overall, tanks, like most weapons, are only effective when used for their intended design. When used against their design doctrine and qualities, they devolve into metal caskets for their crews. However, when utilized to coincide with the inherent advantages provided by their designs, they ascend into unbreakable and robust vehicles of war.