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Comment by ufmace | Hacker News Reader

Note that on the military side, I'm a little doubtful that landing a single tank is something any military would try. Tanks are prone to breakdowns and need a lot of logistical support, and so usually operate in platoon size of at least 5 of them. Even landing 5 or 10 of them with a bunch of these things seems a bit dubious, you're still gonna need something to bring in tons of fuel, ammo, spare parts, etc.

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You'd use four individual craft to put a troop of tanks ashore. A troop of tanks would be an enormous asset to an infantry or commando battle team. And in the next few hours you could land another troop, and then another.

They can look after themselves for 48 hours. That's a lifetime in terms of a landing operation.

Here's a Royal Navy landing craft delivering a Royal Armoured Corps full-size main battle tank ashore recently.

https://ukdefencejournal.org.uk/guide-british-amphibious-sea...

And didn't the British do this in the Falklands for real not that long ago? It was smaller tracked recce cars, not main battle tanks, but you get the idea.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/news/2020/12/08/TELE...

Yes, the difference between having even one tank where no one was expecting it and 0 tank, is huge.

Your doubt is misplaced. The most heavily used US Navy landing craft can only carry a single tank.

https://www.navy.mil/Resources/Fact-Files/Display-FactFiles/...

Very cool & interesting. Also interesting is that only 91 of these craft were built & delivered -- that seems like such a tiny number. And, apparently, only 68 are earmarked to be kept & maintained ('SLEP') it seems:

"All of the planned 91 craft have been delivered to the Navy. A Service Life Extension Program (SLEP) is currently in progress to add 10 years of service life to the craft design life. A total of 68 LCAC will have undergone service life extension by the conclusion of the program in 2021."

The use case describes was for a raiding party prior to the main landing, in which case ~hours are needed until the main force arrives. Tanks can operate without resupply for this long, and in the case of a surprise raid a single MBT to support an small unit infantry support seems like it could multiply their effectiveness at attacking unprepared soft targets like logistics nodes and edges.

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