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Comment by inglor | Hacker News Reader

Lots of outdated information here. I served in the IDF on something related and (obviously) can't disclose anything of military importance but do you really think for the last 16 years tank armor hasn't gotten (much) better to deal with these threats?

Do you (honestly) believe the US doesn't have tank armor that can withstand a (from the top) hit from a Javelin?

The tank is not dead (well, not any more than large tank charges are probably dead and ww2 style combat is dead? We likely won't see anything like in desert storm or the Yom Kippur war again).

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>Do you (honestly) believe the US doesn't have tank armor that can withstand a (from the top) hit from a Javelin?

If this exists, why did the USMC binned their tanks 2 years ago stating they weren't cost-effective anymore? I'll believe this exists when I'll see it, but so far we have seen $4M tanks defeated by $100K javelins with a 93% kill rate, and so far cope cages have done nothing against them.

I did not work for the USMC and the strategic goals of the IDF (land defense, small area) are very different so I can't answer for sure. In many modern battle scenarios (specifically urban warfare scenarios) tanks aren't of much use so I totally see binning them in favor of better combined arms.

Also again: you are taking Russian armor survivability as proof for US armor survivability against the same threat. I totally get if you take my comments here with a (big) grain of salt because I can't provide citations and I'm not making any direct claims about US armor survivability against Javelins (and you'll note you won't find any videos/info online about that because of classification).

The USMC had become a second land army, and decided they needed a mission and set of capabilities of their own. They've pivoted to facing off against China in the Pacific theatre and decided that tanks just don't fit into their requirements for that mission. If they do need tank support, the army has plenty.

I read that the USMC ditched their tanks in preparation for a conflict with China in the South China Sea. In that environment, tanks don't really fit in an island-hopping scenario. In the place of the armor and aviation units they got rid of, they are looking at things like HIMARS systems. The U.S. Army on the other hand has kept it's tanks.

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