>A $500 drone can ignite a $5M tank. Drones have changed the calculus of tank warfare.
No. What you see in Ukraine is the 20th century war with some drones. Active defense system can take out RPG and anti-tank missile. It can easily take out a much slower moving drone. Unfortunately, the Western tanks and IFVs came to Ukraine without ADS (and many even without reactive armor). And for whatever reason Ukraine was pretty slow to put passive drone defenses onto the armor - you can see on the videos of the Ukrainian 2023 counter-offensive that the Western tanks and IVF are mostly "naked", just the bare base armor.
There are stories - videos - from recent decade how tanks correctly "dressed up" with passive defenses and reactive armor would survive direct hits from Javelin, RPG, etc., in some cases it would even survive multiple hits from RPG. And active defense system is a huge step up even from that.
If anything, with the next generation of active defense systems being able to shoot down even incoming artillery/tank gun round, the tanks will continue to rule the battlefield, especially in autonomous version.
If you've been watching the war you'll notice that tanks are largely absent from battle these days. Russia had thousands more tanks than Ukraine 3 years ago, and now is scrounging the last of its inventory leftover from WWII.
The Super Tank™ you've described sounds cool, though. Can Ukraine order 1000 of the upgraded version with lasers for Spring delivery?
watch the videos from the war - the tanks are mostly without ADS, and the ADS that Russia has is really a crappy one. You can also watch videos how soldiers shoot down the drones with shotgun or just using some stick/stone. Drones are much easier to shoot down than RPG, and nobody has been able to shoot down RPG with shotgun (a great baseball player probably would be able with some non-zero probability to bat an RPG out though).
>Can Ukraine order 1000 of the upgraded version with lasers for Spring delivery?
No. Even the existing ADS with shrapnel warheads are not sold to Ukraine.
No navy would deploy a battleship today, no matter how good an anti-missile system it had. Only needs to miss one, and battleships just cost way way more than even a thousand missiles. Plus ballistic artillery just isn’t that useful compared to what a drone or cruise missle can do.
What's the cost of all your whizzbang technology? Does it cost $10M or $20M per tank to make? And how quickly are they produced? Maybe 1-2 per month? And how many years does it take to modify or improve them?
Now compare that to the hundreds of thousands of drones manufactured every month for far less and adapted monthly.
We've already seen mothership drones used in Ukraine.[0] How long do you think it will be until we see fire and forget multiple attack baby drones that overwhelm any whizzbang ADS? 6 months, a year? As the old saying goes: quantity has a quality all it's own.
No. What you see in Ukraine is the 20th century war with some drones. Active defense system can take out RPG and anti-tank missile. It can easily take out a much slower moving drone. Unfortunately, the Western tanks and IFVs came to Ukraine without ADS (and many even without reactive armor). And for whatever reason Ukraine was pretty slow to put passive drone defenses onto the armor - you can see on the videos of the Ukrainian 2023 counter-offensive that the Western tanks and IVF are mostly "naked", just the bare base armor.
There are stories - videos - from recent decade how tanks correctly "dressed up" with passive defenses and reactive armor would survive direct hits from Javelin, RPG, etc., in some cases it would even survive multiple hits from RPG. And active defense system is a huge step up even from that.
If anything, with the next generation of active defense systems being able to shoot down even incoming artillery/tank gun round, the tanks will continue to rule the battlefield, especially in autonomous version.