Because when a tank fires its APFSDS gun, the muzzle velocity is 1500 meters-per-second.
In contrast, a drone flies at 25 to 50 meters-per-second.
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To put it in concrete terms, a tank 3000 meters away will hit its target in 2 seconds. A drone 3000 meters away will take 1.5 minutes.
In contrast, the Javelin you launch will take 12 seconds before it hits the tank at that range. That's more than enough time for the tank commander to see the Javelin and return fire, killing you before the Javelin even strikes the tank. (This is why "fire and forget" is so important on a missile like the Javelin). So we can see that even a missile like a Javelin has a significant speed disadvantage on these long-range plains that exist on the Donbas region. Its a different fight than the typical heavy-urban environment that Ukraine was doing well in a few months ago.
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Its one thing to fight a tank in urban combat, where they can only see 200 meters out (too many buildings blocking your vision and the tank's vision).
Its a totally different thing to fight a tank on open plains, where 3000m worth of vision is common.
That 2 seconds is the projectile. Unless you're already aimed directly at the AT firing point it's going to take more than 2 seconds for the tank to acquire a target lock and swing the turret into place.
Assume the turret is 90 degrees off target and it will take 2 seconds just to swing the turret around. Assuming it takes 2 seconds to notice the AT round fired, 2 seconds to target lock, that's still 8 seconds total for the tank shell to hit.
That's not great for the AT team, but it is a survivable amount of time for shoot-and-scoot tactics, enough that it's going to be a hellish war of attrition between armor & AT teams, not a completely one-sided battle. Which seems to be roughly what we're seeing in eastern Ukraine, unfortunately. A truly shitty and hellish situation all around.
> Assume the turret is 90 degrees off target and it will take 2 seconds just to swing the turret around. Assuming it takes 2 seconds to notice the AT round fired, 2 seconds to target lock, that's still 8 seconds total for the tank shell to hit.
That's a lot of "assumptions" that still leads to a virtual tie situation: both parties kill each other.
There's also the situation where the tank commander emerges out of hide-position, fires a shell, and kills the enemy infantry before they even know where the tank is, and the tank then retreats back into hide-position before any enemy even knows that a tank is there.
A tank in turret-down position is still exceptionally difficult to spot. And that tank commander looking out, waiting for the ideal time to ambush with his main tank gun, will have night-vision, thermal vision, and loads of other equipment.
In "turret down" position, pretty much only the tank commander is visible. They can spot you 3000m away in this kind of position thanks to modern binoculars.
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Given that the tank moves at 50km/hr, and has more expensive equipment (thermal vision / etc. etc.), the tank honestly has the advantage in most of these fights.
Infantry might (?) have the advantage of surprise and hiding. But tanks also might have that advantage. There's no guarantee that the infantry always ambush the tanks. Especially when you consider how much faster a tank travels, and the shear size / distance that these weapons cover (a tank can choose any point with 3000m line-of-sight to attack the enemy infantry, knowing that the infantry is too slow to keep up with the tank's movement).
I think the assumptions are reasonable, and if you hit the tank you may only have to survive that first shot of return fire.
Don't get me wrong, it's not ideal and the fighting is more about attrition than superior tactics. I agree completely that an open field is just about the worst place to deploy the AT system.Tanks may have to travel through open areas but they do so to get to & from locations of more strategic interest, and it's best to hit them in those places, or if enroute then at a location where there's a least more natural cover. And I don't think the tank is at all obsolete quite yet.
> To put it in concrete terms, a tank 3000 meters away will hit its target in 2 seconds. A drone 3000 meters away will take 1.5 minutes.
> In contrast, the Javelin you launch will take 12 seconds before it hits the tank at that range.
What's the latency for the turret to pivot to the target angle? I suppose it's pretty fast but let's say in worst case 180deg? How long does that take? 1s? 10s?
T72 is about 3 seconds for 180 degrees. But it also takes time for a human in the tank to notice the incoming AT round, trace it back to the source, acquire a target lock, and then swing the turret over.
I can only guess at how long the full return fire process takes, but you only need to be pointing a javelin AT at the tank, it will do the rest. You can be sprinting away pretty much as you launch and get 50 meters away. Safe? Hell no, but it's not as bad as the "2 seconds" comment makes it out to be.
NLAW has 1000m range. AT4 and Panzerfaust3 has 300m range.
If you are using an NLAW and the enemy tank has line of sight 3000 meters away, you are outgunned, outranged, and outmaneuvered and almost certainly will lose.
The tank has 40+ shots with a firing rate every 4 seconds. Javelin is a 50LB weapon that is single shot, so a miss (due to thermal smoke grenades / flares) is a critical mistake that will kill you.
Running away at 3km/hr only delays the inevitable, as the tank travels 50km/hr to close the distance with you... And had far more shots to invoke suppressing fire to scare you from running away effectively.
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The advanced weapons help, but a tank is a tank. It's faster than you, has more range than any weapon you can carry, is almost always decked out with the best night vision optics, has more bullets, bigger bullets, and armor to negate most of your weapons.
At best the advanced missiles even the odds. I'm not sure if I'd call it an advantage though, because of the single shot nature / long reload times of missiles / recoilless rifles, especially compared to tank guns.
In contrast, a drone flies at 25 to 50 meters-per-second.
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To put it in concrete terms, a tank 3000 meters away will hit its target in 2 seconds. A drone 3000 meters away will take 1.5 minutes.
In contrast, the Javelin you launch will take 12 seconds before it hits the tank at that range. That's more than enough time for the tank commander to see the Javelin and return fire, killing you before the Javelin even strikes the tank. (This is why "fire and forget" is so important on a missile like the Javelin). So we can see that even a missile like a Javelin has a significant speed disadvantage on these long-range plains that exist on the Donbas region. Its a different fight than the typical heavy-urban environment that Ukraine was doing well in a few months ago.
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Its one thing to fight a tank in urban combat, where they can only see 200 meters out (too many buildings blocking your vision and the tank's vision).
Its a totally different thing to fight a tank on open plains, where 3000m worth of vision is common.