Design

2013 Polish light tank concept

Would be cool to have more futuristic looking tanks

@dwr.eth @macbudkowski 

The primitives of all modern warfare are Fire + Movement

Over the past 20 years, we've basically entered an era where the definition of "Fire" has gotten significantly broader and more dynamic

It's no longer constrained to the elements immediately in the battlespace and there's every reason to think this will only accelerate with other new vertical attack vectors (tungsten rods from space anyone?)

The big question rn is that no modern military has really figured out the Movement part for today.

Tanks in US doctrine ofc aren't a standalone unit - they are part of a "combined arms battalion" with mounted + dismounted infantry as screening + support against most low-ish tech "tank killers". This includes dudes with shotguns shooting drones out of the air (yes this is real). Additionally, the top is usually the least armored part of the tank and as such tanks have always been weak in urban environments. Cheap drones have just extended that weakness into non-urban environments.  

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Building @kiwi 
Writing @ https://kanfa.macbudkowski.com/

People aren't going away soon because most warfare isn't "blow everything up" bc we live in a society and you can't clear even a mildly complex objectives with a robot yet, maybe one day tho. 

I expect new versions of tank-like vehicles to be more uniformly armored, lighter weight aka built more for maneuvering, and be moddable  with fight-specific capabilities (anti-troop vs AA vs anti-drone kits)

I also expect future doctrine updates to be even more rigorous in its treatment of multi platform coordination (aka all tank battalions get primary and backup drone control channel jammer units etc)

https://potomacofficersclub.com/articles/10-anti-drone-weapons-used-by-the-u-s-military/
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weird internet kid. helping Creators with /seemore. yapping on /okbanger. curating in /creators and /cameron. dev + veteran + HBS. 
seemore.tv/cameron 🫡

It's also imo much more interesting + impactful to think about this in the context of naval warfare. Land based ware is cool and all, but global power is projected at sea.

We already knew that you can fire 10 cheap antiship missiles at 1 very expensive aircraft carrier and be extremely cost effective in your warmaking.

Imagine how fast we're racing to the bottom with drone driven sea warfare

https://www.twz.com/sea/the-compelling-case-for-arming-u-s-navy-warships-with-drone-swarms

We should also keep in mind that the reality of Ukraine fight too is a lot of isolated, untrained units using really shitty tank tactics as they don't have a deep bench of professional soldiers 🤷
https://www.armyupress.army.mil/Journals/NCO-Journal/Archives/2019/March/Russian-ncos/

Tanks are nerfed for sure, but all the media we see is also only partially representative of modern near peer army exchanges

Thoughts from my informed buddy (ex-mech Artillery officer and now Armored Vehicle PM at Anduril)

"We are seeing the point of max relative advantage of drones rn

Once CUAS point defense and EW systems integrate w the next gen of armor, things will look v different

Drones will need to be more performant which increases cost/lowers volume

Also, there's a lot of survivor bias in videos - there are relatively few spots on a tank where a drone can do real damage w/o specialized munitions

Plus - swarming isn't real (yet)

Preprogrammed light shows are v different than on-the-fly concurrent targeting. Swarm coordination in air requires expensive onboard hardware (like jam resistant comms/beefy compute) which isn't cheap

Using ground coord swarms instead creates its own jamming/counter targeting risk

Plus rn literally no one has software to mission plan more than a few robots simultaneously

Humans can fly many drones in the same AO, but interference by many close proximity radios quickly degrades performance"

addendum from my buddy
https://warpcast.com/cameron/0xc75cc881

will need to cook more to have a big coherent one, but lightning round thoughts:

- The military is full of "ain't no robot gonna be smarter than me" energy so will be a lot of resistance at strategic, operational, and tactical levels

- It will be much more impactful in "greasing the gears of war" at first (providing supplementary perspective on live battle maps, parsing large amounts of radio traffic in other languages into insights, suggesting probably area unit locations, etc) vs replacing any line leader decisionmaking

- AI Latency vs op tempo alignment will make or break unit trust in AI systems (if it takes 20 seconds to get a coherent response from battle AI in a 5 second fight context, it's worthless)

I would really love you take on how AI will likely effect military strategy.

working @ /neynar   🪐  casting @ /rish

I want to, but it's so much more niche/lower reach than all the other content stuff I could do with my time

(and elsewhere on the internet war stuff immediately invites the worst kind of engagement lol)

maybe in a few years i can do more on this kind of stuff tho! for now it'll be opportunistically

Wow I'm in the military but this blows my mind, I've bookmarked the link and will read it at my free time.

With the addition of drones you can also separate the moving element in two threat direction and also move the supporting fire of the supporting element