Much of this discussion should be regarded as a “Red Team Exercise”, a deliberate attempt to pull apart entrenched thinking.
We have chosen three select areas, which all influence the utility of tanks the Totality of the Battlefield (TotB), the totality of technology, and the totality of society. There is value to any asset deployed to the battlefield, from an entrenching shovel to aircraft carriers, providing that they are used properly and adequately supported. To be clear, this article is intended to initiate discussion, it is a reflection of those issues that must be considered when balancing forces. The contemporary discussion around the abiding value of the tank is not therefore new, however the context and the nature of the modern battlefield has changed considerably since 1916, and this in turn warrants a different discussion around the value of the tank. 1 And, following that war, only Britain and France continued to see utility in the tank for close to a decade, before the Soviet Union began to enter the field. Fuller came to realise the limits of tanks during the 1917 Ypres offensive. The late Professor Ogorkiewicz wrote in his 2016 book Tanks, of how Lieutenant Colonel J. Hard to build, difficult to man and drive, and ultimately vulnerable once deployed, tanks have never been the perfect package that they externally represent. From the day that the concept of a tank was introduced there has been debate about the utility of these vehicles.
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