Armoured warfare

Strategists wanted to break the tactical, operational and strategic stalemates forced on commanders on the Western Front by the effectiveness of entrenched defensive infantry armed with machine guns – known as trench warfare.

The developers of tanks aimed to return manoeuvre to warfare, and found a practical way to do so: providing caterpillar traction to machine guns allowing them to overcome trenches, while at the same time offering them armour protection against small arms as they were moving.

In practice, tank warfare during most of World War I was hampered by the technical immaturity of the new weapon system, limiting speed, operational range, and reliability, and a lack of effective armoured tactics.

An exception, on paper, was the Plan 1919 of the British Army's Colonel J. F. C. Fuller, who envisaged using the expected vast increase in armour production during 1919 to execute deep strategic penetrations by mechanised forces consisting of tanks and infantry carried by trucks, supported by aeroplanes, to paralyse the enemy command-structure.

Technical development initially focussed on the improvement of the suspension system, transmission and engine, to create vehicles that were faster, more reliable and had a better range than their WW I predecessors.

[7] To save weight, such designs had thin armour plating and this inspired fitting small-calibre high-velocity guns in turrets, giving tanks a good antitank capacity.

The British were the first to create a larger fully mechanised unit when the War Office sanctioned the creation of the Experimental Mechanized Force,[9] which was formed on 1 May 1927, under infantry Colonel R. J. Collins, after Fuller (was) refused the function.

Naval War College, argued that the British army, under budget and over-stretched during the interwar period, pursued innovation recklessly by betting on the combat effectiveness of armoured units operating with little infantry or artillery support.

Red Army and German experts collaborated in developing the use of tanks based on second generation vehicles with turreted main weapons, and experimenting to design different chassis configurations and drive trains.

[12] The Red Army tactics were influenced by the theoretical works of Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky who advocated "large scale tank warfare" as part of the deep battle doctrine.

[13] In France, the second largest tank producer, mechanisation was motivated by a need to compensate for severe manpower shortages due to a collapsed birth rate during World War I.

General Georgy Zhukov in the summer of 1939 combined mass tank manoeuvres with artillery and air attacks, to defeat the Japanese Imperial Army at the Battles of Khalkhin Gol at Nomonhan in Mongolia.

[18] Partly as a result of the experiences in Spain, the Soviet Union began the development of a new generation of medium and heavy tanks, sporting much stronger armour and armament.

However, later it has been argued that the campaign was largely an instance of the classical nineteenth century German concept of the "Annihilation Battle", in which the role of deep strategic armoured penetrations was limited.

The spectacular and unexpected success not only caused a sudden change in the global geostrategic situation, gaining Germany a position of hegemony on the European continent, but also seemed to vindicate the theories of Fuller and Liddell-Hart.

The 10th Italian Army of Maresciallo (Marshal) Rodolfo Graziani, being ill-armed and inadequately led, soon gave way to this approach by the Commonwealth troops of the British Western Desert Force.

Naval War College, wrote that due to factors emanating from the interwar period, the British army in North Africa initially operated their armoured units with little infantry or artillery support.

[23] The Red Army tank fleet was extremely large, consisting of some 24,000 vehicles, but many were obsolete or unfit for service due to difficulties with supplying spare parts and lack of qualified support staff.

[citation needed] At the outbreak of World War II, the German armoured forces benefited from a much more profound and more flexible training than that of the Allies on the tactical and operational level.

A prime example is Erwin Rommel's lead-from-the-front approach while commanding 7.Panzer-Division which allowed him a flexible response to the battlefield situation, an instance of the Auftragstaktik (reliance on subordinates to make their own decisions).

[citation needed] To stem the flood of marauding panzers, fast moving powerfully armed tank destroyer battalions were created to be held back and used in the counter-attack.

Japan was a naval power, and concentrated its production on warships, thus placing a low priority on armoured vehicle development,[35] its tanks becoming quickly obsolete during the later years of the war.

[citation needed] The conflict between Arab nations in the East Mediterranean region and Israel in particular would serve to become a testing ground for development in armoured warfare during the decades of the Cold War.

Hundreds of AT-3 Sagger man-portable anti-tank guided missiles (ATGMs), supplied to Egypt by the Soviet Union and could be operated by infantry without having extensive training, inflicted heavy losses on the Israeli armoured formations.

In the recent 2006 conflict with Hezbollah, while Israeli infantry were able to easily defeat opposing ATGM teams, tanks operating on their own suffered several hits from the latest advanced Russian tandem-warhead types (such as the Kornet).

The ability to rotate the turret by a full 360° allows coordinated movement within and between platoons, while defending against attacks from multiple directions and engaging troops and vehicles without stopping or slowing down.

In addition, firing down from multi-story buildings allows shots at the thin upper turret armour and even basic weapons like Molotov cocktails, if aimed at the engine air intakes, can disable a tank.

Although able to carry a number of different missiles and bombs (including anti-tank ordnance such as the AGM-65 Maverick), the A-10's main weapon is a 30 mm GAU-8/A Avenger Gatling gun which is capable of firing 3,900 depleted uranium armour-piercing rounds per minute.

The AH-1Z Viper, AH-64 Apache, HAL Light Combat Helicopter, Denel Rooivalk, Eurocopter Tiger, Ka-50 Black Shark, Mi-28 Havoc, A129 Mangusta and Westland Lynx are examples.

The lack of armour protection is offset by the provision of a first-look/first-hit/first-kill capability through the mating of a powerful gun to superior targeting electronics, a concept similar to that of the US tank destroyers of World War II.