Tank
- This article is about armoured fighting vehicles. For other meanings, see Tank (disambiguation).
A tank is a tracked, armoured combat vehicle (armoured fighting vehicle), designed primarily to destroy enemy ground forces by direct fire. A modern main battle tank (MBT) is distinguished by its high level of firepower, mobility and armour protection relative to other vehicles of its era. It can cross comparatively rough terrain at high speeds, but is fuel-, maintenance-, and ammunition-hungry and is logistically demanding. It has the heaviest armour of any vehicle on the battlefield, and carries what is intended to be an effective anti-tank weapon. It is among the most versatile and fearsome weapons on the battlefield, valued for its shock action against other troops, its ability to engage a wide variety of ground targets, and high survivability. If not properly protected, tanks can be vulnerable from weapons such as aircraft strikes, mines, and artillery, as well as being swamped by infantry. They are usually employed as part of combined arms warfare, supported by infantry and engineers, other fighting vehicles, artillery and aircraft.
Tanks were first used in World War I, to break the deadlock of the trenches, and they evolved to take the role of cavalry on the battlefield. The name "tank" first arose in British factories making the casings of the first battle tanks: the workmen were given the impression they were constructing tracked water containers for the British Army, hence keeping the production of a fighting vehicle in secret. Tanks have subsequently undergone many generations of design evolution; many of their traits have matured. However, there is an ongoing arms race between tank armour and anti-tank weapons systems, and between opposing tank designs, causing a continual need for upgrading.
History
- Main article: History of the tank
WWI – the first tanks
Having already seen armoured Rolls Royce cars used in 1914, and aware of schemes to create a tracked fighting vehicle, First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill sponsored the Landships Committee to oversee development of this new weapon. The first successful prototype tank was tested for the British Army on September 6, 1915. Although initially termed "landships" by the Admiralty, the initial vehicles were colloquially referred to as "water-carriers", later shortened to "tanks", to preserve secrecy. The word "tank" was used to give the workers the impression they were constructing tracked water containers for the British army in Mesopotamia, and it was made official on December 24, 1915.
The first tank became operational when Captain H. W. Mortimore of the Royal Navy took a Mark I into action at Delville Wood during the Battle of the Somme on September 15 1916. The French developed the Schneider CA1 working from Holt caterpillar tractors, and first used it on April 16 1917. The first successful use of massed tanks in combat occurred at the Battle of Cambrai on November 20, 1917.
The tank would eventually make trench warfare obsolete, and the thousands of tanks fielded by French and British forces made a significant contribution to the war. Initial results with tanks were mixed, with problems in reliability causing considerable attrition rates when getting the tanks into combat and on the move. This forced the development of tanks such as the Mark IV, which rhomboid shape could navigate large obstacles, especially long trenches, more easily than many modern AFVs. Allied tanks continued to evolve during the war, while Germany mostly fielded a small number of captured tanks, and only made 20 of their native design, the A7V.
Template:Multi-video start Template:Multi-video item Template:Multi-video end
1920s to the end of Second World War
With the tank concept now established, several nations designed and built tanks between the two world wars. The British designs were the most advanced, due largely to their successes in WWI, the state of the other European powers France and Germany, and the detachment of the USA.
There was thought put into tank-against-tank combat, but the focus was on powerful anti-tank guns and similar weapons, including dedicated anti-tank vehicles. This was put to its fullest expression in the United States, where tanks were expected to run away from enemy armour, and let dedicated tank destroyer units deal with them. In practice these concepts soon proved dangerous. As the amount of armour on the battlefield increased, the chance of running into a tank grew to the point where every vehicle had to be an effective anti-tank vehicle as well. This led to a rapid up-armouring and up-gunning of almost all tank designs. Tank shape, previously guided purely by considerations of obstacle clearance, now became a trade-off, with a low profile desirable for stealth and stability.
World War II saw a series of advances in tank design. Germany for example, initially fielded lightly armoured and lightly armed tanks, such as the Panzer I, which was originally intended for training use only. These fast-moving tanks and other armoured vehicles were a critical element of the German Blitzkrieg. However, they fared poorly in direct combat with British tanks and suffered severely against the Soviet T-34, which was superior in armour and weaponry. By the end of the war all forces had dramatically increased their firepower and armour; for instance, the Pz (Panzer) I had only two machine guns, and the Pz IV, the "heaviest" early war German design, had a light 75mm design and weighed under 20 tonnes. By the end of the war the standard German medium tank, the Panther, mounted a powerful 75 mm gun and weighed 45 tonnes.
By this time all tanks were equipped with radios, vastly improving the direction of units. Tank chassis were adapted to a wide range of military jobs, including mine clearance and engineering tasks. Some of these vehicles remain as other classes of armoured fighting vehicle. All major combatant powers also developed tank destroyers and assault guns—armoured vehicles carrying large calibre guns but often without turrets.
Turrets, which were not previously a universal feature on tanks, were recognised as the way forward. It was appreciated that if the tank's gun was to be used to engage armoured targets then it needed to be as large and powerful as possible, making having one large gun with an all-round field of fire vital. Multiple-turreted vehicles (e.g. the Russian T-35) slowly died out during World War II, but never entirely disappeared. Most tanks retained at least one hull machine gun. Even post war, the M60 MBT had a smaller secondary turret for the commander's cupola.
Cold War and beyond
.jpg)
Jeff Widener (The Associated Press)
After WWII, tank development proceeded largely as it had been, with improvements to both the medium and heavy classes. Light tanks were now limited to the reconnaissance role and, in US use, airborne support as well. However, the weight limitations of air transport made a practical light tank almost impossible to build, and this class gradually disappeared over time.
In the 1950s improvements in armour and engines led to a new medium class with the same sort of battlefield performance as the previous generation of heavy tanks. As a result of heavy anti-tank guided missiles (ATGMs), the focus in development shifted away from just the tank's size, to the technologies within it. The long range of ATGM made it useless to concentrate resources into fewer heavy tanks, because they could no longer perform in the standoff role, the one thing they were really useful for. So rather than just producing tanks with much thicker armour, radically more effective armour was implemented. Gun technology remained remarkably similar even to WWI-era gun technology, with most tanks in service still being manually loaded, but with big advances in shell effectiveness.
The result was the concept of the main battle tank, a technologically superior design that would make up the vast majority of the armoured forces and be used like the last generation of medium and cruiser tanks. They had the armour to withstand hits from other tanks, but were just as vulnerable as ever to threats like aircraft, mines, and artillery fire. They focused performance on the anti-tank role and speed instead of infantry support. One of the most popular of these designs was the British Centurion with the 105 mm L7 gun.
The continued need for vehicles that could carry and protect infantry, resulted in the development and use of combination vehicles, Cavalry Fighting Vehicles and Infantry Fighting Vehicles (CFVs and IFVs) such as the M2 Bradley, which combines the roles of a light tank and an APC.
Although the basic roles and traits of tanks were almost all developed by the end of WWI, the performance of 21st-century counterparts had increased by an order of magnitude. They had been refined dramatically in response to continually changing threats and requirements, especially the threat of other tanks. The advancing capabilities of tanks have been balanced by developments of other tanks and by continuous development of anti-tank weapons.
Design
The three principles of armoured warfare, which therefore govern tank design, are firepower, manoeuvrability and protection, which all lead to the shock action the tank will be able to deliver.
Firepower: this is not simply the ability to penetrate a certain thickness of enemy armour, but encompasses, for example, the maximum distance targets can be engaged at, the ability to engage moving targets, the speed with which multiple targets can be destroyed and the ability to continue fighting after damage has been sustained.
Manoeuvrability: this is not simply speed and agility of driving cross-country, but also covers the range of terrains that can be covered, the size of obstacles, including trenches, ridges and water, that can be crossed, and the distance that can be covered before refuelling is required.
Protection:this is not simply the amount of armour, but the type(s), how it is arranged (eg: whether it is sloping or not), and which areas are given more protection (eg: the turret and tracks) and which receive less (eg: the rear of the chassis).
Tank design is a compromise between these three principles - it is not possible to have all three: for example: more armour will lead to increased weight and therefore decreased manoeuvrability, whilst increasing the firepower by using a larger gun will not only decrease manoeuvrability, but also decrease the armour at the front of the turret leading to a decrease in the overall protection.
How the compromise is achieved is influenced by a combination of factors, including military strategies, budget, geography, political will, and, in these modern times, the desire / need to sell the tank to other countries.
Examples of how different countries are influenced in their decisions are as follows:
- Great Britain have historically always opted for better firepower and increased protection at the expense of some manoeuvrability. Britain has always maintained a small, highly trained professional army, and so tank crew survivability is important. Similarly, as limited resources may be available, the crews needs to be able to maintain their tanks in the field, and, with a succession of secondary sights available, are able to keep fighting if the primary sight is out of action.
- America has an extremely large army with sophisticated weaponry and enormous resources. As their tanks will rarely be away from support and repair units, less emphasis is placed on the crew's ability to maintain the tank themselves or to continue fighting it once damage has been sustained.
- Germany's tanks were completely outmanoevred on the Russian front during WWII by the T-34, which was a major factor in their defeat. Also they lost more of their overly complex Tiger and Panther tanks due to mechanical breakdowns than enemy action. As a result, their tanks have since been incredibly maneovrable, with the resulting decrease particularly in protection. All demonstrations of post war German tanks focus on this ability. Enhanced reliability and lower maintanance requirements were also important design goals.
- Israel is a small, but relatively rich, nation, with limited man-power and surrounded by neighbours sworn to destroy it. Its primary concern is therefore crew-survivability, and to this end it is the only nation to have produced a tank with the engine placed at the front (to increase protection for the crew behind).
See also Tank classification for a overview of tank designs
Armour
- Main article: Vehicle armour.
The MBT is the most heavily armoured vehicle in modern armies. Its armour is designed to protect the vehicle and crew against a wide variety of threats. Commonly, protection against kinetic energy penetrators fired from other tanks is considered the most important. Tanks are vulnerable to anti-tank guided missiles (ATGMs) fired from infantry or aircraft. Anti-tank mines, larger bombs, and direct artillery hits are also serious threats. Most modern MBTs do offer near complete protection from artillery shrapnel and lighter anti-tank weapons such as rocket propelled grenades. The amount of armour needed to protect against all conceivable threats from all angles would be far too heavy to be practical, so when designing an MBT much effort goes into finding the right balance between protection and weight.
In spite of their heavy armour, modern MBTs can be destroyed by artillery, heavy anti-tank mines, and disabled to varying degrees by a large variety of anti-tank weapons. They are especially vulnerable to airborne threats, and even a few rounds of well placed armour piercing rounds by an aircraft can disable a tank. This makes efficient tactics a very important part of tank protection.
Types of armour
There are several kinds of armour. The most common is called passive armour, comprised of layers of battle steel, alloys and ceramics. One of the best types of passive armour is the British-developed Chobham armour, which is comprised of spaced ceramic blocks contained by a resin fabric matrix between layers of conventional armour. A form of Chobham armour is encased in depleted uranium on the massively protected M1A1 Abrams MBT.
Nearly every tank designed since World War II has been designed with sloped armor surfaces, usually in front. The purpose of this is to deflect projectiles off the angled surface. A notable application of sloped armor during WWII is with the Soviet T-34. German tank crews were said to be horrified to find that shots fired at T-34s would sometimes simply bounce off.
Another common design feature among tanks is to use spaced armour, characterised by empty space between armour layers. This was first introduced in WWI and became especially common in WWII, as the technique was especially good at defeating shaped charge warheads that do not depend on kinetic energy for effectiveness. Some common types of spaced armour include slat armour, screens, or solid sheets attached outside the main armour of the tank, or alternatively an extra layer inside the main armour face.
Another major type of armour is reactive armour, which involves the armour "exploding" out towards the incoming round and diverting it. Reactive armour is most effective against shaped charge weapons while passive armour tends to be better against kinetic energy penetrators. Reactive armour tends to be attached to the outside of an MBT in small, replaceable units rather than being permanently incorporated into its main body. Secondary passive armour may also be attached to a tank, but this is not common.
Armour location
Traditionally, the thickness of the armour is unevenly distributed. The thickest sections are usually on the front glacis plate and the front of the turret. The sides have much lighter armour and armour on the top of the turret is lighter still. The back of the tank, and over the engine in the rear, have the lightest protection of all.
The tracks and wheels on some tanks are partly protected by steel skirts, since these are some of the most vulnerable parts to damage. Many tanks without side-skirts have them added later or with kits in the field.
As a result of these design decisions, a tank unit is relatively vulnerable to air attack and needs the support of anti-aircraft vehicles when the enemy is at least partly in control of airspace. For the same reasons immobilised tanks are also very vulnerable to enemy artillery fire from anything from medium mortars to heavy artillery guns. Unescorted tanks are also vulnerable to ambush by light infantry and guerrillas with hand held anti-tank weapons.
Paradoxically, a tank is usually in its safest state when the commander is in a personally unsafe position, riding in the open, head out of the turret, with no personal protection save his helmet and a flak jacket. In this rather high position the commander can see around the vehicle with no restrictions, and has the greatest chance of spotting enemy anti-tank operations or natural and unnatural obstacles which might immobilise or slow down the tank. Tank periscopes and other viewing devices give a sharply inferior field of vision and sense of the countryside, despite constant advances in optics and electronics. Thus, when a tank advances in hostile territory with hatches closed, the commander and the crew might be personally safer, but the tank as a whole is more at risk given the extremely reduced vision.
Armour research
Using armour technology currently in development (such as electric reactive armour) could reduce main battle tanks from their current scale-tipping weight of 70 tons down to a more manageable 20 tons, while providing superior protection. This would also have strategic implications. Currently, US heavy armour divisions can take months to move from the continental United States to locations around the world. A lighter MBT could make deployment faster.
Other technologies being considered for MBTs include active armour, an advancement on reactive armour, which uses radar or other sensing technology to automatically react to incoming missiles. Once the system detects hostile fire, it calculates a firing resolution and deploys counter-projectiles to intercept and disrupt the incoming fire. Again the goal is to reduce overall tank armour while maintaining protection levels.
Weapons
The main weapon of any modern tank is a single gun. Tank guns are among the largest calibre weapons in use on land, with only a few artillery weapons being larger. Although the calibre has not changed substantially since the end of the Second World War, modern guns are technologically superior. The current common sizes are 120 mm calibre for Western tanks and 125 mm for Eastern (Soviet/Chinese legacy) tanks. Tank guns have fired many types of rounds, but their current use is commonly limited to kinetic energy (KE) penetrators and high explosive (HE) rounds. Some tanks can fire missiles through the gun. Smoothbore (rather than rifled) guns are the dominant type of gun today. The British Army and the Indian Army are now the only ones to field main battle tanks with rifled guns.
Usually, tanks carry other armament for short range defence against infantry or targets where the use of the main weapon would be ineffective or wasteful. Typically, this is a small calibre (7.62 mm–12.7 mm) machine gun mounted coaxially with the main gun. However, a couple of French tanks such as the AMX-30 and AMX-40 carry a coaxial 20 mm cannon that has a high rate of fire and can destroy lightly armoured vehicles. Additionally, many tanks carry a roof-mounted or commander's cupola machine gun for close-in ground or limited air defence.
Fire control
Historically, tank weapons were aimed through simple optical sights and laid onto target by hand. Consequently, accuracy was limited at long range and made concurrent movement largely impossible. Modern tanks have a variety of sophisticated systems to make them more accurate. Gyroscopes are used to stabilise the main weapon; laser range finders are used to measure the range to the target; computers calculate the appropriate elevation and aim-point, taking into account many factors such as wind speed, air temperature. Night and infrared vision equipment is also commonly included. Laser target designators may also be used to illuminate targets for guided munitions. As a result modern tanks can fire reasonably accurately while moving.
Grenade launchers and smoke
Most armoured vehicles carry smoke grenade launchers which can rapidly deploy a smoke screen to visually shield a withdrawal from an enemy ambush or attack. The smoke screen is very rarely used offensively, since attacking through it blocks the attacker's vision and will give the enemy an early indication of impending attack. Modern smoke grenades work in the infrared as well as visible spectrum of light.
Some smoke grenades are designed to make a very dense cloud capable of blocking the laser beams of enemy target designators or range finders. In many MBTs, such as the French-built Leclerc, the smoke grenade launchers are also meant to launch tear gas grenades and anti-personnel fragmentation grenades. Many Israeli tanks contain small vertical mortar tubes which can be operated from within the tank, enhancing the anti-personnel capabilities and allowing it to engage targets which are behind obstacles. There have been proposals to equip other tanks with dual-purpose smoke/fragmentation grenade launchers that can be reloaded from the interior. Some tanks have been adapted to specialised roles and have had unusual main armaments such as flame-throwers. These specialised weapons are now usually mounted on the chassis of an armoured personnel carrier.
Ammunition types
There are several types of ammunition designed to defeat armour, including HESH (High Explosive Squash Head), HEAT (High Explosive Anti-Tank), APDS/APFSDS (Discarding Sabot designs). Non-KE-penetrator rounds have greater accuracy when fired from rifled guns, but can also be fin-stabilised in order to work with smoothbore guns.
Some tanks, including the M551 Sheridan, T-72, T-64, T-80, T-90, T-84, and PT-91 can fire ATGMs through their gun barrel. This functionality extends the effective combat range of the tank beyond the range afforded by conventional shells. It also provides the tank with a useful weapon against slow, low-flying airborne targets like helicopters. The United States has abandoned this concept, phasing the M551 and M60A2 out of their forces, but CIS countries continue to employ gun/missile systems in their main battle tanks.
Mobility
There are essentially two main aspects of mobility to consider, the tank's basic mobility such its speed across terrain and ability to climb obstacles, and its overall battlefield mobility such as range, what bridges it can cross, and what transport vehicles can move it. Essentially mobility of a tank is categorised as either Battlefield Mobility, Tactical Mobility, or Strategic Mobility. The first is a function of its engine performance and capability of its running gear and is determined by aspects such as acceleration, speed, vertical obstacle capability and so on. The second is the ability of the tank to be readily transported within a theatre of operation. The third is its ability to be transported from one theatre of operation to other, dependent on its weight, air portability and so on.
A main battle tank is designed to be very mobile and able to tackle most types of terrain. Its wide tracks disperse the heavy weight of the vehicle over a large area, resulting in a specific ground pressure that might be lower than that of a man's foot. The types of terrain that do pose a problem are usually extremely soft ground such as swamps, or rocky terrain scattered with large boulders. In "normal" terrain, a tank can be expected to travel at about 30–50 km/h. The road speed may be up to 70 km/h.
The logistics of getting from point A to point B are not as simple as they appear. On paper, or during any test drive of a few hours, a single tank offers better off-road performance than any wheeled fighting vehicle. On the road the fastest tank design is not much slower than the average wheeled fighting vehicle design.
In practice, the huge weight of the tank combined with the relative weakness of the track assembly makes the maximum road speed of a tank really a burst speed, which can be kept up for only a short time before there is a mechanical breakdown. Although the maximum off-road speed is lower, it cannot be kept up continuously for a day, given the variety and unpredictability of off-road terrain (with the possible exception of plains and sandy deserts).
Since an immobilised tank is an easy target for mortars, artillery, and the specialised tank hunting units of the enemy forces, speed is normally kept to a minimum, and every opportunity is used upon to move tanks on wheeled tank transporters and by railway instead of under their own power. Tanks invariably end up on railcars in any country with a rail infrastructure, because no army has enough wheeled transporters to carry all its tanks. Planning for railcar loading and unloading is crucial staff work, and railway bridges and yards are prime targets for enemy forces wishing to slow a tank advance.
When moving in a country or region with no rail infrastructure and few good roads, or a place with roads riddled by mines or frequent ambushes, the average speed of advance of a tank unit in a day is comparable to that of a man on a horse or bicycle. Frequent halts must be planned for preventive maintenance and verifications in order to avoid breakdowns during combat. This is in addition to the tactical halts needed so that the infantry or the air units can scout ahead for the presence of enemy anti-tank groups.
Another mobility issue is getting the tank to the theatre of operations. Tanks, especially main battle tanks, are extremely heavy, making it very difficult to airlift them. Using sea and ground transportation is slow, making tanks problematic for rapid reaction forces.
Some tank-like vehicles use wheels instead of tracks in order to increase road speed and decrease maintenance needs. These vehicles lack the superior off-road mobility of tracked vehicles, but might be more suited for rapid reaction forces due to increased strategic mobility.
Power-plants
The tank's power-plant supplies power for moving the tank and for other tank systems, such as rotating the turret or electrical power a radio. Tanks fielded in WWI all used petrol (gasoline) engines as power-plants. In the Second World War there was a mix of power-plant types used; a lot of tank engines were adapted aircraft engines. As the Cold War started, tanks had almost all switched over to using diesel, improved multi-fuel versions of which are still common. Starting in the late 1970s, turbine engines began to appear.
The weight and type of power-plant (influenced by its transmission and drive train) largely determines how fast and mobile the tank is, but the terrain effectively limits the maximum speed of all tanks through the stress it puts on the suspension and the crew.
Multi-fuel diesels
All modern non-turbine tanks use a diesel engine because diesel fuel is less flammable and more economical than petrol. Some Soviet tanks used the dark smoke of burning diesel as an advantage and could intentionally burn fuel in the exhaust to create smoke for cover. Fuel tanks are commonly placed at the rear of the tank, though in some designs, such as the Israeli Merkava, the diesel fuel tanks are placed around the crew area to provide an additional layer of "armour." Fuel has often been stored in auxiliary tanks externally, or by other means such as in a small trailer towed behind the tank, able to be detached during combat.
Modern tank engines are in some cases multifuel engines, a form of two-stroke design which can operate on diesel, petrol or similar fuels. However the exhaust is hotter than a diesel giving a larger thermal signature (see below).
Gas turbines
Certain designs, like the Russian T-80 and the US M1 Abrams, are powered by gas turbines. Gas turbines have been used as an auxiliary power unit (APU) in other tanks but not as the main engine. They are comparatively lighter, offer higher amounts of sustained power output, and their efficiency is greater than that of other engines in some conditions. However, they are much less efficient at idle RPM. Newer models of the M1 have a secondary small turbine engine as an APU for powering tank systems while stationary, instead of idling the main turbine for this purpose.
In theory a turbine is easier to maintain than the piston-based engines, since there are much fewer moving parts. In practice, the turbine blades are very sensitive to dust. In desert conditions, where fine sand and dust gets in everywhere, special filters have to be carefully fitted and they must be changed several times a day during operations. An improperly fitted filter, or a single bullet or a piece of shrapnel could render the filter useless, potentially damaging the engine. Piston engines also need filters and these also need constant maintenance, but the engines are more resilient even if the filter does fail.
Sonic, seismic and thermal traces
Stationary tanks can be well camouflaged in woodland and forested areas where there is natural cover, making detection and attack from the air more difficult. By contrast, in the open it is very hard to hide a tank. In both cases, however, once a tank starts its engine or begins to move it can be detected much more easily due to the heat and noise generated by its engine. The tank tracks across lands can be spotted from the air, and in the desert movement can stir up dust clouds.
Most tanks are powered by a diesel engine of a power comparable to a diesel locomotive. From the outside a tank smells, sounds, and feels quite like a diesel locomotive. The deep rumble of even a single tank can be heard a great distance on a quiet day, and the sharp diesel smell can be carried far downwind. When a tank stands still with engine running the land trembles around it. When moving, the vibrations are greater. The acoustic and seismic signatures of multi-fuel engines are comparable. The acoustic signature of a turbine engine is much greater: its high pitch whine can be much more easily distinguished from other sounds, near or far.
The very large output of a tank engine (typically in excess of 750 kW) ensures that it will always leave a distinct thermal signature. The unusually compact mass of metal of the tank hull dissipates heat in a fashion which marks it off sharply from other objects in the countryside. A moving tank is thus relatively easy to spot by good land-based or aerial infrared scanners. One of the reasons for the one-sided fighting during the Gulf Wars was that tanks like M1 Abrams had almost four times the nighttime infrared scanning range of T-72s used by the Iraqi army. Another factor in the Gulf War was that, even when camouflaged and not moving, Iraqi tanks at night would cool at a different rate from their surroundings, making thermal detection easier.
Getting a tank to move proved to be important in the Kosovo conflict in 1999. During the initial few weeks of the conflict NATO air sorties were rather ineffective in destroying Serbian tanks. This changed in the final week of the conflict, when the Kosovo Liberation Army began to engage tanks. Although the KLA had little chance of destroying the tanks, their purpose was to get the tanks to move whereupon they could be more easily identified and destroyed by NATO air power.
Future of tanks through research and development
- Main article: Tank research and development
There has been much speculation as to how tanks will evolve for modern day conflicts. Current research involves making the tank invisible to radar by adapting stealth technologies originally designed for aircraft and a variety of luminosity and colour shaping technologies. Research is also ongoing in armour systems and new propulsion units.
One clear trend is the increasing number of electrical and communication systems on a tank, such as thermal scopes and higher powered radios. If tank designs switched to electrical motors like some other heavy construction equipment, rather than a direct drive transmission, or used electromagnetic guns, as is being studied for ships, there would still be a need for a good power-plant. The turbine engine long ago supplanted piston engines in both military aircraft and ships, but whether it will be successful in tanks has yet to be seen. It is also possible that other types of power-plants such as fuel cells will provide a viable option, and they have been experimented with. For example, a hybrid electric version of the M113 APC outperformed the conventional one in many areas, but only at the expense of smaller range.
References
- Ogorkiewicz, Richard M. Technology of Tanks. Coulsdon, Surrey : Jane's Information Group, 1991. ISBN 0710605951.
- Time Life Books editors. The Armored Fist. Alexandria, Va.: Time-Life Books, 1990. ISBN 0809486091; ISBN 0809486083; ISBN 0809487047; ISBN 0809487055.
- Weeks, John. Men Against Tanks: A History of Anti-Tank Warfare. New York: Mason Charter, 1975. ISBN 0884051307; ISBN 0715369091 (British printing).
See also
- Category:Tanks
- Armoured car
- Armoured personnel carrier
- Armoured warfare
- Hobart's Funnies
- Hull-down position
- Infantry fighting vehicle
- List of AFVs
- Tank classification
