modern day combat military men and tanks

When first deployed on the Somme the tank was proof against German machine guns (although not against artillery rounds). And it won’t come to pass this time either, not yet anyway, for reasons I shall now explain.įirst, the history of the tank in warfare since its first introduction by the British in 1916 during the Great War has been one of a see-saw battle between its protection levels and the potency of weapons designed to defeat that protection. I have heard this cry numerous times before over the past forty years and it has yet to come to pass.

If you would like to submit your own article on this topic or any other, please see our submission guidelines. This article is the opinion of the author and not necessarily that of the UK Defence Journal. What has been widely portrayed in the popular media has led, once again, to predictions that “the age of the tank is over”. Unfortunately, the abiding images in the public view are of heavily armed and armoured, not to say highly expensive, armoured fighting vehicles being destroyed and neutralised wither by plucky individuals with hand-held anti-tank weapons or by cheap – relatively speaking – armed drones and the so-called ‘loitering’ or ‘kamikaze’ munitions. While modern weapons had helped create this problem, generals hoped that they would also assist the Army in fighting their way out of it.Recent conflicts in Nagorno-Karabakh between Armenia and Azerbaijan and, more tellingly, the current war in Ukraine have brought a renewed focus on the role of the main battle tank in modern, conventional military operations. This system was strengthened with fortifications, underground shelters and thick belts of barbed wire.įor commanders, the greatest tactical problem was to get troops safely across the fire-swept divide between the trenches to penetrate enemy defences. Communication trenches linked them all together. The front-line trenches were backed-up by second and third lines: 'support' and 'reserve' trenches. These early trenches were built quickly and tended to be simple affairs that offered little protection from the elements. Both sides dug in and a line of trenches soon ran from the Channel to the Swiss frontier. The First Battle of Ypres (20 October - 22 November 1914) marked the end of open and mobile warfare on the Western Front.

The destructive power of modern artillery and machine guns forced soldiers to seek cover on the battlefield and dig in for protection. Weapons played a large part in creating the difficult and unusual circumstances of trench warfare which the British Army encountered during the First World War (1914-18).

Modern day combat military men and tanks