Imagine you are walking through in a dank trench under overcast European skies; recent rains have left the dug-up mud into a rat-infested swamp that extends right up to your sides, well above your head. When you want a change of scenery, you can always take a little walk, your landmarks are the remains of what was once a person, now hunched over his gun in the mud, in a stylish scarf of barbed wires, rotten beyond recognition and feast for the same rats that you share your quarters with. The air reeks of rotting flesh, human excrement and gun powder and you’re happy because as long as you don’t smell garlic or mustard, you know you won’t die a horrible death. Of course you can climb the wall and look out, the fresh wind across the mined, barbed wire laden No man’s land would bring the stench of a whole other set of corpses and misery, reminding you that at least you are not alone in your misfortune, your enemy keeps you company, although, while you are processing this little quantum of peace, the silhouette of your head is a fine target and like you, the enemy is just as bored and their only entertainment is using the ammunition that their government does not let them lack. One peep, and you are a landmark yourself.
The life of an average soldier in the trench warfare of WW1 is the farthest thing from glorious. Not a heroic second nor a glorious death, just misery and wait for months on end, unable to move ahead or retreat, a true purgatory. You sit down to rest your feet, which you think has developed trench foot, before you begin your fantasy of a life as a peg footed pirate to amuse yourself, you hear a deep distant rumble. Trucks? But trucks can’t drive in this mud nor would anyone be suicidal enough to try to drive anything across the no man’s land. Suddenly distant shouting almost rolls up to you and the whole trench is roused up. Hurried murmurs fill the rancid air and a pall of emotions befalls anyone who tries to look. Bewilderment, fear, confusion, shock? Perhaps equal parts of all of it. You climb up and decide to see for yourself. Lo and behold! A giant silhouette rumbling at you, trees cracking as they are pushed aside by the giant form, the fences and posts disappear under it, as it catches the faint sun, the metal glimmers, a metal fortress on tracks, rolling over everything in its path, bellowing and creaking under a plume of grey-black smoke and under the rumble of its engine, you hear the undercurrents of enemy cheer, equally confounded, but certainly glad.
You do not know what it is you are seeing, but you know it is the enemy, hurried, panicked orders to open fire start coming, and before you know it, a volley of tracers move at the ominous shape. The staccato of machine guns and company’s worth of rifles unloading their lead and yet, the incoming enemy doesn’t even flinch, instead, gun barrels turn towards you almost like eyes and then the flash of the muzzle. You realize you are the target when you hear the crack of the rounds that passed you by. Before you figure it out a large metallic rhomboid box, has crawled up to your trench and over it, followed by British troops. That would have been the first impression of a Landship on the battlefield for a German soldier. The project was codenamed “Tank” due to its shape resembling water tanks and the workers in the factories referring to it as such. But by whatever name, the new machine had just broken months of stalemate despite being horrendously unreliable and hazardous to even its own crews.
Early tanks were ungraceful, poorly protected, slow and unreliable with horrible conditions for the crew, including vulnerability to high powered and armour piercing K-rounds, getting stuck in large bomb craters, vulnerability to artillery and mortar, getting overrun by infantry and even stray bullets and shrapnel coming in through the ports which warranted metal and chainmail masks for the crew. This is however, nothing compared to the high heat, poor ventilation and poisonous gasses from cordite fumes and fuel carried which made it essentially an explosive hot box with no smoking zone expanding up to 20 yards outside. One can gather this to be a drawback considering how a war zone tends to provide much more than the ember of a matchstick without the consideration of your safety zones. Of the 42 tanks shipped to Somme, only about 9 managed to make it to the other side, but the shock and awe was definite. Despite not being an overwhelming success and facing many criticisms from the French for a premature deployment, costing the allies their element of surprise, the Tank had done what horseback cavalry had failed to achieve.
The French were the first to refine the Tank from a metal box into a vehicle of war. Opposed to the multi-purpose crowded room that acted as the engine room, driver’s compartment, gunnery room and everything in between, the Renault FT was the first machine that defined what everyone thinks of when they hear the word “Tank”. Tracked vehicle with a main gun and a 360⁰ coverage. However, the refinement of tank doctrine came in WW2 by the hands of the Germans. The very same Germans who only fielded about a 100 Tanks throughout the great war, in addition to the few captured from the allies called Beutepanzerwagen.
The German Tigers and Leopards hold a near legendary status in war history. Not only did these machines refine the concept but the German Blitzkrieg was a defining moment for what mechanised infantry could do. War was no longer about digging in. It took the mobility of horseback cavalry and added the firepower of artillery to it. The result was a near unstoppable onslaught that brought the downfall of the French forces at the hands of the third Reich. As WW2 progressed, the well armoured and overengineered German tanks transcended to a psychological warfare tool where seeing a Tiger would break the enemy before shots had been fired. The armour itself was built so well that often American Sherman rounds would just ricochet off. The counter? Russians did it the old-fashioned way. A doctrine that continued to dominate soviet mindset. Build well enough, but build a lot. So what if a Tiger can survive you and take you down? After a point, numbers become a quality of their own and once you take the back of a Tiger, its mighty armour isn’t so mighty anymore.
To put things simply, tanks function on the iron triangle, Armour, Firepower and Mobility. Much like a videogame, you must compromise on somethings and then strategize according to your strengths. High firepower and armour mean moving the tank around becomes difficult, not only under its own power but also to and from theatres. Heavy tanks also get limited by the bridges they can cross and terrains where they might sink in. This plagued modern tank manufacturers, especially American ones. Since US has global interests, their machine needs to be effective globally, meaning they need supply and logistics to match whatever they create. But what they did create was nothing short of a marvel, and the M1A1 Abrahams proved its mettle in Operation Desert Storm. A 60-ton behemoth, with composite armour and 120mm stabilised cannon pierced through Iraqi lines so fast that it stretched even their own supply lines. The Abrahams hasn’t stopped there, and heavier armour like ERA and depleted Uranium have been added along with upgrades to weapons and sensors. The other western tanks mimic this philosophy.
Western tanks are built inside-out. They sit he crew comfortably, then design the tank around them, adequate protection from both enemy fire and their own magazine, engine installed in the rear, safe, guns made powerful, secondary machineguns automated and no lack of sensors. They build them to last and to allow the crew to operate as comfortably as is possible and preferably without having to exit the cupola. The Soviets had a different idea however. They built them outside-in. They defined the silhouette, weight, power and armament, the crew, well, they are soviets, they’d manage, as they did everything else.
The dilemma for India is that defending its borders takes you on a virtual world tour. From the forests of North East to the swamps of Bengal and Gujrat, from the salt plains of Kutch, to the shifting dunes of Rajasthan and from the Paddy fields of Punjab to the rocky slopes of Kashmir and the high-altitude desert of Ladakh to the sandy beaches of Andaman. Being in Indian armed forces means learning to fight in every environment that the world can throw at you and tanks built for Siberian colds don’t fare well in the heat of the Thar desert, the heavy machines built to defend Europe don’t fit the narrow roads and passes of Kashmir and the Heavy armour is not easy to carry up to the high battlefields of Ladakh where even the mightiest jet engines and largest cargo wings lose lift to the thin air and the cold turns the fluids into a thick sludge that would love to ruin your machine into an early retirement.
