Why don't tanks have radar aimed guns?

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Radar is great at detecting objects in the sky or silhouettes on the horizon - so it is perfect for anti-aircraft and anti-ship gun aiming.

However, tanks are almost never in the sky, and should never be silhouetted. Picking tanks against the ground is troublesome.

Radar systems up into the 1960/70s were quite cumbersome - anti-aircraft batteries tended to be static emplacements. As the the USAF got better at suppressing air defence in Vietnam, the Russians developed mobile units - but the radar was still quite cumbersome, using a separate truck or trailer to the launchers. Ships don't have a problem with tucking a large radar system somewhere on board, but tanks have limited space and engine power (therefore, weight limits - adding radar would have meant less armour, or less ammunition, or something else being taken out).

Another downside is that the tank would have to be radiating in order to get a return - which is what the USAF targeted when they developed air defence supression tactics - they went for the AA radars. By using radar, you've now made your tank an even bigger target.

Modern tanks (M1 Abrams, Challenger 2, Leopard 2, etc) are using laser targeting systems now - the gunner sights the target, and the turret and gun automatically rotate and elevate accordingly. With auto-stabilisation, it is even possible for these tanks to fire accurately on the move (and at a fair clip). I'm not sure when the laser technology was introduced - but it seems to be at least 30 years old. Focused lasers are lot less detectable than radar (you're more likely to detect the scatter from the target than the source).

So - short answer: radar was too big to be used on a tank, and when it started getting small enough, it was superceded.

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