What are tanks for?
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Accepted answer
The role of tanks changed substantially from their introduction in WWI, through WWII, the Cold War, and to the present day. Any attempt to get a single answer for something that evolved over a century is bound to fail.
- The very first tanks were pillbox and MG nest busters. Moving not much faster than a walking infantryman across shell-holed terrain, with limited range before the first likely breakdown.
- Theorists talked about and hoped for breakthroughs, when tanks would take the cavalry role of rolling up enemy rear areas. Germany came close to that in a few cases early in WWII.
- Improvements in anti-tank doctrine and equipment stopped those breakthroughs and forced the tank units into combined arms teams. (I'm thinking about bazookas here, not tank destroyers.)
- For a while it looked as if anti-tank missiles had killed the tank, but improved armor (Chobham and reactive armor) made shaped charges less effective.
Notably, read up on cruiser tanks and infantry tanks in the interwar UK, the introduction and abolition of tank destroyer battalions in the US during WWII, and the development of the medium tank into the main battle tank.
When Germany fought the Blitzkrieg, most infantry walked to battle, without even trucks. Only elite infantry units would have a full set of trucks. Only the US industrial mobilization when they entered the war allowed fully motorized infantry divisions (not to be confused with Soviet-style Motor Rifles).
The West hasn't fought a serious battle against a "peer competitor" for a long time. This distorts the role of tanks, in a hypothetical Fulda Gap scenario things would have been grimmer.
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