Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

If you've been watching the war you'll notice that tanks are largely absent from battle these days. Russia had thousands more tanks than Ukraine 3 years ago, and now is scrounging the last of its inventory leftover from WWII.

The Super Tank™ you've described sounds cool, though. Can Ukraine order 1000 of the upgraded version with lasers for Spring delivery?



>Russia had thousands more tanks

watch the videos from the war - the tanks are mostly without ADS, and the ADS that Russia has is really a crappy one. You can also watch videos how soldiers shoot down the drones with shotgun or just using some stick/stone. Drones are much easier to shoot down than RPG, and nobody has been able to shoot down RPG with shotgun (a great baseball player probably would be able with some non-zero probability to bat an RPG out though).

>Can Ukraine order 1000 of the upgraded version with lasers for Spring delivery?

No. Even the existing ADS with shrapnel warheads are not sold to Ukraine.


No navy would deploy a battleship today, no matter how good an anti-missile system it had. Only needs to miss one, and battleships just cost way way more than even a thousand missiles. Plus ballistic artillery just isn’t that useful compared to what a drone or cruise missle can do.


What's the cost of all your whizzbang technology? Does it cost $10M or $20M per tank to make? And how quickly are they produced? Maybe 1-2 per month? And how many years does it take to modify or improve them?

Now compare that to the hundreds of thousands of drones manufactured every month for far less and adapted monthly.

We've already seen mothership drones used in Ukraine.[0] How long do you think it will be until we see fire and forget multiple attack baby drones that overwhelm any whizzbang ADS? 6 months, a year? As the old saying goes: quantity has a quality all it's own.

Sorry tankies, your time is over.

[0] https://interestingengineering.com/military/ukraine-forces-t...




Consider applying for YC's Winter 2026 batch! Applications are open till Nov 10

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: