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Yahoo
7 days ago
- Yahoo
The Army has a novel solution to its drone problem: Shoot them with tanks
The Army has solved its drone problem. What you do is: you shoot them with a tank. Problem solved, right? Not quite, but that describes some of the reaction after the service released its latest update to its 'Tank Platoon' manual, known as ATP 3-20.15, late last week, and a set of diagrams deep in the appendix caught the eye of many online. It's not hard to see why. Taken by themselves, the diagrams do come across as a bit… optimistic. They present an extremely simplified vision of a hypothetical tank-vs-drone encounter, a subject that combat in Ukraine has proven is neither simple nor hypothetical for armor formations. In the diagrams, a squad of M1 Abrams main battle tanks aim at a passing drone — which the Army calls an unmanned aircraft system or UAS — and shoot it down with fire from their main 120mm cannon. The course of action instructions alongside the diagram suggest that crews employ the M1028 120mm canister rounds for the takedown. The M1028 is a fairly awful weapon to contemplate, a 120mm shell stuffed with over 1000 tungsten projectiles designed to scatter like grapeshot and mow through dismounted infantry or, in this case, clip a fragile drone in its wide field of disbursement. At least that seems to be the thinking here. Gunners should lead a straight-flying UAS, the manual says, by that most All-American of distance estimates, 'one-half football field.' A second diagram addresses the quadcopter variety of drone, which are rarely seen flying straight and narrow but instead loop and dive directly at their targets. For those, the diagrams say, aim 'slightly above helicopter body.' The new manual represents the Army's first rewrite of its armor procedures to address the threat of drones, but the simple diagrams are hardly the service's first crack at counter-UAS tactics. In fact, missed by most of the online commenters is that the diagrams are pulled from the section on intentionally simple immediate action drills. Immediate action drills, or battle drills, are familiar to any soldier as the building blocks of combat tactics — simple, short, easy-to-memorize instructions for specific scenarios that units practice until they are second nature. But revisions throughout the rest of the tank manual make clear that 'second nature' is what the army wants drone combat to be. Drones now a 'critical task' The revised manual mentions unmanned systems over 100 times and puts combat with UASs into two of a tanker's 12 'Critical Tactical Tasks,' alongside such tank basics as field maintenance and casualty care and evacuation. Drone engagements now also gets its own section in the manual's operating instructions. 'The platoon should assume they are being observed by enemy reconnaissance and targeting systems, and not assume they are under a protective umbrella of friendly air and missile defense units,' the section begins. 'The platoon must react quickly and appropriately respond and report when recognizing signs of possible enemy observation or attack.' Tankers think of defenses against UAS in two categories: active and passive. Passive defense is a relatively straightforward idea: more armor, more hiding. 'Limiting damage and attack avoidance measures are passive defense measures that are used to avoid detection from aerial threats and limit damage if attacked,' the manual says. Those measures include a checklist with everything from smearing mud on headlights for light discipline to OPSEC in the planning stages and using decoys — both real and electronic — to draw drones away. Another passive defense the Army is looking into giving its tanks, as the War Zone reported last month, includes more armor and even 'cope cages' on the top, a weak spot made famous in Ukraine but exploited by ISIS as far back as 2017 in Syria. Active measures are a whole different ballgame, which are manual and automated systems designed to shoot drones out of the sky as they approach a tank. They vary from decades-old reactive armor, to new and in-development laser or radar-directed rockets and 30mm cannons that can swat drones away as they approach. Adding an 'air guard' to the crew Perhaps most interesting though is the manual's instructions for a designated member of the crew to act as 'air guard.' This job — which the manual says will likely fall to the crew's loader — will be used 'for every vehicle and position to establish 360-degree security.' The air guard's job, the manual says, is 'to be vigilant with eyes on the horizon. Air guards are responsible for spotting aerial threats within proximity to the unit's location and providing early warning.' And while drone battles are likely to continue to be a technology race between drone makers and counter-measure builders, the Army seems to think a key to that race will be the very human skill of listening. 'Air guards should position themselves where they can best observe and, more importantly, listen for threat UAS,' the manual says. 'When listening, OPs should exercise noise discipline, ensure all engines are of,f and remove their headgear to listen. Early warning is the key for air guards.' Read the full 432-page 'Tank Platoon' manual here. The latest on Task & Purpose Air Force updates uniform standards including new rules for boots The Army and Navy want the 'right to repair' their own equipment Here is every rifle Marines have used in the last 250 years The Army has realized that horses are no longer good for 'warfighting' Army will look for false accusations, consider 'credibility' in misconduct cases Solve the daily Crossword
India.com
17-07-2025
- India.com
India's smartest ground weapon: Bad news for China, Pakistan as India develops tank with AI control, hit and kill mode, its name is...
Arjun Mk 3 tanks- File image Arjun Mk 3 tanks of India: In a significant development for India's defence development, India is developing the Arjun Mark 3 tank as its next-generation main battle tank. Expected to be ready by 2030, the tanks will be lighter and more agile than its predecessors. Equipped with a powerful 1500 hp engine and advanced AI systems for target recognition, along with drone coordination, electronic warfare, and autonomous functions, the Arjun Mk3 tanks are expected to be game-changer for India. Why are Arjun Mk 3 tanks so dangerous? The Arjun Mk 3 builds on the success of the Arjun Mk 1A, which already features AI-enabled fire control and long-range missile capability. With these upgrades, the tank is set to become one of the most intelligent and lethal ground weapons in the Indian Army's arsenal. Being equipped with a 1500 HP turbocharged engine, the Arjun Mark 3 puts it in competition with foreign technologies like M1 Abrams, Challenger 2 and China's Type 99 tank. Why are Arjun Mark 3 tanks called 'smart tanks'? The Arjun Mark 3 tanks of India, which has a 'smart tank' equipped with Artificial Intelligence (AI) will use indigenous ammunition be specially designed for long-range firing. India recently conducted successfully carried out the test-firing of two of its key strategic assets — the short-range ballistic missile Prithvi-II and the ballistic missile Agni-I, the Ministry of Defence officials said. The test-firing was carried out from the Integrated Test Range in Odisha's Chandipur. According to the Ministry of Defence, the launches were conducted under the aegis of the Strategic Forces Command as part of routine training and validation exercises. Both missiles successfully met all operational objectives and technical parameters, the Ministry said in a statement. The Ministry of Defence confirmed that the tests validated key capabilities, reaffirming the reliability and accuracy of India's nuclear-capable delivery systems. (With inputs from agencies)
Yahoo
23-06-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
How U.S. Strikes May Have Helped the Iranian Regime
Governments are not nations, especially in the Islamic Republic of Iran, but governments wage the wars that can define a nation. Until 2:00 a.m. Iran Standard Time on Sunday, the conflict between America and Iran had remained on a low boil for a solid 45 years, flaring into actual military encounters only on the territory of others, notably Iraq. There, every sixth U.S. fatality perished by the efforts of Iran. President Donald Trump alluded to this history in announcing the U.S. air strikes on three nuclear facilities inside Iran—bringing the conflict to a regime that, even when it attacked the U.S., invariably arranged for someone else to do it. In Iraq, the U.S. was an army of occupation, and its soldiers obliged to patrol the roads. They did so in Humvees heavily armored against the roadside bombs insurgents planted along the route. Iran, which wanted U.S. troops off its doorstep, organized its own insurgents, and gave them a new kind of roadside bomb, a shaped charge that could send a slug of copper through any armor, including an M1 Abrams tank. The soldiers who survived often lost limbs. The U.S. Army history of the Iraq War takes note of the U.S. unit intercepting crates of the copper plates fitted atop the explosive: 'All were turned on the same lathe in Iran.' Israeli officials had been warning the Americans about those bombs. Their own troops had encountered them while occupying Lebanon, where the diabolically lethal innovations had been planted by Hezbollah, the militia Iran helped establish and subsequently armed. When the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003, Tehran directed them to be used against an enemy it had been fighting, in one way or another, since 1979. Read More: Iran Delivers Furious Warning, Speaks of 'Unprecedented Level of Danger and Chaos' After 'Heinous' U.S. Strikes That was the year everyday Iranians rose up against the King (or Shah) who had been put in place a quarter century earlier by the U.S. and British, in a CIA-directed coup bringing down a democratically-elected government (one that had kicked a British oil company out of the country). A half century later, Iranian citizens could be relied upon to bring up the coup to American reporters doing in-person interviews on Tehran streets decorated with wartime propaganda. The entire side of a tall building in Tehran shows the American flag with the stars replaced by skulls and the stripes formed by descending bombs. The mural, which had faded over the decades, was redone with fresh paint a few months ago. The famous 'Death to America' slogan is still on the wall of the park-like compound that once held the U.S. Embassy. The place was officially dubbed 'the Den of Spies' when it was overrun by supporters of the regime that replaced the Shah—a revolutionary movement led by a charismatic Shi'ite cleric named Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. (TIME's Person of the Year in 1979 is not to be confused with his similarly named successor, 86-year-old Ali Khamenei, who finally has reportedly nominated his own candidates as successor.) The former embassy is now a museum and, as TripAdvisor makes clear, an effective one. When Iranians were coming over the gates, American diplomats and spies scrambled to feed secrets into paper shredders, reducing their secret documents to strips of paper maybe an eighth-of-an-inch wide. The zeal of the 1979 revolution is still visible on the tables of the Den of Spies, in the papers true believers re-assembled strand-by-strand. Over 50 U.S. diplomats remained in the embassy as hostages for 444 days. The humiliation the nascent Islamic Republic of Iran inflicted on the United States may have been on par with the humiliation the regime is experiencing now. The hitch, for both the U.S. and Israel, is that bringing the attack to Iran, as a country, risks stirring the nationalist response of a nation that goes back 2,500 years. Most Iranians loathe their government, and may have looked on with a certain interest on June 13, when the Israeli warplanes and drones descended, both from abroad and from a base Mossad set up near Tehran. (A joke making the rounds in Tehran had one of Iran's retaliatory strikes hitting the headquarters of Mossad, but it was empty: All the agents were inside Iran.) At the time its secret nuclear program was revealed in 2002, people still held out hope that they could alter their government at the ballot box. But the political reform movement failed, and the stiffening, increasingly unpopular regime understood that it could no longer count on its population. Instead, it placed its hopes for survival in thugs beating protesters in the streets, and acquiring a nuclear weapon. A large majority of Iranians have no love for the regime. In small towns and cities alike, they have been rising up against their oppressive government at irregular intervals, for decades. But any kind of bomb is terrifying, and after the first night of attacks, Israel's warplanes moved beyond military targets and assassinations. An oil refinery was bombed. The casualties of a strike on Tajrish Square, a bustling bazaar in Tehran's north, included a water main and a well-known graphic designer, who was waiting at a red light. The specter of Gaza now looms over every Israeli military operation. After Iran's retaliatory missiles claimed Israeli lives, Israel's defense minister threatened that 'Tehran will burn.' Inside Iran, opposing the government does not extend to supporting attacks by foreign militaries. A group of human rights, civil society, and political activists who, as they put it, 'have always been critical and opposed to the current wrong way of governing,' posted a statement on Telegram saying: 'At this critical juncture in our country's history, when we are confronted with the aggression and arrogance of the racist Israeli government, which has a long history of warmongering, genocide and breaking the fundamental principles of morality and international law, we firmly condemn this attack. We emphasize our serious opposition to any foreign interference. We consider it to be detrimental to the human rights and democracy-seeking efforts of Iranian civil society, and we stand united and steadfast in defending the territorial integrity, independence, national defense capability of our homeland, defending the lives and dignity of human beings, and peace in the region and the world.' Dread swelled in the neighborhoods around the Tehran atomic research reactor, with the distribution of iodide potassium pills to protect the thyroid against radiation in the air. Experts say the risk of radiation exposure is fairly small around the atomic facilities that the U.S. and Israel have bombed to date, because the ones in Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan all deal with enriching uranium, rather than sparking nuclear reactions. But though small, the Tehran reactor (set up by the U.S. in 1967, when the Shah still ruled), operates as Chernobyl or Three Mile Island once did, and in the center of a city of more than nine million people. Those living closest to the reactor were told the pills should be taken by those over the age of 60 and under 40, but only when instructed by state TV, which Israel has also bombed. Read More: A New Middle East Is Unfolding Before Our EyesSo, where do things go from here? To a large extent, that depends on the actions of an Iranian regime that was already unpopular at the start of this assault. But any government bringing its own military inside Iran's borders should understand the nature of the country. Among Iranians, opposition to the government is grounded in a bedrock pride in their nation, which predates not only the Islamic Republic, but Islam itself. Some on the Iranian plateau still practice Zoroastrianism, the world's first monotheistic faith, and the foundation for an ancient empire that still informs Iranians' sense of themselves. That identity can be glimpsed in first names like Darius and Cyrus—the names of Persian emperors—and actually visible in the ruins of Persepolis. There, in the friezes depicting supplicants from nations lining up to pay fealty to the ruler of an ancient empire, some Iranians find themselves seeing the nuclear program exactly as the modern regime has cast it—as the 'inalienable right' of any signatory to Non Proliferation Treaty to pursue a nuclear program, so long as it's in Tehran, there was evidence the regime was gaining ground with a public it had largely lost. In a private chat, a university professor told a friend: "Even if Khamenei had packed up the whole nuclear program, Israel would have attacked. Their whole plan was to weaken Iran's military." Contact us at letters@
Time Magazine
22-06-2025
- Politics
- Time Magazine
How U.S. Strikes May Have Helped the Iranian Regime
Governments are not nations, especially in the Islamic Republic of Iran, but governments wage the wars that can define a nation. Until 2:00 a.m. Iran Standard Time on Sunday, the conflict between America and Iran had remained on a low boil for a solid 45 years, flaring into actual military encounters only on the territory of others, notably Iraq. There, every sixth U.S. fatality perished by the efforts of Iran. President Donald Trump alluded to this history in announcing the U.S. air strikes on three nuclear facilities inside Iran—bringing the conflict to a regime that, even when it attacked the U.S., invariably arranged for someone else to do it. In Iraq, the U.S. was an army of occupation, and its soldiers obliged to patrol the roads. They did so in Humvees heavily armored against the roadside bombs insurgents planted along the route. Iran, which wanted U.S. troops off its doorstep, organized its own insurgents, and gave them a new kind of roadside bomb, a shaped charge that could send a slug of copper through any armor, including an M1 Abrams tank. The soldiers who survived often lost limbs. The U.S. Army history of the Iraq War takes note of the U.S. unit intercepting crates of the copper plates fitted atop the explosive: 'All were turned on the same lathe in Iran.' Israeli officials had been warning the Americans about those bombs. Their own troops had encountered them while occupying Lebanon, where the diabolically lethal innovations had been planted by Hezbollah, the militia Iran helped establish and subsequently armed. When the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003, Tehran directed them to be used against an enemy it had been fighting, in one way or another, since 1979. Read More: Iran Delivers Furious Warning, Speaks of 'Unprecedented Level of Danger and Chaos' After 'Heinous' U.S. Strikes That was the year everyday Iranians rose up against the King (or Shah) who had been put in place a quarter century earlier by the U.S. and British, in a CIA-directed coup bringing down a democratically-elected government (one that had kicked a British oil company out of the country). A half century later, Iranian citizens could be relied upon to bring up the coup to American reporters doing in-person interviews on Tehran streets decorated with wartime propaganda. The entire side of a tall building in Tehran shows the American flag with the stars replaced by skulls and the stripes formed by descending bombs. The mural, which had faded over the decades, was redone with fresh paint a few months ago. The famous 'Death to America' slogan is still on the wall of the park-like compound that once held the U.S. Embassy. The place was officially dubbed 'the Den of Spies' when it was overrun by supporters of the regime that replaced the Shah—a revolutionary movement led by a charismatic Shi'ite cleric named Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. (TIME's Person of the Year in 1979 is not to be confused with his similarly named successor, 86-year-old Ali Khamenei, who finally has reportedly nominated his own candidates as successor.) The former embassy is now a museum and, as TripAdvisor makes clear, an effective one. When Iranians were coming over the gates, American diplomats and spies scrambled to feed secrets into paper shredders, reducing their secret documents to strips of paper maybe an eighth-of-an-inch wide. The zeal of the 1979 revolution is still visible on the tables of the Den of Spies, in the papers true believers re-assembled strand-by-strand. Over 50 U.S. diplomats remained in the embassy as hostages for 444 days. The humiliation the nascent Islamic Republic of Iran inflicted on the United States may have been on par with the humiliation the regime is experiencing now. The hitch, for both the U.S. and Israel, is that bringing the attack to Iran, as a country, risks stirring the nationalist response of a nation that goes back 2,500 years. Most Iranians loathe their government, and may have looked on with a certain interest on June 13, when the Israeli warplanes and drones descended, both from abroad and from a base Mossad set up near Tehran. (A joke making the rounds in Tehran had one of Iran's retaliatory strikes hitting the headquarters of Mossad, but it was empty: All the agents were inside Iran.) At the time its secret nuclear program was revealed in 2002, people still held out hope that they could alter their government at the ballot box. But the political reform movement failed, and the stiffening, increasingly unpopular regime understood that it could no longer count on its population. Instead, it placed its hopes for survival in thugs beating protesters in the streets, and acquiring a nuclear weapon. A large majority of Iranians have no love for the regime. In small towns and cities alike, they have been rising up against their oppressive government at irregular intervals, for decades. But any kind of bomb is terrifying, and after the first night of attacks, Israel's warplanes moved beyond military targets and assassinations. An oil refinery was bombed. The casualties of a strike on Tajrish Square, a bustling bazaar in Tehran's north, included a water main and a well-known graphic designer, who was waiting at a red light. The specter of Gaza now looms over every Israeli military operation. After Iran's retaliatory missiles claimed Israeli lives, Israel's defense minister threatened that 'Tehran will burn.' Inside Iran, opposing the government does not extend to supporting attacks by foreign militaries. A group of human rights, civil society, and political activists who, as they put it, 'have always been critical and opposed to the current wrong way of governing,' posted a statement on Telegram saying: 'At this critical juncture in our country's history, when we are confronted with the aggression and arrogance of the racist Israeli government, which has a long history of warmongering, genocide and breaking the fundamental principles of morality and international law, we firmly condemn this attack. We emphasize our serious opposition to any foreign interference. We consider it to be detrimental to the human rights and democracy-seeking efforts of Iranian civil society, and we stand united and steadfast in defending the territorial integrity, independence, national defense capability of our homeland, defending the lives and dignity of human beings, and peace in the region and the world.' Dread swelled in the neighborhoods around the Tehran atomic research reactor, with the distribution of iodide potassium pills to protect the thyroid against radiation in the air. Experts say the risk of radiation exposure is fairly small around the atomic facilities that the U.S. and Israel have bombed to date, because the ones in Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan all deal with enriching uranium, rather than sparking nuclear reactions. But though small, the Tehran reactor (set up by the U.S. in 1967, when the Shah still ruled), operates as Chernobyl or Three Mile Island once did, and in the center of a city of more than nine million people. Those living closest to the reactor were told the pills should be taken by those over the age of 60 and under 40, but only when instructed by state TV, which Israel has also bombed. Read More: A New Middle East Is Unfolding Before Our EyesSo, where do things go from here? To a large extent, that depends on the actions of an Iranian regime that was already unpopular at the start of this assault. But any government bringing its own military inside Iran's borders should understand the nature of the country. Among Iranians, opposition to the government is grounded in a bedrock pride in their nation, which predates not only the Islamic Republic, but Islam itself. Some on the Iranian plateau still practice Zoroastrianism, the world's first monotheistic faith, and the foundation for an ancient empire that still informs Iranians' sense of themselves. That identity can be glimpsed in first names like Darius and Cyrus—the names of Persian emperors—and actually visible in the ruins of Persepolis. There, in the friezes depicting supplicants from nations lining up to pay fealty to the ruler of an ancient empire, some Iranians find themselves seeing the nuclear program exactly as the modern regime has cast it—as the 'inalienable right' of any signatory to Non Proliferation Treaty to pursue a nuclear program, so long as it's in Tehran, there was evidence the regime was gaining ground with a public it had largely lost. In a private chat, a university professor told a friend: "Even if Khamenei had packed up the whole nuclear program, Israel would have attacked. Their whole plan was to weaken Iran's military."
Daily Mail
18-06-2025
- Politics
- Daily Mail
White House silent on deadly tragedy rocking Trump's military parade
The White House was mum Wednesday about the tragic death of a Washington, DC woman who was hit by a truck carrying an M1-Abrams tank that took part in the Army parade President Trump attended Sunday. The truck was part of a convoy transporting military vehicles back to Fort Hood, Texas from the parade, which celebrated the Army's 250th anniversary and fell on Trump's 79th birthday. The woman, identified as Sierra Nichole Smith, 39, died at the intersection of New York Avenue and Bladensburg Road in the city's Northeast quadrant en route to Jessup, Maryland on June 16. Emergency personnel performed lifesaving measures but were unsuccessful. Police who conducted a preliminary investigation said Smith ran into the road and stumbled in front of a truck carrying the 70-ton tank. According to the Metropolitan Police Department she was dragged for several blocks, then got hit by a 2007 Chevy Suburban that was driving behind the truck in the convoy. The drivers were private contractors and not members of the military. No one has been charged with a crime. One local official called it 'just a tragedy.' 'These tanks did not need to be on local streets and consequently they didn't need to be hauled away in a big convoy,' DC's 'shadow senator' Paul Strauss told the Daily Mail. 'In some ways it's a very random accident that could have occurred with another vehicle. But it really begs the question: Why was this necessary to have all this equipment here? We don't know if enough precautions were taken. It's not an everyday occurrence that military hardware takes over the city in the way it did,' he said. He called it an 'unneccssary exercise done for the sole purpose of appeasing the president's ego on his birthday. And it's unfortunate.' 'The details that have been made public are just horrific. She was dragged for blocks. It's horrific for so many reasons,' Strauss said. A Washington Metropolitan Police Department spokeswoman said officers responded to 'an adult female, unconscious and not breathing, suffering from life-threatening injuries,' according to local media reports. USA Today, after reviewing an Army document on the incident, reported that an initial police investigation cleared the truck driver and said no military personnel were involved. The tanks were part of a parade costing up to $45 million and consisting of 120 vehicles, 6,000 soldiers, flyovers and a parachute jump. Trump was highly attuned to the parade, touting it beforehand and delivering a short speech at the event while accompanied by first lady Melania Trump. trip to Canada for the G7, and denying the celebration had to do with his birthday.
