Spear & Shield of Modern Warfare: What'd won in the close future?

[Arzeal]

The basic concept of mankind's weapons is spear & shield: Offensive weapons (spears, swords, bows, muskets, guns, rockets, missles, etc.) and Defensive armors (shields, chain mails, plate armor, tanks, etc.)
Currently the Spear is dominating (as speculated in Iraq war whom tanks are chewed like gums).
I'd loved to see more expert ideas on this matter please, as my knowledge on modern warfare is seriously lacking 

 

[Captured Joe]

Armour is more expensive than bullets.
Offence is the best defence.
Defence is static (mostly), while offence can be done on any place.
So, more Spears.

 

[Night Ninja]

Errr, what? Modern Western MBTs are really effing hard to destroy or even mission-kill. What have you been smoking?

 

[The_King_Of_Hyrule]

Decent bombs can knock them out though and they are cheaper than armour.

 

[Lord Burgess1]

Decent bombs can knock them out though and they are cheaper than armour.

'decent bombs?' No, not at all.

 

[RalliX]

Right then, what kind of firepower is required to take down say... an Abrams M1A2 Main-Battle-Tank?
edit: I know that with the TUSK system it is able to easily shrug off most infantry weapons(even without, it's got lots of armour). EG: Shaped charges, RPGs.

 

[AWdeV]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M1_Abrams#Countermeasures

 

[GökTürkHakaniKemal]

At six day wars,israel was a shield and arabs was a spear.Who won?İsrael.İt shows that Shields are still effective

 

[AWdeV]

That doesn't even make any sense.

 

[GökTürkHakaniKemal]

That doesn't even make any sense.

Arabs atacked israel without using tanks and other stuff that can defend them from bullets,they just used their infintary while israel used nearly more tanks then infintary.Also israel did not atack,it wait for arabs to atack just like a shield.When arab countries hit that shield with spear the shield was so powerfull that spear is broken(I mean the defense was so powerfull that arabs loose the battle.)when arabs lost their weapon israel make a counter atack and won the battle. -.-

 

[RalliX]

He's saying that during the six days war, the Israelis fought defensively and won.
But that's obvious.
So, from reading the supplied info, I can safely say that the Abrams is extremely tough and basically invulnerable to older equipment. However, surely the more advanced militaries have anti-tank weapons with the capability of destroying it?
The examples of russian missiles that would fail against it were mostly produced in 1962.
Could we perhaps see some newer, notable anti-tank devices not produced during the Cold War?

 

[nijis]

The 1947-49 Arab-Israeli war, aka the War of Independence aka the Nakba, was not the Six Day War, which was in 1967. And whatever you think about the causes of either war, the Israelis did not fight particularly defensively in either. The Arab armies' entrance into the war in 1948 came after about six months of fighting, mostly Israeli offensives against Palestinian villages, mostly because the Palestinians were unable to organize a mobile fighting force.

A couple of buried 155mm shells can disable most makes of Abrams, if the Abrams drives over them. Although technically, as the roadside bombs are a static system, they are operationally probably a "shield" rather than a spear. Context is everything.

The balance of power between anti-tank and tank changes every 10-20 years or so. As far as I am aware, it's still an open question how recent-make ATGMs like the Kornet would perform against tanks with all the latest countermeasures. If you're interested in this sort of thing, I'd recommend Combat Mission: Shock Force.

 

[Jhessail]

The balance between "spear" and "shield" is always fluctuating - during WW1, the shield was very much prominent as the combination of barbed wire, machine guns and artillery made static defence so powerful that offence became almost irrational. Then the emergence of armoured vehicles broke that deadlock and swung the pendulum the other way. Now it's swinging back towards the middle, as light-weight anti-tank weaponry have become both cheap and so easy to use. Any modern ATGM has a solid chance of knocking out an MBT but it doesn't mean that tanks have become obsolete - just like missiles are encroaching the carrier's superiority at sea while not making them obsolete quite yet, just that neither one is quite as easily dominant as they used to be.

 

[Yugrath]

What about nuclear weaponry? Are they relevant here?

 

[Jhessail]

Not really. While advances in targeting systems have enabled superpowers to utilize smaller and thus cleaner warheads, they are still the gigantic bogeyman in the collective mind of humanity, thus no-one would use them except for a last resort. But yeah, they definitely turned the pendulum over to the "spear". Were it not for the Mutually Assured Destruction, who knows what could have happened during the Cold War?

 

[Austupaio]

I'd say that it's gone back to shield with nuclear warheads these days.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missile_defense
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phalanx_CIWS
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Energy_Liquid_Laser_Area_Defense_System

There's far more, this is just off the top of my head.

 

[Majhudeen]

The fact is there is more to it with warfare then that. What about psychological warfare, using information, propoganda and fear?

Not to mention the varying tactics and strategies associating with that.

As for which is more effective? You can't have one without the other. It can vary in degree's of both but you need both to win the war, and much more.

 

[Palaiologos]

The offense will always, always find a way to overcome the defence. As a general rule that is.

The initiative lies in offense, defense just reacts.

Be it offensive weapon systems vs armour, offensive stratagems vs defensive ones, whatever.

 

[Majhudeen]

Aye, but it is because of this the defence has the advantage initially, and if you utilize that you will be able to seize victory.

Sometimes a good defence can be a good offence. And sometimes a good offence can be a good defence. Its a vice versa saying that reigns true. If you have no forms of defence, you cannot lead an offence. And therefore, you are ****ed if you do not even have a chance of victory, let alone survival.

 

[Palaiologos]

Yes i agree on principle. But i am generalizing even more.


The offense will always find a way around defense-because she has the initiative.

There is no such thing, or will ever be for example an impregnable fort.