Popular Science online has a retrospective about the decades of the "flying car" dream in its several variations. The tag is that DOD's DARPA has solicited design bids for what essentially sounds like a flying HUMVEE.
The site posts an artistic memory lane of such proposals, including the amazing flying tank:
The accompanying text reads,
Flying Tanks: July 1932Well, no they were not forgotten. In fact, militaries around the world have been using flying tanks for a few decades now. The main one used by the Soviet Army looked like this:
In response to the horrors of trench warfare, inventors raced to develop flying tanks that could land on the battlefield and be ready for immediate combat. American engineer Walter J. Christie envisioned a four-ton armored vehicle equipped with a 1,000-horsepower motor, a propeller, and detachable wings. Each tank would be commanded by two men. Upon landing, the driver would pull a single lever, releasing the wings, and advance into battle. Meanwhile, the Soviet Air Force designed their own winged tanks, like the Antonov A-40, which was essentially a T-60 light tank with large biplane wings and a twin tail attached. Despite the efforts of engineers, flying tanks never really caught on, so further efforts were scrapped and largely forgotten.
Yep, it's the fabled Mi-24 Hind helicopter, which was by official Soviet Army doctrine classified as a flying tank, insofar as its mission profile and uses were. The US Army's first flying tank (uh, I mean, attack helicopter) was the AH-1 Cobra, but it was fairly lightly armed compared to the Hind and was neither as long ranged nor as versatile. (The Hind could carry troops as well as lots of armament, the AH-1 carried a pilot and a gunner, period.)
However, as Field Marshal Erwin Rommel noted in World War II, there is no army on earth that knows so little but learns so well or so quickly as the US Army. As so the successor to the Cobra was this massively deadly, all-weather, 24/7 skyborne killer:
First flown in 1975, the AH-64 Apache has gone through a few product-improvement programs since. The most advanced variant of several still flying is the AH-64D Longbow, Block III, which has just begun production. It makes Luke Skywalker's Tie fighter look like a Jenny biplane.
Yet attack helicopters basically perform missions that are classic ones for armor: rampage in the enemy's rear area, destroying logistics stocks and reserve formations. Gen. George S. Patton told his men that their tank's cannon was its secondary armament, used to punch through the combat line to reach the enemy's rear, where the tank's most destructive weapon, its .50-caliber machine guns, would wreak havoc on the soft targets there.
An Apache's weapons are considerably more destructive and varied than an M-1 Abram tank's cannon or machine guns. Since World War II, tanks have become very narrowly focused in design. The Abram's tank, born during the height of the Cold War, was designed to fight Soviet tanks. Other considerations were secondary, although tacticians never forgot that tanks are invaluable in urban warfare (i.e., Fallujah, 2004) even when the enemy has no tanks.
But for versatility, the flyings tanks are far more lethal, more precise, attack far deeper and are multiples faster to the mission area. But there are always tradeoffs. One is that an Abrams is hard to kill but Apaches not so much. Not exactly easy, mind you, but not daunting, either. Another is that the Abrams dominates terrain by being there and staying there. Apaches have no staying power. They fly there, they attack, they leave. Unlike ground tanks, flying tanks cannot take or hold terrain. Apaches rent an objective, Abrams take title possession. You can outwait Apaches, though you won't enjoy a minute of it. But when this steel monster comes calling, it owns you for the brief time you have left to ponder the fact:
Even so, rare (and insane!) is the Abrams commander who would decline being preceded by Apaches into battle.
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