Since you have lots of knowledge about tanks and possibly tank warfare. Please answer this question:
a) Owing to profileration of anti-tank missiles, particularly shoulder fired etc. Are tanks still really relevant?
b) In ladakh (with flat lands and possible no camouflage), will light tanks be of any use? particularly, the other side can get 1000s of anti-tank missiles and be done with the enemy tanks?
c) Is tank warfare still relevant between strong armies (with lots of helicopters; aircraft; anti-tank missiles etc) like India, Pak, China??
A) Thats a rather important point, often people like to compare tanks to other tanks, while the most common threat to any tank in a conventional war is ATGMs and other portable rocket launchers like RPGs. an RPG can easily mission kill a tank, even if it doesn’t penetrate the armor, if it damages the gun, breaks off a track, damages the optics or something of the sorts, your tank is basically useless. ATGMs are a step above, a direct hit with one, even a non-penetrating one (which are less common than penetrating ones) usually means the loss of a tank as the crew will most certainly want to get out of there.
But then there are a few counters to this:
First is that tanks don’t work alone, a conventional war is a combined arms war, tanks are covered by infantry and air support, infantry is covered by tanks and air support, air support is covered by infantry and other aircraft, all the different elements help each other. In this case it becomes the job of the infantry and air support to help keep the tank safe from ATGMs and other infantry threats, so this reduces the chance of a tank being hit by such a weapon.
Second is the induction of Active protection systems, like the Trophy on Merkava, abrams and Leo. Afganit on Russian tanks, GL-5 on VT-4 and the laser system on Type 99. These systems can largely negate the effects of any incoming missile by shooting them down before they hit the tank, with the really good ones even being able to defeat top-attack missiles. All of the newer tanks are starting to get these systems and countries are investing more into them.
So in that sense, tanks are definitely still relevant, as long as the countries combined arms strategy works well, because nothing else can do ground pushes as well as a tank even to this day. APCs and infantry just don’t have that kind of protection and firepower.
B) The same logic of combined warfare will help in Ladakh, light tanks will be useful in the region for armored pushes to take the other sides land, as long as the rest of the arms can cover them. Such pushes are unlikely unless an all out war starts though, and to some extent T90 and Type 96 and 99 can be used in these altitudes too. We did see them deployed in the recent Ladakh conflict. One side could completely wipe out an armored push with just ATGMs and air cover, but then it would not have any armor to counter attack with. India currently does not use an active protection system on any of its tanks, China only has them on their Type 99 and 99A tanks (as well as VT-4s, but those are export only.)
C) A similar answer for this one too, combined warfare can make tanks work, especially in the Pakistan-India Theatre where there are large amounts of plain lands and barren deserts which can only be pushed with armored formations. Both countries will be trying to take each other’s land and only tanks can do that. Yes, with all the Missiles, helicopters, aircraft etc tanks have more threats to deal with than ever before, tanks will be less useful in defensive roles, but for offense, with the correct kind of synergy with the rest of the forces, tanks will stay relevant for a long time to come.
Infantry takes out missiles and SAMs, Air support takes out artillery and bunkers, and then tanks can take out other tanks and enemy infantry. India and Pakistan have extensively trained in combined arms warfare since the 90s.
Another thing to note is UAVs, while they have proved very useful in conflicts like Azerbaijan-Armenia and Turkey in Syria, all of these cases are very one sided affairs where one country has complete air superiority to use its drones. UCAVs will not be much useful against tanks in a Pakistan-India-China theatre where they will easily be taken down by aircraft and SAMs. Hence attack helicopters are still relevant.
