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I think the US/UK offensive operations in 2003 spelled the end of massed armoured and armoured infantry divisions swarming 'blitzkrieg-style' into the enemy. The main issue, as I'm sure you know, is the stupendous amounts of fuel a modern tank brigade, never mind a full division or even an corps, takes for any kind of sustained operations. The US and British armoured advance into Iraq in 2003 was stalled not because of enemy action but simply because they ran out of fuel. So in future we might see armoured brigades with very high tooth to tail ratios that can perform operations that required full divisions in the past. We won't see an operation like Desert Storm again though because even the richest nation in the world, i.e. the US, can no longer afford them.
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Well, i dont think that the price of the oil should be the problem. Tank engines, like most(all of the as i know) diesel engines can run on verious oils, including bio-diesel and other such stuff. As to the logistics, i would thing getting the diesel to the tanks should be getting easier over the years, am i wrong?
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It seems to me that modern technology is far superior to the human eye for observation and detection purposes but as I'm not a tank commander and you are, I'm sure what you say has to be considered very seriously.
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Perhaps if i was trained by a diffrent military, i would think diffrently. but the way i command my tank just seems impractical with cameras. You have to look at least in 2 directions(gun and hull), and actually in 4(gun, hull, crew compartment, other tanks in the unit).
as far as detection, that kind of equipment dose not replace the human eye but is added to it(as in systems that locate ATGMs and thermal imaging devices)
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My feeling is that because armies are downsizing the number of tanks they have, autoloaders are less of a priority than they were before. The Soviets liked them because they had massive tank fleets but the future is small and I think one of the main arguments for them, namely to free up trained men, is disappearing to an extent.
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That is a good point.