JAGM missiles for enemy armour
Do you know what an active defense system is? Does anybody in the Air Force planning on the anti armour capabilities for future CAS relying almost entirely on missiles know what it is? I suspect that the answer to both of those questions is no.
So, allow me to introduce you to the problem:
The next generation of Russia's main battle tanks is the T-14 Armata Main Battle Tank. The T-14 Tank is going to go into production in late 2016 with 500 operational by 2017 and 2,000 in the Russian Army by 2020. It is an incredible piece of machinery that includes an active defense system. In short, an active defense system is a anti-missile, anti-projectile doppler radar system mounted on the turret of the tank. It uses radar to detect inbound hostile projectiles and shoot them down with a defensive projectile. The system will probably work since the Israelis have actually effectively developed and used in combat an active defense system of their own in southern Lebanon.
The ADS is scary. Especially from the perspective of an Army Armor Officer (me) hearing about how my Air Force plans on primarily combatting enemy tanks with missiles. Our own (American Army) Foreign Military Studies Office at Leavenworth wrote this about the headline item on the Armata, the Active Defense System: "It defends the vehicle from strikes, including those from the air. Thus, even the most our Apaches will not have a 100 percent chance of destroying a T-14 with missiles. Active defense is situated along the entire perimeter of the turret at various levels, which ensures complete protection of the tank’s most important elements,”
The ADS might simply laugh at our Air Force missiles and shoot them down. You know what the ADS can't stop? A veritable stream of several thousand 35mm rounds.
I'm an active duty Army Captain. My background is with the Armor branch and as a Tank Platoon Leader/Company XO. I'm currently stationed in Tallinn, Estonia working with NATO in the Baltics. In my office, there is an Air Force A-10 pilot. Both of us are acutely aware of three things. 1) The threat mounting on the border of the country we are in. 2) The impending arrival of T-14's to bolster that threat. 2) The fact that, as you pointed out, our Air Force's plan to defeat that threat won't work and that they are actively trying to get rid of the only combat platform that stands a reasonably good chance of killing T-14's en masse.