First World War
The tank, when it appeared on the Western Front in September 1916, was a total surprise to the German troops, though not to the German General Staff. The French Army Staff was highly critical of the British Army's early fielding of the Mark I vehicles in small numbers because the French trials showed the armored vehicles to be highly unreliable. They judged that large numbers had to be employed to sustain an offensive despite losses to mechanical failure or vehicles being foundered in intractable no man's land terrain. These losses, coupled with those from enemy artillery fire, later amounted to as high as 70% of the starters during some operations. Deploying small numbers of tanks would therefore cause the Allies to lose the element of surprise, allowing Germans to develop countermeasures.
Read more about this topic: Anti-tank Warfare
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“But the highest minds of the world have never ceased to explore the double meaning, or, shall I say, the quadruple, or the centuple, or much more manifold meaning, of every sensuous fact.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The idea that information can be stored in a changing world without an overwhelming depreciation of its value is false. It is scarcely less false than the more plausible claim that after a war we may take our existing weapons, fill their barrels with cylinder oil, and coat their outsides with sprayed rubber film, and let them statically await the next emergency.”
—Norbert Wiener (1894–1964)