Enlisted lets you unlock and command tanks and aircraft alongside your infantry squads, and it’s tempting to treat them as an automatic upgrade. They’re not. Each vehicle type solves a specific problem and creates a specific vulnerability, and knowing which is which matters more than just grinding toward the biggest tank in the tech tree.

Tanks win engagements but lose to positioning, not firepower

A tank’s main advantages are armor and the ability to clear entrenched infantry and other vehicles at range, but tanks die to flanks, not frontal fights. Most tank losses in Enlisted come from an enemy getting to the side or rear armor, or from anti-tank infantry closing the distance while the tank is focused on something else. Treat map awareness, not gun stats, as your main tank-survival tool.

Bring infantry support with your tank, not just AI crew

A tank operating completely alone is an easy target for close-range anti-tank weapons and grenades. Escorting your tank with even a couple of your own soldiers to watch its blind spots, or staying near friendly infantry, closes the exact gap that kills most tanks in a vacuum.

Aircraft are best at denial, not kill-farming

Planes are effective for suppressing an area, disrupting a push, or taking out a stationary target like an artillery piece or a parked vehicle, but dogfighting for kills is a much steeper skill curve and a much smaller payoff for a new pilot’s time. Using aircraft to support a ground objective, rather than chasing air-to-air kills, is the more reliable way to make a plane useful early on.

APCs are spawn points, not just transport

APC squads fill a role no other vehicle does: the vehicle works as a mobile rally point your team can spawn on, and unlike an engineer’s rally point it doesn’t give itself away with a beeping sound when enemies come close. Parked in cover near an objective, an APC can keep a push going longer than a tank that’s out of position.

Not every match needs a vehicle at all

Vehicles cost a slot in your loadout planning and time to spawn back in if lost. On maps or objectives where the fighting is close and indoors, a well-positioned infantry squad often contributes more than a tank that can’t maneuver in tight terrain. Deciding “does this specific objective actually benefit from armor or air support” is a more useful question than “should I bring a vehicle.”

A practical way to start with vehicles

  1. Unlock and try a tank before a plane, since the learning curve and payoff are more immediate.
  2. Escort your own tank with infantry rather than operating it in isolation.
  3. Use aircraft for area denial and objective support, not dogfighting, while you’re learning.
  4. Match your vehicle choice to the map and objective: open ground rewards armor, while tight objectives often don’t.

Vehicles in Enlisted are a force multiplier, not a shortcut. The squads that use them well are the ones that still think about positioning first and horsepower second. Keeping a damaged tank alive instead of abandoning it is its own skill: see our guide to building, repair and resupply for how that actually works.

Sources

Facts in this guide were checked against these pages in October 2026: