People made fun of the Army for this but if we’re being serious about war being more complex at all levels with new technologies and problems which requires the best people, an honest look at our education system at large should have told you this was inevitable

www.army.mil/article-amp/...

Damn. Yeah usually I catch autocorrect - didn’t that time. May have been still waking up while typing

Supporting elements (always has been, but this challenge/demand has only increased now)

Typical Recon, jamming, CUAS, and strike support roles. Plus normal artillery, infantry, and engineers. See Kursk incursion

If we confine examination of combined arms narrowly to achieving success with the tank against a modern prepared defense, the problem is less the tank and more its

Both for protection and success. Arguably and this is why sure the Leopard 2a6 and Abrams are the preferred tank pretty much any semi modern tank is doing fine in Ukraine *if* it is supported by the rest of the team which is now heavily weighted towards drone based fulfillment/enhancement of

Associated and this was both military types, UAF propagandists, and weapons designers to go oh don’t worry this newer tank model will be the critical weapon or solve this weakness.

Which while not entirely wrong, obscures the degree to which the tank operates as part of the combined arms team

The U.S., Britain, and Germany all retooled their armored divisions after initial combat to include higher infantry proportions

of the conversation and the need for the U.S. Army to do any serious study

There were also bangers like the UAF just needs to mass more (everytime they mass they got hit genius) a

And

Why are the UAF leading with infantry then tanks, it’s not the job of the tank to support the infantry (wrong)

In some of the debates that appeared from AUG 22-DEC 23 which saw Russian and Ukraine attempt offensives against various levels of hasty or prepared defenses it seemed a lot of US Army analysis was focused on well they didn’t do combined arms and then everyone nodded their head and that was the end

And all shown in a branches culture, it’s training, it’s evaluations, etc.

To Rocks point, I think this has repeatedly challenged our study of Ukraine. I remember the expectations of massed tank duels in the opening days of the Ukraine invasion that didn’t quite happen. And left people confused

As Robert Leonard observed in his book Fighting By Minutes must military officers are captured by protective like-system fighting. The best tank crew is the one that kills the most tanks, the best artillery man is the won who best wins the counterbattery duel

Glad I wasn’t the only one trying to figure that out

An American partner force stood and fought hard for their country yet popular U.S. cultural history overlooks such sacrifice and pretends it didn’t happen? Inconceivable!

thing and IMO when the U.S. is taking a the drone always gets through mentality on recon/strike at low echelons and is not in public domain discussing what happens what a Rifle CO CDR has to fight their company and plan UAS SEAD/DEAD to get recon and then strike package in?

which would require less close fight allocations by division and less reactive oh, BCT still is stuck, here we go targeting close again to get them unstuck cause deep targeting didn’t produce a fast enough effect

Of course that could simply be a temporary shift - UAS countermeasure are a 2/3

Something I am interested to see is as ABCTs start coming w/more recon/strike UAS is does this reduce the amount of shaping by 52ID as BCTs, BNs, and COs can now shape objectives on their own through strike capabilities or enhance effectiveness through greater situational awareness by recon UAS 1/3

*STAFF munition

man.fas.org/dod-101/sys/...

Don’t worry it’ll get cancelled again after everyone gets headaches and hates it (again)