TANKS are vulnerable without accompanying infantry!
“IEDs” (Booby traps, mines, whatever) can be made more powerful quicker and at less cost than armor can be improved. The USS Cole was taken out with a Zodiac inflatable, the Murrah Building with a Ryder rental box van.
Politically Correct Rules of Engagement do as much harm as too light an armor. Make the enemy HURT, make his leadership HURT, make it very costly for him to place IEDs in your sector and then things will improve. Ask the ROK Marines about Vietnam.
Realistically, we do not have the resolve to wage war to win. We make our troops respond as if they were Mall Cops dealing with a looting flash mob.
As much as I despise that ^@^%%^*& Yankee, I must say that Gen. William T. Sherman understood this very well.
I quoted Sherman in a medium length rant I sent out on 9/12/01.
Would that our national leadership had similar historical grounding. Instead, we got “Islam is a religion of peace,” the expenditure of way too much blood and treasure over far too many years, and damned little to show for it.
Yes they are. “Fight as a combined arms team.” I remember some of that stuff. My Infantry Lieutenants told me that they never wore helmets at Ranger school. I told them that when they outranked me, they could wear whatever they wanted to wear. Panama happened and the story about the guy getting shot in the head and surviving because he had his Kevlar on seemed to change everyone’s mind. Armor, even personal armor, is a pain in the behind until you need it.