“a former tank commander.”
Looks like tank warfare and tactics have changed significantly since he was in a tank. “Old generals fight the last war...”
yep
“Looks like tank warfare and tactics have changed significantly since he was in a tank. “Old generals fight the last war...””
Yes and no. I worked on the M1A1 and the army was trying to cancel the tank from my first day. That was an attempt on the leadership’s part to recognize that we needed firepower we could get to a fight by air and the biggest vulnerability of the tank was its logistics train. The tank’s outstanding performance in the Gulf War was due to the fact we got them there on two ships, either of which could have been sunk had Iraq had a submarine. Perhaps because the US couldn’t cancel the tank they incorporated it into a combined arms regime that has worked amazingly well. This is something the Russians have failed to do...sending tanks as they have with no backup ground forces and no covering air power. That’s something the US hasn’t done in any of the US conflicts so far. (Periodically militaries have to relearn lessons they already paid for but I haven’t seen any of this yet. But Biden’s term is still young and we’re busy integrating “trans” people into the military.)
Russia has appeared to be incompetent but there are reasons for that which we can’t blame on the tanks. The organization of their military is top down with no decision making at the bottom or middle. They built a force to fight NATO and not Ukraine and they thought Ukrainians would greet them as liberators because the Ukrainians were being held prisoner by “Nazis.” This is a case of Putin believing Bovine excrement and everyone else saying, “Yes sir!”
Putin is a gambler. He’s also old and doesn’t give a rat’s petoot. Therefore, as soon as he sees a target worthy of a tactical nuke he’ll raise the ante. I certainly wish we had a bad old mean Trump instead of a wishy-washy Biden. A few mean Tweets probably would have stopped Putin way back when...but that ship has sailed.
The silicon chip and clever engineering has changed everything. Entire surface fleets and tank formations will be annihilated by a nerd sitting at a console in a bunker far, far from the field of battle. Many young sailors and soldiers will die horrible deaths before the “battleship admirals” and “hidebound generals” are replaced.