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"Unfortunately, Secretary Rumsfeld's brain trust and the current Army leadership seem to think the M-1 is obsolete, a relic of the past....."

A couple of the M-1s were badly damaged by irregular Iraqi forces using what are believed to be Russian-made Coronet Surface-to-Surface missiles. If the Iraqis had had more of these missiles our tanks could have been seriously threatened.

Remember that the M1s were picking off antiquated Russian T55 and T72 tanks where the M1 had night vision and a 2-to-1 range advantage.

The question that Rumsfield has to face as SecDef is How well will M1s do against a competently trained ground force with a full arsenal of modern surface-to-surface missiles?

"The question that Rumsfield has to face as SecDef is How well will M1s do against a competently trained ground force with a full arsenal of modern surface-to-surface missiles?"I

I completely agree. The solution the Israelis adopted in 1973 seems appropriate here. They were leading with tanks and took heavy losses from dismounted and concealed ATGM's. The solution was to employ mixed or "combined arms" teams (which we do) leading the advance with suppressing artillery, mortar and machine gun (or in our case 20mm) fire to destroy or compromise the location of the position. The Crusader would have helped a lot with this type of mission. They didn't have attack helicopters, which can also provide suppressing fire, but they must be careful, obviously. Air support and precision weapons can help if the ATGM's are vehicle mounted, but are of little use against dismounted teams unless their location has been compromised.

Using light armor such as Stryker does not seem a viable solution to the ATGM problem. No M-1's have been lost to frontal ATGM fire, so far as I know, but only to rear shots. A Stryker can be destroyed from any angle by an ATGM(or RPG or heavy caliber weapon, for that matter.) Despite the criticism of the term, the fight so far has been a "cakewalk" to what we would face from a better armed and better led enemy.