RPGs wreck APCs Armor is much more survivable.
Right but as probably was said before, some nations up armor their ifvs without a big gun. I don’t think that for urban fighting an mbt would be that much better than an up armored ifv with tank hunter missiles.
Much of the RN’s success can be credited to the availability of missiles. The RN had enough Sidewinders to make their Harriers effective. The ARA didn’t have enough Exocets, because my goodness, they sure did plenty of damage with the few they had.
The Argentines DID have more Exocets that were ship-based, but their navy could not operate in an area with nuclear attack submarines, against which they had essentially no defense. It’s a matter of luck that it was General Belgrano and not Veinticinco de Mayo that ended up at the bottom of the sea, because actually a sub WAS hunting the carrier; it just didn’t find it before Conqueror sank General Belgrano.
The role of being a tank. The M-113 can be penetrated by .50 caliber machine gun fire and is a deathtrap if hit by an RPG. The Bradley can at least take .50 caliber hits but isn’t going to survive RPG hits - but the infantry compartment might not be as much of a deathtrap as the case would be with an M-113. You’re misunderstanding the role of the tank if you consider the fact that it can’t carry infantry to be a drawback, that’s not its role. That’s the role of the Bradley’s or other infantry carriers that accompany the tanks. There’s a reason the commander on the ground and Powell were requesting tanks and other armored vehicles, not one or the other. The fundamental essence of combined arms is that the whole of the combined parts is greater than they are separately, they can cover each other’s weaknesses. After the battle was over, that was what was sent, and what would have been of much more use to the Rangers had they been available at the time: a combined arms task force.
The Ready Battalion of the 24th Infantry Division, 1–64 Armor, composed 1,300 troops of Task Force Rogue, including the bulk of 1-64 Armor and Infantry troops from her sister battalion 3-15 Infantry. This was the first time M1 Abrams tanks were delivered by air, using the C-5 Galaxies, which delivered 18 M1 tanks and 44 Bradley infantry vehicles,[170] while the balance of Task Force Rogues equipment and vehicles were delivered via a roll-on/roll-off ship sent from Fort Stewart (Hinesville), Georgia, to Mogadishu to provide armored support for U.S. forces.
That’s how the US Army operates, the 1-64 Armor and 3-15 Infantry never operated as entirely separate entities in the field, they swap companies so that there is armor with the mechanized infantry battalion (3-15 Infantry) and mechanized infantry with the armor (1-64 Armor). They train together so that there is no sudden confusion caused by deploying and operating with unfamiliar units. It continues down even to the company level, as a reminder the field manual I quoted from earlier on the role of the tank, FM 71-1 is entitled “Tank and Mechanized Infantry Company Team.” Tank and mechanized infantry companies will swap platoons with each other so that the tank company will have mechanized infantry and the mechanized infantry company will have tanks. The only functional difference is that the tank unit will normally have a higher proportion of tanks than mechanized infantry and the mechanized infantry unit will normally have a higher proportion of mechanized infantry. They aren’t supposed to operate separately from each other, they are supposed to operate as an integrated team.