Clearly you are talking above your pay grade, if you had ever served in a unit or formation HQ you would know it’s not all as simple as you make out. Where do you think all that fuel come from to keep your heavy force mobile? How does a tank brigade get into battle? Who organises the road routes and tank transporters. Warfare is all about logistics and all about higher level manoeuvre. The final tactical battle may get all the press but usually by then the result has already been decided.
But don’t take my ‘wisdom’ for granted. What I am talking about here is backed up by EVERY SINGLE serious thinker about warfare and winner of battles and wars. Perhaps you should read some Guderian, you might have heard of him before.
But never let historical military reality get in the way of a good story that helps one sell bigger and more expensive tanks. Sure the Germans conquered France in 1940 with pipsqueak Panzer IIs, sure the Soviets did it back to the Germans with comparatively lightweight T-34s, the Israelis won with Shermans and AMX-13s vs Egyptian IS-3s, the South Africans with Ratels vs T-55s, India with PT-76s, etc, etc. But lets keep building bigger and heavier tanks.
It looks much better that way.
Yeah, and Shermans, T-34s, PzII, etc. had a serious advantage when it came to cross country performance over for example a Tiger, Königstiger or IS-3.
But also PzII,even the upgraded ones, had serious problems with T-34s.
And because of what? Because T-34s managed to stay maneuverable despite having good firepower and armor.
Nowadays a MBT/IFV force is matched by what on terms of firepower, armor AND mobility on the battlefield?
You cannot rant about the ugly big movers of these days without considering the fact that with the appereance of real MBTs the problem that heavy armor and firepower was contradictal against mobility faded away.
BTW, the conquer of france was a result of poor french planning and flexibility of the higher decision makers.
If the French had used their assets up to their limits it wouldn't have been a walk in the park for the
Wehrmacht.
Your talking about logistics is great and right. And I never countered the idea of medium forces having a higher mobility on the streets to reach their area of operations.
But once there they just have a problem holding their ground in direct fights against heavy echelons riding into their direction not to talk of offensive operations against prepared heavy forces.
Use them as intended. Be it as a deployable force for oversea missions where they can stand their ground against 3rd world units, use their heavy infantry component to do you favors in heavy terrain, cities, etc. or use them as a fire force and throw them into holes in your frontline, a little bit similar to what we intended to use our airborn forces for in case of cold war turned hot.
And if your logistic can just support medium units because heavy units tend to use too much support for you then you have a problem with your logistic network and not with your idea using of heavy units.
