M1A1 Abrams vs Deep Muddy Turn on Dirt Road

[randy]

I don't know if they've made tanks obsolete, but they've certainly made tactical nukes obsolete.

Ahhh...memories. I was involved with developing targeting and employment doctrine for the Skeet round based on early test results my last year or so on active duty. It's always heart warming to see young'uns grow up and do well in the world.

[Rod]

All this talk has brought out another "there we were" story from my 14 year memories of tanks. Fort Hood has a road around the impact area, twice around it is nearly 100 miles. This makes for good road march practice. There are (IIRC) two bridges over streams in the area, neither stream is fordable by tanks. The main one was called Cowhouse Creek and there was a half mile span across the arroyo where the creek was. My platoon sergeant and I were alone on his tank during one of the road marches (crews were short for some reason). We had an electrical failure and couldn't get the circuit breakers to reset so we had to let the tank cool down. When we were finally up and running, my psg said hit it and I did, 50 mph in an M60A1. Now we're on the tank trail, dust flying, skidding around corners, I'm having a hoot of a time and the psg is enjoying a cigar in the TC hatch. We're approaching Cowhouse Bridge and I remembered there was a drainage ditch between the tank trail and the road surface; a little too late it seems since we went airborne. From the expressions on the MPs' faces and my view of them, we had to be at least 6 or 7 feet in the air. The tank hit, bottomed out, then dug divots out of the road surface speeding up again. I busted my lip on the forward edge of the hatch and kept on driving. 5 minutes later, a very weak voice told me to slow down. Seems when we hit, the PSG went up in the air, his spring loaded seat snapped up, and he fell into the bottom of the turret and was knocked cold. We were amazingly lucky for a number of reasons, the least being we only broke two torsion bars. God, those were the days.

[Aesop]

The trouble kicks in when you face an actual top-tier combatant.

No other military on earth can field both the quantity and quality of Armor that we do. Many can do one or the other, but not both.

That's true, but you're missing the point. Having the finest buggywhips or 3-decker sailing frigates ever made is no longer the question.
With that smart CBU, the question is which enemies have them or could develop them, and how small and simple a platform will successfully deploy them.

At this point, it's even odds that with enough of those CBUs, the Confederate Air Force could fight the 1st Armored Division to a standstill.
Or at least reduce them to the 1st Light Infantry Regiment in a matter of hours.

The entire point of that YouTube briefing was that one FAC and one CBU on one B-52 turned an Iraqi armored Bn. into smoking hulks and EPWs in 90 seconds.
Open sources and best recollections put the total number of similar sized units we could immediately field at 3-6(-) for the entire USMC, and maybe 20-30 for the 10 active Army divisions and another 12 or so from the reserves, assuming we'd helpfully gotten them all to the same area at the same time.

Against an enemy that could hold its own in the air, that'd be one squadron's daily sorties, maybe two, in CAS, and after that, our troops will be walking. Everywhere. The historical term for that is, I believe, trench warfare.

The fact that theirs will be too is slim comfort if the enemy happens to have a few million men in their army.
The historical term for that is the Battle Of The Little Big Horn. {cf. Chosin Reservoir 12/1950}.

After that, the only recourse is either diplomacy, or measured in kilotons.

We don't have the Army that existed in 1990 or 1945; we have the Army of 1936. We've spent 10 years proving it.