The day of the tank and the armored fighting vehicle in the US Army is very far from over

The RPG-7 is one of the most lethal hand-held weapons our forces have to face.

Rocket propelled grenades were used with deadly effect against us in Vietnam, shot down our Blackhawks in Mogadishu, are one of the favorite weapons of the Taliban in Afghanistan, and are so common in Iraq, they can literally be found lying in the streets. Elsewhere in the world, from Liberia to Indonesia, they are equally ubiquitous because they are cheap, easy to source, simple to use, and frighteningly destructive.

A single projectile from an RPG-7 can sear its way through up to five inches of steel armor and can turn the vehicle it hits into a blazing coffin of mangled steel.

No less than ten such rocket propelled grenades struck the lead M1A1 Abrams tank of Colonel Perkins’s brigade of the 3^rd Infantry Division (Mechanized) as it thrust into Baghdad for the first time.

Apart from some scars on its paintwork, the Abrams was utterly undamaged. It swung its turret around and relentlessly went about it’s business of killing with 120mm cannon, 7.62 co-axial machine gun and .50 heavy machine gun. It was not a fair fight. It is not the intent of the Army to fight fair. Its mission is to win at minimal cost in American lives.

That was very much the pattern throughout the rest of the column. Volleys of RPGs, heavy machine gun fire and small arms fire proved largely ineffective against the tanks and Bradley Fighting Vehicles of the 3^rd ID. Artillery and mortar fires were also shrugged off.

The point about the heavy forces of the US Army is not that they are entirely invulnerable to enemy fires – some vehicles were disabled and some casualties taken – but that casualties in these forces tend to be minimal compared to unarmored infantry, or even soldiers in light armor, and that heavy armor brings unparalleled mobility, lethality and survivability to the modern battlefield.

Together with courage, those are the elements that win wars.

There is nothing new about the dominance of US heavy forces in open terrain, such as desert, as was well proven in Iraq I, but the pleasant surprise of Iraq II was how successful heavy armor proved to be in built-up areas such as towns and cities where conventional Army doctrine had long stated infantry were the key - despite appalling casualties of 30-70% in simulated combat during MOUT (MILITARY OPERATIONS IN URBAN TERRAIN) exercises.

Fortunately, Army warfighters have a long tradition of throwing doctrine out the window when it seems to make no sense, and the 3^rd ID were not short of initiative and daring. The results speak for themselves.

The question now is how the Army will treat its heavy forces. When teamed with air power, as Iraq II has shown, the Army’s heavy forces are unstoppable, yet for the last four years they have been starved of funds while the previous Chief of Staff of the Army focused on building an Interim Force of Stryker wheeled, lightly armored vehicles with the argument that Strykers are more deployable. However, deployability is not much use if your forces cannot do the job when they get there; and Strykers are not warfighting vehicles.

Unfortunately, Strykers even have limited advantages on the deployability front because they have ended up being too heavy for the C-130s which constitute the bulk of our tactical airlift, and are also severely lacking in terms of mobility, lethality and survivability. Further, they are vulnerable to RPGs. True, Strykers can be transported by C-17 or sent by ship but so can Abrams tanks and Bradley Fighting Vehicles in exactly the same time with the added advantage that they bring with them vastly more combat power.

Doubtless, a limited number of Strykers will have some utility in a peace-keeping role, but it is the consensus of informed observers that the much neglected heavy forces, the units that actually do the fighting, deserve an increased share of the Army’s resources at a time when this nation is at war and looks like being at war for many years to come.