A lone Russian tank...the results are predictable...

I am deeply conflicted.

I don't know but supposedly Ukraine is good tank country.  Plains and forests.

But this war.  Forget the tactics.  I'm talking about the lethality of missiles.

Maybe Berger WAS ONTO SOMETHING.

How much heavier do tanks have to get before they're able to shrug off anti-tank missile hits?  I remember a bit ago when the US Army was looking at a replacement for the Bradley and everyone balked at the idea of it weighing as much as an Abrams.

I get it now.

The iron triangle is busted.  

Are we at the point where APS is absolutely essential for an armored vehicle to survive?

Tell ya something else.  The T-14 Armata makes nothing but sense now.  I UNDERSTAND why the Russians were going with a radically different, more heavily armed MBT.

The weird thing?

I can't help but look at this from the USMC's position.  The MAGTF (from smallest to biggest) seems like the ideal formation to survive this type of conflict (properly sized that is).

But we're told that the formation COULD NOT!  Was that propaganda so leadership could crawl back underneath the Navy's wing or the reality of the modern battlefield?

I won't get the answer from a USMC after action on this conflict. I need to see what the US Army says.  USAF too.  I haven't touched on it but from the social media coverage of this thing (and that's what this has been...new media has been using social media to report this story) it would seem that attack helicopters have hit an evolutionary roadblock too.

Of course that leads to the idea that if attack helicopters are dead then so are transport helicopters.

I'm not sure we can trust this conflict to give us answers but what little it can tell us will be fascinating.