This may be old news, but I learned this morning that the Army has cancelled the M10 Booker program for a variety of reasons. Evidently, the Army wanted a light tank that was air-droppable. One video here, and a short reel here. The thing that both cite is the fact that the M10 was not air-droppable.
What the wags compare the M10 to is the old M551 Sheridan. I have some experience with the M551 Sheridan, and it was not air-droppable either. Or, to be more precise, anything is air-droppable once. We used to say that if you were going to drop a Sheridan out of an airplane, be sure to drop it where you wanted it, because it would never move from that spot.
There may be ten dozen good reasons to cancel a program. But, if you want an armored vehicle to parachute from an airplane, you are dooming that program to fail. Light forces are good for a lot of things, but they will never be heavy forces.
The conflict in Ukraine has taught us a lot, and we have seen the fielding of new technologies. The problem is that the US Arm is always training for the wrong war. We might suspect that we will know what the next battlefield looks like, but we won't know until we get there. And, I'm betting that the future commander will want the option of some heavy forces in his tool bag.
Parachute infantry is useful, but it is not the end-all for a battlefield commander. The parachute is simply a method to get light infantry on the ground. Once you get light infantry on the ground, the commander needs to sustain them, which means he needs either an airfield or a port. We can bring in supplies either by air or water. Air is faster, but water brings more tonnage.
3 comments:
airborne is not always the way to go. as always it depends on how far away you drop the troops from the supply point. see Market Garden for how well that turned out.
resupply is the key to ANY airborne operation.
the troops carry at best 3 days worth of "stuff"
old 1/503 PIR guy.
Sheridan could be LAPE'd into a small air-head. That's what is meant by air dropped when tankers be talking about the twee little tanklettes.
There's a need for something like the Sheridan in the 82nd. A need that the Army resolutely keeps finding a vehicle for and cancelling. At least they actually made some production vehicles this time...
I always thought the issue with the Sheridan was the gun/missile launcher that wrecked the gun systems when the missile was fired. Perhaps an upgraded gun system would let them reissue those. Also, I believe the Marines loved that Ontos light tank of theirs with the six recoilless rifles
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