The thing about Tactics of Mistake is that it was written based on a very specific real-life

However, neither he, nor the rest of the NATO professional military officer corps understood their enemies.

Bruce is quite right to state that "A tank you cannot transport to the battlefield because it’s too large/heavy to use your infrastructure is a lump of useless metal. Expensive useless metal that will likely cause your troops to get killed because you couldn’t afford the tanks that could be transported."

What Phil, and most people that write and read about 'tanks' (all AFVs) get wrong, is that they are not about trade-offs in mobility vs protection (survivability). In fact the entire survivability + mobility + lethality formula used by the US Army (with other NATO equivalents) is the least important part of the larger equation more pertinent in a greater-view of the Traveller universe: Affordability, Appropriateness, Availability, Elegance (ingeniously simple design), [Operational reach] Efficiency and [Tactical] Effectiveness (survivability+mobility+lethality). I call this the A3E3 formula, and the design thinking based on this as are all other consideration, are derived from the strategic considerations that are all about the Economy of the society that owns the military force, whil

The TAM tank was a better tank, when seen from the A3E3 perspective than the M48/M60, Chieftain and the Leopard I designs.

In terms of NATO requirements, the M48/M60 and Chieftain were bad designs.

However, this wasn't the

The French production of wheeled AFVs, including anti-tank-capable 'armoured cars' was necessitated by the strategic depth they would have had to transit in order to reach forward areas of battle in the eventuality of the Warsaw Pact attack. Wheels are better than tracks for this mission by the virtue of operational tempo + operational reach.

T

Of course any design are misused, but Phil, 'Russians', i.e. Soviet designers, didn't design AFVs for use in 'Russia'.

And, 'Russia' is not "You know, endless steppe & all that." A cursory look at the map of the Soviet Union will show that the endless steppe occupies mostly northern Ukraine and parts of southern Belarus and south-western Russia, i.e. parts not regarded as where offensives will be conducted; AFV design philosophy in Soviet Union was based on the offensive Strategy.

There is a vast misunderstanding as to why the Soviet Army retained use of wheeled AFVs throughout the Cold War, and the Russian Army continues this.

The simple explanation is that wheeled AFVs offer the capability to generate the offensive tempo and exploit operational reach that tracked-mounted forces can't match and counter.

The reason tank divisions had BMP-mounted regiments is that these served as 'sabots', in that they would 'peel-off' in the breach and establish anti-tank zones along the breakthrough path. BMP-mounted units are not really 'infantry' despite the vehicle's name, but anti-tank since 3/4 of the BMP crew and passengers are anti-tank weapon operators/users.

The tank divisions however would follow in the wake of the Motor-rifle regimental Operational Manoeuvre Groups which were BTR-mounted to exploit West German autobahns and road networks. NATO forces were uniquely badly designed to cope with fast-moving wheeled opponents because by late 1960s false-economies thinking converted most of the NATO forces to being track-mounted.

There was also a false-belief in air power to interdict these penetrations, but this was unwarranted because it didn't come with appropriate FFI technology.

I'm going to leave the issue of the German use of captured T-34s for now. The short answer is that their discontinued use had more to do with cultural bias and lack of suitable ammunition than actual T-34 design.

To get back to the TAM, it was far from helpless, particularly when the 105mm APFSDS ammunition became available.

The thing about anti-tank tactics is that it doesn't necessarily require a 0-warning meeting engagement EVERY TIME to validate the heavy frontal armour tank design. Both the Germans and the Soviets during the Second World War successfully used lightly armoured anti-tank designs that fought from ambush positions in a combined arms tactical setting.

To quote Wayne P. Hughes, a naval officer, "doctrine is the glue of good tactics." and "To know tactics, you must know weapons."

Neither Gordon R. Dickson, nor Lieutenant Colonel Cletus Grahame knew either, but Dickson was a very good writer.

On a final note, the F-35 is a failed design. Those that care to learn the program history would know that the F-35 started as a post-Vietnam project to design a single engine to serve both services that use jet aircraft, the 'universal engine'. The F-35 has this been in development since mid-1970s. The engine project was rolled into one closed (defunded) program after another, gathering other projects like flint to a comb, until it grew into a Joint Service Fighter.

Based on the A3E3 it is unaffordable to fly, so no further progress should have been made by late 90s when first realistic cost estimates were voiced and told to shut up. Lockheed-Martin current statement is that "An F-35A purchased in 2018 and delivered in 2020 will be $85 million, which is the equivalent of $75 million in today’s dollars." To quote ADM. Mike Boorda "Occasionally it would be good if the target cost more than the bullet." A Su-27/35 as the most likely F-35A opponent in the next 20 years costs US$30/65 million. A MiG-29 is US$29 million. It is not at all clear based on some simulation models that the F-35 can defeat advanced versions of either of these airframes (or their Chinese copies) when numerically outnumbered.

It is an inappropriate design because a combat aircraft is not an analogy of a Swiss Army knife. It’s a design that is over two decades late in full service, which is not unusual for the US DoD where the average program delivery for a major system has been about 18 years since the mid-1960s. However, with aircraft, the airframes are not subject to reconditioning. Unknown to most, there is a steady issuing of contracts to replace entire parts of F-16s and F-15s because they can no longer be quality assured in flight. This should be attributed to the cost of the F-35 delivery delay that would increase the F-35 costs substantially over the production costs quoted above. Worst of all, the F-35 is anything but ingeniously simple as a design. Structural tolerances are such that ANY internal damage would effectively end aircraft's participation in combat for weeks even if it survives to land because repair requires technological qualifications way outside normal combat operations as practiced for the previous generations of aircraft.