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ORIGINAL: lwarmonger

Yeah, it was kind of embarrassing to watch. That being said, you'll notice that the three best tank platoons were all in Leopards (the Poles brought Leos to this one), and the three European armies haven't been using their tankers as Saw gunners for the last decade.

ORIGINAL: TheWombat

I suspect you're on to something. The US Army has been de-emphasizing heavy combat units and mechanized combat since the end of the Gulf War, and the experiences in Afghanistan and Iraq have focused it on a much different style of combat. While some of this was undoubtedly necessary--you gotta fight the war you've got--as usual it all went too far and now we seem to have a military mostly configured for one particular mission at the expense of what is arguably a more important mission in the grand scheme of things. The Europeans haven't had to stomp around deserts and mountains chasing Taliban and their ilk much, so they've been able to focus on what armored units traditionally stay focused on.

Of course, if history is any guide, the USA will eventually swing back and get back up to speed in conventional warfare. We can just hope there's no pressing crisis that will catch the Army in between war fighting styles.

ORIGINAL: lwarmonger

ORIGINAL: TheWombat

I suspect you're on to something. The US Army has been de-emphasizing heavy combat units and mechanized combat since the end of the Gulf War, and the experiences in Afghanistan and Iraq have focused it on a much different style of combat. While some of this was undoubtedly necessary--you gotta fight the war you've got--as usual it all went too far and now we seem to have a military mostly configured for one particular mission at the expense of what is arguably a more important mission in the grand scheme of things. The Europeans haven't had to stomp around deserts and mountains chasing Taliban and their ilk much, so they've been able to focus on what armored units traditionally stay focused on.

Of course, if history is any guide, the USA will eventually swing back and get back up to speed in conventional warfare. We can just hope there's no pressing crisis that will catch the Army in between war fighting styles.

We're working on it. There was a school of thought that said "all you need is artillery and Javelins... tanks are obsolete". Then that school of thought went to NTC and was DESTROYED. Then President Obama said we weren't going to use DPICM anymore. Now we're discovering that the last 13 years have been more damaging to our armies ability to fight a conventional war than Vietnam was. Iraq and Afghanistan sucked up a larger proportion of our combat power than Vietnam did, and we have lost a great deal of institutional knowledge in the last decade.