Re: Tanks

In a message dated 2/1/00 11:58:27 PM Central Standard Time, 
oerjan.ohlson@telia.com writes:

<< 
 > << Than you have a one man tank. One man -- providing a bit of
 judgment,
 >  pattern recognition and the ability to improvise.  That a least gets
 rid of
 >  the problem of the auto loader loading the gunner. >>
 > 
 > Oh, come now! It can't load the WHOLE gunner, now can it?
  >>

A one man tank crew is a BAD idea. One set of eyes hands, and one
attention 
span is woefully insufficient. If the option is to eventually go to an
auto 
loader, the best idea would be a semi-remote turret  The autoloaders
system 
is locked away from the gunner and commander by partition and cannot
injure 
anyone - though a malfunction will make the whole tank a "tech
casualty". 
Semi-remote rather than truly remote because while the gunner can be
tucked 
awy in the hull away from the auto loader problems, the commander really

NEEDS to be able to unbutton and stand up where he can actually SEE what
is 
going on around him. From the hull he cannot get tall enough - he can't 
unbutton and holler across the intervening hundred yards to another tank
in 
the platoon - the adjutant's Hummer can't pull up next to him and give
orders 
verbally across the distance where they can see eachother's faces and 
evaluate the reality behind the words - there are way TOO MANY reasons
for 
not letting the tank commander seal himself away inside the tank where
he can 
get truly tunnel-visioned and forget the complexities of his
responsibilities 
by focusing on fighting his tank, to the exclusion of surviving the
battle.

If you go to tiny tank crews, the platoon can no longer tend to their
own 
maintenance, security and scouting and you will have to permanently
assign an 
IFV and squad to the tank platoon. This means it is no longer an armor 
platoon at all and while task-forcing the company level is an asset, I
am not 
in any way sure that it is a good concept for the platoon. The grunts
will 
also get stuck with helpin maintenance on the other three vehicles in
the 
platoon besides their own - whil volunteering to do such with one a
nother is 
a good thing - it is still a dirty job to be assigned routinely. They
would 
also get stuck with security and scouting routinely which would not
promote 
the idea of cooperation in the platoon very much at all. There's is
simply 
too much for a tank crew to do in  24 hours in the field and still
insist on 
reducing the size of that crew.