Proposed light tank battalion concept will require more armor crewmen

Here we go again. I can't even remember the number of times this idea keeps coming up and it never goes anywhere. Those old enough to remember Fort Knox, there was a light armor tank over by the Armor & Cav Magazine building. It was created for that Quick Reaction Force to go with Airborne units and be dropped from the sky. And that got nixed. After many decades of many different contractors coming to Knox showing off their version of the light tank, nothing came about.

Then a genius came up with the idea of the Stryker then made some with a 105mm main gun. That too wasn't so rapid or quick to load. The tires needed to be nearly deflated. The .50 cal mount had to be completely disassembled as well. In the development of the 105mm Stryler, had some buddies that were on the fire development team. They were constantly working on the auto-loader to make it work, even while firing The over pressure system failed because of huge gaps going up thru the gun mantle. When it came time for the big brass to approve it, they were told it "will" function no matter what. The Armor community/Soldiers quickly learned what a waste of money it was. And Branch forced 19K to go over to the Stryker's, which were in infantry units. I got to hear many complaints of being treated like bitches. Stupid Idea.

If they do make this happen, those Tankers need to be their own separate units with their own COC, not completely under the control of infantry. The Bradley concept, if remember correctly, was suppose to be just a infantry troop carrier with a .50cal on top. Much like the M113. Someone went nuts and designed a turret for it. The rest is history.

It does need to run on tracks. Not as wide as the Abrams chassis but a lower profile. Along the same with the turret. TC needs to be able to stand out of the hatch to process the battlefield. As much as I don't like it, they will most likely go with an auto-loader. The average human loader take about 5 seconds to load, auto-loader 7-10 seconds. This vehicle needs to be KISS, Keep It Simple Stupid. Updated electronics and firing computer, and sites for shooting but not overloaded with optics on the outside so the TC is buttoned up relying on those optics for 360 viewing. Which we proved during train up for NTC, 1-12CAV against a unit in 2d AR at Hood. We training on the M1A2SEPS. Their training was for the TC to stay in turret observing the battlefield using his CITV only. We trained With TC's out of the hatch. We beat them up pretty bad in the FTX's. We were the 1st Combat BDE to be fully digitalized at NTC. They got their a$$es handed to them in every battle. Our battalion won most of theirs and my PLT won all of ours in the sectors we were at. We even got impact AAMs from the OPFOR Commander. :D Back on topic sorry.

So....YES, we should have a light armor tank and tankers, 19K, to man them. With the improvements of our tank killer rounds, SABOT, they could equip it with a 76mm gun with Depleted U and a righteous HEAT, IMPAT round for light skin vehicles and troops. I loved the canister round.

We are 19K armor crewmen, 19D are scouts, 19KR is armor with R designator for Stryker. If they go thru with a light armor tank force, they need to keep them 19K with a designator. Me for instance: 19K48K4. The K4 is the designator from being A2SEP trained and qualified.

We do have a limit to how many people can be in uniform...

That ought to make a lot of 19E's happy, unless they have a different designation for those members of the MPF MAJ Dale E. Wilson, Ph.D.