Those articles merely state the Army doesn't want to upgrades, they want to wait until a new version of the M1 is available in a few years? I took the above conversation to mean that there's a (universal?) consensus that heavy armor's time is past. These links don't support that.
At the end of the day, it's kind of hard to do a thunder run [1] without tanks.
>I took the above conversation to mean that there's a (universal?) consensus that heavy armor's time is past. These links don't support that.
No, those links don't. Forgive me, it's the most recent / best that I could find in a single web-query. I also didn't find a better link for you after searching again today. (search results too full of RTS game related junk)
The tank's day is done though, and while we'll maintain a small number of them, our war strategies do no rely on them, nor should they. If that were so, then any opposing force with one (of the many available) Javelin missile[1] like capability could stop our tank forces in their tracks. Killing tanks cheaply is a solved problem.
Yep, but it's more like good combined arms operations (the use of multiple combat arms like armor, artillery and air, you might start with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combined_arms) and a "cooperative" enemy. Like France in WWII.
I get the impression that Saddam's conception of war was strictly WWI era (right down to chemical warfare, although perhaps the issue there is why it wasn't widely used in WWII (ask for details if you're interested)), although this was most relevant in the First Gulf War, where we tricked him into thinking he would receive a frontal attack, and we hooked around his right flank. This avoided the expense of a frontal attack, he was no doubt hoping would cause us problems back home or worse.
For the rematch, well, he certainly had a lot less force, I would suspect the "thunder run" might vaguely resemble Patton's dash after the breakout from Normandy (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_S._Patton#Normandy_brea...), or if you want Nazi analogies, the crushing of small/relatively weak countries prior to France.
At the end of the day, it's kind of hard to do a thunder run [1] without tanks.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Baghdad_%282003%29#Th...