This is a serious problem for our infantry in an age of great power competition, especially in Europe:
As it stands presently, one of the biggest threats to an infantry brigade combat team is a near-peer armored force. This is, in part, because IBCTs manning their anti-armor roles with 11Bs that were arbitrarily assigned to fill them are not able to employ those weapons to maximum effect, producing a significant gap in organic anti-armor capability. Nonmechanized formations cannot consistently rely on the support of mechanized attachments to provide a counter to an enemy armor threat.
Infantry units have two basic problems--lack of their own anti-tank capabilities and a lack of tanks.
Infantry units need more and better organic anti-armor weapons.
But infantry brigades could consistently rely on Abrams-based mechanized attachments--as I argued in Army magazine that we should do rather than build light tanks for that purpose--if the Army made it a priority to create tank battalions or mechanized task forces available to infantry units to train with in case they must face mechanized enemies in war.
I've been worried about the lack of tank-killing power in our units. I just don't think that our infantry can rely on indirect or air-delivered fires as a replacement for direct fire anti-tank capabilities.
