Here we go:
In 2017, the US Army has launched a program called Mobile Protected Firepower (MPF) that will purchase 504 light armored vehicles. The Mobile Protected Firepower (MPF) vehicle is a new combat vehicle required to address the capability gap identified within the Armys Infantry Brigade Combat Teams (IBCTs). This vehicle would be incorporated in the IBCT structure as a weapon system solution to provide a protected, long-range, cyber-resilient, precision, direct fire capability for early/forcible entry operations.
My contempt for the idea that light tanks are the solution to infantry brigade weakness knows no bounds:
I have no idea what enemy is going to be sporting enough to send light infantry with only light armor up against our MPS-equipped infantry so we'll have dominance.
The light tank fantasy world is insane. Kill it now before these Future Burned Out Hulks are killed en masse on a future battlefield.
In my view, these light tanks are just Future Burned-Out Hulks (FBOHs, for the acronym addicted defense community):
How sporting of the Army! They want to give enemies a fighting chance on the battlefield by giving them potential targets easy to kill. Will nobody in the infantry reject those flaming coffins?
We have Abrams tanks. Use them, as I urged in Army magazine.
And if somebody calls them "agile" I will scream the cry of total despair:
I really hate the term "agile" to describe ships or ground vehicles because I don't think that anything is agile enough to avoid a missile hit.
When I see "agile" I read "expendable." But it is not polite to say that out loud.
So don't.
*You can call it a mobile protected system or mobile protected firepower. But it is a light tank. Light tanks can be killed by virtually anything on a modern battlefield. Of course, if they are cheap and don't have a crew, get back to me and we'll talk.
