Light! Agile! ... and burning on the battlefield. All hail the M10 Booker!
The program in question is the M10 Booker, and it should be a home run. As America reconfigures global force deployments, mobility and protected firepower for rapid deployment will be more critical than ever.
Booker is not a tank: it is an armored vehicle with an assault gun and a top speed of 40 mph whose purpose is to “defeat targets that could compromise the effectiveness of the Infantry Brigade Combat Teams (ICBT),” explained Lieutenant Colonel Ben Ferguson and Captain Lennard Salcedo.
Well, to defeat targets that aren't part of heavy armored brigades. I continue to be amazed that we assume our enemies will be cooperative by not sending heavy armored brigades to destroy our infantry brigades (IBCTs), making the M10s the apex predator on that particular battlefield.
Darned sporting of our enemies, I say.
And don't you dare claim they can be airlifted in any but token numbers. Global rapid force deployment can't get only bet two out of three of those descriptions. If a deployment is global and a significant force, it won't be rapid. If its rapid and a force, it won't be global. And if it is global and rapid, it won't be much of a force.
Unless we decide "protection" for our mobile protected firepower can only be provided with mass-produced M10s that makes them cheap and replaceable even in armored brigades--rather than by fielding expensive heavily protected main battle tanks--Bookers are just expensive FBOHs.
NOTE: TDR Winter War of 2022 coverage continues here.
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