Lethality is not only the ability to kill and break things. It is the ability to use killing to break the enemy.
A lethal unit applies violence that shatters an enemy’s will to fight. It does so with skill, tempo, and aggression that discourages an adversary from standing before it. Lethality is a fusion of advanced technology, rigorous training, and, most critically, a hardened, aggressive, and offensive mindset embedded in organizational culture.
Killing soldiers and breaking their things for the sake of killing and breaking in greater volume is not the key to victory. That just leads to a high-tech, high-tempo clash of phalanxes.
Firepower is one part of an expanded combined arms battle to restore maneuver--and that's where tanks come in with their mobile, protected firepower--by breaking the enemy's will and capability to fight at the point of attack is what is important:
Tanks are not made obsolete by a more transparent battlefield. The impact of tanks is amplified by secure information that surpasses what the enemy has. But tanks are just one more wonder weapon to be slaughtered if not used in combined operations in the right circumstances and at the right time and place.
Yet I strongly disagree about the "transparent" battlefield angle. Do we have more ways to see the battlefield? Yes. But there will be countermeasures, in time. Ultimately, surprise is created in the mind of the enemy commander.
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NOTE: Photo from the article.
