This video was made possible by CuriosityStream. Generally speaking, I think military enthusiasts
can grasp the concept of a tank. Shocking i know. I'd perhaps go a step further and say it's also
not that hard to understand the concept of a tank platoon either. I mean it's usually just
three to five tanks divided in a finite amount of ways. But when you start getting into how
tanks are supported in combat, it gets a little more complicated. In reality tanks not only
fight with other tanks, but with other types of units that make up for their deficiencies
and enable them to do their jobs. This practice is accepted at least in principle by most major
militaries that field tank forces, from the U.S., Russia and China to Sweden, Canada and Japan;
even if sometimes implementation can be a little lackluster. In this video I'm going to go through
the U.S. Army specifically and examine how they reinforce their Abrams tank units to go to war.
Mainly the U.S. because they publish all their manuals online and my core military audience
is people who rank somewhere in this range. But if you're in a different military we'd be
happy to hear what you do in the comments. But first, I'm going to tell you about our sponsor
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us create content here. But back to the topic at hand. The focus here will be on the armor company
team which are based on pure armor companies. The basic armor company is composed of a company hq
and three tank platoons each tank platoon has four abrams either M1A2 Sep v2s (or v3s) or M1A1
SAs split into an A section under the platoon leader and a B section under the platoon
sergeant. These sections mutually support each other's movement and allow the platoon to be
split evenly to support infantry, engineers or what have you. The company HQ meanwhile has two
tanks. One for the company commander and one for the executive officer. These tanks allow company
leadership to move with their tank platoons across the same terrain and in the face of enemy fire,
but they can also act as backup tanks if the platoons take casualties. The HQ's rear echelon
has an M113A3 APC for the first sergeant which can be used to set up a forward command post,
an LMTV supply truck towing a water tanker is also organic to the company, as well as two to
three HMMWVs for transporting company leadership in situations where tank is not appropriate. In
addition to these organic elements there are few attachments that are made to this company that are
less situational and more all the time affairs. For example, each armor company has a field
maintenance team attached from its battalion's forward support company to provide it repairs
and vehicle recovery. This generally includes a HMMWV for the motor sergeant and Abrams mechanics,
an SECM HMMWV or contact truck for minor repair work, a PLS truck with a mobile workshop,
an M88A2 Hercules armored recovery vehicle for towing tanks, and another MTV cargo truck.
Another habitual attachment is an armored ambulance with medics from the battalion HQ which
provides ground-based medical evacuation back to the battalion aid station with en-route care.
Note that in the future the M113 is planned to be phased out by the AMPV, which is essentially
a turretless Bradley. And lastly, a fire support team or FIST is attached from the brigade's field
artillery battalion to coordinate fire support and make recommendations to the commander on how
fires are to be used. Such fires can include battalion-level 120 millimeter mortars,
brigade-level 155 millimeter artillery and, if a JTAC is not present, emergency close air support.
These are attachments that are made even in the rear and functionally act as part of the company.
But when on a mission, even more augmentations can be made. To create tank-infantry teams,
the standard procedure is typically for an armor company to trade a platoon with one of
the battalion's infantry companies. For an armored company team, this nets two tank platoons and one
infantry platoon with four Bradleys and three nine-man squads. Rifle platoons can be further
task organized internally like creating an ad hoc weapons squad out of the spare weapons pool,
but that's a different video. Platoons can be further split up and reorganized to create shorter
lived combined arms platoons within the company team, such as pairing two tanks with two Bradleys.
If there's a credible air threat, which is now more common than ever even with low tier opponents
due to the proliferation of small drones, a Stinger MANPADS team on a HMMWV can be attached.
In the near future though, such teams will be organic to the companies rather than attached
from outside. To provide mobility support when breaching obstacles, sappers from the brigade
engineer battalion can be attached to each company. This could mean as little as a single
engineer squad mounted in a Bradley or, if the company is a breaching force leading a battalion
attack through significant obstacles, they could temporarily receive a composite engineer platoon
to enable them to cross the gap. An example would be something like three engineer squads,
an assault breacher vehicle and bridging assets. If the unit has to go through a minefield,
each armor company has roughly three mine clearing blades and one mine roller earmarked to mount
the leading tanks. So in summary, a fully task organized armor company team with all the bells
and whistles has enablers from basically every supporting subunit of their parent brigade and
battalion, and they may be reinforced with more stuff in some cases more so than others. The
next step above the company team is the task force based on the combined arms battalion. Since 2016,
Armored BCTs have had two armor-heavy battalions with the headquarters and headquarters company,
two armor companies, one mechanized infantry company and a forward support company. The
brigade also has an infantry heavy battalion which has two infantry companies and one armor
company. For deployments, combined arms battalions form task forces which, as the name suggests,
are task organized to fulfill a certain mission. For example, the 1st Battalion of the 67th Armor
Regiment, which is a CAB part of the 1st Armored Division's 3rd Brigade, is sometimes called
Task Force Dealer or Task Force 1-67. In some cases, these task forces might not even
have that much attached to them and in others might even have stuff taken away. They do vary,
but here are some hypotheticals based on real world examples for two very different situations.
First, a task force charged with a major breaching operation against a fortified defensive line might
form two company teams to take on the main effort and maintain a pure company to support by fire.
It might have one or two engineer companies attached to it to enable
it to maneuver through minefields and obstacles and open a breach for the rest of the brigade.
A platoon of Avengers mounting Stinger air defense missiles or the newer M-SHORAD system could be
attached to suppress enemy UAVs or helicopters that penetrate the unit's larger air defense net.
And a Paladin howitzer battery could be attached in direct support to provide heavy indirect fires.
All the while, the task force is working directly under its parent brigade. Such a setup is very
similar to what some first-line armored task forces ran during Operation Desert Storm.
Conversely, if a forward-deployed task force is being redeployed to provide armor
expertise to help a light infantry brigade advise and assist a foreign military,
an armor-heavy CAB could leave its mechanized infantry company and pick up a civil affairs team,
special forces element and a foreign partner motorized infantry company. At the same time,
its mechanized infantry company could be deployed to another area in support of another infantry
brigade's counter insurgency operations. During this time frame, elements of the battalion would
be working under two different brigades, neither of which it's permanently assigned to. Something
like that wouldn't have been out of place during the 2010s in Iraq and Afghanistan.
But as i said before, task forces vary quite a bit and exactly what a battalion commander
controls will depend on what's necessary. If you liked this video, check out this video on
the evolution of mechanized infantry squads at the height of the Cold War. We'll see you over there