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