Toby & Manuka,
The bottomline is tankers in the US Army haven't been doing too much "tanking" the last 15 years. What they have been doing is performing security missions in HMMWVs/MRAPs. If they have been in contact with their tanks its been at close range and in support of Infantry (see M1A2 TUSK).
Recently the US Army has had to deal with mandated reductions in the size of our Army based on numbers based on resources and funding. Happens every time we came off of a ramp up for a war. But the Army has pivoted the training to a more realistic multilevel direct action combat at our combat training centers. This includes our Army National Guard as well.
As for Europe specifically...we now rotate a heavy brigade4 combat team on 9 month rotations into Europe. We also stage additional forces. Keep in mind it may not be our ground maneuver comabt forces which are the most important. We have built up and further building up large number of preposition stocks of other forces with are tremendous combat multipliers.
But you will not see US forces in theater on the scale of 1988...or 1998.
The bottomline is tankers in the US Army haven't been doing too much "tanking" the last 15 years. What they have been doing is performing security missions in HMMWVs/MRAPs. If they have been in contact with their tanks its been at close range and in support of Infantry (see M1A2 TUSK).
Recently the US Army has had to deal with mandated reductions in the size of our Army based on numbers based on resources and funding. Happens every time we came off of a ramp up for a war. But the Army has pivoted the training to a more realistic multilevel direct action combat at our combat training centers. This includes our Army National Guard as well.
As for Europe specifically...we now rotate a heavy brigade4 combat team on 9 month rotations into Europe. We also stage additional forces. Keep in mind it may not be our ground maneuver comabt forces which are the most important. We have built up and further building up large number of preposition stocks of other forces with are tremendous combat multipliers.
But you will not see US forces in theater on the scale of 1988...or 1998.
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