panzersaurkrautwerfer

Sigh.

My contention is this:

We throw a wild party for Battlefront, and all of us are in attendance.  We all get positively rip-roaring drunk, do stupid things.  At the height of the party I'm demonstrating armor maneuver by going full sprint through the office swinging my arm wildly to indicate turret direction while screaming "Death before dismount." I certainly 100% do damage.

However it's hard to separate the next morning what specifically was damaged by my "Thunder Run" vs what other parties did too.  Sure there's my tanker boot treads all over the shattered remains of someone's desk...but I "ran" it over after someone else already kicked it down screaming "THIS IS SPACE LOBSTER COUNTRY!" I contributed my share to the massive pile of bottles yes....but I wasn't even the one who drank the most.

Within the context of both fights, US artillery and aviation certainly did destroy things.  This is a known variable.  However pointing to the rubble of Mosul and chittering how it was all those damned Americans and their bombs, or Raqqah and placing all the blame on 18 heavily abused 155 MM howitzers is a bit disingenuous.  

ISIS vigorously practices scorched earth type tactics.  Our "Friendly" and friendly forces all practice firepower warfare vs manuever (or they're going to shoot the objective with every weapon they have for an hour, THEN move to a closer firing position to repeat the same tactic, and then maybe five hours later, short on ammo move onto the objective).

Both of those cities felt the full weight of a 3rd World conventional military attack, a suicidal bomb happy defender, and then some Western precision fires.  Between those three, those fires certainly did their part in damaging those cities.  But again the contention that basically, without those fires the attacks would have left either of those cities pretty much intact is very much a falsehood.  Aleppo for instance serves as a really good example of what happens without the US precision fires, and with the opposition not being generally ISIS tier individuals.

So.  Again not denying there's collateral damage, but it's just idiotic to lay the preponderance of the damage at the feet of 18 howitzers while ignoring the effects of thousands of ground combatants, tanks, conventional artillery from both parties, IEDs in all guises all duking it out in close quarters.

Sigh.

My contention is this:

We throw a wild party for Battlefront, and all of us are in attendance.  We all get positively rip-roaring drunk, do stupid things.  At the height of the party I'm demonstrating armor maneuver by going full sprint through the office swinging my arm wildly to indicate turret direction while screaming "Death before dismount." I certainly 100% do damage.

However it's hard to separate the next morning what specifically was damaged by my "Thunder Run" vs what other parties did too.  Sure there's my tanker boot treads all over the shattered remains of someone's desk...but I "ran" it over after someone else already kicked it down screaming "THIS IS SPACE LOBSTER COUNTRY!" I contributed my share to the massive pile of bottles yes....but I wasn't even the one who drank the most.

Within the context of both fights, US artillery and aviation certainly did destroy things.  This is a known variable.  However pointing to the rubble of Mosul and chittering how it was all those damned Americans and their bombs, or Raqqah and placing all the blame on 18 heavily abused 155 MM howitzers is a bit disingenuous.  

ISIS vigorously practices scorched earth type tactics.  Our "Friendly" and friendly forces all practice firepower warfare vs manuever (or they're going to shoot the objective with every weapon they have for an hour, THEN move to a closer firing position to repeat the same tactic, and then maybe five hours later, short on ammo move onto the objective).

Both of those cities felt the full weight of a 3rd World conventional military attack, a suicidal bomb happy defender, and then some Western precision fires.  Between those three, those fires certainly did their part in damaging those cities.  But again the contention that basically, without those fires the attacks would have left either of those cities pretty much intact is very much a falsehood.  Aleppo for instance serves as a really good example of what happens without the US precision fires, and with the opposition not being generally ISIS tier individuals.

So.  Again not denying there's collateral damage, but it's just idiotic to lay the preponderance of the damage at the feet of 18 howitzers while ignoring the effects of thousands of ground combatants, tanks, conventional artillery from both parties, IEDs in all guises all duking it out in close quarters.

One of the more common tactics used by ISIS, and to a lesser extent before them, AQI is the "House Born IED" or "HBIED."  There's a variety of tactics involved with it:

1. The simplest and most direct is just a conventional booby trap.  ISIS does this TONS in places they are anticipating losing or placed they are evacuating.  This are sort of hit/miss, the detonation means are usually mechanical which again your success rate varies, and can range anything from something designed simply to cripple/main the person who triggers it, to full stop leaves a 3 meter deep crater where the house used to be.  

2. A tactic preferred during Mosul/Raqqa type fights is to strongpoint a house into a fighting position (element size is usually team or squad, but sometimes up to platoon), and then equip that building with large scale explosive devices.  In urban operations, the attacker is usually obligated to clear hostile occupied structures (to make sure the folks within are really dead vs waiting for the lead elements to pass), so the structure serves the dual purpose of serving as a place to fight from, and killing enemy forces once the position is taken out/no longer tenable.  

3. Sometimes buildings that offer cover within an engagement area will be rigged, so direct/indirect fire is used to force the attacking element to seek shelter near the booby trapped buildings, which are detonated when most convenient for the defender.  

Beyond the structure based devices, ISIS loves vehicle borne IEDs, and many of these are quite large in terms of explosive potential.

So yeah ISIS bombed "itself" pretty often, frequently using quite large devices in urban settings.

As far as 155 MM, again while that's a lot of rounds, that's a lot of rounds spread over dozens of miles, inclusive rural targets.  Without getting into a lot of detail, the US howitzers are not used for mass barrages because simply put there's not that many guns (again there was only 18 guns+crews, while guns were replaced, to the best of our knowledge there were never more than 18 firing weapons), and our Allies/"Allies" are doing the massed fires themselves.

What the US brings to the table is precision/semi-precision (or more like, guided, and highly accurate conventional fires) synced to intelligence gathering and surveillance tools well beyond what most countries are capable.  What this often works out to is hitting enemy VBIED concentrations while they're massing, firing on ISIS artillery assets, killing enemy supply elements (both the more conventional truck based, but also smuggler "ratlines") or killing enemy strongpoints that are "danger close" to friendly forces.  A lot of these missions/desired effects would fall more on direct fire/aviation/missiles in the historical context, but the capabilities of tube artillery have grown, and their battlefield persistence vs say, helicopters simply mean the system is getting a lot of use.

One of the more common tactics used by ISIS, and to a lesser extent before them, AQI is the "House Born IED" or "HBIED."  There's a variety of tactics involved with it:

1. The simplest and most direct is just a conventional booby trap.  ISIS does this TONS in places they are anticipating losing or placed they are evacuating.  This are sort of hit/miss, the detonation means are usually mechanical which again your success rate varies, and can range anything from something designed simply to cripple/main the person who triggers it, to full stop leaves a 3 meter deep crater where the house used to be.  

2. A tactic preferred during Mosul/Raqqa type fights is to strongpoint a house into a fighting position (element size is usually team or squad, but sometimes up to platoon), and then equip that building with large scale explosive devices.  In urban operations, the attacker is usually obligated to clear hostile occupied structures (to make sure the folks within are really dead vs waiting for the lead elements to pass), so the structure serves the dual purpose of serving as a place to fight from, and killing enemy forces once the position is taken out/no longer tenable.  

3. Sometimes buildings that offer cover within an engagement area will be rigged, so direct/indirect fire is used to force the attacking element to seek shelter near the booby trapped buildings, which are detonated when most convenient for the defender.  

Beyond the structure based devices, ISIS loves vehicle borne IEDs, and many of these are quite large in terms of explosive potential.

So yeah ISIS bombed "itself" pretty often, frequently using quite large devices in urban settings.

As far as 155 MM, again while that's a lot of rounds, that's a lot of rounds spread over dozens of miles, inclusive rural targets.  Without getting into a lot of detail, the US howitzers are not used for mass barrages because simply put there's not that many guns (again there was only 18 guns+crews, while guns were replaced, to the best of our knowledge there were never more than 18 firing weapons), and our Allies/"Allies" are doing the massed fires themselves.

What the US brings to the table is precision/semi-precision (or more like, guided, and highly accurate conventional fires) synced to intelligence gathering and surveillance tools well beyond what most countries are capable.  What this often works out to is hitting enemy VBIED concentrations while they're massing, firing on ISIS artillery assets, killing enemy supply elements (both the more conventional truck based, but also smuggler "ratlines") or killing enemy strongpoints that are "danger close" to friendly forces.  A lot of these missions/desired effects would fall more on direct fire/aviation/missiles in the historical context, but the capabilities of tube artillery have grown, and their battlefield persistence vs say, helicopters simply mean the system is getting a lot of use.

The US has a distinct advantage in fires integration, targeting and precision.  

The greater question for artillery in the next few years is being able to achieve effects in the face of frankly terrifying counter-battery capabilities.  The idea a M777 battery is going to be able to fire off more than 1-2 rounds before having to displace or face total destruction is certainly sinking in.  The traditional massed and persistent Russian fires are basically inviting ruin on the firing batteries.  

From that fires and effects are going to have to be able to answer the question of how to achieve the same effects, with less time/rounds to do so.  Precision will certainly play a role  although the current laser/GPS guidance trend will be challenged by EW (while the laser itself is not subject to jamming, the spotting element's communications, let alone if it's a drone are), as will advances in non-kinetic ADA (or whatever we care to call lasers or similar hard kill non-bullet options) observation. 

One thing that will be interesting is the historic fires integration piece taken to a more refined output, in that it may be still possible to put dozens of rounds on a target while still only doing so from a small number of guns by coordinating and allocating fires across a wider collection of units, or as far as several batteries firing very small missions, but sequenced and coordinating digitally (Battery A shoots 1 round per gun, displaces while Battery B fires 1 salvo then displaces, then BN mortars drop 3 rounds before displacing then Battery A opens up again).  

Or to visualize, artillery will spend more time in motion than firing, and each firing opportunity will need to mean more, and each target will need to be more relevant (or the historical US/and to an even larger degree RU ability to simply dump fires on anything that's being troublesome will be deeply challenged).

Basically it's going to matter a lot less about the gun, or how the gun is loaded, and more about how the round gets where it needs to go, and how we accomplish effects while someone tries to kill the gun.  The Russians especially historically have counted on massed non-precision fires, which may be lethal but again it won't take too many "missed" displacements to start to reach parity in numbers and greater effects disparity in terms of fires.

As far as "Alas Babylon"

It would be a mistake to attribute too much of the damage to US fires, or to at the least, indicate somehow they were responsible for causing more damage that would have occurred anyway.  Both Mosul and Raqqa were subject to lots of dumb artillery and direct fire weapons from the non-US elements rolling in (some of whom conduct "recon by fire" and little else), and ISIS rather relies on booby traps or other scorched earth type techniques.  

Basically several bulls went through the China shop.  The US precision (either in guided or digitally aided) fires certainly did some damage, but it's a bit obtuse to pretend they made it especially bad after looking at the other actors and factors at play.  

The US has a distinct advantage in fires integration, targeting and precision.  

The greater question for artillery in the next few years is being able to achieve effects in the face of frankly terrifying counter-battery capabilities.  The idea a M777 battery is going to be able to fire off more than 1-2 rounds before having to displace or face total destruction is certainly sinking in.  The traditional massed and persistent Russian fires are basically inviting ruin on the firing batteries.  

From that fires and effects are going to have to be able to answer the question of how to achieve the same effects, with less time/rounds to do so.  Precision will certainly play a role  although the current laser/GPS guidance trend will be challenged by EW (while the laser itself is not subject to jamming, the spotting element's communications, let alone if it's a drone are), as will advances in non-kinetic ADA (or whatever we care to call lasers or similar hard kill non-bullet options) observation. 

One thing that will be interesting is the historic fires integration piece taken to a more refined output, in that it may be still possible to put dozens of rounds on a target while still only doing so from a small number of guns by coordinating and allocating fires across a wider collection of units, or as far as several batteries firing very small missions, but sequenced and coordinating digitally (Battery A shoots 1 round per gun, displaces while Battery B fires 1 salvo then displaces, then BN mortars drop 3 rounds before displacing then Battery A opens up again).  

Or to visualize, artillery will spend more time in motion than firing, and each firing opportunity will need to mean more, and each target will need to be more relevant (or the historical US/and to an even larger degree RU ability to simply dump fires on anything that's being troublesome will be deeply challenged).

Basically it's going to matter a lot less about the gun, or how the gun is loaded, and more about how the round gets where it needs to go, and how we accomplish effects while someone tries to kill the gun.  The Russians especially historically have counted on massed non-precision fires, which may be lethal but again it won't take too many "missed" displacements to start to reach parity in numbers and greater effects disparity in terms of fires.

As far as "Alas Babylon"

It would be a mistake to attribute too much of the damage to US fires, or to at the least, indicate somehow they were responsible for causing more damage that would have occurred anyway.  Both Mosul and Raqqa were subject to lots of dumb artillery and direct fire weapons from the non-US elements rolling in (some of whom conduct "recon by fire" and little else), and ISIS rather relies on booby traps or other scorched earth type techniques.  

Basically several bulls went through the China shop.  The US precision (either in guided or digitally aided) fires certainly did some damage, but it's a bit obtuse to pretend they made it especially bad after looking at the other actors and factors at play.  

The US has a distinct advantage in fires integration, targeting and precision.  

The greater question for artillery in the next few years is being able to achieve effects in the face of frankly terrifying counter-battery capabilities.  The idea a M777 battery is going to be able to fire off more than 1-2 rounds before having to displace or face total destruction is certainly sinking in.  The traditional massed and persistent Russian fires are basically inviting ruin on the firing batteries.  

From that fires and effects are going to have to be able to answer the question of how to achieve the same effects, with less time/rounds to do so.  Precision will certainly play a role  although the current laser/GPS guidance trend will be challenged by EW (while the laser itself is not subject to jamming, the spotting element's communications, let alone if it's a drone are), as will advances in non-kinetic ADA (or whatever we care to call lasers or similar hard kill non-bullet options) observation. 

One thing that will be interesting is the historic fires integration piece taken to a more refined output, in that it may be still possible to put dozens of rounds on a target while still only doing so from a small number of guns by coordinating and allocating fires across a wider collection of units, or as far as several batteries firing very small missions, but sequenced and coordinating digitally (Battery A shoots 1 round per gun, displaces while Battery B fires 1 salvo then displaces, then BN mortars drop 3 rounds before displacing then Battery A opens up again).  

Or to visualize, artillery will spend more time in motion than firing, and each firing opportunity will need to mean more, and each target will need to be more relevant (or the historical US/and to an even larger degree RU ability to simply dump fires on anything that's being troublesome will be deeply challenged).

Basically it's going to matter a lot less about the gun, or how the gun is loaded, and more about how the round gets where it needs to go, and how we accomplish effects while someone tries to kill the gun.  The Russians especially historically have counted on massed non-precision fires, which may be lethal but again it won't take too many "missed" displacements to start to reach parity in numbers and greater effects disparity in terms of fires.

As far as "Alas Babylon"

It would be a mistake to attribute too much of the damage to US fires, or to at the least, indicate somehow they were responsible for causing more damage that would have occurred anyway.  Both Mosul and Raqqa were subject to lots of dumb artillery and direct fire weapons from the non-US elements rolling in (some of whom conduct "recon by fire" and little else), and ISIS rather relies on booby traps or other scorched earth type techniques.  

Basically several bulls went through the China shop.  The US precision (either in guided or digitally aided) fires certainly did some damage, but it's a bit obtuse to pretend they made it especially bad after looking at the other actors and factors at play.  

I'll also briefly address unmanned turrets.

So my time on tanks is rapidly becoming a distant past for me, so your mileage may vary, however:

1. The advantage to the autoloader is size, not performance.  Having the fourth crewman was very useful for a variety of reasons, and it was a superior way to service the gun (the ROF is overrated though, in practice a tank will never fire anywhere near "rapidly" simply because it has to acquire targets, and the delay in shooting is usually "finding target" vs prepping the gun tasks).  He also was very handy if there was a fault (we had a gunnery were the breach kept getting stuck not fully closed, on a tank with an autoloader, we'd have been a firepower kill not mission capable, or only capable if the gunner/commander manual actuated the breach, with the loader, he just hooked up a little tool designed for such occasions, and manually operated the breach with no loss of ROF or capability).  The only time I see an autoloader making sense over the current human loader is if we start talking about much larger gun rounds (like 140 MM) simply because it'll be beyond the ability of a normal human to load.

2. I'm opposed to the unmanned turret for the same reason.  The undeniable advantage is having a smaller turret, although you'll still need some volume to allow the gun to depress to a reasonable degree), but I really don't like the idea of the turret effectively sealed and inaccessible.  There's a lot of systems on a turret that without either a human to fix them, or a fairly direct mechanical backup renders the tank totally inoperable.  A loss of the gunner's primary optics, the autoloader, turret drive, or even just a jam in the coaxial weapon all mean the tank is either done, cannot perform combat missions, or requires pulling the tank back to dismount and work on it.  

It's not just armor or firepower, it's being able to manage damage, or degraded system and continue the fight.  Automation is good as a starting point, but there's a reason why we trained using the various mechanical backups, and why the true judge of a crew wasn't at fully mission capable, but instead how it operated when things broke.
I've seen enough go weird on otherwise fully functional tanks to really feel foolish making a lot of those systems inaccessible in normal operations, or eliminating redundant mechanical systems.  

If the SBCT was just a fleet of wheeled armored vehicles, then you'd have a point.  As the case was it was an entire Brigade built around a variety of information age innovations that have since trickled over the fence into ABCT/IBCT (it's worth keeping in mind the SBCT as a paper concept predates the entire BCT construct, and in many ways served as it's model).

Also the LAV platform for a variety of reasons served as a good launching point, but ultimately the platform just isn't the same as a Stryker.  

Re: Topic

A bit late to the party but it's comparing apples to electron flux capacitors.  You can't eat the electron flux capacitor, you can't go back in time and almost seduce your own mother with the apple.  IFVs have a distinct role as an element of the combined arms fight.  Wheeled APCs like the Stryker have their own distinct mission.  There's some overlap between the two, but again this gets to the reality that the Stryker does not look like a Bradley because it doesn't have the same mission set/design considerations so of course it's going to be "different"

Re: Dragoon

It's not a bad idea.  In a lot of places the 105 MM is too much gun, and the low ammo capacity is a hindrance on extended missions.  The 105 MM does have a bit more anti-armor capacity...but the anti-armor for an SBCT unit comes more from ATGMs than the MGS vehicles anyway.  30 MM is more handy for most situations, and the fact it doesn't require a highly specialized vehicle is pretty cool too.

I'll also briefly address unmanned turrets.

So my time on tanks is rapidly becoming a distant past for me, so your mileage may vary, however:

1. The advantage to the autoloader is size, not performance.  Having the fourth crewman was very useful for a variety of reasons, and it was a superior way to service the gun (the ROF is overrated though, in practice a tank will never fire anywhere near "rapidly" simply because it has to acquire targets, and the delay in shooting is usually "finding target" vs prepping the gun tasks).  He also was very handy if there was a fault (we had a gunnery were the breach kept getting stuck not fully closed, on a tank with an autoloader, we'd have been a firepower kill not mission capable, or only capable if the gunner/commander manual actuated the breach, with the loader, he just hooked up a little tool designed for such occasions, and manually operated the breach with no loss of ROF or capability).  The only time I see an autoloader making sense over the current human loader is if we start talking about much larger gun rounds (like 140 MM) simply because it'll be beyond the ability of a normal human to load.

2. I'm opposed to the unmanned turret for the same reason.  The undeniable advantage is having a smaller turret, although you'll still need some volume to allow the gun to depress to a reasonable degree), but I really don't like the idea of the turret effectively sealed and inaccessible.  There's a lot of systems on a turret that without either a human to fix them, or a fairly direct mechanical backup renders the tank totally inoperable.  A loss of the gunner's primary optics, the autoloader, turret drive, or even just a jam in the coaxial weapon all mean the tank is either done, cannot perform combat missions, or requires pulling the tank back to dismount and work on it.  

It's not just armor or firepower, it's being able to manage damage, or degraded system and continue the fight.  Automation is good as a starting point, but there's a reason why we trained using the various mechanical backups, and why the true judge of a crew wasn't at fully mission capable, but instead how it operated when things broke.
I've seen enough go weird on otherwise fully functional tanks to really feel foolish making a lot of those systems inaccessible in normal operations, or eliminating redundant mechanical systems.  

If the SBCT was just a fleet of wheeled armored vehicles, then you'd have a point.  As the case was it was an entire Brigade built around a variety of information age innovations that have since trickled over the fence into ABCT/IBCT (it's worth keeping in mind the SBCT as a paper concept predates the entire BCT construct, and in many ways served as it's model).

Also the LAV platform for a variety of reasons served as a good launching point, but ultimately the platform just isn't the same as a Stryker.  

Re: Topic

A bit late to the party but it's comparing apples to electron flux capacitors.  You can't eat the electron flux capacitor, you can't go back in time and almost seduce your own mother with the apple.  IFVs have a distinct role as an element of the combined arms fight.  Wheeled APCs like the Stryker have their own distinct mission.  There's some overlap between the two, but again this gets to the reality that the Stryker does not look like a Bradley because it doesn't have the same mission set/design considerations so of course it's going to be "different"

Re: Dragoon

It's not a bad idea.  In a lot of places the 105 MM is too much gun, and the low ammo capacity is a hindrance on extended missions.  The 105 MM does have a bit more anti-armor capacity...but the anti-armor for an SBCT unit comes more from ATGMs than the MGS vehicles anyway.  30 MM is more handy for most situations, and the fact it doesn't require a highly specialized vehicle is pretty cool too.

I'll also briefly address unmanned turrets.

So my time on tanks is rapidly becoming a distant past for me, so your mileage may vary, however:

1. The advantage to the autoloader is size, not performance.  Having the fourth crewman was very useful for a variety of reasons, and it was a superior way to service the gun (the ROF is overrated though, in practice a tank will never fire anywhere near "rapidly" simply because it has to acquire targets, and the delay in shooting is usually "finding target" vs prepping the gun tasks).  He also was very handy if there was a fault (we had a gunnery were the breach kept getting stuck not fully closed, on a tank with an autoloader, we'd have been a firepower kill not mission capable, or only capable if the gunner/commander manual actuated the breach, with the loader, he just hooked up a little tool designed for such occasions, and manually operated the breach with no loss of ROF or capability).  The only time I see an autoloader making sense over the current human loader is if we start talking about much larger gun rounds (like 140 MM) simply because it'll be beyond the ability of a normal human to load.

2. I'm opposed to the unmanned turret for the same reason.  The undeniable advantage is having a smaller turret, although you'll still need some volume to allow the gun to depress to a reasonable degree), but I really don't like the idea of the turret effectively sealed and inaccessible.  There's a lot of systems on a turret that without either a human to fix them, or a fairly direct mechanical backup renders the tank totally inoperable.  A loss of the gunner's primary optics, the autoloader, turret drive, or even just a jam in the coaxial weapon all mean the tank is either done, cannot perform combat missions, or requires pulling the tank back to dismount and work on it.  

It's not just armor or firepower, it's being able to manage damage, or degraded system and continue the fight.  Automation is good as a starting point, but there's a reason why we trained using the various mechanical backups, and why the true judge of a crew wasn't at fully mission capable, but instead how it operated when things broke.
I've seen enough go weird on otherwise fully functional tanks to really feel foolish making a lot of those systems inaccessible in normal operations, or eliminating redundant mechanical systems.  

There is no chance of the US operating an updated M60, full stop.  Our stocks of the tank were eliminated either through scrapping or selling them off as surplus.  There's also more than enough M1A1s, or earlier run M1A2s to go around.

The various fancy M60 options exist entirely for other users.  It isn't a "waste" in the sense most tank users aren't going toe to toe with ultra modern MBTs, they're shooting it out with insurgents, or they're worried about neighbors with M48s/T-55s/whatever, so a lower capability tank with modest upgrades makes sense in this context.  

For sources, FM 3-90.1 is the field manual for the Armor-Mechanized Team, which is to say how the US Army plans to fight at the Company level in a mixed force of tanks and mechanized infantry, so there's a lot of "how to" for IFV forces.  

Just a few quick notes:

1. In the world war two context, an IFV without troops is basically a cross between a light tank, and a tank destroyer.  It cannot trade blows with anything reliably (the ERA or APS models can resist infantry anti-tank weapons, but not especially reliably, all of them will resist autocannon fire for only a short time, and virtually every single one of them is ultra dead if a tank is shooting at them), but has a lot of firepower.  Autocannons parallel what you'd expect a 37 or 50 MM gun to do in the 1944 context, kill light vehicles easily, damage tanks from favorable angles, and do quite well against infantry.  The ATGM is pretty hit or miss, against anything with an APS it's pretty much a waste, but your mileage varies against anything else (TOW-2B is pretty amazing against anything that is not APS equipped, a lot of the Russian stuff struggles against any sort of ERA etc).

2. When loaded with troops though, it's best to view the IFV as a half track.  It's simply way too easy to lose entire squads if you're aggressive with a fully loaded IFV.  You can get close to the battle, but generally, you want the infantry and IFV attacking and assaulting the objective as a unit vs the IFVs assaulting with full troop bays.

3. In terms of spotting, the US IFVs are practically super-natural at range, and are great tools to find the enemy.  You'll still want to lead with infantry, but there's a good chance the Bradley will be shooting at targets your infantry hasn't found yet, especially at range.  The Russian/Ukrainian IFVs are not good for this, and will rarely spot anything before its infantry does.  

4. On the offensive, the best world war two analog I can think of would be playing CMBN with a platoon of armored infantry and a platoon of M5 Stuarts.  You have a lot of firepower on hand, but you must be careful when you present the vehicles, it doesn't take much to kill them.  Often it's best to let the infantry get into the fight a bit, and once the enemy is more known, then you flex the armor onto the enemy.  Often you'll have to use area fire with the non-US IFVs, but the effects can still be decisive.

5. On the defense, think of them like AT guns that can move if they have to.  You want to set them on good fields of fire, tied in with the infantry they transported.  Seek out good well protected positions, as if the enemy starts shooting back, the IFV will not survive for long.  It's often best to plan for a follow on position for once the first position is exposed, or comes under effective fire.  It's important at this point to consider how you want to deal with this follow on position, is it simply an alternate from which the IFV can continue to support the infantry, or is it a totally new position you might want to move the infantry to too?

6. The IFV should virtually always be accompanied by tanks on the offensive or in open terrain.  It should always be accompanied by infantry in the defensive or in urban/woodland terrain.  He gets lonely and sad and may explode if you keep him away from his friends.

7. All IFVs rely on ATGMs for anti-tank operations.  Where this gets weird for gamey reasons is sometimes the TAC AI decides the chaingun is the best choice for anti-armor work, so it'll splat a bunch of 25 MM AP against the frontal slope of a tank, and then get murdered.  Also It's possible if tank and IFV spot each other at the same time, the engagement speed of the tank's gun is just so much faster that it'll kill the IFV before the missile is able to strike home.  

Because I'm bored, some short impressions of the tracked IFVs in game:

Bradley: Fear this thing.  It spots well, can kill anything that's not a tank with its chaingun, and with the ERA, is able to take some hits and still plug along. On the downside it's pretty spendy if you're going by QB points, and has almost no real AT capability against anything with APS.  

BMP-2: Rubbish.  It doesn't spot well, rifle grenades will knock it out, and it takes somewhere around 10-15 seconds it seems to launch ATGMs (and they're not especially good ATGMs).  On the plus side, getting more than a few of them is easy in QB, they're pretty zippy, and if you're using it to support infantry, it's quite handy as 30 MM fire ruins anyone's day.

BMP-2M: Much of the above, although there's some issues in game with getting it to fire ATGMs I believe.   I don't know, I haven't used them much.

BMP-3/3M: Tricky.  Decisive if used well, positively terrible if used anything less than well.  On the plus side an astounding amount of firepower, the 100 MM is great at knocking out enemy strongpoints.  It also has a great airburst capability if you're facing trenches.   Reasonable ATGM.  On the negative side it only has armor in the sales brochure, and given the amount of ammunition contained within, it explodes when knocked out.  And not like, oh, drat I have lost a IFV explodes, like kills everyone within the vehicle, takes out the squad next to it, and mobility kills the T-90 nearby level explodes.  More than anything else you have to make sure it's "safe" to employ.  If you can get it into position, it'll be the king of murder mountain.  If the enemy can hit it with literally anything bigger than 7.62, it's going to die loudly.

The hardware is a big difference from the capability.  The strong example would be Iraqis with M1 tanks, it was functionally irrelevant what equipment they had, as long as the men manning it were poorly trained, equipped, and somesuch.
 
That said:
 
 If there's superiority in the American military, it is in the three following areas:
 
1. Size matters.  While it's getting a lot smaller, the simple size and funding of the American military means a lot of capabilities that are simply too expensive for most other countries are a matter of course for the US (see the combined air fleet of the USAF, USMC, and USN and then compare it to the various other NATO countries, or things like having several carrier battle groups active at once)
 
2. Logistics/support/expeditionary warfare.  When France went into Mali it was riding in USAF planes, and supported by logistics moved through the US log systems.  Further in the operations over Libya while the "shooting" part of the operation was very well spread across the different NATO members, the AWACS/refueling/other support asset was overwhelmingly yankee imperialist.  
 
While it's easy to funnel a lot of this into "bigger is better" is worth noting this ability to not only deploy, but sustain forces, and equip them with potent enabler elements is something that is well into an art/skill all its own, and is finely honed in the regards that since 1890 or so, Americans have been doing most of their fighting well over the horizon on distant shores.  
 
No other force can do that to the degree the American military can, and again it's a skill and training that is well beyond simply having more planes or money to expend.
 
3. The average training tempo, and realism for the US military is quite a bit more elaborate than many peer countries.  The number of rounds fired, and miles maneuvered by my tank company in a year was roughly equal to how much some battalion sized armor elements in western European military forces do in a similar time scale.  Additionally every "combat" unit (to include National Guard units) goes to NTC on a regular basis to get its face peeled off by the OPFOR in training that is what could best be called "hyper realistic" (in that the enemy is significantly more capable than he should be) situations.  It's hard, tough training, but what separates it from simply tossing troops in Siberia or marching several hundred KM through North Africa, is that the hardness has a focus, and there's a lot of post-action analysis.  It's not just enough to successfully assault the fake town in the desert, but each step will be broken down, and looked at honestly (having sat through some other country's AARs, there's a lot of face-saving and hand waving when things go wrong.  This is really not the case in an American type AAR in which even your random privates can speak up about what they saw/suggestions to do it better).
 
You get a lot of anecdotal stuff, Legionaries roundhouse kicking Taliban, British bayonet charges, 100% objective success rate for Excercise Donbass Freedom or whatever, but there's a wide margin between what the American military is capable of, and what the rest of NATO and most potential threat nations can do*
 
 
*Which is not to say it is unbeatable, but what gets tiring is the "well we have 300 Leo 2s and they're better than Abrams!" or "here's this link discussing how fast the French moved through Mali when it took the US ten years to sort of pacify Iraq!" There's certainly ways to beat the US in conventional warfare even...it's just not really in trying to meet it at a 1:1 ratio in terrain that doesn't highly favor you if you get my drift
 
Of course, as a post script I'm not sure how much longer we'll be able to maintain a lot of those advantages.  One of the great problems with being "the best" is that it engenders a perception that it is simply a state that will be maintained without further investment, when in reality we're seeing the miltiary budget get hacked and slashed to maintain other spending, while at the same time not seriously re-examining if a lot of what we invested in during "good" times is worth keeping (like the always lovely JSF).  

Firstly, you are an infantryman and thus your opinion is invalid.  
 
Kidding aside however:

 
 
The HEAT fusing has been adjusted to be more sensitive.  It will now go off when striking pretty much anything more solid than loose mud.  Same deal with the MPAT.  The next step is the AMP which will allow you to "dial" a target, with either HEAT-type fusing (for killing PCs), a short of shrapnel approach (replacing cannister), airburst, or anti-building sort of thing (basically PD with a slight delay so it bursts after going through the wall.

As far as Canister, it's actually pretty good against buildings, it'll knock a huge hole in a wall (the pellets are tungsten), cars, most all things you'd find inside a structure etc.  Firing against some dismounts inside a house it'll cheese the target area pretty good.  Against a dedicated bunker it won't do much obviously but that's why the OR round was made and is retained for missions that entail taking the Maginot line 2.0 (which is basically a HEAT round with a penetrator tip and short delay so it goes off inside a target building).    
 
Machine guns on a tank are actually vastly superior to infantry machine guns.  As yeah I want your M240B teams to advance in the face of intense small arms fire for 500 meters with enough ammo to be effective.  The M240 on the coaxial mount has something like 8,000-12,000 rounds "ready" depending on the model plus whatever 7.62 is stashed on the tank.  The newer CROW type system is also very effective considering the other options for bringing a .50 cal to the fight, and the effects of an accurate stabilized M2 (and having it on a platform that'll shrug off all small arms and most AT systems from the front).
 
So in that regards in terms of pulping infantry, tanks are still pretty good!  Also I don't know how your unit worked, but usually we'd have a Company Team concept, so we'd lose four tanks in exchange for an infantry platoon, which gave us the fun stuff a Bradley carried too (sort of the whole point of a company team, Tank heavy teams gain dismounts+some potent anti-infantry weapons, Infantry heavy teams gain a lot more AT capability and a much more resilient fire support system).  
 
 
That was not my experience.  The proliferation of heavy cargo hauling trucks and the need for bridges to often support large amounts of traffic has meant most highway bridges, and nearly any that are paved can support a tank.  We took tanks through Baghdad with no significant mobility hazards and considering the state of those roads, that's an accomplishment.  Further my company in Korea rolled over Korean roads, bridges and all sorts of things and as a rule, anything but the smallest bridges could handle it a tank at a time.

The real comment to take away from this is how reliant the Stryker is on "good" terrain, and how much its mobility is threatened by even modest damage to roads (because if you want to talk about mobility problems, boy howdy let me get started on Strykers).  Further in terms of bridges and recovery assets, the M88A2 has been in service for some years and is capable of towing a broken M88A2 with an M1A2 attached.  Seriously.  Planned that way.  The new AVLB (M104?  Dunno the Wolverine) also is rated to handle M1s.
 
The weight creep has been a simple reality of armor design.  I'm sure Sherman supporter folks lose their collective minds when the first M26 rolled up.  However the payoff in increased armor protection and firepower was worth it.  Same deal with the Abrams, although weight reduction measures are part of the next "block" from my understanding (chiefly reducing the weight of the main gun, and replacing a lot of the wiring with fiber optics and reducing wiring harness redundancy, should save something like 7-10 tons based on whatever estimates you like).  
 
 
It goes more places than the Bradley.  True story.  The tank is heavier but has better power output by a long shot.  Also my limitations on approaches were:

1. Terrain unsuitable to any sort of armored vehicle (swamps)
2. Terrain the Army did not let me use (PROTECT THE WOODPECKER/WHATEVER IS THE ENDANGERED SPECIES ON THIS POST!!!!111oneoneone)
3. Terrain that was inherently a bad idea (wide open, limited hull down positions, had deep gullies that would either force us to expose our flanks, or leave us exposed)
 
I've driven up and down icy roads, across small streams, I've kicked up 30 foot tall rooster tails of mud, crossing terrain that was eating HMMWVs (1025s mind you, not uparmors) like it was the blob.  These mobility issues, I know not of what you speak.
 
 
There's a lot wrong in this statement, so I'll address what's correct:

1. The engine produces a lot of heat.  Much of the problems that result from this (setting the Prairie on fire at Yakima Training Center) can be addressed using the heat shield (which is usually made from scrap-metal with some rebar handles, it's not high tech).  
2. Gas consumption is a problem, however in terms of operational range and refueling requirements, it has similar duration to the Bradley and other Army equipment.  So while it requires more fuel, the resupply frequency is on par with mechanized infantry units.  
 
The only engine fire I saw were a result of an electrical short.  It was extinguished with no great difficulty*.  I have seen tanks operate in the deserts of Eastern WA, NTC, Korea during the "hot as balls I want to die" part of the summer (between monsoons), Kuwait, Iraq and overheating and catching fire was not something I'd heard of. The newer diesel engines still take significantly longer to reach max capacity power output, and involve significantly more moving pieces (our tanks went down much less frequently than the Bradleys and M113s in terms of engine faults).  
 
I have no idea what you're talking about with the engine spool up.  I don't have the literal times beside me but the greater delay cold start was waiting for the optics to cool (so the thermal would "see") and the computers to run up.  If you're doing a "powered" start (like you already have turret/hull power on, just the engine is off it's pretty darn fast (I killed my engine and hid my tank while playing as opfor, the delay from "engine off" to "exploding from the treeline like an angry dinosaur** was negligible)
 
 
I think she's doing fine.  The Abram's infantry murdering abilities are still very capable, and there's a lot of piles of rubble in Baghdad that attest to the ability of the main gun to ruin faces.  During the "Thunder Run" and Falluhjah the Abrams functioned very effectively against infantry and building type targets.  I sat on the DMZ in Korea more than reasonably confident that:

A. If I had to shoot people it was going to be dismounts mostly
B. My tanks (and tankers) were more than up to the task.
 
There's this persistent mythology that the optimal tank should be something like the old ARVE, or assault guns.  Something like that wouldn't be half bad as an auxiliary.  But tanks, and their ability to eat enemy armor for breakfast, and then smoke the crunchies all on the fly is an essential piece of combined arms warfare.  Trying to relegate armor to the infantry support role as a primary mission went out of style in the 1940s.  As much as you can bring up the fate of British Cruiser tanks, we can also point to how equally the infantry tanks failed***.  At the end of the day you resulted in the Main Battle Tank which MUST include both missions, and as I have, and will likely continue to illustrate, the Abrams can smoke armor and dismount alike.  
 
*The conversation still went "Sir one of the tanks caught fire" followed by me getting about 50% of the way to losing my mind until it was explained only the  short circuted component suffered any fire damage.
**It was one of the cooler things I've done in a tank, as the thicket just disintegrated around us and we MILEs a few tanks before anyone knew what was happening.  Took a while before we lose all the branches off the deck though. 
***The Churchill only really becoming successful because it eventually was outfitted with the same sort of weapons package other "cruiser" type tanks had at the time.  As much as the various CS model tanks, or things like the M4 105mm were useful, they remained as specialist tools for a reason.

You're funny.  Perhaps you should open a comedy club?  Have you actually seen the sort of crap people pay to see?

There will always be an audience that wants to see crispy critters, or what organs look like falling out of someone.  I see no reason to make it easy to feed the orgrish crowd, nor is it relevant to the debate.  Regardless of pictures of the dead, your original point is just as wrong, there's no similarity between not showing the dead, and denying that they happened.

The notification process, and return of human remains is a super-solemn process, even for MIA partial remains recovered decades later.  Eventually some legislator fought to allow cameras to cover the return of remains from Iraq/Afghanistan....but it was very much restricted to ensure someone wasn't getting super artistic shuts by standing on a coffin or something.  As Los pointed out, the fact said servicemen were dead, and the nature of their dead was never concealed, just the pictures of the actual dead.  
 
So in that regard, the casualties were known, existed, broadcast (once the family had been notified, and as I pointed out, even notified at great cost and expense).
 
 
Yeah but the key part of "plausible" is that it's believable.  You really overestimate how often western SOF does something that "never happened" usually the key is US SOF is "somewhere" in country, but the actual trigger units are usually local forces that have been trained by the US.  Because THIS provides enough plausibility that US forces were never there, it just happened that some not Taliban friendly tribesmen happened to attack a rival tribe the day that a Taliban HVT was visiting said rival tribe, and the fact a US drone strike blotted out the security element five minutes before the raid started all just happened to occur.
 
Russia has mounted a low order invasion of the Ukraine with significant SOF, regular forces, armor, and artillery and SAMs fired from Russian soil.  There's no plausible involved, no deniability, and pretending the various dead Russian servicemen simply keeled over in the mess hall from bad borscht is simply insulting to everyone's intelligence.  The only deniability is Putin using the toddler defense of repeating "Nuh-uh!" at various volumes on a loop when confronted about Russians in the Ukraine.
 
 
Are you worse served on crime reporting by not getting full page glossy photos of the victims?  Does not getting to see the crispy remains of airplane crash victims make you less aware of the plane crash?  It's simple human respect to give dead folks, and their families some privacy.  Soldier's are not some how less human and less deserving of that respect.  The facts of their deaths, and often the details of their deaths are publicly available and always have been.  This is the stuff Putin is withholding and where the issue arises, and is the stuff that's relevant to the discussion on if it's "worth it"

The radio code word we used at the time was "River City."  We didn't lose many folks, but you'd usually have 10-30 seconds to finish what you were doing before the call centers, internet, and even the official DoD connections to the "real" internet got shut down (the military intranet stuff kept going, but it's not like you got on gmail with that).  Our Artillery Battalion had a mascal and one of the dudes who died was first generation immigrant from Guatemala.  We did not have normal contact with our families until they'd found the dude's family in his home country so a real human in a US Army uniform would tell them their son was dead and we are so sorry.
 
Which is why this Putin mess pisses me off so much.  Oh.  Your son is dead.  SORRY it didn't happen really but he's just as dead.  HEY.  There's your kid on youtube getting probed by Ukrainians.  HE SHOULDN'T HAVE GONE ON VACATION!
 
It's like my god, I knew if I died Baghdad wasn't going to know peace until my body was brought back, and some Captain and a Chaplain were going to have to tell my family that I died serving this country I love.  Or if I went missing my country was going to do literally everything it could do to get me back or ensure I was really dead before it gave up trying to get me back (even if I was a crapbird like Bergdalh).  
 
Russia?  Pffft.  Their soldiers are cheaply sold for questionable goods, and are quickly forgotten when they're broken.  Someone's son is worth more than that, but it's readily apparent Putin's concern for that son, and for Russia's children's future only carries as far as ensuring his corrupt buddies have places to build casinos, and a tinny hollow version of "russian glory."  Whore's makeup on a corpse if you will.  

http://usacac.army.mil/cac2/cgsc/carl/download/csipubs/gott_tanks.pdf

I'm on a borrowed wifi so my apologies if it's actually nothing but graphic pornography of offensive nature.

However that link SHOULD get you to "Breaking the Mold" which is a handy little historical look at the employment of armor in urban settings from World War Two through realistically Grozny (Fallujah is included, however the book was published only a short time after that fight ended so it's pretty short on details).  It's short, and gives a few great examples of doing it "right" and a few equally quality examples of doing it wrong.
 
Which is the long way to say the experience with the Bradley in an urban fight is about the same as any of the other IFVs.  It's more likely to find enemies, and a bit more robust against short range AT.  But in a practical sense regardless of BMP-2 or Bradley the machine in the close urban fight matters less than the tactics.  Bradley is just a bit more likely to accomplish mission if you use the tactics poorly or you get unlucky (and then lucky again!)

Also just read the damned book.  It's enlightening.   

http://usacac.army.mil/cac2/cgsc/carl/download/csipubs/gott_tanks.pdf

I'm on a borrowed wifi so my apologies if it's actually nothing but graphic pornography of offensive nature.

However that link SHOULD get you to "Breaking the Mold" which is a handy little historical look at the employment of armor in urban settings from World War Two through realistically Grozny (Fallujah is included, however the book was published only a short time after that fight ended so it's pretty short on details).  It's short, and gives a few great examples of doing it "right" and a few equally quality examples of doing it wrong.
 
Which is the long way to say the experience with the Bradley in an urban fight is about the same as any of the other IFVs.  It's more likely to find enemies, and a bit more robust against short range AT.  But in a practical sense regardless of BMP-2 or Bradley the machine in the close urban fight matters less than the tactics.  Bradley is just a bit more likely to accomplish mission if you use the tactics poorly or you get unlucky (and then lucky again!)

Also just read the damned book.  It's enlightening.   

Cool.  I've got the same weathering kit, I'm just not as adventurous in applying it.  I've actually mostly used it as a sort of layer, like I'll do legit drybrushing around the tracks with tamiya's flat earth, then some of the "mud" from the weathering kit as a sort of a semi-drybrush.  Then I used to go for a light wash to sort of mute the colors.  Doesn't look horrible, but it's like better than nothing vs quite what I want to get down.

 

I spent the last bit of my active duty career (or at least the useful part!) in Korea.  Some comments:

1. The primary goal of the DPRK leadership is the best off person in the worst country in the world.  Milton had it right in that it is "Better to rule in hell than serve in Heaven."  Whatever they will do, it is for regime preservation.  The biggest danger in terms of chances of the regime being toppled is brought by B-2s flying wingtip to wingtip over Pyongyang, and Third ROK Army blasting a breach through the DMZ with 1st CAV and 25th ID in tow.   Pushing the ROK too far, or large scale military action will end the DPRK as we know it.

   Caveat A.  However, where the playing with gasoline comes in is in the immortal words of the respected poets, Tears for Fears, in that Everybody Wants to Rule the World.  There's lots of the ruling elements that want to be Kim Il Song.  Kim keeps them in line by shooting them with rabid dogs fired from a tank, but there's always a chance one of them gets lucky or Kim gets complacent and we're looking at a total breakdown of order in the DPRK.  This is honestly the most dangerous scenario I can think of.  

  Caveat B.  If pushed to the point where regime survival is less likely with status quo than success in military conflict the DPRK might roll the dice.  This is doubtful however as if the DPRK was that weak, the odds of military success in a conflict against Latvia, let alone the ROK and her allies would be remote.
 
2. A significant part of being the DPRK requires appearing both dangerous, and crazy enough to be really dangerous while not being too dangerous to live next door to.  It's two parts, the first being to made invading the DPRK seem too daunting to even consider, while also never being so dangerous as to overcome ROK and UN resistance to offensive military action.
 
A bit part of this is asymmetrical attacks that are blatantly obviously DPRK origin but to a degree DPRK allies can still ignore the burden of proof.  The mine wasn't there to kill ROK military, it was there to show what the DPRK could do.  They want sugarplum visions of thousands of NKPA ninja warriors planting mines on every surface of South Korea because the God-Emperor demands it be so!  This is something that is not so egregious as to be worth starting a war that will cost thousands (tens of thousands perhaps) of military losses to ROK and Allies, but it's designed to make the idea of starting a war so spooky as to make putting up with another 20 years of DPRK being terrible preferable to open warfare.
 
Same deal why they love nukes, they don't plan on nuking a hole through the DMZ, they just want to make attacking the DPRK so daunting they can more or less do enough shady stuff to keep the Kim family rolling on Johnny Walker and caviar without fear of invasion.
 
In regards to China, they want the DPRK to shut up and behave, and buy Chinese stuff/give China natural resources.  They don't want to deal with a full spectrum bloody conventional war on their border pumping thousands if not millions of starved, functionally uneducated North Koreans who will turn into a humanitarian disaster in short order once they cross the border.  Status quo, and if not status quo, the least chaotic outcome.

So in that regard I would suggest a Chinese intervention would be to establish a buffer zone to keep DPRK refugees south, secure possible high value Chinese investments in the Northern parts of the country.  Likely they'll coordinate some level with the ROK-US elements (possibly stipulating how far north the US goes in exchange for keeping intervention limited, while allowing the ROK all the way to the Chinese front line).  .
 
That said at least the way I'm reading it, this isn't an incident worth getting too excited about.  It's higher tension than usual, but not quite the highway to hell.  

Firstly, you are an infantryman and thus your opinion is invalid.  
 
Kidding aside however:

 
 
The HEAT fusing has been adjusted to be more sensitive.  It will now go off when striking pretty much anything more solid than loose mud.  Same deal with the MPAT.  The next step is the AMP which will allow you to "dial" a target, with either HEAT-type fusing (for killing PCs), a short of shrapnel approach (replacing cannister), airburst, or anti-building sort of thing (basically PD with a slight delay so it bursts after going through the wall.

As far as Canister, it's actually pretty good against buildings, it'll knock a huge hole in a wall (the pellets are tungsten), cars, most all things you'd find inside a structure etc.  Firing against some dismounts inside a house it'll cheese the target area pretty good.  Against a dedicated bunker it won't do much obviously but that's why the OR round was made and is retained for missions that entail taking the Maginot line 2.0 (which is basically a HEAT round with a penetrator tip and short delay so it goes off inside a target building).    
 
Machine guns on a tank are actually vastly superior to infantry machine guns.  As yeah I want your M240B teams to advance in the face of intense small arms fire for 500 meters with enough ammo to be effective.  The M240 on the coaxial mount has something like 8,000-12,000 rounds "ready" depending on the model plus whatever 7.62 is stashed on the tank.  The newer CROW type system is also very effective considering the other options for bringing a .50 cal to the fight, and the effects of an accurate stabilized M2 (and having it on a platform that'll shrug off all small arms and most AT systems from the front).
 
So in that regards in terms of pulping infantry, tanks are still pretty good!  Also I don't know how your unit worked, but usually we'd have a Company Team concept, so we'd lose four tanks in exchange for an infantry platoon, which gave us the fun stuff a Bradley carried too (sort of the whole point of a company team, Tank heavy teams gain dismounts+some potent anti-infantry weapons, Infantry heavy teams gain a lot more AT capability and a much more resilient fire support system).  
 
 
That was not my experience.  The proliferation of heavy cargo hauling trucks and the need for bridges to often support large amounts of traffic has meant most highway bridges, and nearly any that are paved can support a tank.  We took tanks through Baghdad with no significant mobility hazards and considering the state of those roads, that's an accomplishment.  Further my company in Korea rolled over Korean roads, bridges and all sorts of things and as a rule, anything but the smallest bridges could handle it a tank at a time.

The real comment to take away from this is how reliant the Stryker is on "good" terrain, and how much its mobility is threatened by even modest damage to roads (because if you want to talk about mobility problems, boy howdy let me get started on Strykers).  Further in terms of bridges and recovery assets, the M88A2 has been in service for some years and is capable of towing a broken M88A2 with an M1A2 attached.  Seriously.  Planned that way.  The new AVLB (M104?  Dunno the Wolverine) also is rated to handle M1s.
 
The weight creep has been a simple reality of armor design.  I'm sure Sherman supporter folks lose their collective minds when the first M26 rolled up.  However the payoff in increased armor protection and firepower was worth it.  Same deal with the Abrams, although weight reduction measures are part of the next "block" from my understanding (chiefly reducing the weight of the main gun, and replacing a lot of the wiring with fiber optics and reducing wiring harness redundancy, should save something like 7-10 tons based on whatever estimates you like).  
 
 
It goes more places than the Bradley.  True story.  The tank is heavier but has better power output by a long shot.  Also my limitations on approaches were:

1. Terrain unsuitable to any sort of armored vehicle (swamps)
2. Terrain the Army did not let me use (PROTECT THE WOODPECKER/WHATEVER IS THE ENDANGERED SPECIES ON THIS POST!!!!111oneoneone)
3. Terrain that was inherently a bad idea (wide open, limited hull down positions, had deep gullies that would either force us to expose our flanks, or leave us exposed)
 
I've driven up and down icy roads, across small streams, I've kicked up 30 foot tall rooster tails of mud, crossing terrain that was eating HMMWVs (1025s mind you, not uparmors) like it was the blob.  These mobility issues, I know not of what you speak.
 
 
There's a lot wrong in this statement, so I'll address what's correct:

1. The engine produces a lot of heat.  Much of the problems that result from this (setting the Prairie on fire at Yakima Training Center) can be addressed using the heat shield (which is usually made from scrap-metal with some rebar handles, it's not high tech).  
2. Gas consumption is a problem, however in terms of operational range and refueling requirements, it has similar duration to the Bradley and other Army equipment.  So while it requires more fuel, the resupply frequency is on par with mechanized infantry units.  
 
The only engine fire I saw were a result of an electrical short.  It was extinguished with no great difficulty*.  I have seen tanks operate in the deserts of Eastern WA, NTC, Korea during the "hot as balls I want to die" part of the summer (between monsoons), Kuwait, Iraq and overheating and catching fire was not something I'd heard of. The newer diesel engines still take significantly longer to reach max capacity power output, and involve significantly more moving pieces (our tanks went down much less frequently than the Bradleys and M113s in terms of engine faults).  
 
I have no idea what you're talking about with the engine spool up.  I don't have the literal times beside me but the greater delay cold start was waiting for the optics to cool (so the thermal would "see") and the computers to run up.  If you're doing a "powered" start (like you already have turret/hull power on, just the engine is off it's pretty darn fast (I killed my engine and hid my tank while playing as opfor, the delay from "engine off" to "exploding from the treeline like an angry dinosaur** was negligible)
 
 
I think she's doing fine.  The Abram's infantry murdering abilities are still very capable, and there's a lot of piles of rubble in Baghdad that attest to the ability of the main gun to ruin faces.  During the "Thunder Run" and Falluhjah the Abrams functioned very effectively against infantry and building type targets.  I sat on the DMZ in Korea more than reasonably confident that:

A. If I had to shoot people it was going to be dismounts mostly
B. My tanks (and tankers) were more than up to the task.
 
There's this persistent mythology that the optimal tank should be something like the old ARVE, or assault guns.  Something like that wouldn't be half bad as an auxiliary.  But tanks, and their ability to eat enemy armor for breakfast, and then smoke the crunchies all on the fly is an essential piece of combined arms warfare.  Trying to relegate armor to the infantry support role as a primary mission went out of style in the 1940s.  As much as you can bring up the fate of British Cruiser tanks, we can also point to how equally the infantry tanks failed***.  At the end of the day you resulted in the Main Battle Tank which MUST include both missions, and as I have, and will likely continue to illustrate, the Abrams can smoke armor and dismount alike.  
 
*The conversation still went "Sir one of the tanks caught fire" followed by me getting about 50% of the way to losing my mind until it was explained only the  short circuted component suffered any fire damage.
**It was one of the cooler things I've done in a tank, as the thicket just disintegrated around us and we MILEs a few tanks before anyone knew what was happening.  Took a while before we lose all the branches off the deck though. 
***The Churchill only really becoming successful because it eventually was outfitted with the same sort of weapons package other "cruiser" type tanks had at the time.  As much as the various CS model tanks, or things like the M4 105mm were useful, they remained as specialist tools for a reason.

Donestsk is neither a nation, nor a dirty bomb strictly a nuclear weapon.
 
 
It also knocks a lot of people off the fence.  There's doubtless some Ukrainians who really don't care what happens in the eastern part of their country and the war indirectly affects them at best.

You place them under threat of all sorts of radiological funtimes, and their opinions will doubtlessly change for the worse.