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Vis sa Vis winning the war especially a counter insurgency war. You have to go and patrol into every small village and town and not surrender the countryside to the Enemy.
The question is can you go into those villages and small towns with MBTs and or IFVs ?
mr lock,
there is no problems at all for armour to reach villages and small towns but it the problem of maintaining and protect them that is a issue. While armour is great in offensive, it become a liability when it stop. Armour will always need infantry support to hold ground. Once armour become static, then will be easy for enemy to engage with mortar or rockets bombardment.
So, armour is use to take ground but it always the foot infantry to hold ground. yes, armour now come with troopers aka infantry in the troop carriers but there only enough space in the troop carrier to carry a definte amount of provisions, ammo, and water.and the amount of troops in armour is low compare to infantry unit so there wont be enough men to protect the town/village. Fuel is another concern, most IFV have around 200-250miles range. No idiot will try to drive a fuel browser across unfriendly terrain.
i dunno abt other armed forces, but in SAF, armour combat load on paper should carry enough supplies to last 3-5 days. from experience, SAF is smoking grass to expect the supplies to last that long. Many a time we troopers go to the field with no fullpacks as there no space to store them. Ammo can be expended very fast in the target rich enviorment.
so to win the afgan conflict, the eventual winner have to win over the mind and heart of the local population, to deprave the other side of men, supplies and support from the local population. anyway i didnt follow the conflict, not sure what is happening.