Originally posted by indy007
Great stuff in theory, but what happens if you lose air superiority? Can it drive through a building? Can it go hull down? Can it shrug off 20-40mm guns like they're just not there? How many Apaches have been lost in combat compared to M1A1s & 2s?
The best (not the only, just the best) weapon to kill a tank will always be a faster, more heavily armored tank, with a better gun platform 
While this line of reasoning certainly sells tanks, it remains documented fact that armor is exceedingly easy to locate and kill with airpower. The man-portable missile system is also a very big threat to armor.. deploy MBT's in an area infested with Dragon or Hellfire teams without artillery and infanty to support 'em, you got dead tanks. Heluva lot harder to find a concealed infantry anti-tank team than it is to find a damn tank.
The MBT is part of a battle system.. alone, without aircover, artillery and infantry support it's vulnerable as all hell... like I say, my hats off to the tread-heads; waltzing onto a battlefield (or up ambush alley in yer average mud hut village) in the biggest, juciest target ever laid on the table... not my cuppa joe.
Thankfully, we own the airspace over the modern battlefield. We have the most effective counter battery self propelled artillery systems ever deployed. We have the finest, best trained and equipped field army ever deployed... and when (and if) some national enitity ever decides to match their line of battle with ours, we'll handily kick their tulips again.
Unfortunately, weekend Baghdad cabdrivers with a seemingly inexaustable supply of worthless junk artillery shells are fashioning ways to kill our kids at their lesiure despite our seemingly 'insurmountable' technical advantages.
Sucks, don't it? A 2 million dollar up-armored Humvee with 4 of our kids in it snuffed by 4 rusty artillery shells dug into a pit in the road, triggered with a toy-store radio controller from half a mile away.
Why, it doesn't hardly seem fair, does it?
