Well, there's the petty fantasizing (or 'to diddle', finally a new word for my vocabulary), the professional messing up of organizations and finally a form of drawing TOE as a thought experiment in a long chain of theoretical conceptual work that began at strategic or operational level and broke down requirements to unit level.Originally Posted by Pete
My point is that everyone, soldiers included, loves to diddle with organizational charts.
The very sad fact is that formation-level TOE are often a function of politics, ego and budget, not of a thorough optimization process incl. a red team. Many layman TOE designs make more sense than certain actually realized brigade designs. There are some brigades which have no better indirect fire weapon than 40mm UBGLs...
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@Ken; as you certainly know, the very original SPz concept required a frontal hardening against AT guns. This can be understood as a protection requirement against at the very least the ubiquitous, proven and crew-movable 76.2mm ZIS-3 gun (in 1944-1945); ~82mm RHAeq. This protection requirement evolved with the introduction of more recoilless guns; the SPG-82 and the increasing presence of 85mm guns probably made the SPz concept obsolete by the early 50's, if not already in the immediate post-War years.
The much-increased penetration of these weapons was to much for the concept, we would probably have seen the beginning of the age of HAPCs if there had been many modern mechanized campaigns in the 50's.
It's probably no mere coincidence tat the Israelis never adopted the IFV/SPz idea.
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