Quote Originally Posted by Fuchs View Post
In regard to vehicles it's in my opinion more reasonable to divide between medium and heavy AFVs on basis of the compromise: focus on (road) march mobility or focus on sturdiness in battle.
Your opinion is somewhat different to that being implemented by the French and German armies. They seem intent on also procuring light wheeled armour vehicles to fit every level or niche in some Queensbury/Queensberry classification scheme.

The whole 8x8 medium AFV fashion was primarily about the race to Pristina, incited by Shinseki et al, secondarily about tight budgets in the many countries with smaller armies which wanted to modernize but lacked good AND affordable off-the shelf MBT and IFV choices and tertiarily about the widespread perception of tracked AFVs (especially MBTs) as Cold War dinosaurs.
Agree the Euro trend toward medium 8x8 autobahn/route/strada armour is aimed at producing AFVs (as distinct from APCs and armnoured CS vehicles) with march mobility as their main attribute. That probably results from EEC concern that security problems can develop almost anywhere with little warning. In other words they don’t know where they will be called on to go next, but hopefully it won’t be a nextdoor country.

At the more forceful level that “widespread perception of tracked AFVs ....” has been narrowing rapidly.

Neither of those - especially the latter - can be credited to GEN Shinseki. But at least his term did result in the US Army getting some of its cavalry and infantry back into wheeled armour. And he can hardly be blamed for excess production of the larger types of MRAV.

On MechInf; the real difference is not about which ride they use, but about the combined arms setting they're expected to accomplish their mission (and what mission?).
Infantry fighting together with MBTs and indirect fire AFVs can and should be totally different from infantry that merely drives to a region of ops, dismounts and fights then without AFVs support.
The latter is not going to make very swift operational moves; a 150 km dash in one day through multiple defensive positions and surprised red columns is not to be expected. MBT cooperation infantry on the other hand is supposed to be rather reckless, to accomplish its offensive missions quickly and to provide security when the battlegroup is not on the move. It doesn't need much organic support weaponry such as Carl Gustaf or sniper rifles. In fact, an all-very light machinegun armament is a strangely interesting setup for them.
Any ride that can keep up with a mechanized battlegroup and not get shot to pieces too often by the encountered threats would be good enough, albeit not necessarily affordable.

Mechanised / armoured infantry that's not meant for quick offensive success with dismounted advance of less than 2 km is not going to have a consistent concept that meets operational needs.
Suppose you meant ‘aggressive and determined ’ instead of ‘ rather reckless ’ but we still disagree on the likely nature of future combat. The era of huge armoured encounter battles and encirclements has passed - for some unknown period at least. However, believe all infantry units may need to be rapidly transported and deployed over short or long distances, preferably in the security of armoured transport. And when they get to wherever, their subsequent dismounted operations will often benefit from the availability – but not invariably the use – of heavy armour such as MBTs and AEVs supported by ARVs and AVLBs. Historically such vehicles have been very useful in reducing strongpoint complexes in urban zones and especially useful in reducing bunker complexes in jungle environments such as SVN where they dramatically reduced the expected rate of casualties of accompanying light infantry.

In short it is back to the inception of the ‘tank’ and its use in ‘penny packets’ for the intimate support of infantry operations, with some ancillary use for long-range sniping. There may even be a future need for the assault gun.