Quote Originally Posted by Compost View Post
... My item stressed that - except for the austere trucklike and closely held PMV - infantry-carrying APCs, AIFVs and 'BW's should be operated and operationally maintained by specialist 'armoured corps' crews.
However, the US Army tried that for a number of years after World War II and while not totally unsatisfactory, two glaring problems did occur causing the concept to be discarded.
By contrast the infantry does most of its work dismounted and at a short to very long distance from its armoured transport vehicles. If that absence is prolonged then it makes operational and financial sense for that unit of vehicles together with crews to be re-tasked and attached elsewhere.
That's one and it's the biggest problem. The concept places the carriers at the whim * of not only the organization that owns the carriers but the next higher headquarters. Carriers tended to be yanked or moved at inopportune times occasionally leaving units both exposed and relatively immobile as well as Carriers sometimes being left 'unprotected.'

A second problem was the Carrier organization naturally placed a premium on protecting its vehicles (and crews) while the transported unit was more concerned with their folks and the their mission. This led to discord at Squad / Section, Platoon, Company and higher levels on occasion -- said discord extending to deliberately damaged carriers by uncontrolled transported Troops and precipitous and unauthorized abandonment of transported troops by carriers units. A side issue was that individual carrier crews often had no real grounding in the mission and thus, in event of loss of their transported Infantry were often at a loss on what should be done.

A minor issue is that in event of a thrown track or other mechanical problem where help to the crew from the transported element would have been beneficial, the transported lacked the knowledges and skills needed and so, often, several Carriers were out of action so that the crews could combine to work on one while the hapless Infantry just stood and watched.

None of that is to say that such a system does not work at all, it merely indicates that as is true of any compromise, there are minor issues that affect outcomes. A smaller, more cohesive Army might not have any of those issues. Then again, it might...

* One can say that whim (or misplaced priorities) has no place in combat operations, that all troops should be better disciplined and that the joint mission should drive the behavior of all concerned. One can say all that. Whether one can get a bunch of random, thrown together humans under the stress of combat and with no particular loyalty to each other as occurs in large Armies to behave so properly is another issue...