To be fair, I dont think anyone is saying that armor isnt useful. It has been amply demostrated by people that it can be VERY useful and fulfills a distinct role.
That said, I think the gist of his argument is whether its worth the points or not in the game. I see people referencing the mobility of armor to shore up a flank etc, but the question is whether you would have an exposed flank in the first place with another company and change of infantry and support instead of a few tanks.
With WW2-era equipment, a platoon of tanks is roughly the same cost as a company of infantry (until you start getting into the super-heavies Tiger/Tiger IIs etc). That seems like a pretty worthwhile trade-off. But for say, a NATO vs Pact circa 1990ish scenario, a platoon of M1A1s cost about as much as TWO companies of standard US infantry. So are you really getting TWO companies worth of value out of those 4 tanks? I dont know....
Obviously if you are on the attack and time is short, the dismounts are not likely to get to the objective easily, but discouting that type of set-up, are those tanks really worth the cost? They are far more likely to be outflanked despite their mobility and they are far more susceptible to 'bad luck'. A single mis-step or mistake and you could lose a 1/4 your force in one swoop. By contrast, it would take a significant amount of time and firepower to eliminate half of a company of infantry.
There does come a point of diminishing returns on infantry though. Arty will wreck a densely packed group of two infantry companies as easily as it will wreck one. So in a 10000 point battle or so, going with massed dismounts probably isnt terribly cost effective either (unless its a big map). But for the smaller engagements, I do agree to a point with the OP that with standard 'armor' it can be hard to justify the cost to field them.
Personally, I think the cost of armor scales up too quickly relative the the cost of infantry in SPMBT (when compared to SPWW2). I mean do modern tanks kill infantry THAT much better than WW2 equivalents? I dont believe that is quite the case. And by contrast, dismounted infantry can have a lot more capability to threaten modern armor than their WW2 counter-parts, further increasing the disparity. Finally, the cost for anti-tank obstacles/mines doesnt seem to scale up with their effectiveness either. They are just as useful vs modern armor that costs 10-15x what their WW2 brethren cost yet their cost is relatively fixed.
Just some food for thought...
Re: why buy armor?
Hybrid Mode
