why buy armor?

[narwan]

Move to contact frontage for a soviet division is 15 to 25 kilometres. That is the frontage for the divisional recon battallion. The advance guard of the manouvre units would typically be 1 reinforced battallion from one of the regiments. That in turn would have one reinforced company out front and that one would have one reinforced platoon out front. Distance between recon units and manouvre units can be up to a day. The advance platoon of the first echelon battallion would lead the rest of the company by about 20 minutes. The remainder of the battallion would follow about an hour behind. The rest of the regiment would be a couple of hours behind that.
In other words, while the actual frontage of advance will be fairly small (after all, how much can a reinforced platoon cover?) the chosen direction and path of the advance is only one within the whole coverage of 15 to 25 km. There will be a lot of room to move around in and to pick your advance route from. Which is in effect the job of the lead elements, move into advantageous positions (outflanking or simply bypassing) while the rest of the force moves up. Move to contacts do not happen in a vacuum but with a lot of room to manouvre on the flanks and around the enemy.

What I don't get is why you on the one hand feel that the cost of apc's is too high but on the other hand you feel that the very troops they transport (and are a force multiplier for) are too powerful? If something multiplies the value of a unit you consider to be underpriced how can you then say the apc is overpriced? If it multiplies the value of infnatry, at teams and atgms it should cost a fair bit.

Narwan