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| - - Staff Sgt. Robin Miskolczy, 3rd Colonial Marine Tank Battalion, Linna 349. Armor in the Colonial Marines has retained the traditional infantry support role. Tanks are still the best way to deliver direct artillery fire quickly and accurately against enemy strongpoints and, of course, other tanks. The new M40 particularly demonstrates the continuing value of heavy armor on the modern battlefield, with its ability to fire 115 mm shells at a rate of 60 rpm, deliver particulate barrier smoke, scatterable mines and support fire from its integral 60mm mortars and defend against aerospace craft and incoming missiles with its 20 kW phased plasma point defense gun.
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| - - Staff Sgt. Robin Miskolczy, 3rd Colonial Marine Tank Battalion, Linna 349. Armor in the Colonial Marines has retained the traditional infantry support role. Tanks are still the best way to deliver direct artillery fire quickly and accurately against enemy strongpoints and, of course, other tanks. The new M40 particularly demonstrates the continuing value of heavy armor on the modern battlefield, with its ability to fire 115 mm shells at a rate of 60 rpm, deliver particulate barrier smoke, scatterable mines and support fire from its integral 60mm mortars and defend against aerospace craft and incoming missiles with its 20 kW phased plasma point defense gun. - Capt. Andrea Mae Samona, 2nd Colonial Marine Tank Battalion. Aside from the impressive firepower of modern tanks, their psychological value and their ability to shock even a prepared opponent, is still readily apparent. "That night, we argued over the bodycount. Sergeant Bulow insisted we'd got nine of theirs for the loss of one panzer crew and another injured. But I pointed out that the fire control trench Murae had run over had been too badly smooshed to count properly. Judging from the mess left behind there could have been three or four people in there together, or just one spread over a wide area. Since the skin and bone was mangled into mush, there was no way to tell. PFC Herbick suggested we go back and see how many teeth we could dig out, but I passed on that one. Against the Sergeant's objections, I had to count the trench as a single enemy casualty..." - Captain Hayward J.Lay, Jr., 3rd Colonial Marine Tank Battalion, Linna 349. Colonial Marine aerospace/ground teams train in cooperation with the armor units on a regular basis, though there is still opposition to fully integrating heavy armor into the teams. Partly, this is because of the current lack of a heavy dropship capable of carrying a tank into battle; this will be rectified when the production UD-24, with its projected 70,000 kg lift capacity, achieves service in the early 'eighties. Also, it is because of new models and concepts being proposed by the Colonial Marine Tactical Studies School which advocate a reversal of Marine 70 'flexible' armored doctrine in favor of employing dedicated tank-led ground teams. In the tank-led team, the armor is grouped en masse with mechanized and aeroborne infantry in support, rather than the current practice of parcelling out armor piecemeal on an ad hoc basis. However, proponents of this scheme wish to see a radical increase in Marine armor capability once the UD-24 is in service before proper integration with the aero/ground teams can take place.
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