Category Archives: US Army

Army’s (Don’t Call it a) Light Tank Albatross Reappears

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The U.S. Army has had problems with not wanting, but still needing, a decent light tank for generations.

World War II showed the lesson of having a decent light track in the form of the 15-ton M3/M5 Stuart, which, armed with a 37mm gun, swathed in 50mm of armor, and capable of hitting 35 mph, still proved effective if used correctly (i.e. not in fights with Tigers) in Europe and excelled in the Pacific.

A Marine M3 Stuart on Guadalcanal, 1942 “MOP UP UNIT– Two alert U.S. Marines stand beside their small tank, which helped blast the Japanese in the battle of the Tenaru River during the early stages of fighting on Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands. Those well-manned, sturdy machines readily mopped up strong points of enemy resistance.”

This was true enough for the Army to order the M24 Chaffee, which was a 20-ton light tank with a 75mm gun and 38mm of armor that could hit 35 mph on the road, in 1944 and then replaced it post-Korea with the M41 Walker Bulldog (23 ton, 76mm gun, 31mm of armor, 45 mph) which was replaced by the M551 Sheridan, an air-droppable 16 ton track with a weird 152mm gun/Shillelagh missile launcher tube, enough armor to stop small arms rounds, and a 40+ mph road speed.

A soldier from Co. A, 3rd Bn., 73rd Airborne Armor Regt., 82nd Airborne Div., lays out equipment for an M-551 Sheridan light tank prior to the 82nd Airborne Division live-fire exercise during Operation Desert Shield.

Sheridan, which entered service in 1969, was an oddball, but at least it gave the 82nd Airborne a battalion of tanks (err, “Armored Reconnaissance Airborne Assault Vehicles”) that could be Fed-Ex-ed overseas in a hurry.

Well, Sheridan grew obsolete and needed replacement, which led to the canceled M8 “Buford” armored gun system (AGS), the Stryker M1128 mobile gun system (MGS) of which 142 were build and quickly withdrawn from service, and now the Mobile Protected Firepower (MPF) program which fielded the M10 Booker “combat vehicle.”

PD1 – Delivery of First Production Vehicle M10 Booker Combat Vehicle

Booker is a big boy, at some 37 tons, and mounts a 105mm M35 low-recoil tank gun (designed for and formerly carried by the M1128). Actually, it reminds me of the size and capability of the old M60 tank.

And with that, Booker, too heavy and too expensive, is out. The last of three (so far) vehicles that were going to replace the Sheridan, which itself was a cranky platform that nobody really liked.

But still, at least folks got paid…

Can we just pay Rheinmetall for the data set to make a modernized Wiesel here in America?

Drones Give and Take in Unusual Ways These Days

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A few interesting stories that help add color to what warfare is in 2025.

In Poland, Soldiers of the 15th Giżycko “Zawiszy Czarnego” Mechanized Brigade have been “testing new technologies for MEDEVAC procedures, notification systems, and modern teleinformation tools for planning and managing medical evacuations during both operations and emergencies.”

This includes using a large quadcopter UAV with a Stokes litter slung underneath for casevac.

Looks fun unless you are in the litter…

The Poles, who are continually keeping active tabs on what is going on in Ukraine, are all in on drones moving forward.

Drone troops are the future of the Polish army, the future of all types of armed forces. They will have hundreds of thousands of drones: flying, ground, surface, and underwater – said Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of National Defence Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz on Wednesday during the annual task and settlement briefing of the management of the Ministry of National Defence and the command staff of the Polish Army.

Now, flash to the Sinai along the Israeli-Egyptian border, where the IDF recently intercepted and captured a UAV entering Israeli airspace. After downing the drone (which still looks intact, so it was probably via a soft kill ECM device) 10 M-16 style rifles and ammunition were recovered, no doubt being smuggled to Palestinian militant groups.

The rifles appear to be ChiCom Norinco CQs, which have been widely used and are available for sale in Yemen, Iraq, Syria, Sudan, and Libya. The Iranians even make a variant of the CQ domestically (as the Sayyad 5.56) for the Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC).

And from the wastes of the Mojave Desert, where the 11th “Blackhorse” Armored Cavalry Regiment has been routinely beating the tracks off folks as the OPFOR at the National Training Center in Fort Irwin for the past 30 years, drones are well in hand to shake things up.

According to the Blackhorse’s social media team, they have been integrating FPV drones of the type often seen in use as simple munitions droppers and unmanned kamikazes in Ukraine and Syria, drone-deployed minefields, and their own legacy systems to lay waste to visiting units and making it look easy.

Bataan Cyclone

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It happened 80 years ago this month.

Philippines. Soldiers from the 38th Infantry “Cyclone” Division’s 152nd Infantry Regiment use a 57mm M1 anti-tank gun against Japanese positions on Luzon near “Woodpecker Ridge” in Marikina, 11 May 1945. Note the shell cases piled in the foreground.

US Army Photo 173-12

Raised in Indiana, the 38th was a National Guard division that was ordered into federal service on 17 January 1941, nearly a full year before Pearl Harbor. Finally sent overseas on 3 January 1944 after much reorganization and retraining, they warmed up in New Guinea and then hit the beaches at Leyte, landing in the Philippines in December 1944, only to respond to one of the last Axis parachute assaults of the war.

They remained in close contact with the Japanese for the next eight months and continued taking prisoners well into October 1945, ultimately collecting 13,000 of the Emperor’s troops.

Pfc. Elmer S. Pitlik, Air Sect., 139th F.A. Bn, lights a cigarette for one of the Japanese guards. 22 August 1945. On a mountain top in the Sierre Madres, Northern Luzon, eight Japanese officers and five American officers met to discuss surrender arrangements. The American officers, accompanied by twenty enlisted men, made a two-hour march over difficult terrain to the area marked by a Japanese flag on a bamboo pole. The ranking American officer was Maj. Richard F. Jaffers, Artillery Liaison Group, 38th Inf. Div. The ranking Japanese officer was Lt. Col. Shizume Sushimi. SC 211603

The 38th suffered 3,464 battle casualties in the PI, earning the Philippine Presidential Unit Citation and the nickname “Avengers of Bataan,” for obvious reasons.

There are 35 soldiers of the 38th Infantry Division from World War II still listed as missing in action.

The 38th remains the principal combat unit of the Indiana guard, with its members drawn from across the Midwest, and is headquartered in Indianapolis.

The Everlasting Jiggs

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It happened 95 years ago today.

Rockwell Field, near Coronado, California, 29 April 1930. Hollywood actresses Winnie Lightner, 31, and Irene Delroy, 29, clown for the camera as Lt. (later Maj. Gen.) William C. Kingsbury of the U.S. Army Air Corps’ 11th Bombardment Squadron looks down from the forward navigator/bombadier position of a rare Keystone LB-7 light bomber.

Of note, Winnie Lightner was known as Broadway’s “Song a Minute Girl” at the time because she could belt out a song in less than 60 seconds.

A sample of her work:

The Keystone LB-6/LB-7, dubbed the “Panther” by its maker, was never made in great numbers, with just 35 production models delivered to the Army for use by its six bomber squadrons in the late 1920s.

Armed with five light machine guns in assorted mounts, it could carry up to a ton of bombs out to 600 miles, lumbering along with its open crew compartments at a canvas-flapping 95 mph. They were replaced by monoplane bombers by 1934.

Keystone LB-7 aircraft at Patterson Field, Ohio, in September 1929. (U.S. Air Force photo)

They were also stars of the silver screen, appearing in Howard Hughes’ 1927 aviation epic, Wings, filling in as German Gotha bombers.

The insignia seen on the side of the LB-7 at the top is “Jiggs” of Sunday newspaper comics fame. Drawn by George McManus, Jiggs is a wealthy top-hatted rogue who attempts repeatedly to escape his dish-hurling and bread-pin-wielding wife, Maggie.

The unit adopted a bomb-toting Jiggs as the 11th Aero Squadron when it was flying DH-4s over the Western Front out of Maulan Aerodrome in France in 1918.

The 11th is still active today and flies B-52Hs out of Barksdale.

And Jiggs is still on their insignia, spats and all. .

Mindanao Doughboys

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It happened 80 years ago today.

Infantry troops of Company B, 19th Infantry Regiment, 24th Infantry “Victory” Division, marching towards the Mindanao River in pursuit of Japanese forces retreating near the Fort Pikit Ferry, Mindanao Island, Philippines. 22 April 1945. During the PI campaign, the 19th carried the radio call sign “Doughboy.”

Photographer: Pfc. Mack Gould. Signal Corps SC 270579

A closer look at the above image shows that every third or fourth man in the columns are local Philippine guerrilla force, often barefoot and very ill-clad, serving apparently as porters. Make no mistake, though, the Filipino forces got plenty of action in 1945 and were increasingly better outfitted.

As for the 19th Infantry (Regulars who earned the title “Rock of Chickamauga” during the Civil War), they had fought at Hollandia for months before landing at Leyte with as part of  X Corps of the Sixth Army in October 1944, with the regiment’s 2nd battalion the unsung “Lost Battalion” of WWII.

As the rest of their division moved up the Leyte valley, the 19th was carved off and assigned to the Western Visayan Task Force, landing at San Jose on Mindoro on 15 December 1944. They then assaulted Romblon Island and Simara Island in March 1945 before moving onto Mindanao in April.

Following a half-decade of garrison duty in the PI, in 1950, they would see much service in Korea during that war, keeping their “Doughboy” call sign.

19 September 1950. L-R: M/Sgt. Albert R. Charleton, Salem, Ill., and 1st Lt. Harry J. Lumani, Cumberland, Md., both of the 19th Inf. Regt., 24th Div., put up welcome sign for the newly-arrived Philippines combat troops at Pusan, Korea. SC 348885

Part of TRADOC today at Fort Benning, the colors of the 19th Infantry are decorated with the streamers of 30 campaigns, and the regiment has participated with distinction in 86 battles and engagements. Eight of those streamers are for Korea, while nine are from the Philippines including three for WWII (Leyte, Luzon, Southern Philippines) and six for the 1899-1901 Insurrection.

Banners of Liberty

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The battle of Bunker’s Hill, June 17th, 1775, painted by J. Trumbull circa 1840; on stone by A. Hoffy. The print shows British and American soldiers in hand-to-hand combat during the Battle of Bunker Hill, including early Colonial martial banners. LOC LC-DIG-pga-00085

With nearly 2.5 million (1,227,890 Confederate and 2,128,948 Union) serving in the Civil War, and the much more prevalent availability of silks as the U.S. was a Pacific nation at the time, thousands of 1860s vintage regimental battle flags and ensigns survive, some in amazing condition. Practically every medium-sized military or veterans’ museum East of the Mississippi has a collection of martial CW flags, while hundreds more are in private hands. The Michigan History Center alone has 240 flags from the conflict.

The same cannot be said of the Revolutionary War.

Only an estimated 231,000 men served in the Continental Army throughout the war’s duration and the Army’s size never exceeded 48,000 at any time during the 1775-1783 conflict. Even those numbers are probably inflated as men often enlisted numerous for short period in assorted units and their names were frequently misspelled or abbreviated so its a high likelihood that those 231,000 should be trimmed down.

Plus, silk was rare in the colonies in the 1770s.

This means that today, only an estimated 30 or so unit flags from the War of Independence endure. Even these are widely distributed in personal, private, and public collections, with even the latter often locked away in archives and not on public display.

That’s what makes the new Banners of Liberty exhibit at the Museum of the American Revolution, which kicked off last week, important.

They have assembled more than half of the known American Colonial unit flags known to still exist, most of which have not in the same vicinity to each other since Washington’s Army was disbanded.

They include Washington’s Headquarters Flag, his own personal standard; as well as the flag of Pulaski’s Legion, the 2nd Regiment of Light Dragoons, that of the 8th Virginia Regiment, the banner of the Light Horse of the City of Philadelphia, the Pennsylvania Associators, and the 2nd New Hampshire Regiment.

Pulaski’s Legion

The exhibit runs through August, at which point the banners will return to their respective homes across the country, perhaps never to be assembled again. So if in Philly at any time this summer…

So long, Ernie

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Indiana-born Ernest Taylor “Ernie” Pyle in 1945 was one of the best-known and most well-liked American war correspondents. His syndicated column was published in 400 daily and 300 weekly newspapers nationwide. Along the way, he had earned a Pulitzer Prize in 1944 for his first-person coverage of “dogface” grunts in the mud and the blood.

He had such a universal appeal that crews named their guns after him. Try to get that kind of love for a modern reporter.

Sailors aboard USS LST 392, discussing D-Day, when Ernie Pyle was their passenger and left his signature on their guns. Shown, left to right: SM3 Chas T. Repik, USNR; SC2c James F. Reardon, USNR; S1c Edward T. Wholley. (Bottom) BM2c Martin A. Reilly, USNR, and RM2C Gint Middleton, USNR. Photograph released December 4, 1944. Official U.S. Navy Photograph, now in the collections of the National Archives. 80-G-289953

Born in 1900, he wore a Navy uniform in the Great War, although only briefly. After covering WWII in England before the U.S. entered the war, then on the ground in North Africa, Italy and France, he shipped out for the Pacific in January 1945 aboard the light carrier USS Cabot (CVL-28) and landed on Ie Shima with the Army’s 77th “Liberty” Division on 17 April to cover the Okinawa campaign.

Pyle, right, on the bridge of Cabot with the skipper –CAPT (later RADM) Walton Wiley Smith (USNA 1920)–during strikes in the North Pacific against Tokyo, February 1945. 80-G-262854-001

Ernie Pyle watches the invasion of Okinawa from a Navy warship, little realizing the death lay in wait in a gully on Ie Shima. 80-G-49872

The next day, Pyle was hit by a Japanese machine-gun bullet to the left temple just under his helmet, killing him instantly. He was one of 69 War Correspondents killed during the conflict.

His remains were later moved to the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu in 1949. A memorial to him endures on Iejima.

It reads, “At this spot the 77th Infantry Division lost a buddy, Ernie Pyle, 18 April 1945.”

Nerding out on 1775 firepower

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We’ve been digging into the ballistics and history around the battles of Lexington and Concord, which are now 250 years in the rearview.

Of interest, we found that a .69 caliber spherical musket ball of 584 grains, pushed by 110 grains of modern 2F black powder out of the barrel of a Land Pattern musket, was still able to zip through 32 inches of 10 percent FBI ballistics gel and keep going through two water jugs into the berm!

That’s no slouch.

Photos by Paul Peterson, Guns.com

Looking back at the outfitting of the local militia, in the Journal of Arthur Harris of the Bridgewater Coy of Militia (n.d.), Arthur Harris states that in 1775, Massachusetts forces were required to have with them:

A good fire arm, a steel or iron ram rod and a spring for same, a worm, a priming wire and brush, a bayonet fitted to his gun [at this time Minute Companies were outfitted with bayonets while many Militia Companies were not required to use them], a scabbard and belt thereof, a cutting sword or tomahawk or hatchet, a…cartridge box holding fifteen rounds…at least, a hundred buckshot, six flints, one pound of powder, forty leaded balls fitted to the gun, a knapsack and blanket, a canteen or wooden bottle to hold one quart [of water].

Many of the guns at those battles that were carried by the militia were “long fowlers,” or hunting pieces, of assorted calibers, along with a smattering of British (.77 caliber) and Dutch-made (.78 caliber) martial muskets and some French infantry muskets (.60 and .62 caliber) captured in the French and Indian War.

Meanwhile, the British regulars were armed with 46-inch-barreled Long Land muskets and 42-inch-barreled Short Land muskets in .75 caliber. As bullets of the age were often molded to much smaller diameter than the bore (for instance the British used .69 caliber balls in their .75 caliber muskets), to aid in rapid loading as part of a paper cartridge, this only adds to the curious array of balls recovered not only in this early battle but in many Revolutionary War sites.

A sampling of the British and Colonial musket balls recovered from Lexington and Concord. One analysis of just 32 balls recovered at the Parker’s Revenge site spanned from .449 to .702 in diameter. 

When the smoke cleared, the Massachusetts provincials lost 49 killed, around 40 wounded, and 5 missing out of roughly 4,000 who answered the drum. The British lost 269 killed and wounded out of 1,800 regulars engaged.

A deep dive into those on the ground there, as interpreted by Lt Paul O’Shaughnessy and Pte Nick Woodbury of the 10th Regiment, and Steven Conners of the Lexington Minutemen:

Rolling Bones

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80 years ago. Awaiting removal of a roadblock on the road to Eisfeld, Germany, a 90mm GMC M36 tank destroyer crew whiles away the time shooting craps. 28th Infantry Division (“Keystone”), U.S. Third Army, 12 April 1945.

Signal Corps Photo 111-SC-204555, National Archives Identifier 6927819

The men are likely “Cossacks” of the 630th TD Battalion, Battle of the Bulge vets who passed from temporary XVIII Airborne Corps control back to the 28th near Wolfstein around this time.
Among the camp gear accumulated on the back of the M36 is a case of “10-in-1” rations, Menu 3, which would include bulk-packed K rations in two 5-serving packs, the first in packages and the second in cans. Of key importance, a 10-in-1 also held ten packages of cigarettes– each holding 10 Chesterfields, Luckies, or Pall Malls– along with ten GI matchbooks and 250 sheets of GI toilet paper. Tough but fair.

Lessons from Ukraine for the Future Force

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In the mood for some light reading on lessons learned in blood and treasure from the war in Ukraine. Well, here are 359 pages courtesy of the U.S. Army War College.

Written by John A. Nagl and Katie Crombe, A Call to Action: Lessons from Ukraine for the Future Force explores the changing character of war through the lens of the Russia- Ukraine War. The authors analyze the conflict’s history, each side’s warfighting functions, the role of multidomain operations, and more. The radical changes in the character of war suggest the United States is at a strategic inflection point.

The authors draw lessons from both the Ukrainians and the Russians to suggest improvements for the United States. Advances in drone technology, cyber warfare, and electromagnetic warfare pose new technological vulnerabilities and possibilities. In addition, the war has highlighted the roles of allies in deterrence and training, as well as how leadership styles within the military—specifically, in the implementation of mission command—can be a decisive factor. As the Russia- Ukraine War has demonstrated, modern conflict touches a plethora of domains; thus, having sufficient personnel who are ready to fill a variety of capacities will be critical in the future.

Finally, the war has shown that history and justice are critical aspects of going to war and achieving peace, so crafting a narrative and satisfying stakeholders will be necessary for establishing a stable world order. The Russia- Ukraine War foreshadows the challenges the United States will face in future conflict and highlights the keys to adapting to modern warfare.

Download here.

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