It's inevitable that received wisdom be distilled down to simple precepts, but this is rather regrettable.
This memetic behaviour certainly has its reasons - armour excels in mobile firepower, independent movement and dominating large tracts of terrain, among other speed-related precepts, and operating in closed terrain or ones lacking roads can be a dangerous affair.
Moreover, logistics vehicles that must follow the armour are often not tracked.
However, this dismissal of areas like mountains, urban terrain, forests and such as poor 'tank country' runs at odds with historical counterexamples. One doesn't even need to get into obscure examples - the US Marines in Fallujah moved in with plenty of tank support, using the combination of armour and firepower of Abrams tanks to destroy strongpoints and buildings. The after-action report detailing the carefully prescribed dance of infantry and tanks covering one another is rather stunning, albeit somewhat incredible. The German attack through the Ardennes in 1940 took place in an area both mountainous and forested, and with a river crossing to boot.
Terrain is but a problem to be overcome via engineering or planning. For example, if one's engineers are adept at civil engineering, gravel could be laid to help one's wheeled lorries transport supplies forward.
Even a platoon of armour here and there where least expected could do quite some damage - see the use of two troops of Scorpion tanks in the Falklands war at the long end of a logistical chain.
As a corollary to staff thought, the more pertinent question would perhaps be - is it worth taking the precautions and/or adding the infrastructure that will allow armour to enter?
I'd like to add something:
ReplyDeleteThe German general Uhle-Wettler was an outspoken critic of the German and generally Western force structure of the Cold War. He pointed out examples such as the Ardennes, the 40% urban and woodland terrain in Central Europe and the lack of infantry to control or at least delay on this terrain.
NATO considered such terrains as unsuitable for mechanised forces, and implicitly expected the Soviets to avoid such terrain and fight on where NATO prefers to fight; agricultural areas. But woodland in itself is no obstacle; as with every obstacles, only defence thereof makes it valuable. We lacked the troops to block even the tiniest forestry roads and had thus a horrible vulnerability to flank attacks (see historical parallel of the Malayan campaign in 1941/42 where a handful Japanese tanks and bicycle troops flanked repeatedly through woodland paths).
The quality of a terrain depends a lot on the opposition therein.
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And then there's what I wrote in December 200 about tanks and terrains, too.