Actually, light infantry has the same firepower as tanks; and have so sincePainRack wrote:are you thus going to argue that because light infantry don't have the same firepower as tanks, they aren't effective on the battlefield?
1973.
From No Victor No Vanquished:
During the first three days of the fighting the Israelis had made twenty-three armoured attacks of battalion size or larger, and all had been repelled. The basic reasons for these failures were that the Israelis had blindly put all their faith in a mass of charging tanks, rather like the heavy cavalry of old, anticipating they would automatically crush all opposition and cause the Egyptians to run away. In addition, tanks were easy prey to the determination and capability of the tank hunting teams which went out in front of the infantry and solidly stood their ground.
The Israelis knew the Egyptians had ample antitank weapons, but they were contemptuous of them and depended upon their tank gunnery to beat them in battle. The Israelis had also ignored the principle of concentration of force at a vital point and, instead, made scattered uncoordinated attacks along the length of the front. They later estimated the Egyptian antitank weapons to be of a density of "55 to the kilometre." The Egyptian tank-hunting teams were easy to spot out in the open, and one Israeli tank commander explained that he at first thought they were tree stumps until they moved. Expecting to fight tanks and not infantry, the Israelis had no HE shells for their guns, which would have broken up the Egyptian infantry and tank-hunting teams in open terrain. Then, too, in their tank formations they had no integral infantry or mortars which would have helped to counter the teams.
The Sagger antitank missile proved to be very effective when used in groups of three with all of them directed onto one tank. The shorter range RPG-7s proved to be effective at ranges of a hundred yards or more and also were fired in threes and fours, all aimed at one tank. The Snapper was much less effective, and one in four of its missiles was nullified by technical faults. General Herzog says that twenty-five percent of Israeli tank casual- ties were knocked out by antitank missiles, and the majority of these must have been hit in this initial three-day period when they were vulnerable because of faulty tactics. Corporal Abdul A'ata, a student at an agricultural college before he was conscripted into the Egyptian army in 1969, was credited with destroying twenty-three Israeli tanks on the sixth of October, including eight M-60s within the first hour. Later, when the Israelis changed their tactics, the antitank missiles became less effective. The Egyptians claim that seventy percent of the Israeli tanks left behind on the battlefield had been hit by antitank missiles.
