Second, U.S. Army ground forces proved to be more skilled and tenacious in defensive operations than in offensive operations against the German Army. There were several reasons for this. American offensive combat power - armored forces - were extremely vulnerable to German shoulder-fired anti-tank weapons like the Panzerfaust - a forerunner of the Russian rocket-propelled grenade - as well as anti-tank guns and mines.

Though thoroughly mechanized by 1944, the mobility of U.S. forces could not compensate for the vulnerability of thin, ineffective armor protection because American tanks and tank destroyers lacked gyro-stabilized tank-killing guns and could not fire accurately on-the-move and kill enemy tanks from any angle. The length of training for masses of Citizen-Soldiers that preceded assignment to operational units was short and unit cohesiveness was poor. As a result of all these factors, attacks on the ground only succeeded when American numerical superiority was assured and artillery fire could be delivered in massive volumes.

One comes away from this discussion with a sense that the need for effective, joint integrative command and control on the operational and tactical levels of war is as acute as ever. With the growing lethality of modern weapons, superior technology in terms of devastating firepower, armor protection and mobility is just as important today. And the unit cohesion that springs from genuine training readiness and confidence in the chain-of-command is an unchanging requirement. So, it is a safe bet that developments in these three dynamic areas should profoundly influence the Army's current transformation".