Crossposting my thoughts on the instructor from another board:
Listening to the introduction, when the instructor is introduced, I hear her referred to as "Chouno Ami-ichii". Looking at her rank tabs, she's what the JGSDF would call an Itto-kuni, or what the rest of the world would call a Captain.
Curious. Military rank and uniform, and driving a modern MBT. Wonder if she had a crew - unless she crawled from the driver's compartment out the commander's hatch.
Or maybe the commander's console has a driver remote ala BF3
. That said, if you have a TC, it
is possible to dispense with a gunner - I know the Cold War-era M1 tanks with the 105mm gun had a tank commander's override that allowed them to take control of the gun and turret away from the gunner, so I presume this was carried on with the M1A1 and M1A2. Also, been reading Team Yankee by Harold Coyne. Interesting book on cold war tank warfare, and it's apparently a fanfic for General Sir John Hackett's The Third World War.
That said, this is hardly
ideal; TC's job is to maintain situational awareness and fight the tank; if the TC has to take control from the gunner, things are not going to go well.
I think more likely she
does have a crew, but they're sticking with their tank; the company CO has a tank of his own, in addition to his command vehicle, but he's not always with his tank, especially when he goes off to do officer things at battalion.