If you look at what engaged them when they invaded there wasnt much in the way of armor
49th Armored - biggest armored division that directly engaged the Mexicans - they never sent the two training brigades which to me makes no sense - they did well against the Mexicans and then ran into Soviet Division Cuba and got their butts handed to them
40th Mech - a new unit that had a grab bag of armor attached to it - meaning that they never had their full complement or even close to it - which can be seen by how many engineering "tanks" they used
46th Infantry - got overrun when stretched out badly and wasnt exactly a armor heavy unit to begin with
then you have two MP formations in CA and light infantry divisions that basically had no armor except M113's
and remember Mexico started the war with 500 or so APC's, many of them armed with 20mm cannons, as well as a good amount of armored cars that had a 90mm anti-tank gun - so against most of those units I just described they actually were close to one on one or better - and with the numbers involved they had numerical superiority as well - and most likely had gas and diesel when a lot of US units had already converted over to alcohol
and the date of the invasion - June of 1998- means that what was left of the US Air Force in the states was probably very limited indeed
|