I have a question that I've never gotten a solid answer for yet:

What is the "caret" marking on allied tanks? I first noticed this on allied / coalition ground vehicles in the first Gulf War (1990-91). I think it's simply for identification, but I'm not positive.

It usually denotes to which company a tank belongs, depending on whether the caret points up, down,to the front, or to the rear. Not all NATO armies handle it that way, but I think it has become more popular.

Ahh. Now that makes sense!!!

With regards to the first Gulf War, the symbol was added to most ground vehicles midway through the air war after a number of friendly fire incidents. The symbol (we tended to call it a chevron back then, but that might have changed) was of a type of paint that would show up better in the night vision systems of Coalition aircraft. In most cases it was crudely applied with a wide paintbrush and a couple of strokes by the very rushed soldiers assigned to this detail.

These days, in the US Army, Chevron refers to platoon. Pointing up is 1st platoon, forward is 2nd, back is 3rd, 4th is down, or something like that. (I was 1st, so it was easy).
In the chevron will usually be three numbers, two big ones, and a little one. The little one is the vehicle number within the platoon. The big ones tell you company and battalion.

However, all that said, I've rarely found a tank which has a complete marking which actually correlates with the crew it happens to be assigned to.

NTM