French used to have the lightest, i.e. most worst protected, tanks among Western Armies since WW2. However, if used right, even AMX-13 company can be dangerous to most advanced tank units of the time. It seems to me that French Army abandoned the idea and pursuited modern MBT design in 1980s, but Leclerc is still a lot lighter than Challenger 1/2, Leopard 2 (especially A5/A6) and M1A1/A2. Actually, Japan's Type 90, Korean's XK2 MBT and PLA's ZTZ-99 are in the same league as Leclerc.

 

Having a "tank support infantry" embeded in a tank company doesn't make much sense to me. In actual combat planning, tank companies are always embeded to infantry units to form task forces. Platoon, Company and Batallion are administrative organizations, not necessarily, and often not, the exact combat order. Also, given the establishment listed, it seems to me that, after discounting the CO, Master Chief and XO, the rest 20 people are mostly company NCOs who take care of different company-level duties such as human resource, logistics book keeping, ammunition etc. In other armies, it might be called HQ team or HQ platoon. It seems to me that the "Direct Support" here means logistic and administrative support, not combat support.

To answer your original question,

Yes, a tank company (three platoons of 4 tanks each) should have an organic infantry platoon (4 vehicles, with 30+ dismounts).  Mind you, that many dismounts will require something like a CV90, which has space for eight... but since I am dreaming anyway...

 

Tanks without infantry are dead meat, in most terrain, and although most armies do have a good ratio of infantry to tanks, combat requires a close, continuous realationship.

 

Some will whine that the infantry wouldn't receive good training, under a tank company commander, or that the flexibility of the current "cross-attachment" system is too cool, etc.  I find those arguments disgusting and disgraceful, coming from a military professional.  In the cavalry, we did have infantry in the line troops (the mortars) and the leadership of the troop and squadron went out of their way to ensure that they were trained to a very high standard (and they managed to outperform mortar sections in the local mech battalions, I might add).  The benefits of knowing and working closely with the same people, every single day, are huge, and yet some would throw this very real combat advantage because they think that they may get slightly better training (dumb, dumb, dumb...)

Which country were you from? It sounds like usual SNAFU to largely conscripted armies to save money. Western Armies are very professional and get to train a lot.

 

As for embeded infantry, I think it depends on tactical thinking. There are some merits for cavalry units to be integrated from company level, but, generally, tank crew and infantry receive different training, equipment maintainance and schedule management. For mechanized infantry company, it's OK because every squad takes care of their own vehicle.

 

As for combined training, it is a problem to poorer countries. They often have selected units that trained a lot, but most units are staying around all year long and nevet train beyond basic company fighting.