The purpose of this study is to better understand the cause of the United States major tactical victory over the Iraqi Republican Guard at the battle of 73rd Easting. The reason for conducting this study is to better understand how two American armored companies managed to strike a decisive blow against a republican guard’s tank brigade. On paper there are no indications that two companies should achieve victory while on the offensive against a defending brigade. This is the overarching research problem that this study aims to explain. The study aims to accomplish this by analyzing the battle from a purely tactical perspective, with the support from Stephen Biddle’s Modern Systems Theory. This was achieved by formulating several operationalized questions based on the offensive and defensive tactical principles of Biddle’s modern system. The analysis of the United States attack on the Iraqi defensive position highlighted that the two US armored companies fail to utilize all offensive tactical principles that the modern system advocates to achieve success on the modern battlefield. The result of the study is thus that the United States tactical superiority was not the deciding factor that defeated the Iraqi numerical superiority, yet they still achieved overwhelming victory. This points the study to discuss the alternative factors that might have affected the outcome, which are technological and psychological. While not decisively being able to better understand the case, the study highlights the weaknesses of the modern systems theory and points to alternative ways of understanding the battle.