National Defense Blog has a titillating article on the relevance of the US Army in the near term and a interesting view of the Air-Sea Battle concept in general. Definitely worth the read. Check it out here but a tidbit.
Another topic of discussion was how the Army would maintain its presence in strategic areas of the world, such as Asia, when it will have fewer foreign bases and most of its forces will be stateside.A few points just jump out at me.
This concern harkens back to the late 1990s, when the Army feared for its relevance as its forces were deemed to slow and heavy to deploy to urgent crises. For a U.S.-based force, the ability to rapidly move troops is “going to be a problem for the Army,” said Steven Metz, a strategist at the Army War College.
Another theme that emerged from the seminar is the notion that, barring a major war, the Army might not be needed, or even wanted, in many parts the world. In Africa, for instance, foreign allies typically need help building roads, hospitals or assistance in humanitarian relief, but they do not always welcome U.S. military presence. “How to you work with someone who needs you but doesn't want you?” asked Lt. Col. Thomas Talley, an advisor at U.S. Africa Command.
First we're back to transformation. God help us we're back to Rumsfield's transformation. Air-Sea Battle smacks of it.
Second, we have a US Army that's still too damn heavy! The JLTV that's being pushed on the Marine Corps is the most obvious example of it. The double hulled Stryker is another example. Lastly the biggest villain is the Ground Combat Vehicle. US Army procurement today is killing it for tomorrow.
Lastly the US Army is extremely relevant, just not in the way that it wants. Its relevance is in its Soldiers. They need to make a strong move back to its old format of a couple of Divisions of Light Infantry. Change the 25th back to Light Fighters. Make the 1st ID Light Fighters. You get the idea. Heck even consider an additional Air Assault Division but understand that a heavily mechanized force with little balance is not the way forward...especially if you're going to have to fight world wide....not just the desert but in the jungles and mountains too.
UPDATE!
B. Smitty hit on something and it got me to thinking. The warfare in Afghanistan for the past decade has sowed the seeds of success for the US Army. How? By forcing them to operate as essentially motorized infantry. Stryker brigades deploy without their Strykers and operate out of MRAPs. And just like with HUMVEEs or more specifically with the failed 9th ID motorized experiment, when your infantry just uses the vehicle as transports and are less wedded to them then they have a chance of maintaining infantry proficiency. If the Army is to be mechanized then lets adjust and have a portion motorized instead.
isnt 10th mountain a light infantry like that? why dont we do like we did before WWI and put our army on the border, as great of a job border patrol is trying to do, only the US military has the capability to secure that long of a border!
ReplyDeletei can explain why we don't put troops on the border....its all politics and the importance of the Hispanic vote. i personally think they're misreading the feelings of the Hispanic community on the issue but i could easily be wrong...another reason is because illegal immigration by all races and creeds helps lower the cost of labor.
ReplyDeleteas far as light infantry and the US Army, its been bastardized by the Stryker Brigade concept and the push toward a GCV is a back handed admittance that it just didn't work.
the Army doesn't want to admit it but we need them to be a heavy and a light force. if they cover those bases then its easy to scale a medium force out of it. but they're wedded to Strykers for some reason.
well it is about the hispanic vote but i think the republicans seriously mis-read the politics, if they talk about security while allowing people here to have a road to citizenship, then we get the best of both worlds, but people became so xenophobic and made it about race they lost the battle, in 2005-2006 they could have had a major victory, instead they keep making it about race and not security, and thats why they are losing the hispanic vote. Alot of data shows those who are here support legal immigration, we just have to get our shit in order, and your right it is politics. honestly i would like to see the army be able to be flexible about thier divisions, a light division can become medium in a short time, and a medium heavy, etc, we should maintain as much flexibility as possible
ReplyDeleteMost hispanics are religious conservatives. It's the democrats that have smeared Republicans as racists. When I was a registered republican people would say " OMG Republicans are racists they only care about rich white people" this is the programed response that's spewed out like its part of a mass brainwashing indoctrination exersice.
ReplyDeleteMy dad retired from the army and even he agrees the future is a smaller land army deployed along the border with two MEU's on each ocean at a time. But he knows big defense contractors won't let that happend.
The Air-Sea Battle concept makes sense in terms of countering Chinese A2/AD capabilities. However, that won't be the only challenge facing us in the decades to come.
ReplyDeleteIMHO, the Stryker brigades are a welcome addition to the Army's force structure. They have a good mix of mobility (tactical through strategic), protection, dismounted infantry, and firepower. They filled a hole in the force structure.
I do agree that we should be improving and perhaps expanding our light infantry units. The problem with them is, while strategically mobile, they they are largely foot-bound without augmentation. This greatly limits their usefulness.
IMHO, we need to standardize on an IBCT TOE that has 100% vehicular mobility. I've seen a few proposals to do this.
The one I like the most involves attaching a mounted element to each platoon, much like a Stryker platoon. This mounted element would consist of 6 Humvees and at least six crew (drivers). It would be nice to have a driver and a gunner for each vehicle, but that would blow up manning requirements even more. Maybe attach two dedicated gunners, and draw the remaining four from the platoon.
I would start with the M1151, but kit it out like a SPECOPS GMV. Make as much of the armor modular. If rapid deployment was needed, they could be moved with little or no armor and have it fitted in the field later.
Carry up to five soldiers inside and up four in back on center-line seats facing out. Arm half with .50 cals and half with Mk19s. Include swing arm mounts for all platoon SAWs and GPMGs.
A baseline M1151 has a curb weight of 3.4 tonnes. Six of them only weigh a couple tons more than a single Stryer ICV. Stripped down, GMV-style, they would weigh even less.
The six infantry companies in an IBCT would need over a hundred extra HMMWVs under this plan. The support battalion would need to be enlarged to handle all of the extra maintenance and supply.
However the goal is to give the entire brigade vehicular mobility.
We invariably do something like this anyway when we deploy light infantry, we might as well make it part of the standard TOE.
Fortunately, as military hardware goes, HMMWVs and extra HMGs and GMGs don't cost all that much. You could kit out an entire company for the price of one Stryker (assuming ~$200K per equipped HMMWV and $3.8M per Stryker)
i like your idea but you do know that you just sketched out the US Army's motorized infantry division experiment from the 90's that was done with the 9th ID.
ReplyDeletesadly the problem with the US Army's concept of operations with mechanized infantry (to include the Stryker brigades) is that it always becomes about the vehicle and not on the infantry skills.
check out a Bradley based heavy infantry unit. dismounts are how many? 200 or so in a division? Strykers aren't much better.
but Afghanistan is sowing the seeds of success for the Army. by using MRAP's they've in essence been motorized infantry for a decade!
Yep, I know the general idea has been around for a while. It's time to do something about it. It's how they normally fight anyway. Might as well standardize on it.
ReplyDeleteInfantry skills aren't terribly useful if they lack the mobility to get where they need to be. That's the case now with an un-augmented light infantry unit.
Stryker platoons dismount a full 38-9 soldiers (4-5 HQ, 3x9 squads, 7 weap squad). They have an additional 7 man mounted element. A single battalion of 9 platoons has 342-351 dismounts.
It's an infantry-heavy TOE.
MRAP-based infantry is no lighter than Stryker units. Those things are heavy, and not terribly mobile off-road.
The US Army has a whole host doctrinal and organizational issues among which is the national requirement for maintaining heavy armored forces which, among other capabilities, are indeed required.
ReplyDeleteCertainly one can agree with the observation that the US Army should concentrate on heavy and light forces (that can be augmented) and that transitioning some Stryker brigades to light infantry might be useful but there are other more fundamental ways to add maneuver battalions to the US Army.
The brigade of 2 maneuver battalions is simply a ridiculous construct. Every division lost a maneuver battalion and gained additional HQ structures to further ticket punching careerism. In order to add 2 additional light infantry battalions to the US Army an entire brigade has to be fleshed out.
The best way to add maneuver forces to the US Army is to transition back to brigades of 3 and 4 maneuver battalions designed to fight in sustained combat where detaching a single battalion for whatever reason doesn't destroy the integrity of the brigade.
Before the US Army made the move to 2 battalion brigades various current and former officers (be happy to list this history if someone asks but it's not a short history) were advocating large heavy brigades of 4 maneuver battalions for various reasons.
The reality is heavy forces are heavy and take time to move strategically. Pre positioned equipment and high readiness fast transports can help but if large numbers of heavy forces are required it's going to take time to deploy and nothing is going to change this.
Heavy armored and mechanized units are continually getting heavier, the FCS fantasy aside, and the trend up adding armor to every support vehicle is not going to go away nor are the armored vehicles getting any lighter and focusing on specific weight requirements for single systems is ridiculous given we move units not individual self propelled howitzers.
That portion of the US Army that is going to be heavy should embrace their roles and missions. Each heavy brigade should have 2 armored and mechanized battalions not 1 of each. The personnel savings from disbanding excess brigade and supporting HQ's would allow more light infantry.
to BlackCell Gun Crew: i agree republicans (or the vast majority of them) aren't racist, but its how they framed their argument that made them look that way. They talked so much about Hispanics and put so much about race into it they lost the argument, it doesn't matter what you believe, its about how people perceive you. I completely agree Hispanics would be a natural GOP constituency, hard workers, socially conservative, located in GOP states (southwest and midwest alot) but i think how they talked about it turned people off.
ReplyDeleteHey, I got an idea. Since we haven't fought a major land battle in 20 years (which clearly may as well be the Cretaceous for most of the special needs individuals known as "journalists") lets disban the Army and just recreate them if we need them in the future. I'm sure when our hired mercenaries (sorry, "contractors") abandon the field because their ARs aren't quite enough to take out MBTs, our enemy will agree to a decade or three "time-out" so we can extract our heads from our asses. And anybody who thinks the USMC can fight *that* fight alone is clinging to a pipe-dream the likes of which haven't been seen since Hope and Change.
ReplyDeleteLane,
ReplyDeleteWhat do you think of the 4 company battalions in the HBCT? Could we get by with two, 4 company battalions in a BCT? It saves a battalion HQ's worth of soldiers per BCT, and it's only 1 company off from the 3 battalion x 3 company BCT.
Actually all the armor and mechanized battalions have operated with 4 companies for decades in order to facilitate cross attachment of companies. Heavy brigades used to operate with 3 or 4 battalions of 12 to 16 companies.
ReplyDeleteThere are many reasons why brigades of 2 maneuver battalions are problematic whatever the size of the battalion. They're brittle and can't sustain losses. The brigades supporting forces tailored to support two battalions would find it challenging to support an additional battalion and taking one from another brigade leaves a brigade of one maneuver battalion. Consolidating a battalion objective means either the brigade halts or continues on with one battalion.
Historically a binary organization was developed by another nation in response to colonial wars where they functioned fine there. However, Italy found it's binary structure lacking in staying power and flexibility when fighting a real enemy.
All this aside it's simply wasteful. Consider all the duplicate headquarters created in order to flesh out binary brigades. Divisions now have 4 maneuver brigades HQ's, 4 artillery battalion HQ's, etc., instead of the old 3 and all lost 1 maneuver battalion. It does provide a lot more command billets of course.
It's also worth noting that the infantry brigades already operate with 2 battalions of 3 companies each. Calling 6 infantry companies a "brigade" is almost obscene. The US Army came up with a structure significantly increasing the number of required headquarters units and reduced maneuver battalions to compensate. All the flexibility is gone and each binary brigade is vulnerable in sustained combat.
However the battalion is organized the question is how many should be normally assigned to it's parent unit? Various former US Army officers all advocated for heavy brigades of 4 maneuver battalions (Macgregor, Barnett, etc.) and for a time when Macgregor's "Breaking the Phalanx" was all the rage it looked like the Army might go in this direction. What Macgregor advocates today is something that looks a lot like the MAGTF.
B.Smitty
ReplyDeleteyou focused on the vehicle again in your reply to my post. like was said earlier, if you switch whats being done in Afghanistan and re-invent the wheel and make those guys motorized infantry based on HUMVEE improved (with blast chimney's and RWS) you will have more mobility than foot infantry but less hitting power than a heavy mech brigade...a middle weight force that's rapidly deployable and would rely on airpower and attached artillery for tough spots.
We're in agreement on motorizing "light" infantry. They still don't compare to Stryker brigades in terms of vehicular protection and firepower. But at least they're operationally useful without augmentation.
ReplyDeleteOTOH, you do have to look at the vehicles and other heavy equipment in the TOE to assess a unit's strategic deployability and sustainability. The vehicles in the TOE also impact manning levels, which has further cost and logistics implications.
You had mentioned Stryker brigades weren't much better than HBCTs when it came to dismounts. That's not the case. They have far more dismounts. They even have 3 maneuver battalions, unlike the other modern brigade TOEs.
Lane,
ReplyDeleteI agree the 2 battalion brigade seems like a bad idea. Brigade commanders will probably end up using the RSTA/Cav squadron as a surrogate third maneuver battalion.
Sure that's happening but the armored recon squadron within the heavy brigade isn't a maneuver battalion, has very few dismounts and no tanks, and is supposed to be doing things very different from what a maneuver battalion does. Basically it's a group of 6 scout platoons.
ReplyDeleteIt's actually too light to fight for information, it's primary mission, and bears little relationship to the old arm cav squadrons which were designed to actually fight for information among other tasks.
The army just needs to take a long look at what they really need in the future.
ReplyDeleteSol, you mentioned artillery and i am wondering about the future of artillery, like everything else, its getting smaller, i mean we have mortars that have good range to them, shoulder fired missiles, i know a few paladins will always be useful and so will the helos bringing in M198's, where do you see the future of artillery or fire support, i know you arent a fan of the strykers but their MGS might be helpful on another platform. just random thoughts.
ReplyDeleteArtillery is not getting smaller. Some of the towed systems are getting lighter. The trend for self propelled systems are more protection with a 155/52 in the PzH2000, K-9 (Turkish T-155), etc. Consider that a 155/39 will fire an M982 out to 40km while a 155/52 can reach to 60km.
ReplyDeleteOne percent of the US populace should be enough for our security, There are 300M US citizens, 3M US Armed Forces should cover two major wars, plus a reserve for i.e. natural disasters, civil unrest, and terrorism. The Army is very relevant, now and in the future, in itself, it is also a deterrent for our enemies just like our nuclear arsenal and subs.
ReplyDeleteThe Abrams M1 MBT for example, is an excellent weapon, but the logistics of the vehicle, limits its use. What if we had some hybrid airships, some of them capable of 500 Tons, VTOL, up to 100mph, can deliver 7 battle ready MBT, or a mix of vehicles including artillery, within 24-72 hours, could really make a difference.
The US Army has to make itself significant, just like the MEU's are today: flexible, combat ready, with all of the tools right there; they need better delivery platforms. As the Navy provides for the Marines, so should the Air Force for the Army; more integrated delivery platforms and weapons systems, just my 2cents!