The 11th Airborne Division has a storied past. It operated in the Pacific during World War 2 and its my contention that it should be brought back as the 11th Airborne (Air Assault).
A brief overview of their WW2 activities via WW2 Airborne.us
The 11th Airborne Division was activated at Camp Mackall North Carolina on February 25, 1943 under the command of Major General Joseph M. Swing (picture left). The division was manned primarily with former glider troops and some veteran Airborne troops. Immediately after activation, the Division began an intensive training cycle to get all of the glider troops jump qualified. Many of the troops were simply sent up in an aircraft with little formal training on the ground. The new Airborne soldiers performed above expectations and the Division was ready for overseas movement barely a year later.
In early 1944, the "Angels" were ordered to prepare for embarkation and the Division moved to San Francisco California. They boarded troop transports and in May they were on their way to New Guinea in the South Pacific. Upon arrival they were ordered into an intensive training cycle to learn jungle warfare in preparation for the invasion of the Pilippines. For 5 months the 11th Airborne sweated in the jungles and mountains of New Guinea and had several training jumps. FInally on November 11th, the Division boarded transports for their objective.
On November 18, 1944, the Angels landed at Leyte Beach Philippines. After consolidating their equipment, they moved inland to relieve they weary 24th Infantry and 37th Infantry Divisions. The 11th's objective was to clear a mountain pass from Burauen to Ormoc. It took 3 months of bitter fighting, often hand-to-hand to drive the Japanese defenders from the pass and surrounding heights. In the end the 11th Airborne had killed almost 6,000 enemy soldiers. When the Division arrived in Ormoc they were given a much needed rest and resupply.
On January 26, 1945 the 11th went back into action having rested only a few days. The Division landed at Nasgubu Beach, Luzon some 70 miles from the capitol city of Manila. Their mission was simple, clear all enemy opposition from a major highway and link up with the Allied forces attacking Manila. In just 5 days, the Division had eliminated all enemy resistance along Highway 17 and had pierced the main line of resistance at Tagayatay Ridge. Here the 511th Parachute Infantry Regiment conducted a combat parachute drop to reinforce the 11th and the Division continued north.
After capturing Fort McKinley and Nichols field, the 11th launched their assult on Manila joining the 1st Cavalry Division and the 37th Infantry Division who were attacking from the North. Once the capitol was liberated, the 11th made a daring raid behind enemy lines and liberated 2,147 Allied POWs from the Los Baños Internment Camp. Once that mission was cleared the 11th Airborne spent the next few weeks mopping up resistance in the southern areas of Luzon.
In May of 1945, the Division moved into a reserve area in the Philippines to rest, resupply and take in new troops. They began preparations for the next big operation. Operation Olympic, the invasion of the Japanese home islands. Those plans were cancelled after the Japanese surrender in August 1945. On Aug. 10, 1945, the division moved to Okinawa to escort Gen. Douglas MacArthur into Japan and to spearhead the occupation. The 11th Airborne landed at Atsugi Airdrome, near Tokyo, on Aug. 30, 1945, and occupied an initial area in and around Yokohama. They remained there until mid-September 1945, when they moved to northern Japan and assumed responsibility for Akita, Yamagata, Miyagi and Iwate Prefectures. The division later took over control of Amori, Hokkaido, Fukushima and Prefectures to control of almost half the island of Honshu and all the island of Hokkaido.
Legend has it that when the 1st Cavalry Division, whose motto is "1st in Manila, 1st in Tokyo" arrived in Tokyo, they were met by the 11th Airborne Division band. The band played a special song for the Cavalry; "The old gray mare ain't what she used to be". General Swing left the division, which he had formed and led through combat, in January 1948, to assume command of 1st Corps, 8th Army and Maj. Gen. William M. Miley, the former commander of the 17th Airborne Division, assumed command. The 11th Airborne Division remained on occupation duty until 1949 when they were relieved and sent to Camp Campbell Kentucky.
Its time to relearn the lessons of Vietnam. Fighting in the Pacific has always been particularly vicious. Mobility has always been a concern, and another Air Assault Division forward deployed in say Australia or Diego Garcia would give the Army a dog in the fight and an effective force to boot.
What brigades are you going to cut (or transform) to bring back the 11th? The Army is losing 8 or more already, so you'll have to transform another three.
ReplyDeletePersonally, I don't see great utility in having specific air assault divisions anymore. I'd transform the 101st into a pure airborne division to add to the nation's forced entry capability, and either spread their helo assets around or pool them in a separate unit.
well my thinking went like this.
ReplyDeletethe US Army considers Air Assault units as a forcible entry asset as a matter of fact joint documents list 3 types of forcible entry, airborne, air assault and amphibious.
additionally while the 82nd can get there quick, they lack battlefield mobility once they got on the ground, the 101st gets there a little slower but has outstanding mobility...in the pacific in certain situations you could have the division self deploy especially in certain places like the phillipines that have a thousand islands or even indonesia which has a ton of islands too.
i think the concept is sound and makes sense...especially since i also proposed that this unit be forward deployed.
If it can't self deploy, the 101st gets there a LOT slower. It has to be airlifted (meaning landing fields have to be available) or delivered by sea. The 82nd can paradrop just about anywhere. Because of this, I have trouble seeing the 101st as a credible early-entry force.
ReplyDeleteThe 101st helo mobility is great, but once on the ground it's just as bad as the 82nd. And building up the logistics needed to move from island to island would require sealift anyway.
Plus, all those helos also makes the 101st an expensive division.
IMHO, the Marines seem better suited to island-hopping campaigns anyway. They have the right combination of sealift, armor and rotary aviation.
well using the philipines as an example. they have an insurgency problem and if the US Army were to station a Air Assault Division there (if they want us back) then you would have a tailor made force to reinforce that country, it would be located where it could self deploy to many nations and it would allow for the Army to get into the Pacific fight.
ReplyDeletethe idea isn't that the Army can do it better than the Marines but there is a role for the Army and i see it as being an air mobile force....not a complete combined arms outfit like an MEU but a unit that has its place on the battlefield...anyway it would be much more useful than a Stryker Brigade...
Hmm, I still don't buy using an air assault division for this. I'd almost rather use a traditional infantry division and move it via JHSV from island to island. It would be a lot cheaper. JHSVs can also move a lot more tonnage faster than helos.
ReplyDeleteUse a combination of HMMWVs and M113s for ground mobility (tracks are handy in difficult island terrain).
But what 3 additional brigades (on top of the 8 going away) are you willing to give up?
The US Army has a lot bigger problems than trying to figure out which of it's ten divisions it should consider making into another air assault. If they do have a requirement for more air assault brigades they can always add them. Hell you want 4 more battalions just put a 3rd battalion back in the existing 4 brigades.
ReplyDeleteThe current structure is a much bigger problem. The US Army binary brigade structure resulted in brigades not suitable for sustained heavy combat, destroyed flexibility, and created significant numbers of additional brigade and battalion HQ's. It's a ticket punchers wet dream but resulted in divisions losing at least one maneuver battalion.
A heavy brigade of two maneuver battalions is a ridiculous construct. That's a brigade of 200 dismounted infantry. A heavy brigade of 4 maneuver battalions is what they should have gone to in order to maximize combat power and minimize supporting HQ's. Consider two binary brigades have the same 4 maneuver battalions but twice as many artillery, support, etc., battalions with twice as many HQ's. Now ask if you really do need one additional battalion where does it come from and what do you do with the resulting "brigade" with a single maneuver battalion?
What the US Army needs is more fighting battalions and fewer numbers of supporting HQ's. Whether they need more air assault battalions is a far more minor matter. That said is the suggestion to convert over some light infantry units? Frankly, I'd suggest the US Army could use some more light fighters
Consider the 25th Infantry which has 1 light, 1 airborne, and 2 Stryker brigades evenly split between Hawaii and Alaska. It's not a fighting division but a holding unit for 3 different brigade types. What exactly is the 2nd Infantry doing with one heavy brigade and the aviation brigade in Korea and 3 Stryker brigades in Fort Lewis? The 4th infantry is a "heavy" division of 6 heavy battalions and a light brigade thrown in. Once upon a time heavy divisions had 11 maneuver battalions because it was the most efficient use of resources and they should have 12.
The six active US Army heavy divisions have a total of 15 heavy brigades with 30 heavy maneuver battalions or what used to be considered exactly 3 divisions worth.
All this aside given the range of the CH-47 you get exactly how far an air assault can bound forward at one time. An air assault division does not strategically deploy itself. Like any heavy US division it's strategically deployed by ship.
not to be retro but the Brigade structure has never struck me as being valid...it appeared to be too "Marine" ish for a force that was totally different.
ReplyDeletei did not know that it was as bad as you've described though. that's a really big issue.
as far as the need for another Air Assault Division...oh yeah it applies...especially when you look at the areas of operation in the Pacific and if you get out of the box thinking. staged in the philippines and then have them bound to japan with a stop on an aircraft carrier for refueling...or even a JHSV...anything you can do to extend range and build up combat power rapidly. if the Army is going to depend on shipping to get anywhere then they better start lobbying for some high speed cargo ships that can make a sustained 30 knots while carrying a battalion worth of gear and troops.
Lane, I agree. The 2 battalion brigade may've looked nice on PPTs to increase brigade numbers and spread the burden of long deployments around.
ReplyDeleteLarge brigades would increase the Army's "tooth-to-tail" ratio. With the wars winding down, small brigades don't make sense anymore, IMHO.
I've advocated for a new type of infantry brigade that sits between the strategically mobile, but tactically immobile light infantry unit, and the Stryker Brigade. It would have full vehicular mobility for all units based on armored and unarmored HMMWVs and trucks. That way, it would be lighter (and cheaper) than a Stryker unit, but more operationally valuable (in most situations) than light infantry.
You can always plus up light infantry units with mobility assets, but this causes problems unless units train regularly with them, and can cause logistics issues if you have to cobble them together from various sources.
There have been movements in this direction in the past (e.g. 9th Infantry (Motorized) concept, Marine Distributed Operations experiments).
Plus, light infantry is already doing this in Afghanistan anyway, just on an ad hoc basis.
oooh motorized infantry....isn't that what a stryker brigade is actually?
ReplyDeleteSol,
ReplyDeleteYes and no. They both use wheeled vehicles, but have different conditions for use. Strykers don't do well in Afghanistan, for example, but HMMWVs can work.
Strykers weigh 16.5 tonnes and cost $3.8+ million each. They are barely C-130 capable.
The GVW of an M1152A1 (cargo variant) is 5.4 tonnes. They cost somewhere around $150k-200k each. Several can be carried (and airdropped) from a C-130.
A platoon's worth of six HMMWVs weighs 32.4 tonnes and costs $1.2 million (on the high side).
A platoon's worth of Strykers weighs 66 tonnes and costs $15.2 million.
HMMWVs are about as light as you can get on a militarily useful platform while still providing vehicular on- and off-road mobility.
your cost figures are gonna be off because the military will transition to upgraded HMMWVs that are going to weigh and cost more. additionally when i talked about the stryker being basically motorized infantry i was talking about the concept of operations.
ReplyDeleteand i kinda dispute the fact that HMMWVs are doing fine in Afghanistan. they don't let them outside the wire, so they're about as vulnerable as strykers....i don't know how the uparmored strykers will do but agree that the stryker has been found to be vulnerable.
The HMMWV Recaps will be more expensive, yes, but still not on the order of a Stryker.
ReplyDeleteLast time I read about it, hey don't let HMMWVs outside the wire in some areas, but still do in others.
HMMWVs also have a much lower logistics footprint than Strykers (primarily due to weight).
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0IAV/is_1_95/ai_n16346579/?tag=content;col1
From 2006, but still relevant.
Plus we're not just talking about Afghanistan. There are other theaters where HMMWVs will still work.
I could be wrong but I thought the Army canceled the HMMWV recap and was going with JLTV?
ReplyDeleteThe Stryker units are what used to be called light armored/mechanized infantry. With every vehicle now being armored to some degree or another it might be tempting to just call them motorized but they're really light mechanized (wheeled). The Army having some medium forces is a good idea but they went too far and have too many Stryker units. Interestingly these units retain 3 maneuver battalions.
"Too far" with Stryker units? What would you prefer instead? IMHO, Stryker units are more useful than light infantry for most situations (since light infantry lacks organic vehicular mobility). The only cases where light infantry "wins" is in very rugged terrain or rapid deployment scenarios. I suppose they cost a lot less too.
ReplyDeleteHBCTs are too heavy for many situations, and IBCTs are too light. SBCTs try to be juust right.
What I'm proposing is we transform IBCTs into something more operationally useful. There is still a big capability gap between the current light IBCT and the SBCT.