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| high speed roll on/roll off ship. |
via DefenseNews.
During the service’s yearly senior leader seminar Nov. 20, the Army’s top uniformed leadership for the first time called for a look at cutting the size of the squad from nine soldiers to as low as six, while reminding subordinates that the service is shrinking and likely won’t be able to afford new leapahead technologies in the near future.Read the entire article and marvel at the stupidity, shortsightedness and lack of spine being shown by Army leadership. The only thing that gives me hope is the knowledge that the Marine Corps isn't the only organization suffering from failed leaders.
And briefing slides referenced vehicles half the weight of the Ground Combat Vehicle (GCV), which enjoys dwindling support among the brass.
Going smaller while focusing investments on increasing the combat punch a small unit can bring to bear will “make us more affordable, yet as capable” as the service is now, one leading general said. A key point is also to become faster and more expeditionary.
One senior leader said that in coming years, the Army will have to “reduce the size of our formations but increase the capability of our formations. ...If we can be more effective with less people it will make us more expeditionary.”
A handful of reporters were allowed to sit in on the briefing under the condition that names not be used.
This talk about moving faster comes in response to the fact that the Army will primarily be a domestically based force in the coming years. The idea that rapid deployability to hot spots around the world will be a key to future conflicts is one that the Army is taking very seriously.
This new push has generated a new Army catchphrase: “Speed that matters.”
The thinking goes that speed can act as a deterrent to adversaries. The idea was also floated during the seminar that having a rapidly deployable force provides civilian leadership with more leverage and “decision space” in which to politically exploit an adversary’s weakness.
Assuming that we are heading into a time period where we will be reacting to moves from bad actors or using Special Ops to shape future battlefields, I wonder why the idea is to replicate a hybrid Armored Airborne/Motorized Infantry.
The issue is and has always been transport.
The issue is and has always been the lack of acceptance by Army officials that transport by air is NOT delivering the benefits long promised.
The answer isn't to make squads smaller.
Not to make smaller, lighter more vulnerable vehicles.
The answer is to work with the US Navy and develop/deploy high speed roll on/roll off ships that can motor from the US to distant area quickly.
Instead of doing the obvious, they would instead tinker once again with war winning formations just so they can be at the forefront of "change". Change without purpose is stupid meddling. Army leadership is meddling.
Gee. I already thought their squads were small. In WWII the Army squad was 11, 1 of those carrying a BAR. One month before the war in Europe ended, they increased the size of the squad, adding an additional BAR man. for 12. You would think, that could be managed with a sergeant and a corporal. 6? That is no squad. As for the GCV it will be a gigadollar POS.
ReplyDeleteWhat a bunch of fucking brain dead dolts. They are essentially rehashing the same debate from the 90s that Shinseki instigated and resulted in the Interim force. What's next? A new pitch for a Farcical Combat System?
ReplyDeleteThey just got done losing a war to guys in pajamas who used nothing more complicated than a skill set that any 16yr old could master because they couldn't field enough forces and were over-reliant on technology.
Go ask the Germans how well a smaller, higher tech force faced off a numerically superior enemy equipped with effective and simple weapons in WWII?
Armies don't do strategic movements. Their main concern should be what is in front of them and how deep their biggest artillery piece can fire.
ReplyDeleteParalus, every once in a while someone will spout off something that makes me wonder if they've studied any military history at all. You just made me wonder.
ReplyDeleteAs a flip side to your rhetorical question, why don't you ask the Brits how they roll the SAS around in Land Rovers? When it comes to COIN the Brits are pretty much the recognized world leaders in successful COIN campaigns, so if you want to focus the US Army to be more mobile, able to put out "brush fire wars" you could do a lot worse than the British model. Of course this means restructuring at least somewhat to a more constabulary model, which Americans have a distaste for (we did it in the Phillipines under Gen. Pershing, but that was a long time ago).
i'm not tracking with your critique of Paralus' statement. the German's undoubtly had the most technologically advanced force during WW2, employed cutting edge (for the time) tactics and lost badly. Shin did have a vision of an expeditionary army operating Strykers that could fly in and it was to act as a bridge to the FCS. and last you can point to success in the Philippines but i can point to 30 years in Haiti by the Marines that did little, additionally i can point to the British experience in several countries that show that COIN at the best of times is a long, hard slog, probably not worth the effort.
Deleteam i reading you wrong?
S, a pretty poor selection for a transport~ It is a freaking ferry~
ReplyDeleteWhat would have been more interesting is a Ro/Pax which lifts both vehicles and passengers over mostly short sea routes. Plenty of those in foreign services.
And even better would have been on the ships which MSC charters (as needed) or is under MARAD in its RRF. There are multiple ship types there which are intended to provide strategic sealift and which are much more readily available since WE own them. Goto:
http://www.marad.dot.gov/ships_shipping_landing_page/national_security/ship_operations/national_defense_reserve_fleet/national_defense_reserve_fleet.htm
BTW the US Army has already pulled out of a couple HS sealift ship programs, seems they don't want to PAY for transports they use~
ReplyDeleteresearch the RSLS Rapid Sealift Ship project for one
Solomon, Germany started WWII with the best planes and tanks, with supply lines largely supported by horse drawn wagon. Between the tactics and technology the Germans managed to kill twice as many Russians while the Russians held a defensive advantage (by casualty estimates). But the point isn't that Germany had the best, it is that everything Germany had wasn't a technological leap over the competition.
ReplyDeleteWWII was Germany's to lose, and they lost it at the strategic level when they made the same mistake Napoleon made, attacking into Russia. Even with the tactical advantage of being on the defensive, the Russian body count by all estimates was twice that of the Russians. While Germany was advancing east, extending their supply lines still largely dependent on horse drawn wagon to move from rail to the front lines, the Russians were compacting their supply lines and getting closer and closer to their bases of support.
Combine that with a ruthless bombing campaign to disrupt the logistical support for the Wehrmacht and you see that the battelefield technology wasn't a factor in winning the war, it was a logistics fight from the start at the strategic level. The tactical advantage of having a great tank does you nothing if you can't keep it in the fight.
If you think about the purges going on in Stalin's Red Army, how competent Officers were killed or imprisoned (or imprisoned then killed) it explains one of the reasons why the Russians lost so many men despite having the advantage of being on the defense (planning factor is 1 defender to 3 attackers). When you compare body counts (around 4.5 mil Germans and up to 13 mil Russians) you see that the Germans enjoyed a tactical advantage that translated into 1 attacker killing three defenders, totally flipping the planning factors for attack/defend around.
Of course you could get into the argument that "any tank is better than no tank" which is a situation the Soviets found themselves in early on as they were very ill equipped to fight any sort of war, as evidenced by the 1939 Winter War where they "took just enough territory to bury their dead" which had to have affected Hitler's thinking about attacking Russia.
Saying that the Mosin Nagant and T-34 were better because they beat the K98 and Tiger tanks is fundamentally ignoring the WHY of the matter, which is the same as we saw with Napoleon, logistical overreach. Hell, even today in Afghanistan the terrorists don't fight with an AK-47 because it is a quick way to get dead, instead the build IEDs and try to fight in an asymetric manner.
Paralus's comments were pithy, but ignorant. A better analogy would have been comparing the American Revolution (foreign superpower attempting to pacify a restless colony) where the technology was even on each side, but in the end logistics set the stage for strategic victory. In an Insurgency, you don't outfight the superpower, you outwait the superpower.
Dude you're just making shit up....just kidding, that's a hell of an answer. Whoever tries to rebut better have their stuff in order.
Deleteyeah he went deep into the weeds with that answer. all i can say is roger that and move on...but i won't. American Mercenary took the discussion to a deeper level than just hitting the high points that i try and do here. i'm still sticking with the view that Paralus is right. and i'm also going to say that AM is right too.
Deletethey just approached it with different considerations in mind.
finally i still think that this rush to small unit ops and making squads smaller is a mistake.
its been proven time and time again that small units once found are too easily destroyed for my liking...even with supporting arms. network warfare just makes it possible for multiple small units to located and destroyed, making the chance of providing support even more difficult.
in the end i think you're seeing a SOCOM mentality invade the general purpose force and its being done without understanding that all those ops SOCOM runs are with a company of grunts providing support with air, artillery on standby.
Also I read the Army Times articles talking about this force and the entire exercise was complete and total BULLSHIT. There was zero joint force operations. That right there tells you this is completely unrealistic.
DeleteThe president is not going to authorize Marines and Navy participate in a hostile invasion of a foreign country? In the scenario that they used the current Army would have outperformed Innovation Group if it has been a joint force.
But the Marines could have been landing all three MEU the Navy would have had at least 2 CSGs in support and coupled with a Brigade from the 82nd that would have held the line for the 30 days that the Army needed to land actual heavy brigade combat teams.
So Ranger's could have gotten there at D+4, 82nd at D+7, 2 CSGs at D+7, 3 MEUs at D+14-18, and finally 2 Brigade Heavy Combat Teams at D+30.
Instead the Army wants to show up with the, it is not a Future Combat System *wink*, at D+14. And not have any firepower to land at D+30.
So much for Joint. And if the Army is going to insist on showing at up D+14 with baby tanks and IFV. The USMC will want to show up at D+5 with only boots, rifles and a light coat of CLP.
Is everyone that bashed on Rumsfeld for the last 8 years going to apologize to him? Because all of his ideas that were blasted in 2006 as failures are now the basis of the entire military for 2015 and beyond.
ReplyDeleteBut if most all the mainstream defense reporters continue with the stance that Rumsfeld was one of the worst SecDefs of all time than what is the difference now? Is SecDef Hagel Rumsfeld in disguise?
i think i've stated pretty clearly that Rummy was the worst SECDEF ever and that his transformation of the military was shortsighted.
Deletebut more to your point, you're absolutely right. the military of the future is Rummy's idea and no one in the mainstream press is calling it for what it is. every initiative that he pushed from expanded SpecOps to the F-35, to even moving from a triad to a two pronged nuke force is straight from the NeoCon agenda.
I don't disagree that making squads smaller is a bad idea for Light Infantry during major offensive operations. However we've seen the 6 man squad actually work out with Heavy Mechanized Infantry units in their Bradley Fighting Vehicles during major offensive ops just fine.
ReplyDeleteWhen you are dismount centric a 6 man squad is nothing more than a glorified fire team. When you are an Armored Brigade Combat Team, your dismounts are there to deal with the things that Bradleys and Abrams tanks don't want to be bothered with. Still, it should be noted that the Bradley was originally designed to hold a full 9 man dismount squad, but the compromise to 6 was made because of parts commonality with the Cav Scout variant so they wouldn't have to redesign the turret.
In terms of patrolling in the current COIN environments, most of our MRAP fleet can't hold a full squad of dismounts. That isn't to say that the MRAP is a bad answer to the problem, it is a specific answer to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. For operations other than war evidently being able to task organize into MRAPs hasn't hurt us in my experience.
In warfare, it is never having a "silver bullet" answer that is one size fits all, it is having the right mix of capabilities where you need them to be when you need them to be there. I think we'll see the Stryker brigades stick around long after the "interim wheeled brigade" concept GEN Shinseki came up with is nothing more than a quaint footnote in the history books because it does allow for an organization to move like an Armored Brigade, and then dismount full infantry squads and platoons and fight like a light infantry brigade.
Right now the truly Light brigades (that are not airborne or air assault) have been doing the "get what we can" for vehicular patrolling (meaning MRAPs, up armored Humvees when we still had them, sometimes even rolling into the fight in the back of 5 tons, etc). So getting those light brigades the right vehicle to provide protection and maneuverability is a good thing, and for operations other than war a six man squad will be ok, even if it is not optimal for a high intensity conflict. Personally I'd like to see the AGCV die a quick death as it is just another example of "silver bullet" thinking.