Rand's Enhanced Army Airborne Proposal. MUST READ!

Thanks to SNAFUperman for the link! (that's really dude's screen name)

I made the contention that the US Army is finally acting on Mike Spark's long ago proposal to make Army Airborne Mechanized.  Well what did I find in my in box?  A note from SNAFUperman confirming my suspicions and linking to the above document.  He added this comment...

In response to your posts about the 82nd trying out the LAV-25, check out the 2014 RAND report  The report calls for a mix of LAV-25s (Stryker is too heavy) and gun platforms like the M8/"Mobile Protected Firepower". This is EXACTLY what is going on.

The chilling thing for Marine Corps planners?  While the USMC is trying to ramp down to "Expeditionary Squads" and "Company Landing Teams" to chase terrorists in the Middle East and perhaps support SOCOM raids, the Army is pushing to fully mechanize the 82nd.

In other words they'll have a global response force that can ACTUALLY hold its own against other middle weight forces.  They'll go from being speed bumps to actually being able to hold ground and even seize it from all but top tier enemy forces.

The only thing worse would be some hardcore Army Colonel to get the idea of making the 101st useful again and converting it back to an airborne instead of air assault unit.

I shared the report (properly this time) and you can find it here.