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2005-07-28 Home Front: WoT

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Posted by Steve 2005-07-28 09:44|| || Front Page|| [1 views since 2007-05-07] Top

#1 This is going to take some serious 'splainin. For example, are major non-organic units, such as Engineers, going to be reorganized into separate Brigades, or be broken up into Battallions attached to combat Brigades? Other CS and CSS branches can only operate with minimum sized units, so how will they be integrated? Either you have Brigades that are far less than organic, or you have the majority of a combat Brigade being non-combat support.

Posted by Anonymoose 2005-07-28 10:21|| 2005-07-28 10:21|| Front Page Top

#2 Looks like they'e reinventing the squre division.

Posted by Shipman 2005-07-28 10:58|| 2005-07-28 10:58|| Front Page Top

#3 The size of the brigades bothers me. They are about 1/2 the size of the cold war brigades. If they include engineering, recon, etc, then the line units are really small. This might work in a guerrilla war, but will be a disaster if we have to fight the Chinese.

Al

Posted by Frozen Al">Frozen Al 2005-07-28 11:09|| 2005-07-28 11:09|| Front Page Top

#4 I'd have to see more details before I know if I like this. Just before WWII, the Army had a big reorganization, introducing 2 concepts: one that worked, and one that didn't.

The one that worked was Modularization. We made a "standard" infantry battalion, regiment, and division. Ditto for armor. If you commanded the 92nd division, you knew that it had exactly the same TOE as the 3rd division. (Many other countries, notably Germany, did not do this.)

The one that didn't work was Pooling. A division was stripped down to the minimum components that it needed to perform all missions. All the support units were sent up to Corps or Army level, which then assigned them as needed to a unit to perform a given mission, then took them away again. This meant that the tanks and TD units, for example, didn't form a long-term relationship with their associated infantry. Instead, you got assigned a bunch of people you never had seen before and were expected to smoothly coordinate with them. Eventually, higher command would unofficially "marry" support units to divisions, allowing them to integrate into the command.

OK, 65 years later.

I think the Light/Stryker/Heavy works well in maybe 85% of the cases. But how will the 82nd and 101st be labeled? As "Light?" I suppose the 101st could simply be Light that happens to have a lot of air transport assets to it. But the 82nd is unique.

Will the mountain brigades merely become Light? Or will they be Light, with special training? That means we no longer have 3 types of brigades, but 4 or 5. A generic Light will no longer be substitutable for a Light-with-mountain-training brigade. (Let alone a Bud Lite.)

That can be worked out, though. My bigger problem is who gets artillery and engineers and other support units? Will each brigade get, say, one battery of artillery, one company of engineers, one company of AA (besides Stingers), one company of heavy AT (besides Javelins)? Or will we go back to the pooling days?

I would like to follow up more. I am going to do some searching around to see how much is publicly available. If anyone else can find some detailed descriptions, please post in the comments or at least send an eMail to My address.

Posted by Jackal">Jackal 2005-07-28 11:42|| home.earthlink.net/~sleepyjackal/index.html]">[home.earthlink.net/~sleepyjackal/index.html] 2005-07-28 11:42|| Front Page Top

#5 I'm tied up today, but if y'all go read the various docs at the DOD transformation site you might get a better feel for what is in fact being done and why.

Lots of threads combine to make these changes: mobility, unit rotation (i.e. a guy stays with his unit longer, family gets more stability), technologies such as Future Combat Systems and a whole lot more.

Doctrinal changes, equipment (some of which has been field tested in Iraq and Afghanistan), BRAC reorg ....

and figuring out how to have a single multi-service force that can take on current and future (perhaps totally new) missions that range from stability and sustainment ops (peacecreating/keeping) to that China problem.

I don't know if it's the right move, but it certainly hasn't been done casually or without great thought about what and why.

Posted by rkb 2005-07-28 11:59|| 2005-07-28 11:59|| Front Page Top

#6 A little more info here

Posted by Mrs. Davis 2005-07-28 12:11|| 2005-07-28 12:11|| Front Page Top

#7 The article does get it wrong in one respect: there will be airmobile brigades (101st Airmobile Division), and Airborne (82nd ABN Div and the Sky SOldiers of the 173rd), and of course the Rangers will retain the Regiment, and the Special Forces will retain their structure.

So the article, intrying to simplify things for the general puyblic glosses over a LOT of detail that you and I could use to make sense of things.

The primary unit of manuever remains the battalion, the primary unit of tactical execution remains the company. Those will likely never change.

Cross attachment remains a normal practice, to form company "teams" or battalion "task force", so thhhis is mainly about making strategic commandable units a bit easier to handle and transport.

As for the smaller size, most of the "new style" light brigades no longer have much organic MP, artillery or anti-aircraft support. ANd the stryker bridgaes have a littl less of it than the heavy brigades. This kind of unit (artillery, ADA) gets cross-attached per mission needs. I am unsure where that falls - at division, or up at corps. But you can bwe the heavy brigades hold a ton of the stuff.

As an example, you dont need artillery in Iraq, you do need it in Korea or for China. Artillery units in Iraq are being turned into MP units. Their tubes are back in the US while their soldiers are getting on-the-job training in patrolling and counter-insurgency operations.

So yelling about how this screws up artillery or other branches is irrelevant -- the combat we are in is already forcing the "destruction" of air defense, artillery and other units. This re-org simply codifies what has been goign on in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Posted by OldSpook 2005-07-28 12:41|| 2005-07-28 12:41|| Front Page Top

#8 Regardless of whether this will make the military more efficient and better prepared for present and future challenges (I think it does, but I am far from a military expert), there IS one undeniable upside:

the military brings home 50,000 troops from Germany and Korea

Posted by docob 2005-07-28 13:19|| 2005-07-28 13:19|| Front Page Top

#9 faster, please

Posted by docob 2005-07-28 13:20|| 2005-07-28 13:20|| Front Page Top

#10 think the Light/Stryker/Heavy works well in maybe 85% of the cases. But how will the 82nd and 101st be labeled? As "Light?" I suppose the 101st could simply be Light that happens to have a lot of air transport assets to it. But the 82nd is unique.

ummm.... I have an idea.... Hey Fred man! Is it time to break up jumping divisons?

Posted by Shipman 2005-07-28 13:34|| 2005-07-28 13:34|| Front Page Top

#11 Keep the names... . I can't help but keep thinking about that Apache Raid at the beginning of the war. Less than steallar has I recall.

Posted by Shipman 2005-07-28 13:36|| 2005-07-28 13:36|| Front Page Top

#12 From then Secty of the Army White re: the Apache raid on Saddamn's Medina division:

think the conclusions are, if you fly over a known area of enemy concentration and you don't do anything from a combined arms perspective to prep that area, you're probably going to get your butt shot off.

Posted by rkb 2005-07-28 14:01|| 2005-07-28 14:01|| Front Page Top

#13 We were doing some of this back in 91-93 in the 101st. The artillery and airdefense was tasked at Corps level, along with engineers. The units were "assigned" as the mission dictated. For instance, a airfield defense would not get artillery, but maybe a company of stingers and some vulcans. A line unit would get some of each and a unit behind the lines would get mostly artillery support (along with CAS). This let units that are not using their support, like artillery to "loan" their assigned units to other units that were being overrun and were in range of the artillery, but could switch back at a moments notice. I don't know the details of how it worked, but from the grunt's point of view, it worked very well. We were never without anything, except hot food.

Posted by mmurray821 2005-07-28 17:26|| 2005-07-28 17:26|| Front Page Top

#14 Some other Bliss troops, trained in anti-aircraft weaponry, are set to move to Fort Sill, Okla.

This sorta doesn't make sense. If the Patriot is being evolved to an anti-theater ballistic missile system from its anti-aircraft design, you have to train which means live fire. At least at Bliss/Macgregor/White Sands you have the range to do it, to include target launch from an old ammo storage site near Gallup NM. They've been shooting across NM already. Heck of a lot of open, unpopulated space there. Don't know if the citizens [and asshat anti-military folk and their judicial sympathizers] are going to be happy have missile intercepts and debris drops in their neighborhood of southern OK, northern TX.

Posted by Elmaitch Unomort5930 2005-07-28 20:25|| 2005-07-28 20:25|| Front Page Top

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