You hit one of my exposed nerves...
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Originally Posted by
Fuchs
This bounding overwatch thing always strikes me as odd when it's about movement from height to height such as in that graphic.
Tanks & AFVs are supposed to move like water flows - not over ridge lines.
I fought a losing battle in the US Army for well over thirty years trying to convince people that flawed art work in manuals would get people killed. The reality should be and usually is what you say, not what the pictures always show -- however, those flawed pictures do lead some astray. The practice of stopping training for administrative lunches and then trying to resume tactically oriented thinking is the same sort of thing.
We as an Army do the big things well, however we are too frequently really pathetic at the little things. The flawed pictures and writing in our doctrinal publications are a big part of that. The problem is that most of the artists are civilians and opt for clear portrayals and 'clean graphics' as opposed to accurate representations of what should occur. We did better toward the end of WW II but that fell by the wayside as experience levels dropped and we moved to a system of mixed snowbird / blackbird and civilian authors instead of doctrine and experienced military training oriented writers ... :mad:
Gute:
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a War College paper written in the early 70's proposed going away from armor and infantry specific battalions to combined arms battalions of two tank companies and two infantry companies.
That push has been around since WW II -- it always got stalled by Branch parochialism more than anything else. My solution has always been to do away with Branches...;)
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Wass de Czege made the case that there are three distinct subgroups of infantry: armored, regular, light.
I don't agree with him on many things but he got that right. Solve the Branch problem by making the Armored dismount guys Dragoons...
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NCOs argued that the M3 was not suitable for cavalry reconnaissance missions because it is too big, too heavy, too heavely armed and the five man crew is too large. Most importantly, the cav scout should rely on stealth to obtain infomation. Midlevel officers countered and argued that the vehicle had to be heavy to counter the heavy armor threat in Europe. Also, an experienced NCO will not put his crew in a position to be outgunned.
The NCOs were right (and not putting your vehicle in a position to be outgunned is just sensible...). FWIW, as someone peripherally involved in the Bradley debacle, at the time, the LTs, CPTs and most MAJs agreed with the NCOs, the other MAJs and the LTCs were ambivalent but leaned toward the heavy solution mostly because the COLs were the ones who were Europe oriented and adamant about the Red threat -- actually, it was all about speed; those guys didn't want to wait for stealthy recon, they wanted to just slam out and get in fights. It is possibly noteworthy that the guys who would actually go out opted for light and stealthy while those on Staffs opted for somebody just to go out and get in a fight ... :rolleyes:
That myth is older than I am...
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Originally Posted by
TAH
An old cav guy once told me that the good thing about M2/M3 was that the enemy would not be able to easily tell if they had run into an element from an ACr, a DIV CAV sqdrn, a Bn/TF scout platoon or a Mech infantry Platoon buy just looking at the vehicle itself. A scout/recon specific vehicle will telegraph that.
It's not totally mythical but it's close. That misidentification will last for only seconds in any contact. The actions of the occupants of the vehicle will quickly tell the opponent who and what he's facing -- not that he's likely really concerned with that, his concern will be to react to it, who or what it really is can come later if at all... :rolleyes:
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Think there is a dis-connect between too big, 5-man crew and stealth. A 3-man crew like would have been on the XM800 would not have provided any dismount capability.
Depends on whether you waste a space on a Gunner or not. Having scouted for a number of years, in combat and out, with three man crews, Veh Cdrs man guns (or dismount) the third man, a Scout, dismounts (or mans the weapon). Which dismounts is METT-T dependent (the 'C' factor generally has nothing to do with it). Four is overkill, five is ridiculous. ;)
Part of the logic for three man scout crews was to keep the numbers up front down in a dangerous job to keep casualties lower...
The Cav 'problem' didn't exist from WWII until the stupid Bradley came along.
Scouts scouted (stealthy recon / economy of force efforts / screens), the Tanks and / or Infantry fought for info and did the delay, cover and guard msns supported by the Mortar and Scouts. It worked -- so we reinvented it so that it did not work. :mad: