Cogent and accurate post, Reed.
As one who has been all three -- SF, Inf Recon and Cav -- I wholeheartedly agree with what you say. The SF intrusion into the reconnaissance and surveillance business was all about funding and mission turf expansion (and it hit at a low point in the fortunes of the US Army when McNamara's project 100,000 was in full bloom and training was being dumbed down). Spaces and budget slices. :rolleyes:
The Inf problem is partly that too many Inf Cdrs do not have a clue how to use their Recon capability and our 1980-2005 poor, dumbed-down training didn't help-- Armor branch is taking advantage of that to garner spaces...
The Cav problem is that they lost the bubble on Reconnaissance and became an 'economy of force' element and due to bad equipping decisions (and the aforementioned poor training system), Armor heavy and 'Hi diddle diddle right down' the middle oriented.
Much of our problem with recon is impatience -- some staff squirrel is afraid his Boss will ask a question he cannot answer so they drive their Recon elements into dumb situations and thus the perception that Recon is (a) too slow and (b) too dangerous to employ properly is thoroughly embedded in the heads of too many.
There are some exceptions to all the above but they are far too few. :mad:
Yes. It was a restorative period so far as
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Originally Posted by
Fuchs
Wasn't 1980-1992 supposed to be the great period of the U.S. Army resurrection after Vietnam and pot, before the bad, bad peace dividend a.k.a. Clinton??
personnel intake was concerned. Some very sharp enlisted and officer acquisitions as opposed to the 1970s dreg problem; thus my mention of McNamara's Project 100,00 (LINK), (LINK).
Aside from the problems that fiasco caused directly in the 70s and early 80s, many of those folks stuck around for 20 or 30 years and thus screwed things up far longer than they should have, they were also the real reason for the Army electing to adopt that dumbed-down Task, Condition and Standard training system. The 20 to 30 year dwell time of the 100K (actually, the total number recruited was greater) was the main reason that flawed system was allowed to stay -- it was all many could handle and in later years, they were senior NCOs... :rolleyes:
By the late 90s, that problem was gone, the training system was flawed and everyone knew it but too much was invested to change it even though it was not only an inadequate training process, it was virtually insulting to the really sharp and well educated enlisted and officer accessions from the mid 90s on.
Clinton wasn't responsible for the 'peace dividend' problem, George H.W. Bush did that. Clinton didn't know anything about the Armed Forces so he left them pretty much alone other than to misuse them in places like Somalia (which GHWB started but Clinton screwed up) and Bosnia.
Agree with you on the vehicles, problem is that to develop and field the ideal Recon vehicle would be an extremely expensive proposition and the fear that Recon assets are 'high risk' permeates the acquisition community. Their solution to low quantities with high risk is to not buy them.
Thus we have the M3 Bradley purchased as part of a deal between the then Chief of Armor and then Chief of Infantry, so we ended up with the Bradley and the Abrams because that deal killed off the M8 armored Gun system (just as well, that was poor vehicle also...)...
There are lots of options but Recon is not considered a vital skill in the US Army today so we likely will not pursue any of them. We were sort of going to but backed off (LINK). That will be regretted as soon as we have mid size or larger war. :mad:
One of my sons was 1SG in one of those at Bragg.
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Originally Posted by
82redleg
Each IBCT recon squadron has a dismounted recon company, authorized 2 x platoons of 28, 3 x 8-man "sections" plus PL, PSG and 2 x RTOs. In addition, the company has a 7-man sniper squad, a 6-man 60mm mortar section and a company HQ, but they aren't really involved in scouting, except for the maybe the snipers.
He was and is a minor force of nature, so while he was there, that Squadron's C Troop was totally, emphatically and positively into scouting. Period. When he left, it became a junior rifle Company... :rolleyes:
That they are not involved in Scouting is in part a function of the type of war we're in, in part due to lack of competent training, in part due to Infantry folks not being real sure what to do about reconnaissance (also a training shortfall) and lastly in part due to risk avoidance in not wanting to kick Squads and Platoons out on independent missions where someone might get hurt. The capability is there, it was designed to be there but is simply not being used. Hopefully we'll get smarter and train it for use when it is required.
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Regarding the LRS units, on the active side, the division LRSDs are no more, AFAIK. I know that 82nd LRSD went to the CAB and became a Pathfinder Company, although they still call themselves LRS. The Corps LRS-C still exists, but has been rolled into the 1-38 CAV in 525 BfSB. I've heard that they have stood up a new LRS-C in the BfSB at FT Hood, but I don't know for sure.
One of the ongoing turf battles which will likely destroy the US Army long before any enemy does... :mad:
The LRS mission is not a SOF mission and it is emphatically not a SF mission --yet the SOF folks think the LRS mission should go to them. The MI folks are not comfortable with a bunch of rowdy parachute types who aren't really "intelligence trained (read; the right branch...). Yet, the LRS Cos have long been associated with and / or asgd to MI Bns and Bdes.
The LRS mission and units(Infantry, not SOF or MI people) to do it have been around since WW II with only a short hiatus in the late 40s. The concept fluctuates in popularity with senior leaders. That shouldn't be the criteria. The criteria should be what is required and who can best do it.
Using SF to do it is waste of expensive skills not required for the mission...
Chinese snipers in the Korean War and British snipers on the Western Front
The translation is mine and I take responsibility for any errors:
Sniping by PLA forces in the Korean War started in early 1952 when the 230th Communist Youth League Regiment brought with them some ‘special grade shooters’. These were sharpshooters and not specially trained snipers but as the Chinese People’s Volunteers referred to them as snipers that is what I will call them in this article. They employed captured United States M-1 Garand semi-automatic rifles and Soviet Mosin-Nagant 1891-30 bolt-action rifles without telescopic sights. The maximum engagement range was between 400 and 500 metres with the average engagement range around 100 metres. Spread along the front and operating in teams of one to two men, one acting as an observer and the other the shooter, they killed or wounded 14 enemy soldiers for the expenditure of 29 rounds according to Chinese sources. Special ranges were built for their use, utilizing both fixed and disappearing targets.
In the First World War British Army, snipers and Vickers medium machine gunners, were loathed by front line soldiers. After they did their mission they went back behind the lines and the British infantry recieved heavy Minenwerfer fire in return - no good deed goes unpunished.
The PLA also used M1Cs that had been transferred
to China after WW II and which they captured or obtained when the Nationalists were defeated in '49. Their Snipers weren't bad, weren't terribly good, either (up through late fall '52; don't know about later). They also had some dedicated marksmen, not snipers, in most units.
Nope, no references -- just recall seeing racks of M1Cs
(or possibly M1Ds, hard to tell from a distance) from the Army Depot on Guam loaded along with many more plain M1s, many BARs and Browning MGs (both .30 cal models) plus much other surplus equipment on the blue and yellow LSTs of the Nationalists in 1946-7 for transfer to mainland China. Chepaer to give it to them than send it home. Also a better deal, I guess, than dropping it into the Mariana Trench -- the fate a lot stuff left in the Pacific at the end of the war.
Doesn't mean the PLA ever got hold of 'em so I should have been more explicit and put a perhaps in there. Apologies for not doing so.
The Marines never used the M1C or D to my knowledge (other than those few traded or lifted from the Army :D ). In China, 1945-49 they had the USMC M1941 Sniper rifle (a star gauged '03 with a 7.8 power Unertl scope). Late in Korea, they had the USMC Model 1952 Sniper rifle which looked like but was not an M1C/D. It mounted, IIRC, a Square D (Kollmorgen) scope. It was not well liked.
I do know 5th Marines captured at least one M1C/D from the Chinese in mid 1952 but how it got there is not known to me.
Reed:
You don't need any help, you're doing just fine...
I'd add that Viet Nam totally wrecked Army recon at Battalion level, it still hasn't recovered. The concentration on the NTC and north German Plain in the 70-90 period didn't help. Iraq and Afghanistan will further erode that level unless someone gets smart. In the 50s and early 60s, most Divisions ran a recon school and had a Recon platoon competition annually.
There is an LRS leaders course at Benning (or there was) plus, LRS guys in Germany get to go to the NATO International LRS School at Weingarten. There are some who get to attend other nation's recon courses and also to USMC courses.