Comparing the Modular BCT to the British Future Army Structure

As most are aware the U.S. modular HBCT is made of two CAB, an ARS, a FA BN, STB and BSB. The Brits might go to smaller brigades of around 4,000 made up of one armour BN, one armored infantry BN, one mechanized infantry BN, two light infantry BNs, and a reconnaissance regiment. Is this a truly combined arms brigade or are the Brits putting together a one size fits all brigade? Is this something the U.S. Army should consider - BCTs comprised of one armour BN, one mechanized BN, one Stryker infantry BN, one light infantry BN, and one ARS?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Future_...e_(Next_Steps)

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Originally Posted by gute

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Future_...e_(Next_Steps)

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This is probably already old new. With the sweeping cuts and changes announced in recent days I'd say anything can happen yet.

That's a lot of tooth and no tail- no CS/CSS at all. Well, the wiki article just says that there are no details on CS/CSS yet.

I don't see any way that these BDEs can come in at around 4000 pax, with 6 maneuver BNs.

I don't see any reason to mix that many BNs of differing types in a single BDE, at least in the US. It simply compounds the difficulty of training and preparing. The chances of a BDE leadership being capable of training that many different BNs effectively is very small, much less having CS/CSS that is flexible enough to effectively support all those different types of units. Its hard enough to develop those leaders to employ effectively, and training compounds this.

In the US, we have enough force structure to build relatively homogenous BDEs (the BCTs we currently have), and task organize if we need to in theater.

I would like to see a mix of different unit types on a post, so that the opportunity exists to work together in training, but that is higher level training, probably mission specific, not just generic METL tasks.

I've wondered about the feasibility of similarly organized units, hence these questions:

http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/...&postcount=143

http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/...4&postcount=83

The specific proposals, IIRC, were actually less about warfighting (ugly, neologism but we'll stick with it:wry:) and more about juggling personalle and force structure to an acceptable level (i.e., in terms of manning/funding/and that old bogey "the Treasury"). It was a way of justifying maintaing those capabilites rather than, say, have some suit/tie type turn up and say "you don't need tanks!" Jumbling the arms up like that was meant to "sell" combined arms (i.e., "we still need at least a bit of everything" to "donors".

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Originally Posted by Tukhachevskii

The specific proposals, IIRC, were actually less about warfighting (ugly, neologism but we'll stick with it:wry:) and more about juggling personalle and force structure to an acceptable level (i.e., in terms of manning/funding/and that old bogey "the Treasury"). It was a way of justifying maintaing those capabilites rather than, say, have some suit/tie type turn up and say "you don't need tanks!" Jumbling the arms up like that was meant to "sell" combined arms (i.e., "we still need at least a bit of everything" to "donors".

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It was certainly not about optimizing the force for war under a given budget.

The brain-melting effect of rotation schedules for small wars