Quote Originally Posted by Fuchs View Post
Which restrictions?
Well, a corps might order one division to give a Bde to another Div, but then you're again at a higher span of command for the latter division (and the div/bde staffs don't know each other). Keeping brigades under command of a specific division ties them together. You get bundles of brigades which you couldn't move as freely in a corps sector as you could without the division layer. That's one restriction.

A corps HQ has a picture of the corps area, issues missions to division HQs which in turn update their own intent and issue orders to brigades.
The lag in here should be obvious. Such a lag is a restriction on agility of command.


I'm not particularly interested in DS or OIF experiences. That's like boxing experiences based on punching ball training. The fact that there were problems at all is embarrassing. A competent army would have created very different challenges and a modern army structure should not be modelled with the least problematic and long since gone opfor in mind.
Yet, if OIF was of interest; the British 1 Armoured Division wasn't an effective HQ in that operation. It issued few orders, and those came often very late. The brigades pulled their weight.


By the way; the quotation marks (" ") are not for paraphrasing. Your third quote was paraphrasing and I would appreciate not to see false quotes.

I can assure you that nobody in the 50's thought of "synchronizing", for that is a much newer fashion - and mostly an anglophone fashion. There's an official military history book on the early years of the Heer (up to 1970) and it clearly tells us that the reason for the division in the second army structure was a political one. The German experts were advocating a brigade-centric army. The result was the Division 59, an often-copied structure which focused on the brigades and left only a small role for the division.
Example 1: Task Organization... you find your example a restriction... that Armies in general and the US in particular find the attachment of another maneuver force troublesome? Which decade and situation do you refer to??? 101st received a balanced TF during OIF and we couldn't be happier... and I KNOW if you asked the LTC or CPTs in that unit that they would overwhelmingly tell you we employed them properly... and in the end they wanted to wear our combat patch... they were fairly emphatic... we certainly didn't find them a burden... nor did they feel as if they were malused or somehow otherwise neglected... anecdotal evidence - certainly... any less rigorous than your hypethetical... nope

Example 2: Orders process... exactly how deliberate/regimented do you perceive the orders process to be in execution??? Corps finishes their order, then the Division starts, etc? Beyond the initial orders self-flagulation that might be CLOSER to reality, but not really representative of the parallel nature of the process... in combat the orders are actually without much delay at all because we've already done the staff work prior to receipt of the order... The fact that a British Division issued the order after the fact is not necessarily a condemnation... I don't KNOW, but I SUSPECT the order was meant to "clean up" the battlefield and formally capture the VOCO issued as commanders executed with CAT-like reflexes... an order as opposed to a FRAGO actually has a shelf life... since I don't presume that our British allies are a bunch of bungaling baboons... I think it likely to be closer to the truth

Example 3: DS and OIF are not valid... they are what we have in the last 20 years... so we should delve back to the 1940s or 1950s or 1960s as more representative of our likely future challenges??? Why is that? For which future challenges should we organize???..

False quotes... my deepest apologies... did I misrepresent the West German's allies by calling them collectively NATO? If so, mea culpa... For the record, I don't find the 1970's German Army particularly interesting so I guess we are even... However, for the sake of argument... that force would be used to do what??? defend the IGB... didn't have to deploy (actually was against the constitution right?) fought on intimately familiar terrain... known and well rehearsed OPLANS... hardened facilities and incredibly nice road and rail infrastructure... this is exemplar and more intellectually interesting than the fights of the past 20 years in terms of informing the future???

To be perfectly honest, I'm usually far more swayed by your logic