provided there is applied training and exercise
Your questions have been often asked. They were particularly well examined and answered by commentators like Ogorkiewicz and Simpkin in their books and also articles in Military Technology published several decades ago.Originally Posted by Distiller
And the general answer is ‘yes’. To do anything else would be careless because all infantry are firstly trained to be resourceful and aggressive when fighting on their feet, essentially as light infantry. Fighting from within vehicles demands a different type of endurance and a different skill set including maintenance. Neither of those require a vehicle crew of eight or more men. And a standard section of about eight infantry is about the minimum for versatility and staying power. A section of that size can also be augmented by a three or four–man weapon team from the platoon or company without becoming too cumbersome to control and manoeuvre.
However, light infantry operations can – without exception – benefit from vehicle support as a means of rapid, less tiring and protected transport, sometime source of observation and offensive/defensive fire, systems support and mobility and also as an arms-room, Q-store, kitchen and casevac post. What varies is the distance between dismounted infantry and their supporting vehicle – whether that be a GS truck or light-medium-heavy ground-based armour vehicle or watercraft, or in another context a STOL or VTOL aircraft. And a standard infantry section of about eight enables the overall size of that vehicle to be restrained.
Light infantry/armour co-operation was around for more than a millennia before Hannibal and his elephants. Modern infantry/armour co-operation has been productive in most environments since WW I and generally the closer together the better. Armour – MBTs, AEVs and APCs - proved unexpectedly useful in heavily vegetated areas in WWII and more recently in South Vietnam.
The result is that close coordination of armour and dismounted infantry is generally regarded as beneficial in defence and productive in offence for all environments and all forms of conflict – extending from prompt delivery of heavy firepower, combat engineering resources and concentrated and diffused infantry manoeuvre to passive overwatch and less vulnerable sentry in peacekeeping operations. APC concepts and capabilities have also been enhanced to produce not only AIFVs but also heavier armoured ‘battle wagons’ such as the German Lynx and Israeli Namer. And there are Ogorkiewicz and Simpkin concepts that have yet to be realized.
Usage improves with applied training, familiarity and frequent exercise but that does not require the infantry-carrying armoured vehicle to be operated by infantry. As implied by you, the mobility component or crew – driver, vehicle commander and gunner(s) or systems/weapon operator(s) - is better composed of personnel from an Armoured Corps. Most armoured vehicles have specialised systems and weapons and the vehicles themselves need attentive maintenance. So who better to crew infantry-carrying armoured vehicles than those specialists who already crew generally similar armoured vehicles that transport cavalry scouts. And the pool of Armoured Corps personnel can anyway be boosted by cross-corps recruiting of infantry who may have ‘lost’ some agility or fitness due to age or accident such as to an ankle during a parachute jump. That and other types of accident are prevalent in active training and often result in premature retirement.
It is in the nature of campaigns that after operating with one type of armoured vehicle for some period, a light infantry unit might be deployed to another operational area as light infantry, or as infantry mounted in another type of armoured vehicle more suited to that operational area. That type of rota is especially likely during operations conducted on a basis of periodic deployment or re-deployment.
There is the old furphy that an Armoured Corps crew may lack the knowledge and drive to deliver the infantry section where and how it needs to go. So some stalwarts strenuously argue that the infantry section commander should - instead of advising the vehicle commander – have command until the infantry dismount. However, after basic training and reasonably frequent exercise together (plus in some instances specific-to-operation rehearsal) the typical vehicle commander and typical section commander are likely to function well enough regardless of which is in substantive command.
But there is almost always an exception. And here is one such. There are several distinct types of infantry carrying armoured surface vehicle: light, medium and heavy wheeled and tracked. The least capable but also the least expensive to procure and operate is the light (less than 20 tonnes) wheeled APC. The Australian Army has decided that it is generally adviseable to transport an infantry section in an armoured vehicle. As a result many of the GS trucks in its regular and in some reserve light infantry battalions are being effectively replaced by about 800 Bushmaster 4x4 Protected Mobility Vehicles: an austere type of APC with V-shaped hull, blow-off external lockers and sacrificial wheel stations, some with Platt mounts but all currently without a shield or small turret. ( There are also two so-called armoured infantry battalions equipped with a mix of obsolescent M113A1 and modernised M113A3 APCs with an extra wheel station and upgraded engine, systems, spall liner and turret.)
The exception is partly due to the Bushmaster PMV having only ten seats. Hence - whenever it is required to carry a standard 8-man infantry section plus a 2-man command, engineer or other special team - an infantryman from the section has to be the designated driver and vehicle minder. And that seems to anyway be standard procedure in order to avoid having to increase battalion strength by about 100 drivers.
However, it is pleasing to note that AustArmy are ahead of the pack at the lightweight end of the protected mobility field. The US Army and USMC might find it convenient to employ the lighter variants of their MRAV vehicles in much the same way, provided they have independent springing rather than beam axles.
Unfortunately as a bitter aside AustArmy have mucked up the heavy end. It has only 59 M1A1(AIM)D Abrams MBTs on strength and not even one squadron can be deployed because for mobility support there is only a batch of M88A2 Hercules ARVs that rely on dissimilar spares. There is strangely not one AEV nor AVLB. So AustArmy may continue to perform at the light end but will have to rely on some other force such as the US Army and/or USMC to do any heavy lifting.
Returning to the basic question, it is generally preferable for each infantry battalion to be trained and primarily equipped as light infantry ? The answer has to be 'YES'.
If a battalion is issued with austere wheeled PMV-type vehicles then the unit might itself provide the driver and any weapon/systems operator for each vehicle. All other types of wheeled and tracked armoured infantry-carrying vehicles should be crewed by specialist drivers, commanders, gunners etc from an Armoured as opposed to the Infantry Corps. And groups or units of such vehicles should be attached to infantry units for periodic training and exercise, for specific operations and for more extended periods of use.
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