Very good question...Originally Posted by JMA
Very good question...
This rounds it up nicely:
http://www.everyjoe.com/2014/06/30/p...they-carrying/
As does this:
Donkeys led by Lions
... but is anybody listening?
I would have thought comment on this document would have opened up a new line in this thread. Alas not. Where are the enquiring minds.
TE Lawrence lamented way back then of the British officer being too much body and too little head. Lind tells us that this crisis extends to the US military as well. Deeply troubling times.
I re-read that article and the thing about it that was even more distressing than the soldiers carrying too much weight was the HQs burdening themselves with so much useless make work that they are approaching the point where they can't function. They sling a lot of trons, the HQ people are all sleep deprived from overwork and mountains of 'product' are produced but they are approaching the point where they can't do what they exist for, guide and assist troops in combat. Napoleon and Grant did that for hundreds of thousands of men with pen and paper.
We are in a bad place.
"We fight, get beat, rise, and fight again." Gen. Nathanael Greene
I think Jim Storr's book 'The Human face of War' has been mentioned elsewhere; it looks at many modern aspects of modern war, not IIRC the weight of combat kit, certainly command & control. A paperback edition is due out, though not shown here:http://www.amazon.co.uk/Human-Face-W.../dp/1847065236
Thanks to JMA for the copy of the BAR article 'Donkeys Led by Lions'. As the BAR is still print only and kept within the UK military, very few outsiders will have seen that.
At a recent presentation a British soldier displayed his kit, he was the Section machine gunner and explained if he laid down he had to helped up so heavy was his load. Asked if it was practical he said no and hinted as much as possible was dumped If the OiC was brave enough and no-one was watching.
davidbfpo
Wider appreciation for risk aversion and overloading might be developed by ordering that duty wear for HQ personnel include body armour and 24 hours of water. Any such regimen would need to apply without exception.
It would presumably be necessary to enforce aperiodic checks of armour and containers.
The residual difficulty would be finding senior officers prepared to issue such orders.
So return to square one. The starting and restarting point where chiefs lay out unvarnished options and politicians make the decisions which can/should/might be publicised.
If you ask US Army LRS what type of missions they do in Afghanistan, they will give you answer - recce. Overt recce in Hummwees, more like kind of demonstrative overwatch. Only very few units dare to ditch body armour (one mission mentioned in "No Easy Day" - good book) including SOF units. If they go like: "OK don´t wear it, but if you get killed, your family probably gets no money" what you gonna do?
Just for adding a bit of (ironic) fun to this sad thread:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1X6HnOA88vw
(end of the video is relevant to our discussed problem)
Actually, this is an urban myth. For US military, SGLI pays out no matter the cause of death - suicide, not wearing PPE, etc. However, if he survives the wounds, the unit could court-martial him.
As for kneepads, they help when going prone too, especially in rocky terrain. A sharp hit in the shins is excruciating. The new combat pants with build-in knee pads are awesome and finally solve all the issues about the clunky straps and skiing or skateboarding derivatives with their bulkiness.
Tankersteve
Carl,
This weight issue will not easlily be solved. The rotations are getting shorter and as a result commanders only start to get the idea when they are on the way home.
From a book currently to hand - and a re-read for the umpteenth time we hear 20 year old 2Lt Sidney Jary who learned the lesson early after D-Day (1944) has to convince his new/replacement company commander to allow his platoon - which was to be the forward platoon of the forward company in the attack on the town of Bedburg - to leave the small packs behind so as to allow them to 'move faster'.
From page 102, 18 Platoon by Sidney Jary:
Carl, you will find this book worth the cost or the effort to find a cheaper copy someplace else as this outstanding officer managed, writing some 40 years after the war to explain his wartime experiences better than anyone else I know of. Much of what gets discussed around here were experienced back then and the lessons learned. Annoying that so many youngsters of today - and sadly others too - perfer to talk about issues rather than read to learn and benefit from the experiences of others. We remain a long way from enlightned discussion around here.I asked Freddie if 18 Platoon could fight without small packs until we had consolidated at Bedburg. If we could leave them on the Company transport with our picks and shovels we could certainly move faster. Freddie had not been with the Company when we had made our rapid advance at Vernonnet and did not understand the advantage that could be gained by very rapid movement in the type of situation which I sensed now existed. After some discussion, he finally agreed and 18 Platoon with considerable relief loaded their small packs into the 15 hundredweight Bedford.
Thanks for a good read tip JMA. Prices are insane, however I will try to ask around to borrow the book.
Sidney Jary and a bonus or two
I've not this book so wondered about the author. ARSSEE has this from 2008, which refers to other recommended books, only George McDonald Fraser's have I read:Link:http://www.arrse.co.uk/community/thr...platoon.88903/Yes I believe Sydney Jary is still very much alive and well. He is a regular contributor to the British Army Review (BAR). The latest issue BAR 144 has an excellent article by him on "Readjustment". This covers the end of the War in Germany and demob, as far as 18 Platoon were concerned. The Platoon have arrived at Wilstedt, North of Bremen, having fought all the way from Normandy to get there. It ends with Sydney leaving his beloved 18 Platoon of the SLI and going back to the Hampshires.
In my humble opinion his book - 18 Platoon, Brigadier ED "Birdie" Smiths - Even The Brave Falter, George MacDonald Frasers - Quartered Safe Out Here and Major Bill Bellamy's - Troop Leader are the best and most human books written about WW2.
Sidney Jary is still alive, he retired ten years ago from giving talks to officers cadets @ Sandhurst and is still spritely - from a friend who saw him recently.
In my Google search I found this fasconating extract from Anthony King's 2013 book 'The Combat Soldier: Infantry Tactics and Cohesion in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries (another book I'd missed, after all I've never been a soldier):http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=R...20Jary&f=false
Link to Amazon.uk for this expensive book:http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Combat-S...pr_product_top
Last edited by davidbfpo; 08-03-2014 at 12:16 PM. Reason: fix last link, thanks Kiwigrunt
davidbfpo
I'm wondering at the weight of 6 MREs. That's in the wrappers I presume ?
That's 48hrs of food. The equivalent British 24Hr Ration pack is about 2.1kgs packed or 4.6lbs ish. That's a 1lb shaved off. Once you start dumping stuff, I suspect you could shave at least 2lbs off and maybe 3.
From experience the MRE pack generates a mass of rubbish, nearly a large bin big per platoon the one time I lived on MREs as part of a Rifle Company on exercise in the States The 24Hr ration pack has nowhere near the same level of packaging as MREs
Unfortunately the only way how to get soldiers moving again is to dump body armour on missions which does not require body armour - or where is it downright counterproductive (recce). But it seems to me that ordinary infantry is doomed with incredibly stupid presence patrols forever, getting hunted instead of being hunters, doing only overt ops "Here I am shoot at me if you wish".
Agreed. The armor is 60% of the equation, the risk-averse overloading of batteries, water, C-IED, ammo and food is the rest of it. The terrifying thing is that in most of Afghanistan the "war" is very low risk, and even in the worst parts of Helmand and RC-East it can't be compared to Vietnam.
I think we all know what the problem is, but no one at upper levels has the moral courage to make changes. That, and the nature of limited wars means that few individuals, and zero institutions, are playing for a win.
Do the U.S. Army and Marine Corps have official doctrine on the use of body armor in jungle operations? That’s one environments where I find it hard to imagine that the benefits would outweigh the costs.
If you don’t read the newspaper, you are uninformed; if you do read the newspaper, you are misinformed. – Mark Twain (attributed)
I don't know. But your comment reminds me of something that I have for a long time thought would be a good idea. The military should wargame some old situations the we know the outcome of and introduce modern elements to see what effect they would have upon the outcome. The thing that made me think of this was the Marines fighting their way out of the frozen Chosin through Red Chinese light infantry. Would they have been able to do it if the Red Chinese had had something like shoulder fired anti-aircraft missiles, something that light infantry could carry, that would have kept the Corsairs and Skyraiders off their backs?
I asked Gian Gentile once if that had ever been done and I think he said he didn't know. But it would be an extremely useful thing to do now, especially in the light of your observation.
Say we took the example of the 5307th Composite Unit (Provisional), Merrill's Marauders. That unit operated for a long time in the tropics, depended upon mobility and eventually broke down because the men were just pushed too far. If people who knew what they were about looked at the experience of that unit and added 30 pounds of body armor to each man's load, what would the result be? That would be very useful, and probably alarming, information.
You could do the same thing with all of our WWII ops in the Pacific, with the 3rd Infantry Division's ops in Sicily, even with Roger's Rangers. You could do it with LRRPs in Vietnam. Those guys had important effects on the fighting. Could they have done it with 30 pounds of body armor?
The basic premise is that the need for those types of ops will arise again and when they do could the modern Army and USMC do what they successfully did in the past.
Last edited by carl; 07-20-2014 at 08:16 PM.
"We fight, get beat, rise, and fight again." Gen. Nathanael Greene
Importantly - for the Brits in Afghanistan - the vast majority of their movement has been within spitting distance of their FOBs where they have (mostly) medium mortars, artillery and a vehicle mounted Fire-support Team based with air support on call. For the British when did this 'load' madness start?
Last edited by JMA; 07-20-2014 at 03:19 PM.
We got a little bit better with a new ration that left out a ton of the BS packaging.
http://www.mreinfo.com/us/fsr/first-strike-ration.html
The development of the FSR came from the fact that prior to deployment, soldiers would "field strip" their MREs. Field stripping involves removing all the excess MRE packaging and unwanted items - bags, boxes, heaters, extra spoons, accessory packs, etc. Creative field stripping could reduce 3 MREs - one day's worth - down to the same size as a single MRE. While this practice reduced the soldier's load by only packing the most critical MRE parts, it also led to increased waste and a reduced consumption of food. A single FSR, which is 24 hours worth of food, is approximately 50% the size and weight of three MREs.
1 FSR = 2,900 calories
3 MREs = 3,800 calories
From the article you linked to comes this statement:
"The body armor and winning the war are mutually incompatible. If we can’t contemplate giving that up, at least as a day in, day out piece of equipment, then we need to contemplate simply giving up on fighting wars. Of course, ultimately that means our national extinction."
That strikes me as pretty profound statement.
"We fight, get beat, rise, and fight again." Gen. Nathanael Greene
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