Quote Originally Posted by Cavguy View Post
As an Armor guy, I'm not shedding any tears for the demise of FCS. Its fundamental assumptions were invalid - namely - that "information=force protection", and risk could be assumed with armor in favor of deployability. If "information dominance" would protect us, we wouldn't be losing soldiers to IED's. Like EBO, FCS tried to eliminate fog and friction from war, instead of embracing it and developing systems to compensate.

Combat experience in Iraq, Afghanistan (CDN), and Israel have all demonstrated the necessity of heavy armor in urban combat. I am all for a recapitalized fleet and new vehicles with less maintenance/logistics requirements, but not at the expense of combat effectiveness. One size fits all approaches rarely work well, we need a mix of high/low capabilities.
Agree totally and completely. A key phrase used by Gates, that I doubt any of the media picked up on, was "full spectrum." Based on the new FM 3-0, that has a very specific meaning - and I hope he was revealing his intent when he used it.

Quote Originally Posted by Cavguy View Post
Not necessairly, as you need both capabilities. What matters is how we organize. Do we need large armored formations for COIN? No. Do we need heavy armor to support troops in COIN? Absolutely.

I wrote a post awhile back on how I tasked organized a heavy company team for COIN - and thought it was pretty successful and flexible. It provided dismounted ability to engage the population with the firepower needed to support those dismounted troops when the sh*t hit the fan (and potentially discourage those who saw an easy and exposed target.

My flexible MTOE with the ability to customize forces to the mission was the key ingredient. My tankers sometimes used the tanks and sometimes acted as infantry. My mech guys did all kinds of varied tasks, as did the combat engineers. The mission/environment dictated our equipment set, not the other way around.

One of my big pushes is doing a better job at executing up front system analysis to translate desired capabilities into system functions that support the intended doctrine. That means evaluating effectiveness across the entire spectrum, a wide variety of missions, and working with the user community to provide systems that have the kind of flexibility to let you do that.