Are snipers and recon still valid in infantry battalions?

[Ken White]

But it's not a "good unit, bad unit" thing. It's a micro-culture thing.

Which exists -- and I'm not sure it's micro; all I contend is that good units can override that and the few really good ones do so.I'm basing my thought they still do on my son's experience as a Scout Dude in good and not so good units in recent years.

Even the best units get to the point where they don't see their own micro-cultural bias.

Best units, good people, most everyone falls into that trap on occasion.

Personally, based on working at the CTCs plus a couple of deployments, I disagree with the assertion that more units use their low-density specialties correctly. It certainly seems like more units misuse them than not.

I don't think I said that they did (though someone else may have). Even good units frequently fail on that depending on human variables. A bad S3 can destroy all the work of a good Commander and god Co Cdrs. FWIW from 1950 until I left troops in 1984, most Commanders did not know how to use their reconnaissance units. Specialty platoons and sections were very much dependent on their leaders; the good ones produced good people and good performance, the mediocre ones did not. I don't expect that's changed...

I don't see why a guy who isn't suited to the infantry "mindset" ...has to leave the army. All God's critters got a place in the choir, etc., when it comes to this here Army, which means we're discussing something we probably agree about. My point is that really good infantry guys probably won't make really good recon or sniper guys. It takes a different mindset, imo.

On staying or leaving, given a war, that becomes moot, in peacetime my point was that if it annoys someone, I can't see why they'd keep beating their head against the wall. However, people differ. He sure doesn't have to leave but if it irritates him for whatever reason (say more than three days a week ) then I don't see why he'd put up with it...

FWIW, LRS hasn't been disbanded, they're still in being, are being used and are doing some good stuff. They do have the problem of risk averse folks being afraid to use them properly but that's not an Infantry mindset, that's an Army mindset.

I don't really disagree on the mindset but my WAG is that about a third can do both jobs with obvious ranking from great to good (and not necessarily for most the same ranking in all three jobs), about a third are suited for either one or the other but not both with the Scout obviously being more demanding and the remaining third probably should have another job somewhere -- but are likely to be tolerated in the Infantry if there's a war on.[quote]Well, post 1991, upon the dissolution of the Cavalry Regiments, Divisional CAV became a mini-regiment, and absorbed the kinetic missions. This resulted in much less recon capability, ... so there really isn't a persistent direct observation capable force in the current force mix.[quote]Agree on that based on what I've seen -- we have lost the track on scouting and reconnaissance. Sadly, that trend goes all the way back to Viet Nam -- we did not properly use the assets and skills we had in that war; we took a lot of good Cav and Recon units who were not bad prior to going to Viet Nam and totally misused them. The skills got lost. We picked up a lot of really bad habits in that war, including micro management. In the reinvention of the Army post VN, Reconnaissance got passed over for going out Armored and looking for bear. Bad answer. Commanders also, as a result of the CTCs and their time compression lost the ability to be patient enough for the Recon elements to do their jobs. That's why the CTC OpFor always out-reconned the Rotation. That and knowing and using the terrain.

I don't disagree with WILF's or your assertions, but in tangential degrees.

Nor do I really disagree with your points as amplified but my initial point was, "I hear what you're saying but it ain't THAT bad." Which I can't say, really, now that I think about it. I can say it wasn't that bad 30 plus years ago but today's not in my vision block FOV...

I'm pretty sure it shouldn't be and sorta sure it doesn't need to be that bad, tho'

[Infanteer]

The skills got lost. We picked up a lot of really bad habits in that war, including micro management. In the reinvention of the Army post VN, Reconnaissance got passed over for going out Armored and looking for bear. Bad answer. Commanders also, as a result of the CTCs and their time compression lost the ability to be patient enough for the Recon elements to do their jobs. That's why the CTC OpFor always out-reconned the Rotation. That and knowing and using the terrain.

Interesting points and discussion on Recon (or, more properly, Recce...).

We are seeing a similar debate in our Army with Armoured Recconaissance units being slated to lose their Coyotes (LAV-25s) for the forthcoming JLTV. Issues with losing a fighting vehicle for a tough truck and debates as to what Recce really is.

As I mentioned before, we have a new manual on this which is pretty good at encapsulating all arms recce.

I find the argument of "saber or stealth" to be interesting - is recce "scouting" or "cavalry"? I caught this at an AUSA presentation a while back and found it interesting.

http://www3.ausa.org/pdfdocs/lwp_53.pdf

We had a long debate about it on a forum here, if anyone is interested.

http://forums.army.ca/forums/index.p...c,35526.0.html

I'll take the time to read through this thread again and try and offer more.

Cheers,
Infanteer

[jcustis]

The bit that resonates with me from the saber vs. stealth work is the part about every fight being a movement to contact.

With the exception of the attack across the berm (and even that suffered from poor targeting and templating) into the Safwan Hill region, I felt I had very little information to work with, and even as our LAV-25s led the 1st Marine Division, we spent more time almost stumbling into contact than confirming the presence of enemy forces. Confirmation came at times through leading with our chin.

Follow-on forces benefited to some degree, but the snoop-and-poop techniques did not support the tempo that was required by CFLCC, and we spent more time dashing forward than was probably doctrinally prudent.

[Ken White]

Follow-on forces benefited to some degree, but the snoop-and-poop techniques did not support the tempo that was required by CFLCC, and we spent more time dashing forward than was probably doctrinally prudent. (emphasis added /kw)

Against a reasonably competent peer enemy; yep...

There's a time and place for both types of 'recon / recce' and the good leader or commander will use the correct one -- sometimes bad staff officers who forget they are not commanders 'require' speed that the Commander isn't even aware of because they think that'll please the commander. Staff types should just do their job and stop trying to impress the Commandante.

The old saw "There's never enough time to do it right but there's always time to do it twice" sort of applies. Some times you just have to trade bodies for progress or forward movement -- usually you do not but our impatience often leads us to do it when it is ill advised and totally unnecessary.

[William F. Owen]

There is some compelling sets of data that show, except in open desert, average rates of advance since 1918 are < 2km per hour, and often substantially less. 30km per day is considered good.

[Fuchs]

There is some compelling sets of data that show, except in open desert, average rates of advance since 1918 are < 2km per hour, and often substantially less. 30km per day is considered good.

Average and median are really of little interest.

A WW2 armoured corps with 40 km/h tanks* advanced 400 km in quite exactly four days- against the opposition of several conventional divisions in suboptimal tank terrain (Manstein's Corps to Vilnius).


Advance through defence is of little interest today in general. There are enough gaps for advance, and no continuous line of defence. You don't need to advance through deep defensive positions in most conventional warfare scenarios.
You can - if you prepare well for it - rather go back to an extremely accelerated version of Central European 18th century army maneuvers (Wars of Silesia as examples).
Speed of advanced in defended terrain was irrelevant then and it is (almost) today.



*: (that needed maintenance every hour of driving in order to prevent excessive breakdowns)

[William F. Owen]

Average and median are really of little interest.

A WW2 armoured corps with 40 km/h tanks* advanced 400 km in quite exactly four days- against the opposition of several conventional divisions in suboptimal tank terrain (Manstein's Corps to Vilnius)

So that figure is a sound basis for discussion, based on the fact it happened once?

Advance through defence is of little interest today in general. There are enough gaps for advance, and no continuous line of defence. You don't need to advance through deep defensive positions in most conventional warfare scenarios.

On what do you base that assertion. You are stating a fact?
How do you know where the enemy defence is? Finding the defence is the problem we are discussing.

You can - if you prepare well for it - rather go back to an extremely accelerated version of Central European 18th century army maneuvers (Wars of Silesia as examples).
Speed of advanced in defended terrain was irrelevant then and it is (almost) today.

So how do we do this? What do you suggest as useful data sets around which to base a discussion?