Ah, but where is your sense of adventure? We’ll just attach the DivCav Squadrons to the... uh, “whatever” brigades. After all, the DivCav *was* part of the Air Combat Aviation Brigade in the old Division86/Army of Excellence designs – and we *do* still have one ACAB per division…Originally Posted by TAH
My bad on the HBCT. I thought that's what was going to happen based on what they did with the two Guard ACRs. But 2nd went SBCT a while back.
Agree with all of your comments on the BFSB.
But....
The concept of separate battalions in a division is now gone.
Prior to modularization/transformation, we had "type" divisions: light, airborne, air assault, mechanized and armored (we will set aside 2 ID).
While each type was different, they did share a common set of units (battalions and companies) organic to the "Division Base". Those were: an ADA Bn, an Engineer Bn, an MI Bn, a Signal Bn, MP and NBC companies and a Cavalry Sqdrn. All gone now. Re-orged into either a BCT or a modular Support Brigade.
So, the discussion of adding an additional Bn to the division is moot. Sorry.
Back in the days of 2nd ACR (Light), we called two dozen Humvees out on recon missions a “light cav troop”. Now two dozen Humvees, a company of grunts, and an unnecessarily larger grouping of MI weenies calls itself a “brigade”. (…and only 4 UAVs! A single platoon, added almost as an after-thought) Delusions of grandeur…
Seriously, more MI personnel does not equal more actionable, accurate intelligence.
In the first moment that I saw the new BCT organization, just a glance, I saw two combat battalions and a cav squadron. I reflexively assumed that the cav squadron was similar to the old DivCav, and thought “Huh, that could work. A cav unit for economy of force, to hold everywhere else, and two battalions for a one-two punch.”
Sadly, of course, that turned out not to be the case. The cav/scouts organizations look like the pieces that they had left over, after shattering the old MTOEs. Can’t really fight, can’t /won’t be allowed to /don’t want to do recon, either. Recall that 3/7 Cav, a DivCav organization with 3 ground troops, 41 Bradleys and 27 M1 tanks, led the way deep into Iraq, quite successfully. It’s quite ironic that the DivCav, and now, finally, the last of the Heavy ACR’s, is being totally dismantled despite proven combat effectiveness, despite being the most modular organizations in the entire Army for *decades*, dismantled in the name of modularity. Absurd. (And don’t complain about a heavy ACR didn’t fit into ArForGen and RIP-TOA, etc. Thinking that every problem on the battlefield happens to be exactly two combat battalions big at all times is a fantasy.)
(BIG CAVEAT – everything below is NOT referring LRS, but to heavy Cav units)
Seeing enough of the Army, staring at enough MTOEs, and reading enough history, and I am convinced that, at the end of the day, you’d better have some organizations that can fight. That, and perhaps we are trying to “push a noodle uphill” with regards to recon. (I agree with the "Scouts Out" paper - Cav units are used to fight, because that is what commanders need the most - so let's dispense with the facade.)
We are supposed to defer to the judgment of the commander on the ground.
Recon and cavalry organizations often end up in direct fire combat. Sometimes it’s because that it what the commander wants. Commanders have made a very CLEAR and CONSISTENT choice to either explicitly task or tacitly allow Cav organizations to fight. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t… sometimes it is merely necessary - but that is just like any other military endeavor. Perhaps it’s time to admit that there may be a good reason for this. Perhaps we should admit that we only think that we need way more intelligence than we will ever actually be able to get in real life, or that we’d change what we were doing in the face of that perfect intelligence if we ever did somehow get it.
I know, I know, with brigades/battalions at NTC, if the scouts got decisively engaged they got destroyed, and if the scouts got destroyed, then the whole unit did as well. (Looking back at the numbers, I don’t recall the ones where the scouts actually lived doing so hot, either.) Well, what did we expect? 6 Bradleys just got swallowed up so fast (just a few mechanical breakdowns, and you are at 50%). 10 Humvees can easily get eaten alive just as quick on real-world battlefields that are far “messier” than the battlefields of simulations or even the NTC.
I’d say the real problem was that, IF we really wanted to do recon, then we didn’t have enough scouts – which admittedly, the current BCT does finally have. Notably, scouts can also fight better than the ever-increasing numbers of MI people that turn up in every tiny tweak to the TOEs. I think that MI branch has actually managed to grow from the numbers it had back in the 80’s, when Army end-strength was vicinity 800,000 (and now it is down to what, 547,000-ish).
In the end, in a US Army that expects to fight outnumbered, why wouldn't we want formations to have an good, solid economy-of-force Cav outfit that can fight? (Even more so, given only two combat battalions per brigade...)
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