Mechanized Infantry Perceptions 2010

[Compost]

The talk was also about units rotating roles, and consequently rotating equipment.

OK now realise you were writing about post 22. And agree rotating complex equipment without trained operators is counter productive.

However there is at least one ready alternative. In some garrison districts (US) and in any small heavily populated country (Germany and UK) some light infantry battalions presumably receive useful familiarisation in infantry-armour operations by regularly training and exercising with a tank company/squadron plus AEVs, ARVs and possibly AVLBs. All of that heavy armour would invariably come with crews.

Surely such short duration loan, attachment or whatever of heavy armour could be productively complemented by similar loan or attachment of armoured carriers complete with crews from an armoured or mechanised infantry battalion. And if the loan involved a 6-passenger (!!) Lynx, then the ‘excess’ from two light infantry sections might be combined in a third such vehicle.

http://www.army.gov.au/lwsc/docs/Owe...l_Infantry.pdf

Possible? - sure.

Good idea? - Probably only for small armies (smaller than corps-sized).

Looking back at post 10 can see that you were in part correct there also but with bolded provisos as below. (How’s that for a restrained type of compliment ?)

Small armies should standardise on ‘light’ infantry units and employ them interchangeably (with frequent training and exercise) as light when foot-mobile and/or motorised in PMVs, as mechanised when in APCs (crewed by armour specialists), and armoured when in AIFVs and ‘BCs’ (similarly crewed by armour specialists).

Obviously believe larger armies would be well advised to do the same. Why ? Because presumably if they are consistent AEVs and AVLBs are crewed by combat engineers, while ARVs (with driver, commander and mechanics) are entirely crewed by auto mechanics.

Similarly if AIFVs and APCs are entirely crewed by infantry then the vehicle crew for artillery observation carriers consists entirely of artillerists etc etc. So before long almost every specialised arm is operating and maintaining its own carriers. That makes for a large number of sub-specialties.

However, the US Army tried that for a number of years after World War II and while not totally unsatisfactory, two glaring problems did occur causing the concept to be discarded.That's one and it's the biggest problem. The concept places the carriers at the whim * of not only the organization that owns the carriers but the next higher headquarters. Carriers tended to be yanked or moved at inopportune times occasionally leaving units both exposed and relatively immobile as well as Carriers sometimes being left 'unprotected.'

My comment was

If that absence is prolonged then it makes operational and financial sense for that unit of vehicles together with crews to be re-tasked and attached elsewhere.

Prolonged was intended to mean days or weeks rather than hours. However, concede such exposure and reduced mobility could occur but only if that type of staff work had not previously managed to cause a unit’s destruction.

A second problem was the Carrier organization naturally placed a premium on protecting its vehicles (and crews) while the transported unit was more concerned with their folks and the their mission. This led to discord at Squad / Section, Platoon, Company and higher levels on occasion -- said discord extending to deliberately damaged carriers by uncontrolled transported Troops and precipitous and unauthorized abandonment of transported troops by carriers units. A side issue was that individual carrier crews often had no real grounding in the mission and thus, in event of loss of their transported Infantry were often at a loss on what should be done.

A minor issue is that in event of a thrown track or other mechanical problem where help to the crew from the transported element would have been beneficial, the transported lacked the knowledges and skills needed and so, often, several Carriers were out of action so that the crews could combine to work on one while the hapless Infantry just stood and watched.

None of that is to say that such a system does not work at all, it merely indicates that as is true of any compromise, there are minor issues that affect outcomes. A smaller, more cohesive Army might not have any of those issues. Then again, it might...

* One can say that whim (or misplaced priorities) has no place in combat operations, that all troops should be better disciplined and that the joint mission should drive the behavior of all concerned. One can say all that. Whether one can get a bunch of random, thrown together humans under the stress of combat and with no particular loyalty to each other as occurs in large Armies to behave so properly is another issue...

The change to all-volunteer regulars and ‘genuine’ reservists has presumably assisted in reducing such unnecessary abandonment and also vandalism.

But perhaps infantry designated as mechanised or armoured do tend to behave like travellers on a luxury busline, where each crew and passenger seat can cost more than $500K or E500K......

Nonetheless that sort of thing is unlikely on a back-country tour bus because there – excepting any sick or decrepit – dismounted passengers are commonly expected to help with wheel changes and with levering and pushing the bus out of muddy ground.

Well-trained infantry can furthermore make use of the mothership concept (additional equipment in the vehicle) in order to be versatile without carrying all stuff all the time.

The mothership concept doesn't work well if dismounted element and vehicle element are separated much. You might end up having the heavy AT stuff in a vehicle 20 km behind and higher command expecting you to set up an ambush against armoured recce because your TO&E tells them that you're capable of it.

Light infantry do not have to move extra loads by backpacking. There are many types of small self-powered load carrying vehicle such as the 2-wheel cross-country motor bike and ATVs with 3, 4 and 6 wheels. If such vehicles are not available or usable then – provided the AT load is breakbulk to say 80kg - infantry can use manually pushed/pulled load carriers with side-by-side wheels that resemble foldable golf trolleys or in-line wheels that look like stripped down mountain bikes.

The small self-powered vehicles may have to be moved in a truck or on a trailer. The conceptual push/pull load carriers might when unladen be simply tied onto the sides, roof or rear of a GS truck, PMV, APC or whatever.

After this its time to get back to my mound of books, notes etc and get gassed up for some other topic.