Quote Originally Posted by Ken White View Post
My belief is that the Roles and Missions review and the QDR should provide the Army some guidance for the future and that the Army then needs to focus on, in order; the flawed personnel system, the flawed training system -- and then on the optimum, logical force structure; all the other stuff will flow from those three items.

There are those who will say I've got it backwards, the first two items I listed flow from the third. Don't think so. The current personnel system was designed to support a type Army (the pre 1940 model). It has had bandaids applied and a random tweak now and then but it is effectively totally obsolete and non responsive to the needs of the Army and the nation. It is in dire need of total redesign and that design needs to focus on providing effective personnel operations and support to what ever the Army of the day happens to look like...

Almost the same thing could be said of training; we have a pre 1940 system with grafts and patches. Most other Armies of any real use provide almost twice the training to new entrants that we do. Why is that? I have been embarrassed many times by US Officers and NCOs who didn't know as much as Brit, Canadian, German and Oz peons. Fix the training and the troops will cope with whatever force structure we throw at them.

ArNG and Reserve force structure needs less change; the Active force can endure change and fight a war at the same time. We did that in WW II, Korea, Viet Nam and we're doing it today. Doesn't make life easier but it can be handled. Be even easier with a functional Personnel system and better training.
Very much agreed on these points, and would be in no position to dispute them anyway. That said, if the HIC role was mostly transferred to the RC, just how long would it take to bring said Heavy forces up to snuff in MCO? Six months? That seems like just painting a big red bull's eye on said forces prior to dispatching them to the war zone. A year? If that were sufficient for a basic grounding in MCO, how could one ensure that the major war they were to be dispatched to would still be ongoing, or even if ongoing, still in a phase in which a major intervention would lead to victory? And, just to throw a monkey in the wrench (as this is most unlikely, but I'm drawing it to try to make a point), suppose an RC HIC force was pitted against a force of near-equal, equal, or even superior fighting quality?

The latter event, as I said, is most unlikely, but it is instructive to ponder the problems that Allied forces faced when fighting an enemy that was, for the most part, still its superior in quality, though in the midst of a precipitous decline in said quality, largely due to the sheer weight of losses suffered in operations in the East. Combined-arms MCO is the most unlikely form of warfare that will have to be faced during the foreseeable future, but it is by far the most difficult to prepare for and to master. It takes not months, not a few years, but several years at least to fully come to grips with, not just "passably", but with real proficiency. The RC manoeuvre brigades sent to ODS did not go into battle, and for good reason. Even with the six months' "grace" period that the Coalition was gifted with by the Iraqis, the RC combat brigades were not up to the job. Arguably, some of the AC units were not fully up to the job, either. Good thing the Iraqis were not up to the job at all.

I fear that there is a tendency in many quarters to overestimate the MCO proficiency of many "Top Tier" Armies, and to underestimate the difficulties of achieving real and thorough proficiency in those regards. It may be that HIC forces - especially Armoured Corps - are not required to make up as much of a proportion of the Active force structure as during the Cold War. One AC Heavy Corps may well be enough. But "Medium" Corps, composed in the main of regular (not Light) Infantry Formations may be more suitable to make up the bulk of the AC force structure, as they can perform in LIC and MIC with barely skipping a beat (if properly led and trained), won't break the procurement budget, and are best suited to most of the tasks that the Army is likely to face anyway. "Light" forces are probably best restricted to dedicated Parachute and Mountain formations, for the most part, and of course SF.

But all that force structure is predicated in the main upon holding to the highest levels of leadership and training. And not least, the substantial reduction of present overeseas committments. Three "Medium" Corps (along the lines of what Ken seems to be describing), a single Heavy Corps, and several Parachute and Mountain Formations (there seems little reason, other than training funds of course, for Parachute and Mountain units and formations to not be of the same quality as Ranger Battalions); Airmobile can be handled just fine by regular Infantry Formations, when the need to perform such operations arises.