Quote Originally Posted by William F. Owen View Post
I strongly disagree with tying infantry to a vehicle type, but I strongly agree that vehicles are essential for most infantry operations.
Agree. It could be a pretty substantial list of benefits, from area of ground that can be dominated to the security provided to soldiers for a bit of rest to the sustainability afar.

The balance comes from higher level managed readiness and a good grip on the troops:task ratio. If I know we are going to a jungle, I probably want to focus a chunk of my force on airmobility and living dismounted (or light). I use the appropriate work-up time to focus on these, while still tucking those mounted skills to the back should a more suitable venue come up in the future.

Loosing trained infantry to crew vehicles makes no financial or military sense, unless they are specialist crews. IMO, the best way of maintaining the skills without the vehicles is to have vehicles organized separately from the dismounts. Something like:
  • Vehicle Platoon = 4 Vehicles + 12 Crew
  • Infantry Platoon = 28 infantry

90% of the training can be done separately, providing you are doing the right training.
This is something I used to believe, but don't anymore after commanding a platoon armed with the LAV III. You don't lose bayonets to the crew anymore than you lose bayonets to be a number 2 on a GPMG or a mortar. The vehicle is a tool and nothing else. We have no qualms training infantryman to drive trucks or shoot crew-served weapons, so why is it all of the sudden an issue when we package those capabilities into a good fighting vehicle. It takes no longer to train these skills than any other PCF (Primary Combat Function - as we call them up here) skills such as recce patrolman, assault pioneer (now gone), mortarman (now gone), etc, etc.

We've discussed the idea of splitting the vehicles from the infantry and brigading them at the Company or Battalion level or going with a "Taxi" battalion of vehicles for a Brigade and the possibility of having armoured crewman crew the vehicles at another place I haunt (army.ca). None of these get around the difficulties associated with this (what happens if your driver goes down as I've had?) and quite lives up to the advantages of having integral crews. Owning the vehicle and its crew at the section and platoon level seems, to me, the easiest and most effective way of doing business. You crew your vehicle and you can provide backups or rotate for rest if your spending a long time mounted (something I've also done).

What needs to be systematized, or at least more properly thought out, is the proper ratio of training with vehicles to training without vehicles and how driving-gunning-crew commanding fits into the development of an infantry soldier (in conjunction with patrolling, helo ops, crew-served weapons, urban ops and all those other good skillsets) and how we balance rifleman's duties in a vehicle (when the unit is using one) and outside of one.