Quote Originally Posted by Rifleman View Post
Would it be worthwhile (or even feasible?) to combine the artillery and mortar specialites?

Assuming that it's feasible, having a soldier roatate from a firing battery to a mortar platoon and then back again throughout his career might help with the mindset problem.

Just speculating.
It is not desirable. A combined indirect fire support branch would lead to material standardization - unavoidably towards the more capable artillery. That would give greater range to organic fire support, which would thus most likely become centrally controlled and used for tasks such as counter-artillery fires and interdiction instead of fire support in combined arms battle.
The maneuver units would in the end lose much (if not all) of their organic indirect fire support.

It is necessary to keep artillery and mortars apart to preserve the combined arms capability of combat teams (brigades). That in itself doesn't suffice, though - as evidenced by the crappy brigade TO&E of the German army.



I would address the mindset differently, and this has much to do with the division of teeth and tail in general.

Earlier armies had warriors and a supporting attachment of traders, drivers, craftsmen, engineers, clerks and whores.
That attachment was almost eradicated around 1800 and had a huge comeback (this time uniformed) during the 20th century (beginning with railroad troops).

Today's non-line-of-sight combat troops are essentially the modern version of the traders, drivers, craftsmen, engineers and clerks known from history.
It doesn't suffice to give them basic training and a uniform to make a real difference.
You need to arm and train them properly to turn support troops into real soldiers. A six month basic training coupled with a full infantry armament (including mortars and AT weapons capable to take on average MBTs) plus alternative training periods (like staffs and artillery units training to be defensive infantry a month per year) might do the trick.

This would be beneficial in many regards, including in times of crisis when the infantry and tank inventory might be depleted, nevertheless there would still be thousands of fighters left in a brigade.