Quote Originally Posted by Tukhachevskii View Post
The HMWWVs in your recon elements always intrigued me. What was the rationale (assuming there was one) for marrying them with BFVs rather than more BFVs or even MBTs?
General Purpose (GP -- precursor for the once ubiquitous 'Jeep') equipment rather than sensibly buying designed for purpose items.

The M3 Bradley was a political compromise purchased by the Armor and Cavalry folks to assure that the Infantry folks (who were buying the M2 Bradley) supported their buy of the M1 Tank. A part of the cost was cancellation of the XM8 Armored Gun system and of a dedicated Scout vehicle. The HMMWV is a lousy scout vehicle but is the standard, GP 'light' (???) wheeled vehicle.

IOW, there is no rationale. Both items were and are simply available and the best of many poor solutions given a refusal to buy dedicated equipment...

We do a lot of really dumb stuff.

We over-Armor our Recon elements because we do not have the patience to wait for effective, time consuming reconnaissance to be completed, we just load up on Armor and go out looking for trouble. Dumb...

We've identified a lack of effective Reconnaissance capability as a tactical and operational shortfall again and again -- we still haven't really fixed it, mostly because we're unwilling to buy dedicated equipment (or adequately train our people) and have impatient Staff Officers who are unwilling to wait for information...