Multinational corps and formations

[Fuchs]

Why this focus on "Corps orders"?
Where is the stone with the law written in it that says you need to issue regular corps orders, probably even in a certain interval?

A Corps Cmdr can keep his intent and still order a Bde to turn towards another direction to adapt a changed situation.

A Corps Cmdr can also decide on the spot to attack a few hills farther or to attempt an immediate river crossing with the effect that he'll advance another 50 km in a few hours.

A Corps Cmdr can also sense a crisis in one spot and tell a Bde to disengage elsewhere immediately in order to re-engage at the crisis.
Or he might want to make the enemy think that he's up against four brigades instead of one by disengaging and re-engaging from different directions.

Then think about a Bde or Corps being called to another spot ASAP. We don't suggest that the correct answer to the theatre Cmdr is "OK, we'll begin to move in 36 hrs.", do we?


Today's armies are fully motorised with vehicles that can march at 60-90 km/h! There's enough time to be found once you don't aspire to reach another continent by tomorrow.


And sleep? Come on. There's enough time for that once you're tired enough to immediately fall asleep once given the opportunity. Men can keep functioning satisfactorily on only 5 hrs sleep/day for quite a long time. Sleep is a leadership problem.


My take on battlefield agility and quickness is that this is something that can be trained. It takes a few weeks of free play exercises only.
Begin by booting a sluggish Cmdr, then proceed kicking asses and keep "killing" slow Cmdrs during the exercises so their 2nd in Cmd get a chance to prove how quick they are.
Use small formations (small brigades). Use independent units (companies for security, recce).Chase them around, let them turn, disengage, reengage, change defence-offence-march-offence, make sure that no unit goes to rest without making sure that leaving the area in any direction would be a perfectly fluid affair based on a bit organisation and SOPs, let them march in parallel on secondary roads, detect and fire slow-thinking officers, hammer a few slogans into their minds.
A few weeks later, they'll be much, much faster and have more than double the value of an average NATO Corps.


About oversized staffs:
30% of a staff does 70% of the work (if not 20/80!).
5% of the staff officers create 30% of the work - and that's almost entirely unnecessary work because some people simply spin around, keeping people busy for no reason.
In fact, some work that's being done was generated in order to neutralise idiots and keep them from doing actual harm.
Most of the staff work wasn't even thought of before the staff became bloated.

Make sure you have the right Cmdr for the formation and he knows the key people of his staff.
Then force him to select 100 personnel for his staff, take away all others and form some experimental Bn with them.
Then force him to ditch another 10 in the next month, again, again, again and again.
A slimmed-down staff will be unable to keep all that chatter (reports) going and will relieve subordinate units from superfluous reporting and answering.

[William F. Owen]

A Corps Cmdr can also decide on the spot to attack a few hills farther or to attempt an immediate river crossing with the effect that he'll advance another 50 km in a few hours.

River crossings demand a lot of planning, especially opposed ones, and you may march 50km in a few hours, but 50km opposed advanced will take about 24 hours or more, based on all the analysis I know of.

A Corps Cmdr can also sense a crisis in one spot and tell a Bde to disengage elsewhere immediately in order to re-engage at the crisis.

How many vehicles in a Brigade? Brigades cannot just break contact and skoot off somewhere. You need to draw back to assembly areas, plan routes, de-conflict convoys on the MSR etc etc etc.

Then think about a Bde or Corps being called to another spot ASAP. We don't suggest that the correct answer to the theatre Cmdr is "OK, we'll begin to move in 36 hrs.", do we?

How far and what's the state of readiness. Switching a Corps between armies, would require at least 24 hours. If you can show me it being done quicker, then I'm all ears.

Today's armies are fully motorised with vehicles that can march at 60-90 km/h!

Convoy planning speeds have not changed since WW2 - where all US and UK armies were fully motorised.

Men can keep functioning satisfactorily on only 5 hrs sleep/day for quite a long time. Sleep is a leadership problem.

Concur, but you cannot keep a planning staff working 24 hours a day

My take on battlefield agility and quickness is that this is something that can be trained. It takes a few weeks of free play exercises only.
Begin by booting a sluggish Cmdr, then proceed kicking asses and keep "killing" slow Cmdrs during the exercises so their 2nd in Cmd get a chance to prove how quick they are.

I do not know. We have little evidence and experience in this area.

About oversized staffs:
30% of a staff does 70% of the work (if not 20/80!).
5% of the staff officers create 30% of the work - and that's almost entirely unnecessary work because some people simply spin around, keeping people busy for no reason.

There are a few extensive studies in this area, that reach very firm conclusions, backed up by experience. Formations do not demand much more than 20 officers. The IDF thinks you can work with as little as 10.

Make sure you have the right Cmdr for the formation and he knows the key people of his staff.

Concur.

Then force him to select 100 personnel for his staff, take away all others and form some experimental Bn with them.
Then force him to ditch another 10 in the next month, again, again, again and again.

At the formation level no experimentation is necessary, at least based on the studies I have seen and the officers I have talked to who study this.

[Fuchs]

River crossings demand a lot of planning, especially opposed ones, and you may march 50km in a few hours, but 50km opposed advanced will take about 24 hours or more, based on all the analysis I know of.

Read the book that I told you about today. ;-)

And btw, who opposed an advance for 50 km in a row? Such a depth of defence is admirable and something I'd really encourage (even more, but that's a long story), but you're unlikely to face it unless you're in pursuit and do it wrongly.

How many vehicles in a Brigade? Brigades cannot just break contact and skoot off somewhere. You need to draw back to assembly areas, plan routes, de-conflict convoys on the MSR etc etc etc.

We shouldn't think of brigades as one piece. They're more like a mobile cloud of units.
Their TO&E is furthermore not cast in stone. The byzantine vehicle inventories of modern units are stupid and need to (and can) be changed.

Today's road network density and off-road capability of modern vehicles allows for a great deal of agility & quickness on part of brigades.
The problem are men who haven't been trained to exploit this potential because neither Cold War nor post-Cold War armies have made it a priority.

[William F. Owen]

And btw, who opposed an advance for 50 km in a row? Such a depth of defence is admirable and something I'd really encourage (even more, but that's a long story), but you're unlikely to face it unless you're in pursuit and do it wrongly.

Good point, but the 2-km/h number comes from a great many sources on overall campaign rates of advance, the exception being desert operations. Even the Soviets only planned on 70-80 km per day - which they admitted was very optimistic.

We shouldn't think of brigades as one piece. They're more like a mobile cloud of units.
Their TO&E is furthermore not cast in stone. The byzantine vehicle inventories of modern units are stupid and need to (and can) be changed.

Again concur, but organisation to enable that is pretty critical. Even a slimmed down BG is 70+ vehicles. Most slimmed down formations will be 500+.

Today's road network density and off-road capability of modern vehicles allows for a great deal of agility & quickness on part of brigades.
The problem are men who haven't been trained to exploit this potential because neither Cold War nor post-Cold War armies have made it a priority.

In Europe, that true, but stand-off fires and a contested air environment may well make this very challenging.

[Red Rat]

Good point, but the 2-km/h number comes from a great many sources on overall campaign rates of advance, the exception being desert operations. Even the Soviets only planned on 70-80 km per day - which they admitted was very optimistic.

Again concur, but organisation to enable that is pretty critical. Even a slimmed down BG is 70+ vehicles. Most slimmed down formations will be 500+.

In Europe, that true, but stand-off fires and a contested air environment may well make this very challenging.

Concur with all the above. Even in NW Europe with its infrastructure, trying to find routes capable of taking main battle tanks can be challenging. Good staffwork (especially in coordinating instructions) is about identifying the exceptions that will derail the plan.

Of course much of the problems involved are not insurmountable, but because they are not practiced we have introduced a greater degree of friction again. IMHO part of the reason the UK army has got so bureacratic is not because things are necessarily more complex (I am with Jim Storr on this one) but because in the old days we would have said 'SOP' and everyone would have known what to do. Now we say 'SOP' (standard operating procedures), and everyone has to look it up and discuss it. This is particularly true for formation level manoeuvre.

By the way, the UK army no longer conducts field training above battlegroup level.

[William F. Owen]

By the way, the UK army no longer conducts field training above battlegroup level.

I guess we'll just have to hope that all our potential enemies feel the same way. - Sometime this year I might visit a "Brigade Live Firing" exercise. Clearly not the UK Army!!