Medium Cavalry: Critical Capability or Poor Man’s MBT?

[Kirkhill]

Related thoughts

Static defence and base defence.
Here I see a role for tracks as well.
But uncrewed tracks.

Rather than fixing guns, missiles and radars in place, allowing the enemy to template them and requiring crews to move to them to service them, allow them to move.

Put them on tracks and allow them to move from hangar to firing position and back. Protect the hangar. Control them from the FCS. Comms would be a mixture of redundant means, both fixed an free air.

They do not need to be armoured but they do need to go everywhere on base regardless of mud, marsh or snow.

 

[daftandbarmy]

I still don't get the difference, or the rationale apart from copying the US military, between Armd Cav and the capabilities of other kinds of 'combined arms' Armd forces.... sorry

The Armoured Cavalry Commander​

Manoeuvre as the Corps Raison d’Être

The War in Ukraine provides us a modern example of how attrition focused warfare quickly results in a stalemate, costing an unfathomable loss of life and resources. The historical solution to this has been manoeuvre warfare through which operations are planned to seek to defeat the enemy by shattering their moral and physical cohesion – their ability to fight as an effective, coordinated whole – rather than by destroying him physically through incremental attrition (paraphrased from our Canadian Land Operations doctrine). Reviewing the principles of manoeuvre warfare, it is evident why Armoured Cavalry is so well suited. However, to refine the scope of change needed within the RCAC at the tactical level, it is important to note that Mission Type Orders focus on the effects to be achieved.

The ACRIB defines manoeuvre as the “employment of forces on the battlefield through movement in combination with fire, or fire potential, to achieve a position of advantage in respect to the enemy in order to accomplish the mission. Although manoeuvre incorporates both fire and movement, it is distinct. For [armoured] forces, manoeuvre is cunning actions taken whose intent is to achieve a relative advantage.”3 The Armoured Cavalry TTP further explains that “the purpose of armoured cavalry today is to provide the Canadian Army (CA) with a versatile, agile, rapid, and lethal manoeuvre force. The armoured cavalry commander must possess initiative, flexibility, quick thinking, and a high degree of adaptability to employ their crews in the full spectrum of offensive, defensive, stability and enabling tasks.”4

However, there has been a CA fixation on the Advance To Contact and Hasty Attack as the combined arms “manoeuvre”, “offensive” operation. Over the years, many mechanized brigades, battle groups, and armoured squadrons have participated in multiple iterations of Ex MAPLE RESOLVE and Ex COMMON GROUND. These mounted forces would always conduct these operations by occupying wide and vast battlespaces with the comfort of the linear contiguous area of operations (AO) mindset. This comfort meaning that in a linear contiguous AO, ideally flanking forces are advancing in symmetry; thus, the threat is always to the front. As such, we pay lip service to rear and flank security, as we fight this attrition style warfare.

By reshaping how the Armoured Cavalry Commander understands and achieves manoeuvre, the RCAC can capitalize its new breadth of doctrinal utility.

The Armoured Cavalry Commander

The Royal Canadian Armoured Corps’ (RCAC) shift to Armoured Cavalry aims to reenvision armour as a key manoeuvre force on the battlefield. Previously, the RCAC provided very task based sub-units for brigade reconnaissance or to form combat teams to, ultimately, support infantry battle groups by...

www.canada.ca

 

[KevinB]

I still don't get the difference, or the rationale apart from copying the US military, between Armd Cav and the capabilities of other kinds of 'combined arms' Armd forces.... sorry

Don’t forget ‘but on a budget’.

The Armoured Cavalry TTP further explains that “the purpose of armoured cavalry today is to provide the Canadian Army (CA) with a versatile, agile, rapid, and lethal manoeuvre force.​

4 lies for the price of one.

 

[FJAG]

These mounted forces would always conduct these operations by occupying wide and vast battlespaces with the comfort of the linear contiguous area of operations (AO) mindset. This comfort meaning that in a linear contiguous AO, ideally flanking forces are advancing in symmetry; thus, the threat is always to the front. As such, we pay lip service to rear and flank security, as we fight this attrition style warfare.

This has been true for decades and is based on the reality that a) we usually are exercising just a battlegroup or, at best, a rump brigade; and b) that an offensive operation can't operate with just a battlegroup or rump brigade because it would very quickly be hammered to crap from the flanks as it penetrates as neither of these groupings have enough combat power to protect their own flanks - thus we have a notional allied force on the flanks.

Perhaps this is a lesson to remember when we are creating our own "division" as a division ought to be capable, by and of itself, of conducting offensive penetrating operations.

That said, I find the article somewhat limited. I was expecting to read about "cavalry" and all I saw was "tanks." I can't help but think that maybe the Brits had it right in the '30s with "infantry" tanks and "cruiser" tanks . . . or the Germans with "panzer" and "Sturmgeschutz." I can't help but get back to the feeling that there needs to be a tactical grouping where some "tanks" work in close harmony with predominantly infantry combined arms battalions providing them with direct fire support to what are essentially infantry-based, concentrated hard slogging fights and a separate tactical grouping of mixed forces where "armour" predominates but which is designed for the rapid offensive and defensive type of warfare characterized by more open spaces and wide-ranging manoeuvre.

For the former, I can see infantry-heavy combined arms battalions of light or medium infantry supported by some form of direct fire "tank company" and CS artillery while for the latter I see a combined arms cavalry regiment with a mixture of medium-weight sensor systems, "tank-destroyers," medium to heavy infantry in IFVs, their own organic indirect fire support as well as access to long-range fires (including UAV surveillance and loitering munitions). Both would be supported by engineers configured appropriately for their specific tasks. The first should form the core of the division's manoeuvre brigades while the latter should be a divisional asset tightly tied in with the division's artillery brigade. (I wouldn't go quite so far as having them organic to the arty bde like the Brit's Deep Recce Strike bde but close to that in operational concept)

What I can't see is a single armoured corps organizational structure that is equipment agnostic and does both roles. I think it's past time to see the division as our basic tactical entity where all arms and services are combined and to tailor it with the most efficient units to fulfill its role. We need to stop fiddling with platoons and troops except as tiny pieces of the whole.