British Military Current Events

[GR66]

I doubt it's helpful to think of the 20-40-40 in too literal a sense as in "2 x heavy vehicles, 4 x expendable units and 4 x autonomous units" grouped together. It's much more likely a rough ratio of forces.

The "Heavy 20" might still be a Combined Arms Battalion with an Artillery battery in support with the "Autonomous 40" might be a combination of optionally manned breaching vehicles and UGV recce vehicles in the CAB as well as artillery spotting UAVs from the Artillery Regiment. The "Expendable 40" could range from anything like micro-UAV's at the Section level, FPV recce drones for the platoon, loitering munitions with the artillery battery and larger Shahed-type UAVs from the supporting division.

 

[daftandbarmy]

I doubt it's helpful to think of the 20-40-40 in too literal a sense as in "2 x heavy vehicles, 4 x expendable units and 4 x autonomous units" grouped together. It's much more likely a rough ratio of forces.

The "Heavy 20" might still be a Combined Arms Battalion with an Artillery battery in support with the "Autonomous 40" might be a combination of optionally manned breaching vehicles and UGV recce vehicles in the CAB as well as artillery spotting UAVs from the Artillery Regiment. The "Expendable 40" could range from anything like micro-UAV's at the Section level, FPV recce drones for the platoon, loitering munitions with the artillery battery and larger Shahed-type UAVs from the supporting division.

Sadly, I only see 'political spin doctoring' when I see slogans like '20-40-40' pop up in news feeds about any military program as this usually indicates the whole thing will turn out to be some kind of ill thought out, too far down in the weeds operational, micromanaging shit show....

<cough> 10-90 <cough>

 

[Kirkhill]

We're getting to longer and longer posts. A thought on cost ratios. tube artillery rounds are very hard to intercept still and fly in all weather and also provide mass neutralizing effects. That has to be taken into consideration in the cost equation. That's why both systems are mandatory but finding the right ratio will continue to be challenging.

I don't know what the right ratio is but I like your thinking. For me this is only something that rigorous battlefield examination and experimentation will solve while never forgetting that we need to scale the process up to the divisional level.

It's an interesting time to be a soldier. For the last century we've been trying to predict what the next war will look like and how best to prepare for it and fight it. We've mostly gotten it wrong and needed quite some time during combat to tweak the systems we had. Even if you look at WW2, the advances that took place over 5 years (including weapons production) were astounding. Technology has shrunk that timeframe. Our challenge isn't so much in deciding the right systems before the next war as building processes from the factory to the front line that allow us to adapt on the fly. I'm much more concerned about identifying and building those processes than anything else.

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Somewhere in this mess.

 

[FJAG]

Just quickly, the 20-40-40 comes up in the UK 2025 Strategic Defence Review for the British Army as:

Autonomous and uncrewed (land and aerial) systems are now an essential component of land warfare, integrated with core armoured platforms in a dynamic ‘high-low’ mix of capability. A ‘20-40-40’ mix is likely to be necessary: 20% crewed platforms to control 40% ‘reusable’ platforms (such as drones that survive repeated missions), and 40% ‘consumables’ such as rockets, shells, missiles, and ‘one-way effector’ drones. Investment in attack and surveillance drones should be prioritised, along with counter-drone systems. The Army must be able to keep pace with high-tempo innovation in drones and associated capabilities such as electromagnetic warfare (Chapter 7.6), supported by ‘always on’ manufacturing.

A Parliamentary summary adds:

The army has subsequently explained this mix as “three rings of lethality”.17 The core ring is made up of the crewed, armoured ‘survivable’ systems. The next ring is a layer of reusable or ‘attritable’ platforms, which provide combat mass but as they are uncrewed they can be lost, and finally a third layer of single-use, disposable ‘consumable’ platforms.

The footnote 17 is from the British Army Review "SDR: Sp what for the army?" Issue 194, pg 6 which provides a broad overview of the army's strategy to increase its lethality by a factor of x10 by 2035 using roughly the same core units and crewed platforms.