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daftandbarmy said:......
Fiddling around in Wherever-istan in pursuit of fuzzy goals that change with the wind?
Meh....
In which case: Why bother?
daftandbarmy said:......
Fiddling around in Wherever-istan in pursuit of fuzzy goals that change with the wind?
Meh....
Haligonian said:I thought I brought this up in my original post. RC Palmer has most of it right but I must emphasise that the Marines do make Cbt Tms. Coy Tms in their parlance. On Expeditionary Warfare School we spent plenty of time doing this. They do it the same way the US Army does by cross attaching tank and infantry sub units and sub sub units to creat Tms Mech/Tank and TF Mech/Tank.=
Tango2Bravo said:Regarding your comment on the USMC school, here on AOC during Tutorial 2 students spend plenty of time considering different grouping options within a battle group. Remember that ATOC and CTCC are courses aimed at the sub-unit/combat team level. ATOC gives the largest combat team possible to stretch the student in terms of span of control.
If we are willing to break up an infantry company for offensive options then the grouping options certainly open up. I think our desire to have an entire company to assault an enemy platoon regardless of the number of friendly tanks blasting away is based on the concern about casualties. A single platoon will culminate quickly from a fairly small number of casualties. Based on modern experience, though, four casualties can also culminate a company and even a battalion until the casualties are evacuated. Perhaps we are a firepower based army where two-thirds are in the firebase and one-third mop up?
RCPalmer said:I guess I don't understand why we are so obsessed with seeing a "school standard" execution of highly repetitive and templated tasks in most of our leadership courses. Anyone should be able to execute a decent attack (whether that be at Sect, Pl, or Cbt Tm level) having just watched or participated in a dozen others just like it. Perhaps we would get a better product if we focused more on assessing the core leadership attributes and decision making skills (accepting "sloppier" execution) in situations that actually force those leaders to adapt to unique situations. Food for thought.
Thucydides said:Reviving the discussion with some new information. The US Army is working on concept called "Multi Domain Task Force" (along with a multitude of other related ideas like strategic artillery) to deal with AA/AD environments and other complex problems.
While not exactly a Combat Team in the manner we think of it, the idea of integrating different elements into a formation, such as Cyber and artillery might make sense to deal with particular tactical issues. So called "Multi Domain Units" will have extended capabilities to identify and target priority enemy personnel and equipment. This will be especially useful in complex terrain and in AA/AD environments (when matched with weapons systems that can actually do something in this environment.
Army’s Multi-Domain Unit ‘A Game-Changer’ In Future War
The example in the article is a battalion sized unit, which might be thought of as a "battlegroup", how would we want to subdivide it in order to actually use it in the field? Other issues like support were glossed over in the article, how would that be handled?
Combat Teams are sub-unit and, while battle groups are units, I am not sure using the labels of manoeuvre organizations is the best way to picture this US Corps level asset. If we had a "brigade group of tomorrow" thread, that would be a better place to discuss this because we do need to think about how to integrate such capabilities down to the CMBG level. In a Canadian context, we also need to understand how we would give such capabilities (or the close support of such capabilities) to an independent battle group. Should the Canadian manoeuvre commander own the supporting "Intelligence, Information, Cyber, Electronic Warfare, & Space (I2CEWS)" capability, or does it belong as an undeclared national asset to support the whole Canadian Land or Joint TF? I've watched Canadian brigades struggle through Wainwright and various CAX with their cognitive capacity overburdened by the management of "enablers" as they try to knife fight a peer enemy. If we want our manoeuvre organizations (from sub-unit up through all levels of formations) to be able to act fast and think fast, then we probably want to keep them lean and organized to focus on the fight in front of them. It is selection and maintenance of the aim. Don't organize a entity so that it has to employ and manage things that are not focused on that its aim.Thucydides said:While not exactly a Combat Team in the manner we think of it ...
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The example in the article is a battalion sized unit, which might be thought of as a "battlegroup", ...