Infanteer said:
Royal Drew,
Ack all. My comments were not directed to anyone here, but more towards a certain sub-culture that exists and prefers to draw a sharp line within the Infantry Corps. It's the sub-culture that likes to draw a spectrum with LAV-based losers on the one end, JTF-2 on the other end and puts itself somewhere in the middle. "We need air assault/mtn ops/para/amphib badges that take 3 courses and 89 days of training after you get a gold at the Coopers test", "we're better able to work with SOF" and "mech guys don't get out of carriers". This kind of mentality is infectious and when we buy it we only put ourselves in boxes that'll limit our effectiveness as members of the profession of arms. A simple walk through the lines of any of the battalions would reveal that Pte Gumby in 2 R22R is not much different than Pte Dumby in 3 PPLCI. We ain't all that different.
As for how much better specializing makes you, remember that airmobile insertions are simply ingress/egress techniques - Phase I and Phase III of the operation. The pilots do most of the work in flying us around, not getting shot out of the sky, and putting us in the right place. After that, it's no different if you jumped out of a helo/airplane/canoe/truck/spaceship, as it is all "close with and destroy the enemy" s**t.
In my opinion, a bn with little specialization and requiring a familiarization with the interior of a Chinook, but with its basic infantry drills down and solid small unit leadership will be a better air mobile force than one that has focused its efforts on load plans, manifests and speed balls at the expense of the basics (not saying your Bn has done so, just emphasizing what makes any bn "good"). I think we're all in violent agreement that frequent work with helicopters will make the ingress/egress that much slicker, but you don't need helicopters to get good at the stuff that really counts.
Now, if you are talking CSS and C2, the issue is something else - a force employment concept. What is the force employment concept for this unit? On the two airmobile operations my company did in Afghanistan, friendly link up occurred at some point during the ground tactical plan, so CSS and C2 were quite easy to factor for.
Is the force employment concept for a light battalion to pitch it off into the wild where it can only be supplied by air/avn? Is it meant to be independant of second line support for a significant period of time? Is this possible? Is this desirable? Before we start talking about how to make the CP able to function in the middle of nowhere, we need to think about why we would put it in the middle of nowhere. The problem is that the Army has, for years, said "we have light infantry battalions" but has not defined a proper force employment concept. As a result, "light" is whatever people want it to be.
Infanteer, completely agree with your first statement, their is a certain sub-culture within the infantry that feels the need to chest beat but soldiers are going to do that anyways it is the nature of the beast. The leadership needs to work on humbling these fellows out and putting them in their place. Everyone has a roll to play and they need to understand that roll. A little bit of light hearted unit rivalry is never a bad thing though IMO.
I also agree that we are all infantry soldiers first and like you said it doesn't matter how you get there at the end of the day; however, that being said these skills are still skills that need to be practiced and they require a bit of time and effort to master them. It takes time to develop capabilities and they need to be continuously practiced if we want to maintain them and be proficient at them. It took us two years of work with lots of speedbumps in between to get our Tac CP to the state it is at now, so it does take a considerable amount of time to turn something into an actual capability.
For the rest I'll make a new post for because this will really tie into some of the questions I put out earlier.
-Skeletor- said:
IMO DRASH is not the way to go, like Infanteer stated it is heavy. As well in colder weather it becomes rather brittle and can break easily.. even in warm weather it can break. If you are planning on staying static, having heaters, etc then it's ok, but if you are going to be moving it around you take your chances of breaking it. The constant set up/tear down and cramming it into those carriers can be rough, I've heard more then a few poles crack during the packing into the bag and securing it.
For your comms, I would also look at Iridium phones. For HF, you will have to train pers on it as it isn't as simple as throwing up the whip antenna and your done - location/weather, etc can play factors and there are numerous antennas you can use. Would you be using HF as your primary comms for Coy to BN CP? Because it wasn't mentioned, I assume you would also have some 117s in the Coy and BN CP as well. If you are pushing platoons out with the 117 but the CP is using a HF radio you won't be able to talk to each other.
Also, why does VHF very much limit the capabilities of air mobility? Did you take into account that RRBs can be sent out to extend your VHF comms. Of course security may become a issue if you push a RRB into no mans land with no friendly forces nearby; a section of Infantry may have to help out with security of the RRB detachment.
Why would you want every section commander and above carrying a 117? Why not give the Section Commanders(and Platoon Commander) a 148/152 and stick with one 117F for the Platoon Signaller. Other things out there are amps for the 148/152, adaptors to use 5590(522/177F batteries)
Coy CP would have both VHF and HF, I should have clarified that. The Coy CP will have a Coy Sig Op who is trained to use the HF radio, as well, all Pl Signallers should be trained to use HF as a fallback option. One of the reasons VHF is not very good for air-mobile operations is because VHF is reliant on Line of Sight and the range is limited. If you are conducting Ops over a large area how many RRBs are you going to push out? Each one of these is going to require security which now eats into your manpower for conducting the actual operation. VHF is alright but you need to overlap it with something else for long distances, Sat Comms would be ideal as in some cases HF doesn't work due to dead zones.
I would use a mix of comms equipment for the CP and overlap the capabilities as part of the PACE plan. You would need to ability to use HF and VHF and I wasn't even thinking about iridium phones when I made that post last night so good call.
Correction to the above and thanks for pointing it out, I meant 152's and not the 117's for the Sect Comd's. That is what I get for making a post late at night, sometimes the brain is scrambled. 117s would be ideal for the platoon HQ.
As for the DRASH I get what you are saying about it breaking; however, we have experimented with it here in Pet and now use it for our Tac CP. We have managed to even drop it out of an airplane a few times and not have one pole break on us so it isn't so bad. Of course we have had many people tell us we can't do that and we are not entitled to use DRASH or we are not entitled to replacement poles but we have done it anyways and made it work. We also experimented with Arctic Tents and Mod Tents and found the DRASH system to be a better fit for what we required. I would ask for your input, if we don't use the DRASH system then what are some other options we have?
Here is a picture of our Tac CP all packed and ready to be loaded btw
Here is a pic of the Tac CP being setup on JOAX 1-13
Generators we use for Power
Here is what we move the Tac CP with, these also can be dropped out of an airplane or loaded on a Chinook (We have tested on both of a these platforms and it works)
I am enjoying this debate and discussion fellows, a little bit of brainstorming and debate is never a bad thing.
