Informing the Army’s Future Structure - CAMO Discussion

[FJAG]

I’d argue that to do any of the tasks in the above slide requires a combined arms formation that currently doesn’t fully exist.

I actually like @PrairieFella 's slide and description as a general statement.

I agree with you in that Cav should be a combined arms organization (some recce, some anti armour some AD, some infantry, some Pioneers, some indirect fire etc) but not as one that is to be slapped together when needed but rather one that comes that way as a single organic trade/unit fully trained for its role as light or heavy. I'm still pondering whether there is really a need for medium or whether adjusting the Venn diagram is possible.

I'll leave the creation of battlegroups and combat teams to the pure infantry battalions and tank regiments. Mix and match those as needed but leave cavalry

 

[GR66]

Overreaching - the cavalry regiment are the masters of maneouvre warfare within the combat team. The infantry close with and destroy and the cavalry supports that with superior firepower and superior tactical mobility for the ultimate goal of shock action. That said, types of regiments can have direct effects based on the different capabilites they bring.

A light cavalry per the new doctrine cant compete firepower wise in direct engagements at the front but they can enable the heavier guys by acting as sensors. Conducting recces, screens, flank security, things like that. FIND tasks. They can also be used to FIX. Ex: Guards. Even some lighter offensive ops like raids or spoiling attacks. Finally they can be used in rear areas to carry out the traditional TACSEC tasks recce regiments used to do. VCPs. Convoy escorts. RAS. Etc. Think light horse regiments in the age of horse cavalry. Lighter on armour and firepower. Heavier on sensing capability and mobility. This will be further enhanced with the planned proliferation of enablers to LCav units like drones, LMs, mortars and assault troopers.

Heavy cavalry is less about FIND and FIX (though they can do that through enabling ops like the advance to contact) and all about the STRIKE. Pretty self explanatory and wont insult your intelligence by getting into it. Tank go boom.

Medium cavalry kinda splits the difference between the two and currently does not exist within the types of equipment we have. Im thr shakiest here since it doesnt actually exist in our army outside of the book that was just rewritten. Think Div recce which specializes in the deep fight that can FIND and FIX but also STRIKE as necessary to attrite the enemy, disrupt C2 nodes, disrupt supply lines, trade space for time on the delay, etc. Tracked. Heavy autocannon. Missiles. Decent armour. Lots of enablers like the LCav but heavier. Think Bradley squadrons as a modern example.

Dont worry - the image and my musings are open sourced. I dont want to get too deep into specifics but thats kind of an overview. An example of the continuum of cav tasks. Bear in mind its not absolute. A tank can conduct a GUARD task. A LCav AFV can conduct a BLOCK against lightly armed enemy. But I dont want to get too deep into the what-ifs.

View attachment 100588

Frankly I think the RCAC has drunk the US Army's "Maneouvre Warfare" Kool-aid rather than thinking about what kind of war we expect to have to fight.

If the main threat we are expecting to face is a Russian attack on NATO then I think this Heavy/Medium/Light Cavalry concept is fundamentally wrong. If we end up defending against a Russian invasion of the Baltic States we're not going to be fighting a "Maneouvre" campaign.

The political priority for (European) NATO nations is to

Overreaching - the cavalry regiment are the masters of maneouvre warfare within the combat team. The infantry close with and destroy and the cavalry supports that with superior firepower and superior tactical mobility for the ultimate goal of shock action. That said, types of regiments can have direct effects based on the different capabilites they bring.

A light cavalry per the new doctrine cant compete firepower wise in direct engagements at the front but they can enable the heavier guys by acting as sensors. Conducting recces, screens, flank security, things like that. FIND tasks. They can also be used to FIX. Ex: Guards. Even some lighter offensive ops like raids or spoiling attacks. Finally they can be used in rear areas to carry out the traditional TACSEC tasks recce regiments used to do. VCPs. Convoy escorts. RAS. Etc. Think light horse regiments in the age of horse cavalry. Lighter on armour and firepower. Heavier on sensing capability and mobility. This will be further enhanced with the planned proliferation of enablers to LCav units like drones, LMs, mortars and assault troopers.

Heavy cavalry is less about FIND and FIX (though they can do that through enabling ops like the advance to contact) and all about the STRIKE. Pretty self explanatory and wont insult your intelligence by getting into it. Tank go boom.

Medium cavalry kinda splits the difference between the two and currently does not exist within the types of equipment we have. Im thr shakiest here since it doesnt actually exist in our army outside of the book that was just rewritten. Think Div recce which specializes in the deep fight that can FIND and FIX but also STRIKE as necessary to attrite the enemy, disrupt C2 nodes, disrupt supply lines, trade space for time on the delay, etc. Tracked. Heavy autocannon. Missiles. Decent armour. Lots of enablers like the LCav but heavier. Think Bradley squadrons as a modern example.

Dont worry - the image and my musings are open sourced. I dont want to get too deep into specifics but thats kind of an overview. An example of the continuum of cav tasks. Bear in mind its not absolute. A tank can conduct a GUARD task. A LCav AFV can conduct a BLOCK against lightly armed enemy. But I dont want to get too deep into the what-ifs.

View attachment 100588

I personally think that the Army's/RCAC's vision of maneouvre warfare in a conflict with Russia (which is realistically where we are by far most likely to require Divisional-sized forces) are misplaced. Politics determines strategy and the Politics of Eastern Europe dictate that a conflict with Russia will be primarily positional and attritional.

The countries facing Russia will not be willing to give up territory to Russia or see its citizens subjected to the treatment that Ukrainians faced in towns like Bucha. That will mean that NATO forces will undertake a forward defence strategy in order to hold the urban areas. The Baltic States and Poland will not be willing to have forces give up territory in order to trap advancing Russian forces in cauldrons and drones/artillery will prevent the defenders from conducting a mobile defence in open ground. The fight will almost certainly become positional urban defence.

On the offensive/counter-attack side European NATO nations (especially those at the front) will not want to drive deeply into Russian/Belorussian territory because doing so would risk regime collapse and despite that being a welcome outcome it would also very significantly raise the risk of Russia using WMD's to prevent such a collapse. Europe definitely isn't willing for that to happen on their territory. As a result any counter attacks will be limited to the Russian/Belorussian border areas which doesn't give much space to perform significant strategic maneouvre.

Tanks with significant engineering and AD support are what the RCAC needs in my opinion, not LAVs or other light vehicles designed for a maneouvre strategy which is highly unlikely to happen. Tanks can work in the Urban fight, they are protected enough to move between protected areas and IF larger scale maneouvre is possible they can do that as well.

$0.02

 

[Brad Sallows]

It continues to look like "cavalry" is combined arms with a formal unit establishment and maybe a standard formation (brigade) template too (if a force large enough to warrant one ever takes the field). Heavy/medium/light just looks like a descriptor based on equipment.

 

[daftandbarmy]

Frankly I think the RCAC has drunk the US Army's "Maneouvre Warfare" Kool-aid rather than thinking about what kind of war we expect to have to fight.

If the main threat we are expecting to face is a Russian attack on NATO then I think this Heavy/Medium/Light Cavalry concept is fundamentally wrong. If we end up defending against a Russian invasion of the Baltic States we're not going to be fighting a "Maneouvre" campaign.

There's the $64K question: what kind of war do we need to be prepared to fight?

Before we go buying a bunch of expensive kit based on the 'willy nilly' principle, and standing up new kinds of formations - like reorging into two divisions, standing up a light Infantry Regiment, or recruiting 300,000 reservists we still seem to be confused about - it would be nice to see some kind of formal estimate that informs our decision making.

OTOH, it's fun watching from the sidelines while alot of this is going on...

 

[FJAG]

Frankly I think the RCAC has drunk the US Army's "Maneouvre Warfare" Kool-aid rather than thinking about what kind of war we expect to have to fight. . . .

I personally think that the Army's/RCAC's vision of maneouvre warfare in a conflict with Russia (which is realistically where we are by far most likely to require Divisional-sized forces) are misplaced. Politics determines strategy and the Politics of Eastern Europe dictate that a conflict with Russia will be primarily positional and attritional.

I really don't disagree with some of the arguments for why "manoeuvre warfare" is dead, at least in the current situation in Ukraine (and possibly in Latvia) but I don't quite agree with the extension of that to the RCAC. Inevitably when we predict the future of warfare and point ourselves in one direction we find ourselves wrong primarily because we end up committing ourselves to a completely different environment. The turn of the century is a prime example - we reconfigured from "manoeuvre warfare" to a Yugoslavia failed state and ended up fighting a religious-based counterinsurgency in Afghanistan followed by a return to MCO that we didn't even recognize as having occurred for a decade.

The Ukraine experience is a strong lesson but, to me, it doesn't mean that this is what we have to commit to on an all-in-basis. I think what is plaguing the RCAC is that Canada has been missing a sound doctrinally based army for many decades now and as a result, individual branches are developing capabilities based on their own independent ideas of what are needed (and their abilities to convince their peers within the army of that capability's need when fighting for resources). Selecting capabilities in the absence of overarching doctrine can leave you wrong footed.

That leads me to this.

There's the $64K question: what kind of war do we need to be prepared to fight?

Before we go buying a bunch of expensive kit based on the 'willy nilly' principle, and standing up new kinds of formations - like reorging into two divisions, standing up a light Infantry Regiment, or recruiting 300,000 reservists we still seem to be confused about - it would be nice to see some kind of formal estimate that informs our decision making.

In other words we need a clear doctrine based on clear government guidance of what they are prepared to go in for and how deeply.

My own guess is that, even in Europe, we need to be prepared for a form of manoeuvre warfare and that there will be a need for both cavalry and tank units of some form or other. We do need the guidance of past experiences in order to design for the future and, because the world isn't a very predictable place recently, the one thing we need to build in is flexibility.

OTOH, it's fun watching from the sidelines while alot of this is going on...

Sometimes though, I gnash my teeth.

 

[Brad Sallows]

The value of the unfortunately poorly named "manoeuvre warfare" is in being a framework (conceptual) which is an alternative to "attrition warfare" which explains some things that might be done differently, and why (and when) those differences can profitably or preferably be employed. It is primarily about movement in the mind and in time, not on the ground. Shorter decision cycles are an advantage; create and use them (initiative, surprise, economy/phasing/sequencing). The approaches are situationally dependent, exist on a continuous spectrum (or map), and the army needs to be able to do both. Sometimes you need to be able to outpace the enemy; sometimes you need to be able to force your pace upon him.

 

[Brad Sallows]

The real "revolution in military affairs" is just that "evolution in military affairs" is accelerating. There is simply not the same amount of time to adapt to each innovation that there was in the past because the time between innovations is decreasing. Snapshotting what is going on and designing and then building a force to match it cannot be done fast enough - maybe not before the design is partly obsolete, let alone the eventually resulting force. An obvious deduction is that forces might have to exist in "versions". See also: continuous integration, continous development, continuous deployment.

 

[McG]

I agree with you in that Cav should be a combined arms organization (some recce, some anti armour some AD, some infantry, some Pioneers, some indirect fire etc)

In a Canadian context, “Cavalry” is the new label that the RCAC has given for what it does. Trying to reserve that word to mean something different will just result in conversations that go nowhere because people aren’t speaking the same language.

 

[Kirkhill]

Some part of the army needs to be skilled in 20th century manoeuvre warfare. The RCAC was created out of that warfare. It seems to me that it should continue safeguarding its inheritance for those battlefields where they will be needed and as a repository of knowledge for when they need to be expanded.

The rationale is identical to maintaining an air defence brigade, an air mobile brigade, a coastal defence brigade and a long range or garrison artillery brigade.

The skills might come in handy some day.

In the mean time the majority of the force should be configured around today's threats with today's weapons and be in a position to constantly adapt to the needs of the moment.

 

[FJAG]

In a Canadian context, “Cavalry” is the new label that the RCAC has given for what it does. Trying to reserve that word to mean something different will just result in conversations that go nowhere because people aren’t speaking the same language.

I find the term "cavalry" as meaningless as "armour" and I find the RCAC's attempt to make one fit quite different circumstances in order to simplify the training regime as inherently confusing.

In my mind there are two different fights in a division - a close fight and a deep fight. Both require combined arms forces albeit the fight is done differently over varying distances and differently when operating offensively or defensively.

Ideally I would like to see combined arms units of mixed tanks and armoured infantry but that won't happen in Canada so I want to see relatively simple and specialized armoured infantry and tank battalions that can easily be grouped and regrouped effortlessly. In my perfect world the rifle companies and tank companies are relatively "clean" and each of the infantry battalion and tank regiment have identical combat support companies (mortars, anti-tank and recce platoons/troops) so that they can form near identical tank or infantry heavy battalions. They train and fight together in the close battle using a range of identical tactics where each learns their specific role.

Because of the wide frontages and depths that the deep battle occurs over, I do not see that same degree of flexibility being available to the unit(s) that cover that. In my mind these need to come from the beginning as combined arms units with all of their components being organic to the unit - ISR units, long range communications, anti-armour elements, air defence, infantry elements, linkages to long range fire support, specialized logistics/medical and engineers capable of working over long distances, organic fire support (mortar tubes, LMs, ATGMs) etc. The key here is that there is little regrouping available. These are units preconfigured and trained to operate over large areas quite capable of independent operation heavily dependent on fire support.

I see them as different the way that I see artillery units classified as guns and LMs and short range ISR as predominantly for the close fight while rockets and larger LMs and long range ISR is organized and trained predominantly for the deep fight

The RCAC component in the close fight I describe as tank units while the entirety of the deep fight units I call cavalry. I don't consider the distinction between tanks and cavalry to be a subtle one. It is in fact a profound one that, from what I can see, the army in general and the RCAC in particular is trying to avoid wrapping its head around.

$0.02