Informing the Army’s Future Structure - CAMO Discussion

[Brad Sallows]

"tactical actions against enemy forces, typically out of direct contact with friendly forces, intended to shape future close operations and protect rear operations. At the operational level, deep operations isolate current battles and influence the timing, location, and enemy forces involved in future battles. At the tactical level, deep operations set favorable conditions for close combat and subsequent engagements."

simplified, sounds like a substantial part is: "My deep ops are those which prevent/shape enemy forces not already/imminently engaged by my subordinates from interfering with their active/imminent fights."

Theoretically any echelon could have some kind of "deep fight", and each echelon obviously must have a different deep fight, reaching further out in time and space and breadth of types of enemy systems engaged, some becoming less important and others more so. A divisional deep fight in this framing is in large part whatever is undertaken prevent enemy beyond the brigade fights from interfering with the brigade fights or with - as stated explicitly - division rear.

I lack imagination to come up with even a handful of general ways to do this past whatever might be thought of as a brigade "deep fight": very long range fires and air; EW; and for ground forces, whatever approximates cavalry raids.

"As an assaulting force leader, I want someone to suppress/divert the enemy flanking and depth elements capable of supporting the enemy on my objective, so that I am not stretched absurdly beyond my capabilities and shot to pieces."

 

[PrairieFella]

The Deep and Close areas are not some informal concept to think about. It's doctrine.

Someone please explain to me how a "Medium Cavalry" organization fights and sustains itself on 50 ton armoured vehicles in the Division's deep area, which is conceivably 30-50 km forward of the FEBA?

The Sqn A1 and A2 echs are robust - but man is it a lot to manage for the 2IC, SSM and Adm Sgt. Drones make it so much worse.

 

[KevinB]

Honestly I like the Battle Group context we deployed with the Bosnia. Each 12-1500 group in theory had their own tanks, artillery Heli support, engineers, infantry, medical support comms, transport CSS etc.

Have three to four battle groups per Brigade. Each one being self sufficient in the Combined arms battle. Able to be combined together or operate separately.

I wanted to jump back to this for a second.
It worked great for FYR, and for Afghanistan and Iraq.

However as @Infanteer and others have mentioned it doesn’t work for a LSCO.

I used to be really enamored with the CMBG “Mini-Division” setup, but while it was good for somethings it falls down heavily in any sort of maneuver requirement as it is too large and ungainly. Keep in mind the Division is a Maneuver Element...