Guardian,
Excellent points! I have spoken to some of the mandarins who are buying the propoganda about the MGS and here's what they say to your well thought out argument:
"Simple, we won't close with the enemy. We will isolate enemy strongpoints and destroy them with firepower!"
After I finish laughing, I tell them why, in my opinion, that is the stupidest idea in the history of armed conflict. Here are my reasons:
1) How do you go about isolating enemy positions? Are the enemy going to forget about mutual support and conveniently site their positions far enough away from one another? I think, in reality, you will have to fight (i.e. close with and destroy) at least some parts of the enemy force in order to isolate the main force. While, on the surface, the MGS poponents' arguments sound like dashing German blitzkrieg tactics, only someone with no knowledge of said tactics would believe that. The Germans always had to fight for a breakthrough before surrounding and isolating their foes (which involves closing with and des.... you get the picture).
2) Where does this "firepower" come from that will destroy the "isolated" enemy? Are our C3s and Mortar Batteries going to pummel the enemy into submission? How about our CF-18s? To this they say: "Our allies will provide the firepower!" I'm sure that would be every American Division Commander's dream: a Canadian Brigade Group that refuses to close with the enemy and finish the job and that is a disproportionate burden on his already stretched firepower resources. Unless we buy HIMARS and attack helicopters, we can pretty much assume that our allies will assign us to guard the hospitals so that we don't hurt ourselves.
3) What happens if our enemy decides to fight in close terrain (cities, forests etc.)? Tanks are still very effective in these scenarios but the MGS would be a death trap. Wheeled vehicles and close terrain do not match for reasons of mobility. Not to mention the fact that the MGS is very lightly armoured and the crew have very limited visibility, even with hatches open.
4) Why are we forgetting almost every tenet of manoeuvre warfare with this new doctrine? Under the doctrine put forward by the pro-MGS crowd, we will cede the initiative to the enemy, we will effectively dislocate ourselves, we will not present the enemy with a dilemma, we will diminish our tempo, we will not attack their weaknesses but will instead encourage them to fight from positions of strength etc. etc.
I could go on but my two typing fingers are getting sore. It just seems to me that the whole MGS idea was not well thought out. Lets only hope we never have to use the thing on operations.
Pro Patria
Alex
