Excellent essay by BG Quintas and Nick Simpson. Mobile Protected Firepower (MPF) is critical to the core competency of Combined Arms Maneuver. Further, MPF and Combined Arms Maneuver is essential to providing the joint force options to seize, retain, and exploit the initiative. This reminds me of Gian Gentiles essay from 2010, The Death of the Armor Corps (smallwarsjournal/jrnl/art/the-death-of-the-armor-corps). We revist this argument about the necessity of tanks and armor after every conflict. If nothing else we have consistently been wrong. In 1943 there were over a million lost in the Battle of Kursk, a battle with over 8,000 tanks on either side of the battlefield with such depth that it is said one could walk miles from turret to turret without hitting the ground. And critics proclaimed that tank-on-tank battle was dead. After the Korean War where the tank was used by both the Army and Marine Corps on the Jamestown Line, near Chosin, and both Inchon and Pusan in restrictive, severely restricted and undulating terrain it was speculated that tank warfare had hit its terminal velocity , particularly in mountainous and defile terrain, giving way to an abundance of indirect fire technologies, counter-mobility efforts, and integrated combined arms engagement areas in preparation for future attacks to come. That stalemate is now closing on its 62nd year and still both sides of the conflict continue to prepare for the final showdown. We have, for our part, removed a HBCT from the peninsula and taken away 2IDs (and every other divisions) DIV CAV asset and brigade recon troops and replaced them with cavalry squadrons that have a limited ability to fight for information. In Vietnam 11ACR, 1-69AR, and other units were employed, most after a 1967 feasibility study by GEN West for the Chief of Staff and SEC Army. GEN Starry wrote extensively on armor, cavalry, and air cavalry employment in his 1978 work Mounted Combat in Vietnam. CPT Gerald Cossey wrote an excellent article on the Battle at Ben Het in 1969, the first American tank-on-tank engagement in 16 years, in the September/October 1970 issue of Armor Magazine. In the 1980s the Iraqis and Iranians fought with heavy mechanized forces, as well as the Soviets in Afghanistan. In 1991 the Battle of 73 Easting, the Battle of Phase Line Bullet, the Battle of Medina Ridge, and the Battle of Khafji proved combined arms operations were vital, effective, and decisive. It was rumored that no one would ever fight the Americans in an open-desert tank-on-tank battle again. The Russians attempted to deal with Chechnyan uprising first with tanks in Grozny (105 of 120 tanks destroyed in 1995) in 1995, 1996, and 1999-2000. We invaded Iraq in 2003 with a mechanized force that fought through a heavily mechanized Iraqi force. 2004s Battle of Kufa saw 2d ACR and 2-37 AR Iron Dukes prove the utility of armor in a volatile and uncertain environment, further illustrated by Crusaders piercing attack along with Iron Troop to demonstrate a contemporary application of the classic hammer and anvil tactic. In 2004 The Battle of Fallujah was fought with both Marine and Army armored forces taking vital roles in both the April and November fights. In 2005 3d ACR fought the Battle of Tal Afar with a heavily mechanized force alongside Iraqi Security Forces and augmented with a parachute infantry battalion. In 2006 1/1AD conducted significant and successful counterinsurgency operations in both Tal Afar and Ramadi with a limited mechanized force. In 2006 the Israelis fought Hezbollah and had significant anti-armor issues. In 2007 1st Cavalry fought successful counterinsurgency operations in Baghdad with vehicles. In 2007 the Russians invaded Georgia with a heavily mechanized force to stop uprising by Ossetian separatists. In 2009 Huthi rebels from Yemen backed by Al Qaeda fought against Royal Saudi Land Force tanks and Bradleys in the southwestern corner of Saudi Arabia along the border. Throughout the first half of this decade Israeli has twice engaged in protracted mechanized operations in Gaza against Hezbollah. For the last 10 months the Russians have maneuvered multiple mechanized and armored units into Ukraine unopposed. ISIS raided Iraqi Army outposts to seize, among other things, Iraqi Army tanks and mechanized vehicles to use in their irreligious campaign of terror. We, on the other hand, discontinued the FCS program and are prepared to use the M1 platform as late as 2050. The tank, an invention nearly 100 years old, was invented to counter the machine gun during WWI. China, Russia, Iran, and other countries continue to pour money in investing in mobile protected firepower systems that can move further, fire farther, faster, more accurately, and acquire targets at greater range with success. And many times weve stated that well likely not engage in this type of warfare again. To put things another way, we have a 65 year history of getting this wrong. We, As GEN Starry said on page 220 of Mounted Combat in Vietnam, cannot afford to make this mistake again. Now fundamentals of tactics are basic and fundamental, meaning they do not change and platform is immaterial. Platforms affect TTPs, but actions on contact are the same dismounted as they are in a Stryker, Bradley, Abrams, or HMMWV - the menu of options at ones disposal may change, but the four steps to actions on contact remain the same. The see first, act first, destroy first mentality of technology proliferation, adaptation, and implementation into various systems of systems to replicate or replace individual Soldier skill discounts many of the cautions the 2009 Capstone Concept warned us about. We can debate whether future conflict will occur on tank battlefields or not, that future wars look more like Iraq or Afghanistan than Kursk or Karbala Gap, but perhaps it is not useful to discuss such contingencies or theorize on scenarios that may or may pan out, for it appears we have already made our decision. We are already executing our future course of action through transformation founded in a potentially flawed premise that we know how our future enemies will engage us. Those premises have shaped our vision of the future and affected force structure decisions in the past 13 years. Army transformation has reduced the armor signature, decreased cavalry capability at echelon without properly resourcing those cavalry organizations with the ability to fight for information, diminished the Armys capabilities to guard, cover, or conduct thorough zone reconnaissance with the elimination of the last Armored Cavalry Regiment, reduced the ability to establish habitual air/ground unit relationships, and, finally, taken away Brigade through Corps Commanders abilities to fight for information, identify opportunities, and seize, retain, and exploit the initiative by reconfiguring cavalry assets to cavalry squadrons and BfSBs, two anemic organizations who are barely able to perform limited missions in context and who were allocated excessively with technological assets under the guise that those technological solutions would replace the force structure reduced in their creation. Perhaps a more pressing question should be what does it mean when were wrong?
Posted on: Sat, 13 Sep 2014 11:46:27 +0000
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