A Future Soldier alternative

 

Some observations on Future Soldier. And AJAX.

 

There can be no discussion of an alternative to Future Soldier without first spending a few words on AJAX, and how the plan as published has faced some issues, or ignored them. 

Even after the recent oral statement and the publication of the report into the vibration and noise disaster, we still do not know if AJAX will ever be able to get into service. Proposals for a number of fixes have been formulated but will now have to be trialed, evaluated and costed, and who knows what the result will be, and how long it will take.

Future Soldier (for now) assumes AJAX will eventually deliver, but there are very good reasons to fear it won’t. It is also increasingly out of place in an Army that has lost its IFVs and does not have a budget that would enable the launch of a second major acquisition programme to replace it. The British Army seems to have well and truly crashed into its “French moment”, and I don’t know if there will ever again be a tracked IFV in service.

At this point, my personal opinion is that AJAX should not survive. The money yet not sunk on AJAX would be redirected primarily towards more BOXERs (because that is the only thing that can be purchased quickly, and expanding the order is cheaper than trying to launch a separate procurement for something else) and towards a modest expansion of the CHALLENGER 3 project. However, given the current situation and the fact that the Army is clearly afraid that, if it lets go of this deal for 589 AFVS, it will not be able to get them replaced, it is indispensable to consider the scenario in which AJAX does survive.

 

We can only guess, at this stage, how the Army thinks it will fight in the future. The Future Soldier plan deliberately avoids venturing into the shape of the “warfighting division” on deployment, unlike Army 2020 Refine, the previous plan.

Under Army 2020 Refine, 3^rd Division was going to have 2 armoured infantry brigades and 2 STRIKE brigades, but the planning assumption was that, on deployment, only one of the STRIKE formations would go. The equipment allocations went hand in hand with that assumption, because at no point of the STRIKE odyssey there was a funded, well-timed plan to get to both brigades being fully resourced.

Now 3^rd Division is down to 2 armoured infantry “Brigade Combat Teams” and a “Deep Recce & Strike Brigade Combat Team” which will see the current 1^st Armoured Infantry Brigade merge with 1^st Artillery Brigade in Summer 2022.

I’m guessing that the whole package is expected to deploy in the field, but the document does not exactly gives us confirmations or any detail about the timeframes and other accompanying conditions and assumptions.

 

Assuming the whole package is now expected to deploy, the principal changes are the greater number of BOXER battalions and AJAX regiments that would deploy.

Future Soldier lists 5 BOXER-mounted infantry battalions, up from 4 in the Army 2020 Refine plan (2 per each STRIKE brigade). If the whole package is to be deployable, this is an increase from 2 to 5 “deployable” BOXER units.

Of course, it does not compensate the fact that, under Army 2020 Refine, there were going to be 4 WARRIOR-mounted battalions in addition to the ones on BOXER.

The number of AJAX regiments is the same (4, with the fourth to be obtained by having King’s Royal Hussars regiment losing MBTs to convert to AJAX instead), but their distribution has changed: instead of being assigned in pairs to each STRIKE brigade (so with the assumption that only 2 out of 4 would simultaneously deploy) they are now assigned as follows:

1x in each Armoured Infantry BCT

2x in the Deep Recce Strike BCT

If the whole package is going to be deployable, the assumption is that AJAX units will be held at higher readiness to deploy and will have an even more important role to play.

 

We can also speculate on the Why.

In a STRIKE brigade, one AJAX regiment would be in “Armoured Cavalry” configuration, and would have reconnaissance and screening as its main role. The other, controversially, was going to be known as “Medium Armour” and would have had the exact same AJAX vehicles, organized differently, more akin to a Tank regiment, with the mission of supplying the very lightly armed BOXERs with intimate fire support.

 

In practice, once in the field the STRIKE brigade was going to possibly parcel out “Cavalry” squadrons to cover the reconnaissance needs, while organizing the rest of its resources in combined arms battlegroups that, by default, would have included:

1x Medium Armour Squadron (14 AJAX in 4 Sabre Troops and 2 more in the HQ, plus a section of 4 ARES carrying JAVELIN teams)

2x Mechanized Infantry Companies on BOXER (12 Infantry Carrier Vehicles in 3 Rifle Platoons, 1 Ambulance, 3 more for the OC, 2IC and CSM respectively)

 

Internal Wargaming of the STRIKE brigade. A battlegroup with the standard Medium Armour Sqn is visible nearest to the camera.  

BOXER, being lightly armed and, unlike WARRIOR, unable to drive the infantry onto the target and deliver supporting fire on the spot, was (and is) expected to dismount the infantry a “safe” distance away from the target. The dismounts would have gotten their intimate fire support not by their APCs, but by AJAX.

In the Armoured Infantry Brigade, of course, the WARRIOR covers both bases (at the cost of carrying 2 dismounts less) and works alongside the CHALLENGER tanks.

 

That was the previous plan. What happens now?

Despite much talk of attempts to improve the armament of at least some of the BOXERs, they remain wheeled APCs which the Army continues to see as unsuited for driving onto the target. The Army has been very clear and consistent in saying that BOXER is not and won’t be a WARRIOR replacement, because it does not have that kind of capability.

Unfortunately, however, the BOXER is physically replacing WARRIOR anyway. It will take its place into the infantry battalions that would have had WARRIOR, and will take over the garages and bases in Salisbury plain. It will sit within the Armoured Infantry Brigades, since the STRIKE brigades are no more.

It will replace WARRIOR... while being in no way adequate to replace WARRIOR. Wonders of British Army planning!

 

This situation means that the firepower gap that AJAX was meant to fill in the STRIKE battlegroups not only is unchanged and undiminished, it is literally 100% worse since WARRIOR will be withdrawn from service.

Future Soldier no longer lists any of the AJAX regiments as “Medium Armour”, but i suspect this is just a cosmetic change.

As we have seen, when STRIKE was a thing and the 2 Armoured Brigades had no Cavalry of their own at all, they were supposed to be supported for their reconnaissance and screening needs by elements coming from the single STRIKE brigade, aka from 2 AJAX regiments.

 

Under the new plan, the 2 armoured BCTs each have an AJAX regiment, and 2 more sit into the Deep Recce Strike BCT. This means 4 AJAX regiments potentially in the field at once. All of them, if we look at the names on paper, to cover Cavalry tasks.

Do we believe to that? Until yesterday, 2 AJAX regts were supposed to be enough to deliver recce, screening and fire support organic to the STRIKE Battlegroups proper, with the Armoured Brigades having no cavalry on their own, and now the Cavalry requirement is virtually doubled...?

 

I don’t think so. It seems clear to me that, while the Army is (rightly so) too embarrassed to call AJAX “medium armour” anymore, the requirement for it to support the infantry is more acute than ever before. With WARRIOR gone, there is nothing else that can deliver the supporting fire of a high-elevation, quick firing gun to suppress infantry, light armour and enemy ATGW teams. 

Logic suggest that the Deep Recce & Strike BCT with its 2 AJAX regiment will do the cavalry job... and the AJAX regiments in the Armoured BCTs will, regardless of names and titles, end up playing that “medium armour” role.

I’ll be controversial about it and say that, by accident and inability to set sensible priorities, the British Army is on the path to (poorly and remotely) emulate the Russian “TERMINATOR” vehicle concept by having AJAX, a non-tank, non-IFV, provide intimate support to tanks and infantry.

 

If AJAX is to stay, I can only hope there is a decent technical solution to its vibration and noise problems. What is not going away is fact that AJAX and BOXER are 2 unfinished projects thrown together in despair to create something that is workable, but way too expensive and awkward for what it does.

I honestly don't think there are alternatives for a wheeled, under-armed APC and a vehicle-with-firepower-of-upgraded-Warrior-but-unable-to-carry-dismounts. All you can do is have APC sitting back, disgorging dismounts some distance away while AJAX “plays Warrior” accompanying them.

 

I’ll also have to try and guess how the Army now expects to kit out 5 infantry battalions with BOXER without new vehicles being purchased. In this case i must assume they have done what i’ve long been saying would be unavoidable, and changed the mix of variants in the order.

For example, I think the 60 engineer section vehicles  could probably have been switched to Infantry carriers: remember that Future Soldier downgrades the previous plan from 4 brigades to 2, effectively, and there is already an engineer variant of AJAX, the ARGUS, on order.

Until recently, we can assume ARGUS would have equipped the Armoured Infantry Brigade’s engineer regiments, while the BOXERs would have gone to the engineer regiments of the STRIKE brigades. Now, there are only the former left to equip.

The order for 61 ambulances could also have been cut back sharply, as well as the (absolutely out of balance) 123 between Command Posts and Command Post – Utility vehicles.

 

Finally, a comment on another case of British Army contradictory decisions: it appears likely that the Mobile Fires Platform project, for the replacement of the AS90 with a new 155/52 gun, has seen its requirement slashed significantly. Possibly by half, despite the Army’s narrative being a greater focus on the Deep battle and long range Fires.

The requirement previously fluctuated between 98 and 116 guns, but with one firm assumption: 4 regiments would get the new gun. 2 regiments for the armoured infantry brigades (19 RA and 1 RHA) and 2 for the STRIKE brigades (3 RHA and 4 RA).

But under future soldier, 3 RHA is converting to GMLRS, and its place in support of 4 “Light BCT” is taken by 103 Royal Artillery Regiment (Reserve). Very big doubts hang over the deployability of 4^th Light BCT as its Combat Support and Combat Service Support are all dependent on Reservists showing up when needed. Moreover, it is now going to be an extremely light brigade, and this makes it very difficult to imagine 103 RA being outfitted with MFP.

4 RA will support 7^th Light Mechanised BCT and might still get MFP, eventually.

Instinctively, i say that the MFP requirement has just stealthily been cut by 25 to 50%. 

  

 

An alternative Future Soldier

 

In my alternative proposal, Infantry battalions take (kind of) even more of a hit, in favour of building up the range of supports needed to ensure there are more Combined Arms Formations that can be formed and put into the field. The Army Special Operations Brigade and the Ranger regiment remain, but the parallel Security Force Assistance Brigade is removed in favour of manpower going to other roles.

 

The main design drivers of my alternative proposal are:

 

-          North and South focus. The UK’s national strategy has, now more than ever, a two-pronged (3 if we include Central / Eastern Europe) shape with the conclusion of key agreements with “High North” countries (Canada, Norway and the rest of the Joint Expeditionary Force partners) and other important deals concluded with partners in the Middle East, with India and in Asia.

The Future Commando Force is reflecting this double focus by forming two Littoral Response Groups but it is clear to me that the Army must add its weight to ensure each region benefits from a more capable and credible UK forward presence.

 

-          Finding and Striking is going to be key in the future. This is an assumption we hear all the time, and which the previous Chief of Defence Staff constantly repeated, but there is little to no evidence of any real action being taken to ensure British forces can Find and Acquire targets quickly and hit them at long range. The upgrade to M270B1 launchers and the acquisition of longer range GMLRS rockets and new payload options is an excellent start but is not sufficient.

Key to my proposal is the repurposing of multiple infantry battalions into composite units which, taking example from 30 Commando IX in 3 Commando Brigade, will assume a long-range “Recce-Strike” and Brigade HQ support role. These units will also become responsible for Mini UAVs and suitable Uncrewed Ground Vehicles once these will become available, in particular combat UGVs compatible with Conceptual Force 2035’s aim of using autonomous vehicles to “push reconnaissance forth to the point of destruction” in order to increase op tempo. 

With mini-UAVs being distributed out directly to the infantry, 32 Royal Artillery regiment will instead convert to lightweight GMLRS launchers.

The official Future Soldier plan assigns 1 Royal Irish to 16 Air Assault brigade in such a role, although detail is still scarce and my proposal might still be significantly different. Each brigade will get such a battalion under my plan.

 

-          The British Armed Forces already possess most of the expensive “ingredients” needed to build up a powerful Air Mobile force. Future Soldier seems to (finally) have noticed and has started exploiting them with plans for the “Global Response Force”, but i’m urging an even greater focus on this area.

 

-          My alternative plan keeps the Army Special Operations Brigade and the Rangers, but sacrifices the Security Force Assistance Brigade in favour of resourcing the manoeuvre brigades. I think the Rangers, being meant from the start as a capable fighting force that will accompany local allies and carry out SOF raids, can carve a useful role for themselves even though the Joint Force would be hard pressed to supply the wide panoply of supports that would be needed for the concept to truly work. I’m far less convinced by the usefulness of the SFAB, because I simply don’t think courses in basic soldiering skills are what partners need. 

 

-          I hope the Reserve can provide more formed units and more capabilities in the future, but i’m not prepared to make one of already way too few brigades dependent on Reservists showing up when and as required. The core BCTs must be manned by regulars and provided with sufficient CS and CSS support.

 

1^st Division

In my Army proposal, 1^st Division is devoted to Forward Presence and Rapid Reaction. Forward Presence being a major, national strategy and involving the Future Commando Force and the indispensable support of Navy and Royal Navy units, the Division becomes a joint unit, effectively absorbing Joint Task Force HQ and integrating 3^rd Commando Brigade in its mechanism of force generation to cover the North and South tasks.

1^st Division will take command of 1^st Aviation BCT, 16 Air Assault BCT, 3 Commando and 7^th Mechanized BCT.

 

1^st Division will become a High Readiness, highly active deployable HQ, integrating in itself Joint Task Force HQ functions (and resources). It will be strengthened to account for the fact that it will be expected to oversee permanently forward deployed forces and command quick reaction operations.

30 Signal Regiment has the single Aviation Support comms Sqn, but sits in 1st Signal Brigade and under ARRC. Why has everything got to be this convoluted? Why can't the British Army just put things where they are needed, and cut down some of the intricacy?

30 Signal Regiment, which is primarily tasked with JTFHQ and JHC support already, will consequently become an organic element of the Division’s Information Maneouvre Component, alongside 2 Signal Regiment and an Intelligence battalion integrating joint force elements. 244 Aviation Support Signal Sqn will go directly to the Aviation Brigade.

 

A Recce and Fires Group will be formed around 32 Regiment Royal Artillery as it re-equips with a lightweight, rapidly deployable new missile launcher, either LIMAWS(R) resurrected or the USMC’s ROGUE/NMESIS. These lightweight launchers, which will be able to deploy by air, move long distances by road and being carried under slung by CHINOOK, would add that “strategic” dimension to both the air mobile and future commando force that is currently missing. Compatibility with GMLRS ammunition, up to the Precision Strike Missile to come (with ranges of 500 Km or more) and even to Naval Strike Missile (the NMESIS solution) would massively expand the usefulness of the light raiding forces, and make them lethal.

One note i will add here is that plans to acquire and develop new warhead and payload options for GMLRS rockets are the one truly good news of Future Soldier and i hope the Army will truly prioritize this. The acquisition of the Alternative Warhead for Convention-compliant area attack is crucial to restore the M270’s destructive ability, and the intention to add “explosive and non-explosive barriers to constrain vehicle movement; missile-deployed sensors; and radio frequency effects” are to be welcomed. Russia leads NATO by a mile in this kind of advanced artillery capability, and if the UK manages to develop effective payloads it could not only improve the Army’s position but potentially secure huge export wins across NATO.

The Recce and Fires Group will also include one Electronic Warfare regiment: Future Soldier already plans to convert 21 Royal Signal in a second EW formation. In my plan 14 Regt would focus on 1^st Division (it already includes the LEWTs for 16 Air Assault) and would maintain an EW Sqn for each brigade (3 Commando already provides its own EW) plus a Divisional Sqn.

Unlike the Deep Recce & Strike Group at present, which is a mammoth formation of 2 heavy cav, 2 light cav, 2 GMLRS regiments, 2 AS90 regiments and a STA regiment absurdly without any organic RLC unit to carry the immense amount of ammunition and supplies required, the Recce and Fires Group will absolutely need to have at least one organic, regular logistic regiment, plus a Reserve transport regiment specifically focused on ammunition and in particular GMLRS pods.

With each Division having equal “dignity” even if not equal weight, Air Defence needs will be equal as well. In my plan, 12 and 16 Regiments will be assigned one per Division and will become mixed regiments comprising SHORAD and MRAD batteries. Being based on the very same installation and very much working side by side, there shouldn’t be excessive issues in adopting a mix that, in the field, would be inevitable anyway.

An additional Surveillance and Target Acquisition regiment will need to be formed, so each Division has access to indispensable sensors including counter-battery radars.

The Recce and Fires Group for 1^st Division will have 2 scout battlegroups formed around Light Cavalry, initially with Jackals and, one day, with an enclosed light vehicle better suited to operations including in extreme cold.

 

1^st Aviation Brigade Combat Team changes

1^st Aviation BCT will expand and rationalize its organisation. Elements of one infantry battalion, plus 244 Signal Squadron (from 30 Signal Regiment) and Landing Zone reconnaissance and communication parties from the current Joint Helicopter Support Squadron will be used to create a Command and Support Battalion that will deliver deployable HQs, communications, ground reconnaissance and force protection.

 

The RAF Chinook Squadrons will formally come under the BCT’s command, organized into a Heavy Regiment through the formation of appropriate ground life support teams for operations in the field, on the model of existing AAC regiments. At the moment, the RAF Support Force is more tied to established airbases and does not come with the kind of organic life support found in AAC Regts.

The same would happen with the new Medium helicopters, to be organized in a Medium Regiment which will have 2 of its Squadrons forward based by default (84 Sqn in Cyprus, 667 Sqn in Brunei).

 

The RAF Tactical Supply Wing will merge with 132 RLC Sqn and elements of the current JHSS to form a single, integrated Aviation Sustainment Battalion.

7 REME will lose command of 132 RLC Sqn and carry on focusing only on Aviation Maintenance.

158 Aviation Support Battalion RLC (Reserve) will become organic to the BCT it is meant to support. 

47 Royal Artillery with its WATCHKEEPER batteries would be part of the Aviation Brigade due to the sizeable ground footprint required by the drone.

 

16 Air Assault Brigade Combat Team changes

Largely the same changes already planned in Future Soldier: a third logistic squadron and artillery battery to be formed so that each battlegroup (2 PARA, 3 PARA, 1/2 GURKHA) is supported.

1 R IRISH joining the brigade as a Recce and Strike Formation. Keeping pace with my conception of this unit, which should in no small part reproduce what 30 Commando successfully does for 3 Commando, this battalion will effectively also absorb 216 Signal Sqn and the Brigade’s deployable HQ, to ensure its force protection and life support.

R IRISH will also supply patrols / a mounted Brigade Reconnaissance and Surveillance Sqn, effectively integrating the Pathfinders into what will really be a composite unit, no longer a “true” infantry formation.

An EW battery and a Light Air Defence Battery will complete this battlegroup, on permanent alignment from 14 Royal Signal Regiment and 12 Royal Artillery Regiment respectively, much as already happens today.

The priority for the brigade would be the acquisition of CHINOOK-portable light vehicles to increase its mobility on the ground. The new Battlegroup Organic Anti-Armour solution should obviously include a scaled-down launcher option compatible with these light vehicles; the current trailer-mounted EXACTOR can be the stopgap on the way there.

 

7^th Brigade Combat Team

In my plan, this brigade becomes “joined at the hip” with the Future Commando Force’s Littoral Response Groups, forming a North group, with focus on Norway and the Arctic, and a South group focused on Middle East and beyond.

The brigade will still be “light mechanized”, but it would receive the VIKING as its primary fighting vehicle, because it is amphibious and proven both in Arctic scenarios and in hot, sandy and muddy ground.

The brigade will technically be quaternary, but its 4 battalions will be split into two groups, one for forward deployment in Oman, and the other focused on Norway deployments. Each group having 2 battalions enables a yearly rotation to spread out the pressure.

In combination with the afloat LRG provided by the Royal Marines, these heavier, mechanized battlegroups ensure the UK has a more credible force at readiness in both regions. Obviously the Artillery regiment would have 4 batteries to ensure proper battlegrouping, and the Close Support Logistic regiment should ideally receive, over time, at least a basic fleet of all-terrain, Arctic-compatible heavy duty cargo carriers able to ensure appropriate intimate support even in the most demanding terrain.

4 Artillery Regiment would receive the Mobile Fires Platform in the 2030s, replacing the L118.

The brigade will have, as per my introduction, a “Recce-Strike” battlegroup delivering brigade reconnaissance in deep, screening, communications and force protection for the HQ in the field. The unit will integrate the deployable brigade HQ and its Signal Sqn.

32 Royal Engineers will provide close support engineering, and a Close Support RLC regiment will, over time, acquire at least a basic fleet of heavy duty logistic platforms compatible with snow and the atrocious terrain of the high north. Budget restrictions mean this will have to be a gradual transformation, but if priorities were steady, progressive improvements would be possible.

 

3 Commando Brigade changes  

The Commando brigade would undergo some level of change by continuing its already ongoing split into two Groups, North and South. Specifically, i’m advocating 42 and 47 Commando to mix their respective capabilities. Right now, 42 Commando concentrates all of the ship boarding and ship force protection teams, as well as Mentoring tasks and a Sqn assigned to Joint Personnel Recovery role; 47 Commando groups the Landing Craft Sqns and the boat raiding Sqn.

I think it would be beneficial to split the capabilities across the two units and have them assigned to the two geographic focus points. Each “maritime Commando” will deliver:  

-          Boarding Teams and Force Protection with the adequate force and equipment mix for the relative areas. In general, most boarding happens in the LRG (South) area, normally.

-          Boat / Raiding Sqn, to be equipped with more capable combat boats as soon as practicable

-          Landing Craft Sqn

-          Joint Personnel Recovery

 LRG (North) would be delivered by 45 and 47 Commando plus supports; (South) would be the remit of 40 and 42 Commando.

 

 

3^rd Division

 

The Iron Division will continue to be the Heavy division (or “warfighting” if you like the Americanism) and will have 3 manoeuvre brigades: 12 and 20 armoured BCTs and 4^th Light BCT. The inclusion of the Light BCT can appear counter-intuitive, but it was always planned that 3^rd Division, on deployment, would call on the services of the Vanguard Light Brigade for rear area security, prisoners management and all sort of other supporting tasks. In my proposal, 4^th BCT would also be Light Mechanized, anyway, by inheriting the Foxhound (and Mastiff / Ridgback) from 7^th BCT as the latter gets VIKINGs.

 

The divisional enablers will include of course a Recce and Fires Group centered on 26 RA (and 101 RA of the Reserve) with M270B1 GMLRS. 5 RA delivering STA, 16 RA delivering SHORAD and MRAD, 21 Royal Signal delivering EW.

The one difference from 1^st Division’s Group would be the 2 Recce-Strike battlegroups which, in this case, would be square Combined Arms Regiments comprising a cavalry “battalion” with 2 AJAX Sabre Sqns plus supports and an infantry “battalion” of two rifles companies on BOXER, plus a regimental support company with mortars, long range ATGWs (to be acquired under the Battlegroup Organic Anti-Armour project).

 

 

Armoured BCTs

This model of Combined Arms Regiment would be the core of the Armoured BCTs as well, for the reasons explained at length in the introduction. You’ve heard me talk of the Combined Arms Regiment in a multitude of articles in the past, so i won’t repeat it all here.

I will just note that, due to the “particular” situation of today’s British Army, needing to combine AJAX and BOXER to, effectively, replace effects normally associated to the IFV alone, i’m keeping the tank regiments separated.

Instead of a single Type 58 regiment, each brigade would have 2 smaller tank regiments (ideally Type 44, with a slight increase to the total number of CHALLENGER 3 to be acquired over time), to go along with 2 Combined Arms Regiments.

The Armoured BCTs would need to be, virtually, at the same level of readiness for the deployment of both to be feasible in a Division-level operation, but in truth we’ll have to assume a more graduated cycle of readiness and engagement.

One brigade at “higher” readiness could be committed to central-eastern Europe, with elements of one Combined Arms Regiment plus tanks and supports in Estonia for operation CABRIT and the other Combined Arms Regiment and tank regiment in Germany.

The other brigade could, in the same year, rotate its battlegroups through Oman’s training area to deliver the heavier element of Forward Presence in the (South) sector and to exploit greater training spaces and maintain experience of operations in arid climates.

The Close Support Artillery regiments with AS90 (and then MFP) would be organic to the BCTs in my plan, as well as Close Support Logistic.

The Armoured BCTs would have their own Recce-Strike formation to support the HQ, deliver reconnaissance in deep and UAV support and organic tactical intelligence.

If Future Soldier is to truly deliver BCTs that are more capable of independent action, this is simply indispensable.

 

4^th Light Mechanized BCT

That 4th Light Brigade Combat Team as envisioned in the current Future Soldier is not a (reliably) deployable brigade is evident by the fact that the totality of its Combat Support and Combat Service Support roles are to be covered by the Reserve.

With all due respect for the Reserve and with all possible optimism in the expansion of their role and ability to field formed units, it appears to me that this arrangement will too often not work satisfactorily.

 

That 4^th BCT is yet another brigade becoming an undeployable paper tiger due to the Army’s obsession to cling on to more infantry battalions than it can possibly support is further evidence by the fact that 1st Division has a single Signal regiment. 3rd Division has 1 divisional regt and 2 "brigade" regts. The current ORBAT is just NOT built around what is needed to deploy force in the field.

We KNOW that a Bde needs, at a MINIMUM, a Signal Sqn for its HQ and Comms. Army currently assigns a whole regt to its (few) decent bdes, with 1 Sqn delivering Armoured HQ (where applicable) and 1 delivering Network, plus Sp Sqn. A Bde is nothing if it can't command & communicate.

 

"We need X battalions of infantry because there is the Cyprus and Publid Duty rotation, you know" is technically true, but the Army cannot continue to use this shield to defend a constant erosion of the CS and CSS elements that make a Brigade a meaningful combined arms formation.

21 Signal Regt becomes EW, and that's fantastic. More EW is needed. But can price of some more EW really be leaving 4th Brigade without Signal support? 3 RHA becomes a GMLRS regiment, and again that's good, but the price can't be leaving 4th Bde depending wholly on the Reserve.

My solution to all of these problems is the Recce-Strike combined arms formation at brigade level, as it combines a combat role suited to infantry and cavalry with indispensable current capabilities including a Signal Sqn for the brigade’s C2 needs and a tactical UAV unit.

The remaining Signal resources, grouped in regiments assigned to the Divisions, can deliver theatre-wide network support while the Signals organic to the brigades deliver the BCT’s intimate needs.

With 32 RA no longer being the lone custodian of mini UAVs, it can convert to Light GMLRs as said earlier, and 3 RHA can continue in the close support artillery role.

 

4^th Brigade will be based around 4 Light Mechanized battalions on deployment, but will have more battalions at its command to account for the needs of Cyprus.

Cyprus absorbs 2 battalions, one of which is a garrison force while the other, from several years already, is a Theatre Reserve Battalion, effectively forward based on the island for rapid insertion in the Mediterranean and Middle East area. This would make it one of the 4 primary manoeuvre units of the brigade.

The brigade would also control the garrison battalion, but that would be additional to the manoeuvre strength, not considered part of it proper. The Cyprus-task would continue to be rotated through the brigade’s battalions.

3 RHA would still be aiming for the Mobile Fires Platform, in my plan.

 

The Reserve

Future Soldier is a bit contradictory on how best to organize the Reserve to ensure it can force-generate for deployment. Several Reserve units are organic to Regular BCTs, while many more are assigned to 19^th Brigade, which will resurrect in 2022 to take care of the reserve force generation cycle.

Personally, i’m going to recommend going with specific brigading of the Reserve, outside but alongside Regular BCTs.

As i’ve said from the beginning, 11^th Brigade will not take a Security Force Assistance role in my plan. Instead, it will become a Reserve brigade (Heavy), assigned to 3^rd Division to support primarily the armoured BCTs.

It will take ownership of units that Future Soldier currently assigns directly to the Armd BCTs, from 104 Royal Artillery to the Royal Wessex Yeomanry, moving through the Reserve battalion counterparts to the BOXER-mounted regulars.

 

19^th Brigade will be the Reserve brigade for 1^st Division, taking command of 103 Royal Artillery and the reserve infantry battalions as well as the reserve CS and CSS units currently assigned to 4^th BCT.

 

Public Duty

Future Soldier has started a welcome revolution in how Public Duties are provided, reducing the requirement from 2 regular battalions to 1, thanks to the creation of “Public Duties Teams”, presumably based on the current Incremental Guards Companies. There will be 8 teams, apparently, with up to 3 on duty at any one time.

Support will be provided by the reserves of the LONDON regiment, which is receiving the Guards title.

 

 

In conclusion

My plan would impact the Infantry quite severely. Many battalions would need to become “hybrid” formations less about traditional infanteering and more about UAVs, patrols, surveillance and target acquisition. I believe this is in the interest of the Army’s capability, however, and an inevitable consequence of having to accommodate the largest number of capable Combined Arms Formations into a constrictive ceiling of 73.000 regulars.

 

Emphasis is put on ensuring regular CS and CSS support, as well as Surveillance and Target Acquisition, are available more widely and assuredly across the formations.

Note that these are all things that the Army and Secretary of State for Defence say are needed; the problem is that Future Soldier as currently published does not follow those directions.

The many weaknesses of STRIKE

An idea can only ever be as good as its execution

NOTE: this article was originally meant to appear also on uklandpower.com, since it was initially conceived specifically as a reply to one of their articles. This intention had to be abandoned since the editor and the army voices on that portal feel that this article is too long and the point it raises have already been “discussed ad infinitum”. I felt I could simply not work along the lines that were asked of me.

My criticism of STRIKE has gained me the irritation of several Army figures, so I’m now known as an Army hater as well as an RAF hater. Facts of life, I guess. I actually care deeply for both, and want only the best for them. My critique is purely due to the firm belief that in some areas the Services insist on taking the wrong paths.

There can be no doubt that the “STRIKE prophet” who has written a new pro-STRIKE article on UKLandPower.com is speaking primarily, if not only, to me. I am the one who challenged “STRIKE prophets” to provide answers, after all.

I will now have to answer, and to once more clarify the exact nature of my critiques and concerns, which again and again are reduced to the absurd rather than faced head on. My critique is a bit more complex than “BOXER has no cannon and so is useless”.

I will quote several passages of the article in question, and refer to its author as “the Author”, but of course you should first of all go and read what he has to say about the STRIKEconcept. As you can tell I continue to have many reservations, but it is a more useful article than most seen so far.

I also need to point out a fact which should be obvious, but evidently is not: the STRIKE supporters that periodically try to prove me wrong have an easy time coming at me from their individual background and push forward their own idea and interpretation of STRIKE.

I’m locked in discussions with multiple people, however, and that means I am exposed to multiple interpretations of STRIKE, including those who insist that the Armoured Brigades should be sacrificed in order to go “full STRIKE” for the future. I have to answer to everyone, not just to one person, so this will require some extra space, and if it feels like I’m addressing things you haven’t said, it is because someone else has. It is also a factor in my hostility to the concept: the more STRIKE is presented as the One and Only Future for the Army, the more I tend to disagree.

The Author’s main point, in this case, is that:

In the simplest possible terms, [STRIKE] means giving a UK Division and/or Allied Corps a Screening and Exploitation Force. This has been publicly stated by the Army.  

It has, and it has never been in doubt. Screening and reconnaissance have always been part of the STRIKE concept, and in truth, since building STRIKE means taking the Armoured Cavalry element out of the Armoured Infantry Brigades, it can only be so. One of the first sacrifices STRIKE has required has been the shifting of AJAX to the “new” role and new formation, and the Armoured Brigades no longer will have a recce cavalry element of their own, other than the Close Recce troops part of the constituent Battalions and Tank regiment. Clearly, the requirement has not gone away; just the vehicles have.

Screening, reconnaissance and exploitation are extremely important in high intensity warfare, and we are witnessing increasing interest in powerful formations for this role also in the USA, where more and more often the old and extremely powerful Armored Cavalry Regiment of Gulf War fame is mentioned as a kind of formation that needs to return and might in fact provide a base for the future structures.

The premise is something I don’t disagree on.

The Strike mission requires highly dispersed operations enabled by low signature, highly redundant C2 which can concentrate effects in both time and space in ways far more detrimental to the enemy’s scheme of manoeuvre than might otherwise be the case if conventional methods were used.

Strike is looking to add as much friction and uncertainty to the enemy formation as possible by enabling Fires, Aviation, Air and a whole range of joint effects to destroy, defeat, and inflict attrition on enemy formations within a Division’s or Corps’ battlespace. Ultimately, this allows Armoured Infantry Brigades and/or coalition Armoured formations to conduct counterattacks and counter strokes under considerably better conditions than if Strike Brigades were not present.

The Author is right. This is part of the concept and is an effect that the British Army hopes to obtain through dispersion. From the RUSI Land Warfare Conference 2019 we have learned that the STRIKE Brigade is looking at covering “a front width of 80 to 100 km, with a depth of up to 100 km, advancing on as many as 12 axis at the same time”.

Brigadier James Martin speaks from around minute 28:40. This is recommended viewing.

The Author’s mention of “uncertainty” for the enemy can actually be further developed. STRIKE is clearly the primary attempt of the British Army to fit into the new Multi Domain concept pushed by the US Army. To understand what I mean, I recommend reading this report (of course coming from the American side. Unfortunately the British Army is terrible at this kind of communication and rarely produces something which is both accessible and worth reading) from WARFIGHTER Exercise 19-04. This massive wargame / simulation exercise held in the US had 3^rd (UK) Division involved and the article does an excellent job at explaining just what this concept of “creating dilemmas for the enemy” is all about.

“A single penetration, though conservative and often effective, would not achieve the commander’s intent. The penetration presents the enemy with one problem—a problem that other units have presented repeatedly. Dilemmas are not the same as problems. A problem is a situation regarded as unwelcome or harmful that must be dealt with and overcome. A dilemma, by contrast, is a situation in which a difficult choice has to be made between two or more alternatives, especially equally undesirable ones. To present the enemy with multiple dilemmas across multiple domains and in multiple locations, the Division combined penetrations with audacious turning movements and tactical deceptions, complemented and reinforced with nonlethal effects.”

“Conducted simultaneously, the penetrations, turning movements, and tactical deceptions enabled the Division to achieve a degree of irreversible momentum against the enemy. The armor penetrations kept the enemy’s sensors engaged. The turning movements avoided the enemy’s principle defensive positions and seized objectives behind the enemy’s current positions causing the enemy to both dislocate from its positions and to divert forces to meet the threat. The tactical deceptions, in particular feints, kept the enemy fixed on sizable threats, which influenced the enemy’s decision to prematurely unmask forces in sanctuary inside its underground facilities. Additionally, the combat aviation Brigade was employed as an independent maneuver organization focused on destroying enemy high-payoff targets—in particular long-range artillery. Synchronizing all of these actions in time, space, and purpose became a tremendously complex task and the primary focus for the Division main command post.”

It is pretty clear where the STRIKE concept fits in, and also the kind of considerations that have driven the (incredibly welcome) development of the British Army finally forming a coherent aviation Brigade for Division-level ops.

It is also pretty clear, however, how different the US and British approaches are. The British Army believes that this kind of warfare can be founded upon a wheeled (in part…) Brigade, with the consequent reduced sustainment needs, while the US Army has in no way identified a particular advantage for wheels or tracks. The US Army has actually not yet wedded itself to a new Brigade Combat Team structure for this kind of distributed warfare; but has actually started from evolving its FIRES, and the sensors and communications needed to employ them to strike out to 1,000 miles and beyond. The absolutely central role of FIRES is something that the American article once again makes clear, reaffirming how artillery is at the same time the main problem and the most promising solution.

The US is especially not betting that they can somehow practice dispersion by using a Brigade consisting of just 2 infantry Battalions to split across up to 12 axis of advance on a front of 100x100 km. They do consider a level of dispersion and wider fronts, but in much more realistic terms. Now, obviously the British Army is in no condition to throw as many combined arms Battalions at a front as the US Army can, but the worst possible thing to do is to pretend once again that “less is more” and aim for stars that can’t be reached.  

It is no mystery that I think the US Army approach is the more realistic one. And it is no mystery that the main thing that remains mysterious is how the British approach to dispersion is supposed to successfully work. It is more than legitimate to have doubts.

I will once again reference one of the most interesting proposals for future army formations in a Multi Domain Operations setting, which is the Reconnaissance and Strike Group put forward by US Army Colonel (retd) Douglas MacGregor, of battle of 73 Easting fame. His RSG has obvious points of contact with both the ACR of his days and with STRIKE. The formation he proposes is meant to cover a very wide front of 60 to 80 kilometers, with a depth of attack of 80 to 100 depending mostly on terrain.

The Reconnaissance Strike Group is built around its FIRES element.

It differs from STRIKE in many ways, however: it is founded upon a powerful FIRES formation literally at its center, and puts 4 extremely powerful and tracked Recce-Strike combined arms battalions all around it. It is a mobile fortress which fights on a very vast area, finding and striking targets. Its Battalions, in the proposal, are clearly meant to achieve infiltration by force, and lots of it. MacGregor wants something lighter than an MBT, but with firepower at least equal, and in fact superior: he urges the US Army to adopt a new standardized tracked Armoured vehicle coming in IFV variant with 30mm and Direct Fire variant with 120mm, if not with the new Rheinmetall 130 mm cannon. Moreover, he also wants the Battalions to have numerous organic AMOS 120mm turreted mortars on the same base hull.

Again, the US Army clearly can afford to purchase more and better kit than the British Army could ever afford, so a direct comparison of kit is not the point of this. What I truly want people to reflect on is that the extremely powerful RSG is meant to operate, with twice the mass and several times over the firepower, on an area which is smaller than the one STRIKE is supposedly meant to cover, against the same opponent.

How can this ever be realistic? If you can’t afford the equipment, you can’t cover the area. If you can’t infiltrate by means of force and are extremely unlikely to do it by means of stealth, what is left? This is my chief worry about STRIKE. It is not about the “30 mm on BOXER” in isolation, it is the fact that I do not see any real effort to make dispersion viable. STRIKE takes vehicles and armaments of a Brigade that used to count on MBTs for the striking power, and tells them, literally, to operate over a far greater area. How can spreading insufficient resources on an even wider area be considered a solution is mysterious.

In TANK, the Royal Tank Regiment journal, issue 2017, Lieutenant J. Benn writes after involvement in STRIKE simulations and mentions, among other things, that “in CATT, the AJAX Troop was spread up to 8 km apart, with commanders being able to make decisions for themselves about Limits of Exploitation and what risks they could take. Exploitation was the principle aim and if the threat picture became too great we simply dissolved into the ether in order to concentrate elsewhere”.

This might appear extremely bold and innovative to some, but it appears exceptionally fragile in a multitude of ways, and I seriously struggle to imagine much room for actual exploitation against a peer enemy with even the most basic of competence in using its own sensors and weapons. It literally seems like a desperate attempt to avoid annihilation via artillery by spreading out too widely to present a good target, but without a real answer about how to preserve a meaningful offensive potential.

When people pontificate that “strike cannot survive against a peer competitor,” they seem to do so from a standpoint which does not reflect an understanding of Formation-, Division- or Corps-level warfighting. So some people clearly think Strike is an alternative to an Armoured infantry Brigade, which given the announcement made in December 2016, that the Field Army would reorganise as two Strike Brigades and two Armoured Infantry Brigades is hard to understand, as the intended role of the Strike Brigades, if not immediately articulated, was obviously both different from and complimentary to, the Armoured Infantry Brigades. Even the most casual observer should have concluded that a Strike Brigade does not fight or operate like an Armoured Infantry Brigade and has a totally different mission. If 50% of the formation is reconnaissance vehicles, then logic would strongly suggest the role it currently has is far from being as “vague and unclear” as some suggest.

We have established in what contest STRIKE fits in. And while I can’t speak for others, I have always had in mind the fact that 3^rd Division is meant to deploy as 2 Armoured Brigades and 1 STRIKE. But that does not in itself ease the concerns about STRIKE being unsuited for the kind of fights it imagines.

Also, please note that the British Army itself says that of the 2 AJAX-mounted regiments in each STRIKE Brigade, only one is expected to be truly recce roled, with the other called Medium Armour. The Army has made extremely clear that AJAX is there to act as a medium tank of sort in support of the infantry carried by MIV, and that the coupling of the two vehicles is indispensable because, as we know, MIV is extremely lightly armed. It is in fact an APC, and in other times this means it would have kept pretty much out of the fight; in STRIKE this is not quite possible and MIV will be in the very vanguard despite not being truly equipped for it.

I would avoid making the point that 50% of the vehicles are “recce” because it is not quite as meaningful as the Author implies. While in the future the aspiration seems to be that the line between “recce” and “striking” battlegroups will be increasingly blurred, if not cancelled, to claim that the presence of AJAX means everything is clear cut is not realistic. AJAX is there primarily because it is what the Army has. It is the most expensive contract the army has entered into for decades. There is no easy way out of it (if at all), and STRIKE needed something with Direct Fire capability and good “eyes”. There never was a choice; it was AJAX or nothing at that point in time.

The AJAX family: variants, sub-variants and procurement quantities. The Joint Fires sub-variant appears to be effectively dead, while the status of Overwatch and Ground Based Surveillance is not known.

STRIKE will not operate as a traditional Armoured Brigade and no one has tried to imply otherwise. Or at least, I haven’t. 
But it is a fact of life that at the lower levels, the cooperation between AJAX and MIV will still have to very closely imitate the relationship between an MBT and an APC in a Mechanized formation. AJAX being the armour, MIV being the APC which, unlike in a traditional scenario, will have to do more than stay well back and drop its infantry some distance away from the actual target. It is fair to say that at Brigade level the concept is very different from that of “normal” Mechanized Infantry Brigades, but deep down at platoon level the difference is far less.
Again J. Benn mentions: “in CATT, AJAX and MIV pairs worked alongside one another, with the AJAX commanders under the direction of the Platoon Commander”.

He goes on to make a series of reasonable points about how this will have to be taken into consideration in training both MIV and Platoon Commanders, which will have to be particularly prepared in both fields. Intimate collaboration at all training levels is also extremely relevant, but of course the STRIKE battlegroups only form up in the field, and otherwise are well separated entities with the AJAX half living in Tidworth and the MIV half in Catterick. Finding a way to create permanent STRIKE BGs was too innovative for this innovative project. Capbadge bunfights will have been in the way too, I bet.

Simulation of course helps, but the cost and intricacies of training are going to be massive if this has to work and it is another reason why I utterly despise the argument that STRIKE is a cheaper alternative to legacy Mechanized Brigades. They really aren’t, at no level, assuming you are serious about doing it right.

The Author suggests elsewhere in his text that the renewed concept of screening began with AJAX itself, and it is probably true, in a way. When it was still known as FRES SV, there were going to be several other variants in a number of successive production batches, with more vehicles ordered to cover more roles. Crucially, there used to be an actual Medium Armour variant which was meant to be procured to ensure the Scout variant would have intimate support of 120mm guns. You might remember that a lot of happy noise was produced back then because AJAX came with the large turret ring capability, ready to accept the turret and cannon needed to create the Medium Armour variant.

FRES SV clearly had plans that extended well beyond what AJAX now delivers. Medium Armour was already planned back then. The difference is that the previous plan had the firepower, not just the name.

General Dynamics has benefitted from that as it gave them a developed base to work on to mature their proposal for the US Army’s Mobile Protected Firepower medium armour programme (although armed with a 105mm rather than a 120, at least for now). 

The British Army, short of money, is stuck to saying that half of the AJAXs will be “Medium Armour” even though they are the exact same vehicle with the exact same armament. It is this kind of “magic” that I really can’t support. At one point in this story, the dramatic loss of firepower that intervened since the true Medium Armour and Overwatch (long range ATGW launcher vehicle) variants that had to be part of FRES SV have both vanished, has been brushed under the carpet. The firepower is no longer there, but the role is, and the area to cover is still the same. Or indeed much larger.

The latest image of General Dynamics’ offering for the US Army Mobile Protected Firepower. These are intended to equip a Squadron within each infantry brigade. The Stryker brigades have concentrated their wheeled 105mm Mobile Gun Systems at Squadron level within their cavalry element as well, while a Squadron of MBTs has been moved into the recce element of Armored Brigade Combat Teams.

Italy assigns a similar number of CENTAURO to the Cavalry regiment of each of its brigades. The challenges of urban warfare and the recognized need for a stronger screening are part of the reason for this firepower increase across various countries and brigade structures.

What I firmly believe was not planned before 2015 at the earliest was the eventual split of the same Brigade between tracks and wheels.

I don’t think anyone can deny that there was a rather dramatic split in ideas between the era of CGS Sir Peter Wall, which ended with tracks being the absolute priority and the signing of the AJAX contract in its very last days, and the era of CGS Sir Nicholas Carter which followed with the dawn of STRIKE. The equipment programme shows the damage that the about turn from tracks to wheels has caused, leaving the Army stranded in the middle with insufficient money to do both and, moreover, to fund everything else in the contour.  

I believe there can be little doubt that, had AJAX not been already on order, in the context of STRIKE it would not have been pursued in its current form.

We are where we are at this point, but let’s not turn a blind eye to reality.

This brings us to a key point about Strike, which again some seem not understand. Strike is not a platform-centric idea. Yes, Strike may have started with Ajax, but that was pure logic, based on the fact that covering forces were in the formation recce business, as in CVR(T) regiments. Ajax is the CVR(T) replacement. This means that criticism of Strike is based on shallow technical analysis of Ajax and Boxer. The most simplistic observations seem to focus on direct fire weapons and mobility.

High lethality is required, and any vehicle can increase its capacity to offend by adding a weapon, but that comes with large cost implications attached, and so the often heard comment that “Boxer needs a 30mm cannon” assumes the absolute need for such a weapon, or else Strike will be a “hollow force.” For Strike, what gives the 30mm weapon its real value is the sighting and detection system inherent to it. Thus, lots of people talk about the 40mm cannon on Ajax. Almost no one talks about the Thermal Imager, which is actually the key capability. The strike concept of operation clearly puts primacy on sensors and communications. To paraphrase Wavell: “Amateurs talk 30mm cannons. Professionals talk communications and sensors”.

As previously stated, lethality is clearly both important and required, but as the current Strike Brigade Commander has pointed out, what experience has shown is that for Strike to succeed it merely needs to be competitive with the enemy, as opposed to superior to the enemy. You just need to win the fight rather than the whole battle. Consequently, the plan has always been to  resource Strike units with both mounted and dismounted ATGM and anti-armour weapons, which are obviously high pay-off in terms of cost versus effect/ flexibility.

To some measure it is true that final capability is not purely due to platforms. But you cannot pretend platforms are not key. The idea might well be kind of platform agnostic, but its realization cannot be. MIV was always going to be wheeled, because it is felt that only wheeled armour has the kind of low sustainment burden needed for dispersion to have a chance. Moreover, the British Army selected the absolutely most expensive 8x8 on the market. Why, if platform attributes are not that important? Why has it insisted on having numerous ambulances and command posts on this very expensive vehicle base rather than be “innovative” and offload those to something less expensive, like MRV-P, in a fashion already seen in other countries?[1]

Because, I am told, you need the exact same protection and mobility level for those elements for STRIKE to work, because everyone has to work dispersed and, indeed, probably surrounded by enemies. There is no rear echelon anymore, is the argument, which if pushed to the extreme introduces all sorts of implications for the wider Logistic element too. I’ve seen people seriously debating the opportunity of carrying supplies in BOXERs, but I hope no one is seriously thinking about replacing MAN SV trucks with it. Some heavily protected load carriers have been seen before, of course, but it’s unclear quite how far the Army thinks it needs to go.    

For sure, it is serious enough in its belief that BOXER is the only base vehicle that will suffice, to bet its available budget on the current order. An order which is the largest ever made so far worldwide for BOXER vehicles. And yet, even though more than 520 BOXERs are incoming, at most 4 infantry battalions will convert to it. Or possibly just 2 plus a training margin, since some say that the first BOXER order is only sufficient for the first STRIKE Brigade, not also for the second. The exact details are not known yet.
In another European army such an order could have equipped about twice as many Infantry Battalions, since other countries would have focused their attention on the combat variants.
And yet, at the same time, key elements of combat capability such as the mortars have received no equal attention, which is another aspect that I find frankly incomprehensible.

The Author writes “This concept [STRIKE] then allowed the British Army to buy BOXER. So, no Strike, no BOXER.” I’d argue that it is more factually accurate to say that the British Army has actually decided “no BOXER, no STRIKE”: its procurement choices make clear that the one thing the Army absolutely wants to have in order to declare STRIKE operational is a large amount of wheeled APCs, “specialist” carriers, ambulances and command posts. It has put the available budget into buying BOXER, not in Satcom-on-the-move-enabled tactical headquarters, not on speeding up LeTacCis to move beyond BOWMAN, not on curing the recognized, immense gap in FIRES and not even on continuing the slow process of modernization of its Armoured Brigades, putting their very future into jeopardy. The Army has chosen its overriding priority in BOXER, and has accepted all sorts of limitations, both on the equipment fit of the vehicles itself and in other areas of its capability, in order to buy it. This is undeniable. Regardless of what the Author claims, the Army has decided that it could not use MASTIFF, or FV432 for the first part of the life of its new creature. It demands to have BOXER to declare IOC. So long for not being platform and wheels centric! You can’t deny that this has been the choice. The only question left to be answered is whether this was wise. If you ask me, it wasn’t. 

And yes, we have all been told about the wonder that the Thales ORION sight is, and how AJAX will be an excellent target finder. But I’m afraid I am a little less prone to believing in hype, and I don’t think the enemy’s own thermal cameras will be that much worse to tip the balance. And that’s without even venturing in how Thales thermal cameras have been supplied to Russia in the recent past. Or in how, absurdly, AJAX needs to have that prodigious sight removed in case fitting the RWS is felt necessary. Gods know how anyone could think this was a good idea.

I also do agree in principle on “winning fights, not battles”. Battles are for the whole force to win. But again, my arguments are being reduced to absurdity rather than countered more factually. To win fights you still have to be equipped sufficiently well to have good chances. Has someone taken a bit of time in the last while to observe Armoured vehicle development in Russia (and indeed elsewhere too), and appreciated that they tend to put ATGWs and 30mm guns almost on everything? And even heavier guns on the rest, I’ll add.
The Author say it is enough to be “competitive”, but the gap in both direct and indirect firepower is so vast that I’m far from convinced that even that modest requirement is properly satisfied.

I continue to struggle to see how the dispersed groups of the STRIKE Brigade infiltrate the enemy ground and win fights. Even assuming they can always evade the enemy MBTs, they don’t compare well to enemy AFVs either, including the wheeled ones which match of exceed STRIKE’s mobility and thus cannot be realistically avoided. Will they infiltrate by strength? They don’t have that kind of strength.

Are lightly armed APCs and AJAXs going to slip undetected past people with mobile phones which might be less than sympathetic, past UAVs, past enemy aviation and sensors and Fires and EW and the whole range of Peer capabilities? Will they infiltrate by stealth? It’s extremely unlikely, at best.

Will they infiltrate by means of superior mobility? Both BOXER and AJAX are around 40 tons behemoths with some limits on the actual choice of road routes, yet they are expected to disperse and concentrate at will. They are supposed to be both able to stay dispersed enough to be a poor target for enemy artillery, yet strong enough or at least able to concentrate when needed to be dangerous enough to count as the already mentioned “dilemmas” for the enemy.

I very much struggle to see how.

Boxer is not invisible. Its strategic mobility advantage is only true compared to what the British Army already has, but there is no advantage whatsoever when the term of paragon is enemy wheeled armor, better armed and supported by enormously superior Fires. Not to mention how difficult / impossible it would be to provide any kind of air defence to the distributed groups, and how easy it would be for the enemy to cut them off and suffocate them one by one.

And I’m not even venturing in the endless scenarios that could be drawn up when considering the many difficulties that would have to be faced in order to keep the dispersed elements resupplied, and the absolutely uphill battle of Electronic Warfare to enable the STRIKE elements to communicate and share data.  

Another point that I feel deserves a mention is that STRIKE’s unpredictability almost completely ends as soon as a meaningful river is encountered. There is little to no ability to cross unless a suitable bridge is secured, and that takes away a lot of that unpredictability. I was astonished during one of my early discussions at being told that STRIKE “does not anticipate having to bridge a gap in the direct fire zone”, so ABLE alone, or REBS, would have to suffice.

In more recent times it seems someone has realized that this is truly asking for too much luck and for an enemy truly too incompetent to be taken seriously, and project TYRO (the renewal of bridging equipment) has sprung a requirement for a Wheeled Close Support Launch Vehicle, aka an alternative, on wheels, to TITAN[2]. Again, note Army emphasis on wheels. Not a WARRIOR-based bridgelayer, or an ARES-based one, even though industry has demonstrated both. But the years keep passing, and TYRO is still without a contract, like so many other things.

Compare this to the Russian philosophy. Even their latest Boomerang 8x8 has amphibious capability, and while crossing a major river remains a complex operation, and sustainment still requires a bridge to eventually go up, they do have options. They can put some armour on the other side without waiting for the bridging equipment to arrive. That allows them more unpredictability than STRIKE will ever have. And it is yet another part of why I warn everyone that STRIKE does not have any real tactical mobility advantage over the enemy, so “mobility” is an extremely poor answer to the question “how does infiltration happen?”.

From the Land Warfare conference in 2019 we learn that STRIKE groups must be comfortable with the awareness that they have no secure flank. I understand the idea, but not the application of it: you need to have something that gives you the confidence to be a mobile strike group and not a cut off group lost in enemy land. Élan alone is not the answer.

It is clear to me that indirect FIRES are the primary, if not the only way to keep the dispersed group “light” yet ensure it has the firepower to hit hard. Also, getting back to the WARFIGHTER 19-04 report, once you have forced the enemy artillery to open fire and reveal itself because of your dispersed groups, the one thing you really want is to be able to timely hit it. This is not done necessarily with capabilities organic to STRIKE, but the ability to do this is very much organic to the wider concept. If this capability is not developed, STRIKE does not achieve its aims.

On the specific topic of ATGWs, again it shows that I debate these issues with more than one person. For years I have enquired about the Overwatch sub-variant of ARES, which is meant to deploy ATGW within the AJAX formations. I was told in no uncertain terms that money was not there to do more with it than kit the interiors to carry dismounted Javelin teams. The once hoped for BRIMSTONE is nowhere to be seen, and to my desperation I was told that there was no plan and no money even for something as basic as putting a single JAVELIN on the Protector RWS.

In more recent times, a couple of alternative army sources, including this Author, have instead claimed that kind of capability is funded (at least for some of the BOXER Specialized Carriers, still not sure about ARES…?), and I welcome that change of heart. I hope it proves true, but I still don’t know for sure who has it right. Unless the additional JAVELINs are yet another thing the Army plans to rob out of that sad fellow which is today’s 1^st Division, at some point in the future we will be able to read a Foreign Military Sales document from the US detailing the purchase of new launchers and new rounds, and then we will know and have measurable data to judge.  

But again, it really doesn’t look like such a game-changing capability. For the British Army, absurdly, it is, but that’s only because under-armour ATGWs have not existed in any shape in the arsenal ever since the STRIKER / SWINGFIRE combination left active service. In comparison to what everyone else has had for years, it is still really the poor man’s attempt, however. Doesn’t mean it isn’t useful, the question is whether it is in any way sufficient.

And of course the enemy has its own missiles. On most vehicle platforms and in its infantry.

Your dispersed group needs to be able to effectively wipe out or at least seriously degrade some elements and positions of the enemy forces in order to be meaningful. You need to be lethal to screen, and you need to be lethal to create dilemmas. It’s all good delivering myriads of pinpricks to “overwhelm the enemy C2”, but those pinpricks must be meaningful enough to demand reactions and cause worry. If any amount of escorting infantry with a basic allocation of ATGWs are too much to overcome, you are pretty literally going to make no difference to enemy plans.

How dispersed STRIKE elements deliver meaningful hits by concentrating and then “dissolving into the ether” before being plastered by the superior enemy artillery remains not clear.

How many times in Afghanistan have we seen Company Groups with plenty of air support constantly overhead struggle to dislodge an enemy that was maybe numerous and holed up in a great defensive position, but also kitted with extremely poor equipment and few offensive options. STRIKE cannot afford to get bogged down in struggles that last for hours and if it concentrates too much it is artillery strike time once again.

The infantry hasn’t changed much from back then. AJAX will hit harder than SCIMITAR, and BOXER is roomy and mobile, and well protected for its category’s standards. On the other hand, all other supports are unlikely to be as readily available in a peer scenario and the peer enemy has plenty of its own ATGWs, UAVs, artillery and even access to its own air support. As well protected as MIV is, its protection matters not one bit against anti-tank missiles. If you think that issuing more JAVELINs and spreading them out over a vast area is enough to change the rules of warfare, you should wait and see the enemy issue more KORNETs to pick apart your dispersed vehicles at any chance while they travel around alone or in pairs / Troops.

So why are we expecting to obtain such good results? “Willingness to take risks” and “boldness” help, but if the whole plan revolves on “bold measures” and the willingness to take losses, I’m afraid it won’t last long. How quickly will the dispersed groups become combat ineffective?

Jane's attempt to wargame STRIKE with DSTL's own kit, which even includes capabilities that lay well into the future and have yet to be procured (new 155mm howitzers, for example) went very badly, and the enemy was a Russian force based around their parachute forces[3]. Which are the Russian units with the best training, but are also about as “light” as Russian troops come. That is not very encouraging.

The already mentioned Lieutenant J. Benn also writes in his article on TANK about STRIKE experimentation that as soon as the simulated enemy took on the characteristics of an “East Ukraine-scenario” near peer formation, “STRIKE began to struggle”. AJAX becomes the only thing between tanks and BMPs and the infantry in vulnerable MIVs, and even with the backing of JAVELIN it is a “fight that could, commander depending, go AJAX’s way but is not one that I would want to risk unnecessarily”. And also: “MIV must be comfortable operating on its own, inside a red picture and outgunned”.

I’m afraid that all this rather dramatically cuts down the number of Russian targets, even in the “rear echelon”, that can be engaged successfully. And this is assuming the enemy does not embrace dispersion himself, or at least its consequences, and insists on having a “well defined” rear echelon to penetrate while we seek to not have one ourselves. I think it is unlikely and Ukraine shows it. You will have to fight to get there.

How does infiltration happen, and how do dispersed groups of AJAX and BOXER achieve enough lethality to be “dilemmas”? How do they survive and fight, disperse and concentrate in the contested environment? If there is no answer to this question, we are heading into a dead end.  

What it also means is that lots of the equipment-based criticism and commentary on Strike are simply nugatory and ill-informed. For example, Strike doesn’t have to have organic fires to use fires, so arguing about which wheeled gun the Strike Brigade needs misses the point. It might or it might not. It doesn’t matter, and the best answers lie above that of the Strike concept in the wider evolution of Land and Joint Fires.

Organic or not, FIRES are absolutely essential to this concept of operation. STRIKE’s dispersed operations are in no small part meant to find targets and put the enemy’s own FIRES at risk. Remember that we are talking in the context of near peer and peer enemies (has anyone realized that it is the UK that is a Russia near-peer and not the other way around, by the way?) and of A2AD. Anti Access Area Denial has been part of Carter’s discourse and idea from the start.

STRIKE is meant to Self-Deploy because A2AD means some traditional ways of accessing Theatre might not be viable.

STRIKE is meant to fight dispersed because the artillery part of the enemy A2AD capability would otherwise destroy the massed groups, as Brigadier Martin himself remarks in the opening phase of his RUSI intervention.

STRIKE needs fires because A2AD means air support is not an option and, again I quote the Army itself, it is now the “Land that has to enable the Air” in some cases, by weakening enemy defences.

How can FIRES not be an absolutely critical part of the discourse? Any discussion on STRIKE which does not focus on FIRES and how to timely direct them almost literally from every single vehicle is a discussion that is ignoring reality.

The already mentioned “dilemmas” are actually primarily meant to force the enemy artillery into fights it does not want, because we know how lethal Russian artillery is and we need to silence it somehow. Unless STRIKE is seriously expecting to charge for the guns and take them out with AJAX’s gun, FIRES are front and center.

The “dilemmas” are meant to create the conditions for counter-battery, for taking out enemy sensors, and to allow Land Forces to strike, destroy or force out of position enemy air defence elements, so that in turn allied Air Power can truly land the blows. The Author himself suggests it earlier in his own article.

An article on Wavell Room previously also put the focus on STRIKE as an ISR enabler and as a way to move artillery detection sensors up-threat.

STRIKE absolutely needs significant organic FIRES, and moreover ready access to long range, hard hitting FIRES at higher levels. Which means that Sensors, Networking and FIRES need some real serious development.

The US Army has made FIRES its absolute top priority in the context of Multi Domain Operations.  

The Royal Artillery also has a series of very sensible requirements to contribute to this “new” way of fighting, but unfortunately has had them for sometimes close to 2 decades, without any of them getting funded. Longer range and more flexible rockets for GMLRS are now penciled in for 2030, while a Land Precision Strike requirement exists for a long range (60+ km) “overwatch” missile that can, among other things, lend lethality to dispersed groups (assuming target hand-over is well thought out), with EXACTOR partially filling this area until then.

Industry is quick to exploit what is perceived as a “BOXER for everything” hunger in some quarters of the Army. Here MBDA and RBLS push their vision for Land Precision Strike. Arguably, it should be easier to keep the missile launcher away from counterbattery threats, so a cheaper, and ideally more nimble vehicle base would do, in my opinion.  

Closing the lethality and range gap should be the absolute priority, but unfortunately is not, and the casual way in which this factor is constantly brushed aside, as if it was utterly secondary, is a recipe for disaster and one of the primary reasons why I cannot support STRIKE, or at least the way in which it is being handled.  

The Author rightly mentions the importance of sensors. I actually absolutely agree. I’ve been screaming from the rooftops for years that an Army as well aware as the British Army is of the enemy’s utterly crushing superiority in terms of FIRES cannot still field only 34 light counter-mortar radars and 5 MAMBA artillery locators in total.

As I’ve said in few characters on Twitter:

“Problem is UAV plans still very vague, EW and sensors are a sore spot (those poor lonely 5 MAMBA radars are a punch in the face)”

2012 was supposed to bring new radars. That became 2026 with the current SERPENS programme. Do we think this will be the right time…? Unfortunately, I’m not optimistic.

As for the debate on “which wheeled gun”, this goes on because the British Army has initiated the Mobile Fires Platform programme to procure 98 new mobile howitzer to replace AS90 and the currently entirely inadequate L118s of 3 RHA and 4 RA Regiments, the STRIKE units, and the selection of a wheeled platform is seen as overwhelmingly likely. I think it is an important capability and thus worthy of serious debate, but at the same time I’m not as dogmatically committed to just one solution as I’m made out to be. 

The Reconnaissance Strike Group I already mentioned earlier, for example, actually does not have any 155mm howitzers at all, but has replaced them in the Close Support role by massively uplifting the allocation of 120 mm mortars, while organic GMLRS and Loitering Munitions / Suicidal Drones give it its Deep Fire capability. It might well be that this is the future, or at least part of it. What is absolutely certain is that High Intensity warfare in the future will have more FIRES, not less. Everyone has accepted this, except apparently the British Army.

The Royal Artillery ran an experimentation already years ago exploiting the French army’s CAESAR autocannons. Here gunners from 1 RHA get trained in its use.

RBLS’s entry for the new howitzer for the Royal Artillery has good chances of being selected. It is a step up from CAESAR as it offers more traverse and does not need the crew to dismount in the open to fire the gun. Frankly, I would rather have the howitzer on the BOXER hull and the Land Precision Strike missile on the more fragile truck base, since the gun is more likely to be exposed to counterbattery, and over longer periods of time.

Funnily enough, the Royal Artillery could have had the Fire Shadow loitering munition already in service. The British Army was briefly in the vanguard in the field of Loitering Munitions, and I was one of the (few, at the time) supporters of that idea.

Like 99% of modern day Royal Artillery programmes, however, it ended up cut.

Until the pitifully weak FIRES are cured, I can’t imagine STRIKE going anywhere.  

The other odd claim is that “wheels and tracks don’t mix,” which is clearly a reference to Ajax being tracked, and Boxer being wheeled. Again, this can only be a lack of experience and/or understanding. For example, from the 1970s and 80’s the Bundeswehr had Divisional Reconnaissance Battalions which mixed Luchs wheeled recce vehicles with Leopard 1 tanks at the sub-unit level.  Clearly, you can mix tracks and wheels, and people do. The French Army routinely mixes tracks and wheels at the unit level with Leclerc, VBCI and VBL. There are many more examples including Soviet Divisional-level anti-tank Battalions and combat reconnaissance patrols which routinely mixed tanks, tracked IFVs and Armoured cars. Soviet wheeled BTR Regiments had organic tank Battalions. Tracks versus wheels is largely a false dilemma which is supposedly about mobility, but is actually more about cost and sustainment.

It is of course true that there are plenty of examples out there of tracks and wheels mixes, but they don’t prove anything unless they are taken in context. Is carrying infantry in wheeled APCs or IFVs in support of tanks a major problem? I don’t think it is. The wheeled vehicle will not always be able to traverse the same terrain the MBT could, but most of the time will and it comes with its own advantages, so it is overall an acceptable compromise. Wheels have their own merits, including a much higher degree of self-deployability. It makes sense to reduce a Brigade’s cost and sustainment burden by having infantry riding on wheels.

I have indeed recommended several times now that the cash strapped British Army might want to settle for less ambitious plans and move BOXER towards being a WARRIOR replacement, considering the bleak financial position.

An inviting demo BOXER with Lockheed Martin’s “export” variant of the Warrior CSP turret.

Obviously, my suggestion was met with plenty of outrage from British Army figures and experts of all kinds because it mixes tracks and wheels, and that is bad for all sorts of good reasons they were eager to school me in. Which was really amusing after other Army figures had schooled me and continue to school me in why mixing tracks and wheels is not a problem at all and STRIKE will work just fine.

I assume the Author of this particular article is not one of those who protested, but again, as I’ve warned at the beginning, I debate these issues with multiple figures, and part of my frustration comes exactly from that. Anyone you speak to gives you a different interpretation of what STRIKE is, and of whether tracks and wheels mix well or not, whether FIRES are key or not, etcetera. I am never afforded the luxury of debating a solid and enduring interpretation of STRIKE, which in itself is a further proof that the concept is not clear and not well understood, not even within the Army. The supporters of STRIKE come across as being supportive not of STRIKE how it is, but of how they imagine it.
It very much seems, and the Author himself in some ways confirms it in his piece, that the Army is at war with itself with various factions in disagreement over the direction of travel.

The Author also mentions examples of wheeled scouts being used in support of tracked Armoured formations. Again, context is everything, and I think those cases make sense. There are many examples in the world: France, USMC, Italy, Germany, Australia and others use variations on the theme of wheels scouting in favor of tracks. I think it is a decent solution because it allows the reconnaissance element to be a lot more sustainable, self-deployable and nimble. The screening element can move around with quite some freedom, with more endurance and less sustainment concerns.

So why do I criticize the “half-tracked” nature of the STRIKE Brigade?

Because the tracked element of STRIKE is the only one with serious Direct Fire capability. Moreover, it is the Scout, in the British case, that needs to ride on semi-trailers for as much of the travel as possible. It is the “eyes” of the Brigade that are most difficult to deploy and sustain, and this for me is an absurdity. And, tellingly, it is the exact opposite of what happens in the Countries mentioned before.

Moreover we have been told, including from then CGS Carter himself, that these Brigades are meant to self-deploy over great distances on road. The infamous 2,000 km self deployment march is an Army claim, not something I put into the Army’s mouth. Brigadier Martin reaffirms it in the RUSI Land Warfare Conference.

But by including AJAX in your “self-deploying” Brigade you are making things considerably harder for yourself. And since the British Army has few HETs and LETs (89 + 3 recovery vehicles the former, 77 the latter), you have limited options to move AJAX, and even fewer to move the heavy armour that has to “exploit the conditions that STRIKE creates”. STRIKE is supposed to get there early, infiltrate, scout, secure ground, again “create the conditions” for the rest of the force to enter battle on more favorable terms. If it takes ages to get there, and the rest of the Force does not arrive for an even longer time, it’s a serious issue.

STRIKE is also meant to be the British Army’s primary option for “SERVAL-like operations” in geographically vast battlefields such as the ones that might be encountered in Africa. Cue many mentions of Mali.

France of course did not mix tracked and wheeled vehicles in Mali: it does not need to. The French counterpart to STRIKE is not the Armoured Brigades because they have VBCIs alongside LECLERCs, but their Medium Weight Brigades which will have GRIFFON APCs, JAGUARs Cavalry vehicles and also a Battalion on VBCIs for the hardest jobs. Indeed, the French Medium Brigade has 2 cavalry regiments on JAGUAR, like STRIKE has 2 units on AJAX, which has always come across as an interesting coincidence. Of course, the French Brigade has more infantry battalions, and French formations are built to the rule of 4 and are larger.

Those same Brigades today have AMX-10RC, SAGAIE and VABs, which means they have a very healthy amount on firepower and sensors running on wheels and can indeed self deploy over very significant ranges and go straight into fighting, as they did in the early hours of Operation SERVAL.  

With STRIKE, if you don’t deploy AJAX you are missing out on both the firepower and the sensors.

The Author does not get into this side of the debate, but it exists, and many STRIKE supporters regularly bring STRYKER Brigades, or the French or Italian Medium Brigades into the discourse. And every time they do I will point out that it is a poor comparison, and one in which STRIKE loses on several fronts. It has less of everything, apart from tracks, when compared to those units, and it is an easily demonstrable fact.

In the end, regarding “tracks and turrets”, just to further clarify what my actual complaint is: STRIKE has its (limited) firepower all riding on tracks. Wheels, which are reasonably expected to be faster and better at self-deploying, have little to no firepower. It is simply counter-intuitive.

STRIKE, when described as this great opening act self-deploying over 2,000 km, always reminds me the original Italian CENTAURO Brigades of Cold War years, which were meant to race down Italy’s roads ahead of heavy armour following on trailers. Those Brigades had to contain a soviet breakout and, more specifically, any soviet amphibious landing on the long and exposed Italian coast. They had to get there quickly, on their own, and once there they were expected to delay, to screen and to hold, slowing down the enemy and allowing allied heavy armour to get into position. But to do that, they had CENTAURO with its 105mm gun and MBT-level of firepower, plus ATGW and SAM teams riding on Puma wheeled APCs. The cheap, light Puma 4x4 and 6x6 have eventually given way to today’s FRECCIA 8x8.

Wheels get there quick, and need the firepower to be meaningful once they arrive. STRYKER Brigades are adding 30mm guns, more JAVELINs, and grouping 105mm and Anti-Tank vehicles in their recce squadron to increase their punch. Japan has the Type 16 8x8 with 105mm gun. Italy has CENTAURO and is replacing it with CENTAURO 2 with a 120/45 (the ballistics are the exact same of the universally common 120/44, with the extra caliber compensating the pepperpot muzzle brake). Every Italian FRECCIA 8x8 comes with a 25mm, and the Brigade has a healthy allocation of SPIKE anti-tank missiles, Medium Range at Coy level and Long Range at Battalion level. France has AMX-10RC and, as it downgrades to 40mm on the JAGUAR, it made at least sure to put long range ATGWs in box launchers on the new vehicle to compensate. Poland has lots of 30mm and SPIKE missiles and proposals for 105 or 120mm cannons on ROSOMAKs periodically resurface. All of these Brigades also have 120mm mortars and 155 mm howitzers. And less ambitious CONOPS.

And then there is AJAX, MIV, 81mm mortars, L118s and the most ambitious of CONOPS. The problems should be evident to everyone.

If you are still stuck to tracked vehicles for firepower, you might as well be stuck to MBTs, then. At least once they arrive they'll be able to take on everything. But that brings us right back to already existing Mechanized Brigades constructs, such as Germany’s Jäger Battalions on BOXER which are slotted into Brigades built around LEOPARD 2s. Which in fact is exactly the space that MASTIFF, and later MIV, were going to fill in the original, pre-2015 Army 2020 plan. A single infantry Battalion on wheels as complement to those on WARRIORs.    
But STRIKE is supposed to be something different, innovative and lighter, with less of a sustainment challenge.

In short: if you are putting wheels into a heavy formation that comprises MBTs, you are driving some of the sustainment burden out; but if you add tracks to a Medium Weight Brigade meant to operate over extremely long distances, you are instead adding a whole lot of sustainment burden in. And in fact, Medium Brigades in other countries are entirely wheeled, and a wheeled solution was indicated from day 1 for MIV in the context of STRIKE as well. And I go back to how wheels are now a requirement in TYRO and the near certain winners in the AS90 replacement[4]. Coincidence? Clearly no.  

It is undeniable that the mixture of wheels and tracks in this particular concept and in this particular fashion is sub-optimal at best. You can’t simultaneously claim that STRIKE is different from existing Armoured / Mechanized Brigades and then use those very Brigades with their much different CONOPS as justification for your platform mix.

In passing, I must drop a bitter mention of (dis)honor for the decisions in 2010 – 2011 that have nearly killed off the Army’s ability to use railways to move its vehicles and kit across Europe. By 2023 some kind of U-turn is apparently going to come to maturation with some form of capability rebuilt and I welcome that, but in general the issue of deploying STRIKE, and moreover the Division itself, seems to be getting a lot less attention than it should, along with the enduring failures of Whole Fleet Management in ensuring vehicles come out of storage in good conditions. Fixing WFM would do more to speed up the Army’s deployment time than BOXER self-deploying on its wheels. But this is another story, even if tightly entwined with the wider argument about how the Army chooses its priorities.   

Given its remit to “redefine how the British Army fights,” is Strike the future of the British Army? The answer is “yes,” not “it depends” or “too early to tell.” It simply is.

Why?

Firstly, because there aren’t any other options, and secondly, thirdly and fourthly, money! The force structure descended from Cold War Armoured Divisions or even the short live multi-role Brigades, and now Armoured infantry Brigades might no longer be competitive for the cost.

In the eyes of some of the kit-junkies, an ideal UK Armoured Infantry Brigade would have Leopard-2 MBTs, CV-90 MkIV and some wheeled 155mm. In essence, all you would have is a more expensive version of what was causing the problem in the first place and avoids asking the hard questions about how to evolve or transform. The question that will eventually have to be asked is what comes after the Armoured Infantry Brigades? How can they transform in line with cost and effect.

This is where things get really slippery. 
We have established early on that STRIKE is a supporting tool. A screening and reconnaissance and exploitation force that is meant to “help others win”.

The “others” being the Armoured Brigades, for the foreseeable future at least. But, in the very same article, the Author casts doubts on the future and affordability of those very same Brigades. Unfortunately he is not the only one. Other STRIKE supporters have more or less openly urged the Army to get rid of its heavy armour in order to continue funding STRIKE. It is an alarming suggestion I encounter more and more frequently in UK circles and which has made RUSI pages in William F. Owen’s paper “War without tanks”[5]. 

Literally no one else thinks it is a good idea, at all, and before you mention the USMC I will remark that they are abdicating running their own tanks but count on the US Army to deploy lots of them[6], and they are now more than ever trying to think of a very specific role in a very specific environment. They make for an utterly irrelevant comparison.

To his defence, the Author here does not quite venture into saying out loud that armour should go, unlike others. He talks about STRIKE being in support of “2-3 other Brigades”, and leaves the rest to the classical “we should think about how they evolve in the future”, which is an extremely open ended approach. Well, I’d really like this point to be a lot clearer, though. This is no small issue. If the cost of this supporting tool is such that the formations it is meant to support have to vanish to free up money, we clearly have encountered a huge problem.

What price should the Army pay for pursuing this concept? This is THE key question. If CHALLENGER 2 LEP and WCSP and indeed the Armoured Brigades end up paying the price in the new Review, and unfortunately this is far from unlikely, is it worth it?

The Army has already accepted to cut 1/3 of its tank regiments, convert an Armoured Brigade and deprive 1^st Division of all Combat Support and Combat Service Support formations[7] in order to eventually create 2 STRIKE Brigades. It is an hefty price as it is, but it looks like it is nowhere near enough to cover the costs yet.

Ultimately, if there is no real plan for the “2-3 other Brigades”, what becomes of STRIKE? Does it magic itself into no longer a supporting tool but a battle winning asset without any change to its structure, just like AJAX became “Medium Armour” without any real modification?  

Please, note that I’m not dogmatically opposed to doing things differently, but I want to be given reasons to believe that the new approaches work.

I will exploit the occasion to repeat something I’ve already said on Twitter about how the wider army transformation might go. The latest issue of the British Army Review sheds some light on the thinking for the Conceptual Force 2035[8], and tells us that by then there will be Future Combat Teams of just 500 men, permanently Combined Arms in nature, with robotics & autonomy and substantial organic indirect and direct fires, built to the Rule of 4. Less logistic weight, yet punch comparable to that of a 1250-strong Armd BG. It doesn’t say openly that there will no longer be “tanks”, but goes close to it in implying weight and sustainment burden has to go down. It says there will be a substitutive capability delivered by lighter vehicles, in no small part through ATGWs, although I guess that also leaves a chance that there will still be some form of lighter “tank”.

This is actually extremely fascinating because BAR calculates that today’s Army authorized strength of 82,000 would then be able to field 48 such units, to spread across 3 Divisions in a British Corps. It is a beautiful image, but I don’t know how it could ever be resourced in the real world considering that the poor 1^st Division is reduced to a mere container of Light Role Infantry Battalions without any CS and CSS element left (102 Logistic Brigade is planned to disband; 2 Signal Regiment and 4 Royal Artillery, currently in line for the single Vanguard Light Brigade are needed for the second STRIKE Brigade when it eventually happens, along with engineers and everything else). But if it could be done, it would be wonderful.

Capability-wise, however, this idea smells of FRES and of US Future Combat System take 2, even more ambitious and possibly even more doomed to failure and/or unaffordability. How these units would actually achieve that kind of output for their size is still very, very vague and Autonomy and Robotics are nowhere near as mature as they’d have to be to easily imagine that kind of future in little more than a decade, which is very a very short time in defence procurement terms.

However, we won't know until we try, right? But I mean try really seriously. I’m absolutely all in favor of taking a Battalion, immediately, and turn it into a permanent Combined Arms Battlegroup. Give it absolute freedom to change its organic capabilities and structure. For example: wants organic EXACTOR missiles? Try it out. Wants a platoon back to 4 sections of 10 each? Try it[9]. Wants LMM on vehicles to have a degree of anti-air / anti-UAV capability as well as a flexible anti-surface weapon which is light yet gives you extra reach and lethality?[10] Go for it.

Start gradually driving out weight and personnel to see if it is feasible at all to go down to 500 and to the mythical light logistical footprint. Use this experimental BG as OPFOR in exercise, pitting it against free thinking Armoured BGs enhanced with simulated foreign capabilities. Make it the main “customer” of AWE experiments, and use it to bring coherence in all the little innovation attempts going on all the time, which today frankly often seem a bit disconnected one from the other. Let the field trial of this new experimental unit dictate what kind of robotic help is more promising and more necessary to cut down on manpower requirements.  
The result of the exercises shapes the following round of slimming down and capability insertion. 

And please, do not repeat the STRIKE experiment, which if we are honest has never been about developing a concept, but purely about trying to find a way to make something already decided beforehand "work". Remarkably, the Brigade structure has not changed at all from what Carter described in June 2016, before the experimentation group was even stood up, in April 2017. For all I’ve been able to gather, even the STRIKE battlegroup does not show any evident innovation and its structure is immediately familiar[11]. In one image of the tabletop wargaming exercises, the BG visible is pretty much literally a formation straight out of the 90s, but with AJAX / ARES in the place of SCIMITAR and SPARTAN, and MIV for the infantry. Of course, the Army might not want to share its newer ideas and perhaps is keeping something under his hat, but this is what we know and it isn’t particularly impressive.

The battlegroup being played in this tabletop wargame exercise does not seem to have anything truly innovative about its composition.

If it is proven, in a realistic fashion, that a good alternative to MBTs exists, then we can move on in that direction. But don’t go all-in on an unproven concept.

And when your budget is so tight, don’t throw away what you have counting on jam to arrive tomorrow, especially if, as in this case, you don’t really know what color the jam might even have.

It has been pointed out to me that most of the capabilities that need to be built up into and around STRIKE are for the benefit of the whole Field Army, and this is absolutely true and very clear. Things like LeTacCis, to evolve the communications side beyond BOWMAN; SERPENS and Mobile Fires Platform and others are very clearly whole-of-the-army programs. STRIKE, supposedly, adds urgency to them and helps getting them moving.

In practice, I’m afraid it does not. It’s literally a fact that several other programs could have been funded and started out if the available money hadn’t been put on BOXER instead. 
It seems to me at times like the Army, after criticizing the Royal Navy for many years over the decision to pursue the aircraft carriers as epicenter of its future, has now decided to create its own “Strike Carrier” flagship programme in the hope that more money will be made available to advance it and kit it out for success. This approach isn’t really working wonders for the Navy and is unfortunately highly unlikely to do any better for the Army.

I hope people understand that the British Army runs the very real risk of turning, with its own hands, what was meant to be a decent Division into nothing more than a Reconnaissance and Screening contribution to a NATO Corps which will have to be made up by someone else’s Brigades. It will be a very different Army, and a very diminished country output, no matter how innovative and sophisticated it might be in its core idea. We have to be honest in debating this point, because as the Author himself reminds us, money is very much a problem and the last few decades of British Army Armoured vehicle programmes have been an unmitigated disaster that cannot be repeated one more time.

There is no real reason why the British Army, starting further west than almost everyone else, should necessarily be the one to race east and try to get there first to maneuver as the “Multi Domain” recce and screen element. Considering how many capability gaps it suffers, starting with sensors and FIRES and going up to what unfortunately remains one of the most pitifully weak ground based air defences elements in the whole of NATO, it is very badly positioned for something so ambitious. Unlike many other NATO countries, it has to build up its Medium Weight force from scratch and misses out on several decades of 8x8 experience that others instead posses. 

Many are eager to describe STRIKE as a cheaper option to “legacy” Brigades. Unfortunately, STRIKE is not the cheap option at all, and reducing the number of compromises it has to live with in its force structure and equipment will cost immense amounts of money.

Nobody forces the British Army to deliver necessarily that kind of contribution: the one demand NATO has formulated is “30-30-30-30”[12]. The UK can contribute to NATO in other ways. Why go for the most ambitious and expensive possible concept, because this is what STRIKE is, at least in Carter's description of its aims? Is it purely for prestige reasons, because the British Army has to be seen as the one NATO ally “able” to follow the US into Multi Domain Operations right from day one?

Mind you, I think Prestige is a plenty good thing to aim for, but you have to be careful not to “volunteer for Helmand” again.

You can secure prestige by being able to provide some genuinely solid Brigades, able to cover less ground but do it reliably and autonomously with British troops and British supports. That kind of force would be less of a support tool in nature and more of a flexible instrument that would simultaneously preserve that degree of independent action capability that the Secretary of State for Defence has been begging to see retained. 

There are arguably better ways to use the money and all the manpower and resources of 1^st Division too, to form an army which is less of a unitary silver bullet and more of a force that can sustain a complex task over a long period. It is no mystery, again, that I’ve spent years looking with interest at France’s “Au Contact” plan for two identical divisions which are clearly lighter than the currently imagined 3^rd Division but that on the other hand ensure the Army does not exhaust itself in one single 6 to 12 months “make it or break it” kind of effort.

By definition, STRIKE without the FIRES, the sensors, and the “2-3 other Brigades”, can only ever be an ARRC asset that needs Allies to field everything else.

If your concept is predicated on supporting Armoured Brigades (or whatever form of “evolved” Brigade you want to imagine) that you risk losing in order to fund the concept; if it depends on Artillery programmes you are likely not going to be able to fund; Communications and Sensors you don’t have a line of sight (and funding) on; and a big question mark over how to be lethal while so widely dispersed, maybe you have to accept that the concept you are pursuing is not actually suited to you and your purse.

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[1] France’s VBCI fleet of 600 vehicles does include 100+ command vehicles, but no ambulance, and equips 8 regiments, all individually larger than british Battalions. Italy’s FRECCIA family includes an extremely low number of command posts and no ambulance either. The British Army does get a lot of money, even in these days; it is often how it decides to spend it that downsizes the end result.

[2] http://bidstats.uk/tenders/2018/W50/692977856 The Wheeled Close Support Launch Vehicle was not there before the December 2018 re-issuing of the notice.

[3] Jon Hawkes and his team played the game; he and Sam Cranny plan to write a report about the experience. (@JonHawkes275 ; @Sam_Cranny)

[4] The requirements for the new Mobile Fires Platform do not specifically include wheels but a generic “increased range and mobility”. They are required to travel 520 km in 24 hours, including 200 km on unbounded roads and 30 km off road without assistance. The selection of a tracked platform is universally seen as very unlikely.

[5] https://rusi.org/publication/rusi-newsbrief/war-without-tanks, the report requires membership to be accessed

[6] “We need an Army with lots of tanks. We don’t need a Marine Corps with tanks” is the quote from Marine
Corps Commandant General David Berger himself.

[7] I’m firmly convinced that one of the highest priorities for the Army at the Review table should be to re-balance itself, cutting some infantry (no matter the capbadge tears) to rebuild the supports needed for actual combined arms operations.

[8] BAR Issue 177, Winter/Spring 2020; https://www.army.mod.uk/media/9038/bar177-winter-spring-2020.pdf

[9] A recent experiment seeking to modernize the platoon tested the return to a 4 Sections structure, but was constrained by the order to keep it absolutely manpower neutral. The Rule of 4 was unsurprisingly liked a lot by the troops involved, but just as unsurprisingly, Sections of 6 men proved too small…

[10] Check out the WARRIOR VERDI demonstrator, in the days when Britain still had its own AFV industry and was still genuinely innovative.

[11] By default, expect a STRIKE BG to consist of 2x Mech Inf Coys, 1x Medium Armour Sqn, 1x Arty Tac Gp, 1x Engr Sqn and BG ech. The 2 BGs formed on the Mech Inf Battalions will have a Support Coy with mortars, JAVELINs, Snipers etcetera; but the one formed on the Medium Armour regiment won’t have a Support Coy, since MA is, you will have guessed already, modeled on a Tank Regiment. Information comes from @EdOBrien, who is working on British Army combat capability development.

[12] 30 Battalions, 30 ships and 30 Fast Jet squadrons within 30 days.