This is the first post of what could
become a series for which i invite any reader interested in collaborating to
step forwards and contact me. I will welcome suggestions, information and
thoughts at the same way. This article is intended both as a take on the always
actual, still-evolving Army 2020 situation and as a kick-start for what will
hopefully become a wider reasoning over the future of the british Infantry in
the modern scenarios.
Some Written Answers in Parliament
in the last month and in June are painting a possibly quite depressing picture
for the future of british Infantry battalions, which are possibly set for a
marked downsizing as part of Army 2020 restructuring.
On 13 July 2012, in fact, minister
Nick Harvey, answering to a question about the future of the Royal Regiment of
Scotland, dispelled the myth, created by The Telegraph, that the surviving
Scottish battalions would have their establishment downsized to around 400 or
450 in exchange for their survival. This, both fortunately and unsurprisingly,
is not the case, as creating such small battalions, so much smaller and
different from the others within the army would have been a severely damaging
move.
Harvey makes clear that the
establishment of each battalion will in future depend solely from the role to
which it is assigned and added that, under Army 2020:
Any battalions that are in the Armoured
Infantry role will have a full unit establishment of 729 personnel;
Any battalions that are in the Mechanised
(Heavy Protected Mobile) Infantry role will have a full unit establishment of
709 personnel;
Any battalions that are in the Light
Protected Mobile Infantry role will have a full unit establishment of 581
personnel;
Any battalions that are in the Light Infantry role will have a full unit
establishment of 561 personnel;
[Official Report, Column 415W]
The Light Protected Mobile Infantry
role is a novelty of Army 2020, represented by 6 infantry battalions which will
be mounted on Foxhound vehicles, while the other three roles all already exist,
even if the 3 Mechanized Infantry Battalions (currently 4th Rifles,
1st Royal Anglian and 1st Lancs) will have their vehicle
changed as part of Army 2020 from FV430 MK3 Bulldog (now) to FRES UV (not
earlier than 2022, possibly around 2025) with the Mastiff vehicle, brought into
Core Defence budget after Afghanistan as interim solution.
The Armored Infantry battalions will
go down to 6, but will continue to work on Warrior vehicles, although modified
under the Warrior Capability Sustainment Programme, with first deliveries of
the upgraded IFVs in 2018, IOC in 2020 with an Armoured Company fully operative
and deliveries completed by 2022.
Nick Harvey fails to provide a Full
Unit Establishment for Air Assault battalions, which as part of Army 2020 might
go down to just 2 (from four until now: 2 and 3 PARA plus 1st Royal
Irish and 5 SCOTS). Currently, the full establishment for such battalions
should be 582 all ranks, all trades.
According to the data I’ve managed
to collate, the new establishment present some differences with the current
ones, and most of these differences are not good ones.
According to Charles Heyman’s “The
British Army Guide 2012 – 2013”, and ArmedForces.co.uk, the full unit
establishment of a current armoured infantry battalion is 741, so that, if data is correct, Army 2020 implies a reduction of
12 men. At the moment, there’s no telling how this might be achieved, as there
is not an evident source for the reduction in manpower (as would have been the
case if, for example, the Warrior upgrade had walked down the road of Overhead
Remote Weapon Stations and reduced the turret crew of Warrior from 2 to 1). One
possibility is a reduction in the strength of the REME Light Aid Detachment,
but this is only a wild guess.
With the same source of data about
the current battalions, it seems the 3 Mechanized Infantry Battalions are
getting a very significant uplift in manpower, instead, from 667 to 709,
hopefully with the increase made up as much as possible by fighting troops. Might
have to do with the fact that a Mastiff 2 or 3 can take up to 12 men aboard,
even though normally it is described as a “2 + 8” vehicle which, in the case,
would provide no evident justification for the manpower increase, since Bulldog
is a 2 + 8 vehicle itself.
As said before, the Light Protected
role is new, so there is no comparison to be made. One consideration to be made
is how the Light Protected battalion will work, and how much of its strength
will effectively be mounted in Foxhound vehicles and protected. How will it all
be arranged? Foxhound is a 2 + 4 vehicle, and we could reasonably assume that
the driver at least won’t count as a Dismount, while the commander perhaps
will.
This would open the door to a
fireteam of 5 instead of 4 men, but even if the Section stays 8-strong, there
will be a need for 2 Foxhounds for each Section. That would mean as many as 28
Foxhound vehicles per each Rifle Company.
And numbers at that point do not
work, because many more Foxhound vehicles would be needed over and above the
300 on order (even before the toll that Afghanistan will eventually take)[at
least 35 for a training fleet] and the provision of drivers would become a
problem.
Also, the Foxhound vehicles on order
this far are all in the basic patrol variant, while a Battalion would arguably
need weapon carriers (so the WMIK variant of Foxhound, or perhaps Jackals), an
ambulance, ideally on the same chassis and with the same battlefield mobility
(perhaps the Husky ambulance variant can be used in the short term, assuming
that Husky is brought into Core post Afghanistan), a command post and so along.
Of course, this problem would not
exist if substantial follow-on orders for more Foxhounds (in more variants)
were to arrive, but for quite obvious reasons I find it hard to be that
optimist.
Another reason not to be optimist is
the comparison of the establishment of the Light Protected and Light Role
infantry battalions: just 20 men of difference suggest that there won’t be that
many vehicles, possibly, as the need for drivers and maintenance would suggest
a much higher figure otherwise.
It will be very interesting to see
how these Light Protected Mobility Battalions are actually organized: it might
come down to having the capability of moving one Rifle Company in Foxhounds,
for the look of it, and I frankly hope in something better than that.
But the real worrying part is the
Light Role battalion itself, because a Full Establishment of 561 seems very
low. According to the same sources named earlier, currently a Light Role
infantry battalion full establishment is 630.
That would mean a cull of 69 men
from each battalion, likely to imply a significant impact on the fighting force
of the battalion, which will be balanced, on paper, by the famous “pairing”
with reserve battalions. The Army 2020 document, presenting a force of 14 Light
Role regular battalions, seemed to go in the direction of a possible “one to
one” pairing, since the TA has exactly 14 Infantry Battalions.
The Army 2020 document also showed
the Foxhound battalions paired up with TA battalions, though: will the Reserve
expansion offer room and scope for a further 6 TA infantry battalions? I doubt
it for many reasons, mainly for the fact that, was that the case, there would
have been an easy solution for government in the delivery of the cuts: the
names and badges would be saved by moving into the TA.
Since this has not been done, taking
the usual flak connected to the loss of “historic” names, room for optimism is
very small.
As you can easily see, there are
some very hard questions left in search for an answer. The Telegraph was wrong
when it reported that the Scottish battalions would go down to 450 men
establishments, but the reduction in manpower might have been enforced army-wide, with the oddity represented by
the Mechanized Infantry expansion.
This, of course, while we wait for
better and more accurate data. I have no real reason not to trust the sources
quoted earlier, but I’m taking them with some prudence.
However, there is another, indirect
element in support of the downsizing fear: a look at the current Establishment.
The Establishment is different from
the Full Unit Establishment. FUE is the total strength of the battalion,
all-trades, all-ranks.
The Establishment instead is a figure that only comprises those
soldiers from the unit’s specific Arm or Corps, excluding any supporting
components from other Corps. The Establishment of an infantry battalion, in
other words, is the count of the sole Infantry personnel, excluding REME,
clerks, cooks and all other figures.
Current Establishment for a Light Role battalion hovers
at around 530 men.
For an Armoured Battalion, it goes
from 599 to 608, roughly.
For a mechanized battalion it is
around 570, and for an Air Assault battalion it is 554.
Assuming, once more, that the
figures from “The British Army Guide” are correct, there’s a 132 men difference
between Establishment and Full Establishment for Armored Battalions, of which
up to 90 are made up by the Light Aid Detachment (REME personnel).
The difference reduces to 97 for a
Mechanized battalion (including a smaller REME component).
Some 100 man are the difference in
Light Role battalions (a bit high, admittedly, since Light Role should not have
that much in terms of supporting elements), reducing to just 28 for an Air
Assault battalion.
If the figures are correct, the Army 2020 Light Role battalion might have an Infantry establishment of just 460 men from the
Infantry. This is, obviously, highly undesirable, and goes against operational
experience which very much calls for bigger battalions (an expansion to over
700 has been assessed as necessary already long ago).
The US Infantry battalion in an
Infantry BCT has a strength of 685 men.
A Royal Marines Commando battalion
full establishment is 692 men all ranks, too, even if the Royal Marines are
semi-mechanized, with normally a Wheeled and one tracked (on Viking) “stand-off
combat” companies plus 2 Close Combat Companies.
Looking at the strength and ORBAT of
the infantry battalions, mainly the Light and Light Protected Mobility ones,
will be very important to understand how much compromise the Army has had to
accept, and how much damage the infantry’s capability has eventually taken.
I’ll keep my eyes open, as always,
to try and catch any other useful information regarding this subject.
At the same time, there are
questions we could try and reason about, for coming up with a realistic,
desirable design for the infantry battalion.
Questions to be faced include:
-
The
Maneuver Support Company is valid in its current form? In Afghanistan it is
very often broken down into Fire Support Groups, made up of sections of HMG, MG
Sustained Fire, Javelin Anti-Tank, Mortar, Sniper. These sections are organized
on the lines of a Platoon and assigned directly to the Rifle Company, giving it
the firepower it needs to .
Normally
the FSG will use the 60 mm Light Mortar, and the 81 mm mortars will be kept at
Battalion level. In some cases, the Maneuver Support Company remains, albeit in
a different form, including the RECCE element, a Fire Support Group and a Fire
Support Team (the latter being the 6-man team for the direction of Joint Fires,
be it mortar, artillery, rocket or an air attack). A Fire Support Team is
assigned at Company level on deployment.
Are
these “ad hoc” structures indicative of long-term trends?
What
and how should be made permanent in the force structure?
-
Mortars
and guided ammo. 81 mm forever, or shift towards 120 mm? Is a mortar-cannon the
best Fire Support Weapon, combining direct and indirect effect?
-
Fire
Support Team: vital direction for the whole range of support fires in a
complex, joint environment. Definitely need more, how to integrate them in the
force?
-
The
Load Carrier. At Platoon level? How many? Manned or unmanned?
-
UAVs
for the Infantry, how many, where, for what roles?
And, no doubt, many others.
With a major focus in thinking being
the reduction in the weight carried by the soldier out on a mission. Current
weight levels are way too high, and a substantial reduction is absolutely
necessary.
Other issues include bandwidth and
communications, especially in urban areas and C2 on the move, and this brings
us straight to another problem closely connected to these: provision of power
for all the optics and systems. Which means considering ergonomics of wiring,
load carriage, and other issues.
 |
| The graphic shows the organization of the Royal Anglian battlegroup in its deployment in Afghanistan. The restructured Maneuver Support Company, and the Fire Support Groups in which it broke down are well evident. Also, the Fire Support Team at Company level. |
A very complex and ample subject, so
let’s start thinking.
