On one side, critics of the reorganization to our modular brigade combat teams say having only two line (Maneuver) units in a brigade combat team (BCT) reduced our effective combat power. Note that Stryker brigades stayed with three maneuver battalions of three companies each.
The other side defending the new BCTs said that the critics ignored the recon battalion and neglected that each line battalion was going from three to four companies each.
I sided with the company-based analysis and did some crude calculations here. We'd have more line (or "maneuver") companies.
But I also worried that the recon units were too light and we'd probably have to heavy them up.
This article addresses the complaints with some detail. It is older but I just found it. One section addresses the issues I noted:
Army Secretary Francis Harvey told Lieberman the IDA study “missed the mark” because, in fact, the service’s modularity concept actually increases maneuver units below the battalion level.
“When you do all the arithmetic . . . what we call the pre-modular force had 323 companies, [while] the post-modular force has 532 companies,” Harvey said. Companies typically number 120 to 170 forces.
Schoomaker, testifying alongside the secretary at the mid-February hearing, agreed.
The Army plan foresees “four companies per battalion, whereas before we had three,” according to the service chief. “And we’ve also added a reconnaissance, surveillance and target acquisition squadron. . . . So the reality is if you want to count maneuver elements, there’s actually 11 now inside of a brigade instead of nine in the old [unit design].”
Army officials say the designs for heavy and infantry BCTs call for four companies per battalion, but Stryker brigades will continue to field three companies per battalion. The Stryker is a wheeled combat vehicle making its debut in Iraq.
“In a small unit fight like Iraq, platoons and companies are the real measure of combat power,” agrees one Army officer.
Recon battalion’s value under debate
Yet several note that already-redesigned units, like the 3rd Infantry Division that deployed to Iraq last year, found the reconnaissance units inadequate to the task and were forced to augment their two-maneuver- battalion brigades by borrowing units from other forces.
“No one in the 3rd [Infantry Division] truly regards these humvee- Bradley [fighting vehicle] units as having either the firepower, armor or manpower to undertake complex missions like armed reconnaissance in wartime,” says one retired officer.
“We never said these [BCTs] are never to be augmented,” responds one service proponent on active duty. But by creating the smaller brigades, the service is “getting more [troops] into the rotational force,” this officer says.
Some Army proponents take issue with IDA’s decision not to count the reconnaissance battalions as supplying any combat value at all. In its analysis, IDA regarded maneuver forces as comprising only infantry or armor troops – “as if that was the sum total of combat power,” says one supporter of Schoomaker’s concept for the brigades.
Operating in M3A2 Bradley fighting vehicles, armed reconnaissance troops associated with the heavy BCTs are better armed and protected than dismounted infantry, according to this officer. The heavy BCTs – whose maneuver units include M1A2 main battle tanks and Bradleys – also field sniper troops for the first time.
Reconnaissance troops attached to infantry BCTs, though, move across the battlefield in humvees. The lighter footprint offers them greater mobility and agility than their heavy counterparts, but also can make them more vulnerable to enemy attack, officials say.
How much value do the recon battalions add to the fight? “Let’s not ask the Army,” says a redesign advocate. “Let’s ask the adversaries” who fight against U.S. forces, the officer said.
Though “you don’t want them caught up in a decisive battle,” they do offer firepower, survivability and lethality, the service proponent says.
“We have maintained comparable direct and indirect lethality, increased organic [intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance] capabilities two- to three-fold, and increased access to internal fires,” according to an e-mail a proponent of the Army design sent in December to general officers, obtained by ITP. “The point to be made is that combat power is not just your organic capability, but also the ability to leverage external capabilities.”
This article notes way more line companies than even I calculated. Though with the recon battalions having six platoons, you'd have to count this unit as three two-platoon companies to get to eleven companies in a brigade. (At five Humvees and three Bradleys each, these are larger platoons, I admit, so perhaps they are equivalent to three full companies--but they are still too light).
Also noted is my worry about the lightness of the recon unit. Combat experience in Iraq already requires units in the field to be augmented. I think against a conventional enemy this would be even more apparent.
This article also addresses my point that calling in outside firepower is a key to success in conventional battle. As I noted in my Defanged? post, German World War II divisions fought with two-battalion regiments on a very high intensity Eastern Front and managed to fight well as long as their artillery support was intact.
Even if the recon battalion is good for fighting conventional battles because it calls in firepower; but not good for insurgencies because it is too small and light, it can be augmented for the latter mission. Remember, air defense and artillery units will be cross-trained as infantry for stability operations, so could be plugged into the recon unit to beef it up.
And on the augmentation issue, a recent press conference with a brigade commander in Iraq showed that his brigade was augmented with a additional battalions and even additional companies and platoons:
I'd like to begin by saying that this is not just an Army brigade; we are the 1st Brigade of the 1st Armor Division. We like to call ourselves the "Ready First" Combat Team. But we're really composed of all four services -- Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine. We have five battalions from the 1st Armor Division, but we also have a battalion from the 101st Airborne Division; we have a battalion from the 8th Marine Regiment, and we have numerous companies and platoons from the Army and the Marine Corps, and Navy and Air Force personnel in key supporting and staff positions.
So a unit designed for high-intensity combat can be bulked up with troops for counter-insurgency. Still, I'd heavy up the recon battalion even if the decision is made not to enlarge it to three or four three-platoon companies instead of six platoons.
One question I have is whether in high intensity combat, the battalion or the company is the unit we should measure. As time has gone on, the basic units of maneuver have dropped down in size. Once you just had your "army" and there was nothing smaller. Then you had "left," "center," and "right." Then corps were formed and maneuvered. Then divisions. Then brigades and regimental combat teams were the basic units moved around. Now we think of battalions as the basic unit as the reorganization critics contend. With our new divisions acting like old corps and our new brigades like old divisions, can we say that companies are the new basic unit to be maneuvered?
If so, then the difference between organizng for counter-insurgency and for major combat operations has narrowed considerably and we are near the point where we won't be tugged between the two missions as much.
Just in case we are still at the battalion-basis, I'd heavy up our recon battalions so that they are fully capable of closing with the enemy like our line units. That is how we used to treat our recon units. Armored cavalry regiments were massive anti-tank forces that screened corps and in the Iraq War major combat operations, the 3rd ID's cavalry squadron ripped apart enemy conventional forces while leading the division north. And in history, recon units usually start out light from peacetime theory about speed and agility and then heavy up as combat teaches that you have to survive to gain information. I'm fairly shocked that we have gone back to the peacetime lesson during war.
Of course, since the new brigades based on the Future Combat Systems will have three battalions each (with four companies each, I'm assuming, to keep balanced teams. And further assuming that we'll scrape up the extra manpower needed by successfully moving some Army jobs to civilians, freeing up Army slots), I guess the opposition to the two-battalion brigade has won the debate.
We'll have more battalions and more companies. Dilemma solved.
