With Britain emphasizing naval and air power to help continental allies world wide, the lower priority light ground force has work to do. I'll have to learn to like this capability.
Three light brigades will be the expeditionary ground force Britain will have to work with:
The modern British Army’s light brigade is a mixed light cavalry and infantry force. Mounted on lightly armoured vehicles, or dismounted, it is optimised for mobility and speed. The soldiers are armed with heavy weapons, mortars, and anti-tank weapons. They are capable of conducting tactical actions across the mosaic of conflict. They can exploit opportunities against near-peer threats as part of a combined arms force if resourced and once conditions have been set. Lighter than strike brigades and are not dependent upon significant equipment programme capital, complex integration, and fractious fielding. Light brigades are also less aligned to conventional warfighting and offer different capabilities.
Well, light infantry has strategic mobility and speed. Battlefield mobility is low and speed is non-existent if confronted with enemy heavy forces or firepower.
Against heavy forces they require augmentation. That is, heavy forces and fires units. And "condition setting." Like pummeling the enemy's heavy forces before contact. Or maneuvering the enemy into terrain more suited to lighter forces. Because the light brigades are indeed less aligned to conventional warfighting.
And the author recognizes this role of shock action and protection for heavy armor. He advocates making light infantry light mechanized units. Which reduces strategic mobility without fully compensating for the lack of heavy forces. It will face the same limits as American Stryker brigades.
Indeed, the point of my old article in Military Review (starting on page 28) on the Future Combat System was to say that strategically mobile light armor will not replace the shock action and protection of heavy armor. At best such a combat vehicle can bridge the gap between leg infantry and heavy forces.
Perhaps the British should embed observers with Stryker brigades and OPFOR at the American National Training Center to see first hand how that conventional warfighting environment works for semi-light forces.
Indeed, is it my imagination or is the British army contribution to an expeditionary force viewed by the author--at least initially--as more of a land spotting force for other services' firepower?
But maybe a separate British heavy brigade will follow. Or even heavy battalions will be follow-on forces to reinforce the semi-light brigades for real striking power. As I advocated for American infantry brigades in Army magazine.
The author seems under no delusions about light forces. Britain may have no choice but to rely on them. With additions and care in commitment, a semi-light force makes sense for Britain's new global role that has downgraded slugging it out toe-to-toe with Russian heavy forces on the continent.
But heavy forces have been declared obsolete many times over the last fifty years. I don't know if the future British army's future is light and bright any more than I thought Britain's military could be lean and mean. At the time, downgrading heavy armor seemed like a good bet to me.
Russia changed the odds in 2014 but Britain's path has not changed. I was wrong in my judgement that Britain could not be a global power on their path, however. Last year I began to change my mind. Once in the spring and then in the fall.
But to be fair, my frame of reference has been keeping a heavy British Army of the Rhine in NATO.
But perhaps I'll learn to like a British semi-light expeditionary force that can operate from Norway's North Cape to the Baltic Sea, to Africa, to the Middle East, and all the way to East Asia.
UPDATE: The British army is shrinking to historically low levels. Is the cut too deep and a strategic blunder?
I don't like the cuts. But given the strategy choice Britain has made, I don't know how cuts can be avoided without spending more money on defense than Britain is likely to do.
