The Army's New Mobile Light Combat Brigade Concept is in Trouble.

H

Hard Ball

New member
In March we had some discussions about the Army's new Mobile Combat Brigades (it is a no no to cal them light brigades). 31 types of light wheeled or tracked armored vehicles were being tested at Fort Knox, KY.
Initial test results show that there are many problems. Most of the wheeled vehocles do not have adequate mobility. The requirement taht a vehicle must fit inside a C-130 cargo plane limits vehicle geigth to 102 inches. This prevents mounting aturret which can carry anything bigger than a 20 or 25mm.
Ironically only the tracked vehicles such as the M8 Mobile Gun and the light weight version of Bradley IFV>
 
Here are some numbers from "Dirty Little Secrets" by Dunnigan and Nofi;

* The airlift of a fully equipped mechanized infantry battalion requries 63 sorties by C-141 aircraft plus two by C-5As.

* An armored battalion requires 24 C-141 sorties and 36 C-5A sorties.

* To move a full mechanized infantry division by air requires 1,072 C-141 sorties plus 267 C-5A sorties.

* An armored division requires 1,022 C-141 sorties and 299 C-5A sorties.

here are some numbers pulled from the USAF, FAS, and Lockheed Martin websites...

C-130;
up to 45,000 pounds of cargo
up to 92 troops or 64 paratroops
Inventory: Active force, 93; Air Reserve component (Reserve and ANG), 296

C-141;
Either 200 troops, 155 paratroops, or 68,725 lbs of cargo
up to 208 ground troops or 168 paratroops, or
max payload 94,500 lb (B model)
Active force, 241; ANG, 16; Reserve, 12.

C-5;
291,000 pounds (130,950 kilograms) maximum wartime payload.
Active-force, 70; ANG, 11; Reserve, 28.

So it would appear that moving just *one* Mech Inf division would require every C-141 to make 4 sorties, lets say an average of one sortie per day to allow for the return flight, loading and unloading, etc. Of course, I am assuming that Mech Inf division was packed, boxed, and ready to load at whatever USAF base we launch from, which might take the better part of a week. There are probably some substantial in-flight refueling needs as well. Dunno what the weak link in the chain is.

With our current aircraft fleet, I cannot see any alternative to having the Marines seize a port so that we ship in our heavies over water. While we can grow light forces at the forward point from spec ops units all the way up to 81st Airborne using strictly air transport, I don't believe we have the lift capacity to do anything useful with medium to heavy divisions.

Given that the scale of ground combat vehicles (APCs, IFVs, SP artillery, etc) is to a certain extent limited by the human scale, then it would seem that an airborne rapid response brigade could require new designs for both the ground vehicles *and* the air transport. Which is a lot more ambitious than Shinseki's apparent off-the-shelf approach (which could very well be yet more Washington "faster-better-cheaper" foolishness).
 
The Army announced today that two light infantry brigades at Fort Lewis, Washington have officaly been converted to Mobile Combat Brigades. There equipment is still uncertain but they are to achieve interim operational capability as Mobile Combat Brigades by December 2001. It looks like. for better or fpr worse, the Army is commited to the concept.
 
Erick, no surprise here, but I wonder how long the Army will maintain the facade of "we're doing this right away, with OTS hardware, without changing tactical doctrine, and within current budgets." In other discussions on this board the MCBs have been referred to as "speed bump" units, since that is all the resistance they will provide.

My attitude is that we can do this kind of thing well (this is America, after all; we can do anything we put our minds to), *if* we put the necessary resources into it. To provide light vehicles with firepower, protection, off-road mobility, and transportability, we are going to need some R&D and probably a higher price tag than we are used to for light combat vehicles.

Secondly, we have to take a hard look at the air transport situation. The C-17 would solve a lot of problems for the MCB concept, but the cost is out of reach. A partial redesign of the C-130 with a larger fuselage (wider & higher cargo bay) would help, but we'd also need a whole bunch of them, maybe 200 of the new design just for hauling high-mobility forces. Again, we'd need to add a lot of money to the plan.

Thirdly, once we have the ability to put a MCB at the edge of a conflict area within 96 hours, we'll need the ability to put an armored and mech inf division there as backup within maybe 8 days. I recall that Shinseki has a graduated plan for mobile combat teams of various sizes, but the worry is that if we run out of money after creating a couple of MCBs we'll send them into a nasty situation without backup from our heavies. And one of our weak spots is the lack of American merchant marines and US-flagged ships, particularly cargo ships that are both fast and have the cargo-handling hardware to put its cargo on 3rd world docks or lighters.
 
The key element in the MCB concept will be to have an adequate number of high peformance guns or antitank missile armed vehicles in the brigae. One reason the M8 mobile gun looks good is that its high performance 105mm gun can fire high velocity depleted uranium APFSDS ammunition capable of defeating the armor protection of a T72 tank.
 
The entire concept is just another instance of the logistical tail wagging the operational dog. Instead of developing effective operational forces and telling the logisticians to support them, we are designing less effective forces that our current logistics systems can sustain.

The solution to the whole thing is to buy enough transport to move and sustain a combat effective force. No we don't need to have the boondoggle of unafordable transport like the C17. We just need enough basic air and sealift. Emphisis here on the basic. we don't need all the bells and whistles of the C17, just big dependable airframes that can use an airport. Let Airborne troop seize the airport and airland the follow on forces. No need for dirt field capability in strategic transport.

Perhaps we could buy up some surplus wide body airliners (I seem to recall seing lots of mothballed 747s and DC10s at airports in the Southwest a few years ago) and convert them to cargo use. A lift up nose maybe? This would require some additional material handling equipment because they are higher off the ground then the strictly military transports, but if we just made our doctrine the seizure of an airport, this shouldn't be a problem. Most of the scenarios calling for the use of the Mobile Light Combat Brigade are not forced entry anyway. We could still maintain the current "tactical" airlift fleet (C17, C141, C5, C130) to give us a forced entry, unimproved airfield capability when we needed it.

Of course this would mean billions of R&D money for the defense industry and the airforce airlift pilots would not be able to say that they had unique combat aircraft and would take even more ribbing from fighter types so this probably isn't an option
smile.gif


Jeff



[This message has been edited by Jeff White (edited April 17, 2000).]
 
There is a real simple solution to this half a**ed MCB dog and pony show. NO MORE POLICE ACTIONS. The only things these units can effectively do is die and maintain the peace in far away places like Kosovo, Bosnia, Somalia... Eliminate these type of deployments and the need for these units vanishes. We dont need speed bumps made out of American kids. Thats why God created the Oceans and that is why other countries have armies. Let their kids get chewed up defending their soil while we deploy the real stuff.

The MCB's serve as a great example of what happens when leadership from the back is adopted as SOP. We cant support our heavy brigades capable of killing things in their paths, so instead of trimming the REMF corps, and general staff numbers to make more $$ available for logistical support of proven brigades we trim the fighting force so that God forbid the General would have to travel on a cargo plane like the rest of the f'in troops. With leadership like these morons in charge, who needs China or Korea to kick us in the balls. We seem to be flexible enough to do a great job of it oursleves.

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"Liberty is never unalienable; it must be redeemed regularly with the blood of patriots or it always vanishes."
-R.A. Heinlein
 
This just seems to be another "goat rope".

I think someone dreamed this up as a bullet for their evaulation report. Haven't we gone through this before?

We are bleeding from every area and now we're going to throw a confusing package into the mix which soldiers will spend their entire enlistment in and never see anything come of it!

We have few real forces as it is and now we have essentially disabled 10% of it to tinker with it.

Let's just get the basic right first!

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He who dares wins.
NRA Life Memeber
 
Jeff, well put; that is what I was trying to say, but it didn't come out too clearly. There's no such thing as fair in war; enemy forces aren't going to pare down to make it an even fight, so as you put it, we should design the optimum maneuver forces, then work backwards and develop the appropriate support forces and supply train.

I believe it would be just as expensive to try to retrofit existing airliners as it would be to "grow" the C-130 design. For hauling general bodies and cargo, the existing civilian fleet is fine, but for things that don't fit into a standard shipping container, we'll need a new airframe. It's time we had one, anyway; aside from C-17 which will never be seen in any numbers, our airlift system is based on 1960s designs, which were designed back when tanks weighed 40 tons and APCs weighed 10.

There are 3 basic factors in airplane cost; development cost, "technology" cost, and weight cost. The first is a fairly fixed number, but kills you if the production run is small. The second is the production cost of all the high-tech stuff, from glass cockpits to composite structures (i.e. the whole C-17). And finally, for any hardware, there is a substantial factor just simply due to weight; whether it be pickup trucks, guided missile cruisers, or aircraft, to a certain extent you pay by the pound. So airlift capability to deliver brigade-sized units with 15 ton IFVs/APCs is going to cost a lot less than one that uses 30 ton vehicles. For non-forced entry maneuvers, we can get by with a reasonably basic aluminum airframe and straightforward cockpit, but we need the cargo bay to be sized for light armored vehicles. Of course, we can't design the airplane until we decide what our light vehicles are going to look like.
 
As Far as how many plane loads it would take to move one of these Brigades...All I can use is my experience working DACG (Departure Air Control Group) of the 7th Infantry Div (light) We could move the entire Division in less than 250 chocks (plane loads) using c-141s and C-5s. The last plane would be wheels up within 48 hours of the first plane.

As far as these new Mobile Combat Brigades, can everyone say S.P.E.E.D B.U.M.P, they got enough fire power to just get themselves in a ton of $hit, but not enough to survive unless a "couple of old fashion heavy units show up in a big hurry" Maybe someone should look up what happened to Task Force Smith at the out break of the Korean War...again can lets all repeat "SPEED BUMP".

We "should" have the ability to move a heavy armor Division(if we had more than one) or Infantry Division anywhere in the world in 48 hours (with air support) and sustain them while more units follow. To heck with this idea of creating units that don't have enough assets to cash the checks that are going to be required to write.

[This message has been edited by Alan B (edited April 17, 2000).]
 
Ivanhoe,
I suggested using the surplus commercial airframes not as a cost saving measure, but because I beleive that the procurement system is incapable of designing and producing the basic transport you envision. Anything we design from the ground up will be more advanced and unaffordable then the C17.

Look at the OICW, we are replacing a $400.00 rifle with a $10,000.00 + "system". A couple of weeks ago Army Times had an article on a test program to develop an off the shelf pickup truck to augment the HMMWV fleet. The Dodge and Ford test vehicles have passive night vison viewers and "glass cockpits".

Jeff
 
Alan, if we still had the 7th, and were going to airlift it to some 3rd world country with just basic airstrips, how many planeloads of cargo-handling gear are required (i.e. forklifts, tow trucks etc)? Would that be included in your "250 chock" number? I know the AF has all that stuff, but if its not prepositioned, how many planeloads does it eat up?

I don't think we can afford the airlift to move an Armored division by air, unless we radically overhaul DoD. Ideally, we ought to design a "medium cavalry" division along with a medium transport aircraft.

Jeff, you're probably right. There are only two ways to solve the airlift problem; either have a purge (a la Stalin), or have a war. Wartime expediency cuts thru an awful lot of bureaucracy. Your suggestion is sort of the modern equivalent of the DC-3 situation in WWII; a contemporary airliner design drafted into service. But we still ought to have adequate aircraft for "kick the door in" operations, since history shows that the politicians will get the country into all sorts of messes.

Another issue with airlifted forces is the possible lack of construction and engineer forces. The historical tendency is to start a war with very thin engineer ranks and to increase the number of engineer battalions per division as the war progresses. I figure that will also be seen in the future, due to increased urbanization and increased use of mines. The reason I'm worried is that those sorts of things are usually the first to get cut, sorta like the USNs lack of minesweeping and littoral warfare ships. I seem to recall mention of inadequate bridging capacity in the recent eastern Europe "police actions."
 
Ivanhoe,
I don't think we need a medium calvary division, we just need to put the comabt power that was originally designed into our light forces (and was removed when funding and airlift requirements made them unfeasable) back. The original design for the light divisions had an armor punch in the divison base. It was to be an Army version of the LAV 25. The 82 Airborne used their old Sheridans until just a couple years ago. But we didn't have money to buy the M9 Armored Gun, so we deleted it and have played with other optons since. We need a calvary brigade and the airlift to move it. This along with a 155mm artillery system that is more mobile then the M198 and lighter then the M109A6 would give light forces the staying power to hold until heavier forces could arrive. We can't overlook systems to keep these light divisions in beans and bullets either. Ammunition will be expended at tremendous rates in a mid to high intensity conflict. We have to have enough airlift to sustain these forces until sea or land lines of communications can be established. Even small arms ammuntion is heavy and missiles and rockets are very bulky due to the size of their shipping containers.

So we will need enough airlift to move enormous amounts of supplies into our airhead, along with follow on forces to expand the airhead.

The Air Force has units dedicated to airfield construction and repair but I don't know much about their capabilities. In this day and age there are decent civilian or military airfields throughout most of the world. The use of Rangers of Airborne to seize one would be the way to go rather then build one fron scratch.

Jeff
 
Ivanhoe
That stuff was organic to the division (they would use their stuff to help load on this end but we were entirely responsible for the other end. However if the Air Force had a few KC-10s in the mix they had move assets to the other end as the army didn't have the stuff to lift the cargo 25 feet to get it in and out of the KC-10s cargo hold. The Air Force always wanted to do "Engines running off loads" they didn't want to stick around any longer than needed. I have seen 141s spend less than 20 min on the ground from touch down to wheels up.

Things could get intresting while trying to load the last planes.

Also alot of work was done by Infantry privates who would provide most of the grunt work needed. When you run short a fork lift replace with 30 privates

[This message has been edited by Alan B (edited April 18, 2000).]
 
This was in the April 24th issue of Army Times.

GAME ON TO SEE WHO CAN BUILD BEST VEHICLE
JUNE 6 DEADLINE SET FOR CONTRACTORS

by Matthew Cox
Times Staff Writer

Defense contractors recently got the green light to compete in the final round of the Army's search for the ideal fighting vehicle.

Project officials for Chief of Staff Gen. Eric Shinseki invited contractors April 6 to put their flagship fighting vehicles to the test.

The long anticipated Request for Proposal begins the last stage of the Army's plan to create a fast-moving fighting force with enough punch to take on a heavily armored foe.

Once the competitors are selected, officials will evaluate each vehicles ability to perform in a variety of tactical situations before awarding a contract in late summer.

Shinseki unveiled his vision of the Brigade Combat team in October, touching off a whirlwind effort to equip this new medium weight-unit witha new fighting vehicle light enough to be transported for deployment by a C-130 aircraft.

In January, the Army hosted a Platform Performance Demonstration at Ft Knox, KY, to get a sense of what vehicles were available on the commercial market and what they were capable of. Nine contractors showed up to put 35 systems through the course.

Despite the stress of competition, officials stressed the event was not intended to grade any vehicle's specific performance.

Instead, the Army used the demonstration to hammer out formal requirements contractors will have to meet before competing in the formal evaluation.

After submitting proposals contractors will have to supply test vehicles to be judged at the Bid Sample Evaluation - a formal "drive-off, shoot-off" competition.

That 30 day evaluation is slated to take place at Aberdeen Proving Ground, MD, after the June 6 proposal due date.

"The Bid Sample Evaluation will assess the vehicles' ability to perform against a standard requirement," said Col. Ronald Shenk, project director for the Brigade Combat Team.

"This is not a head-to-head competition to see how vehicle A performs against vehicle B."

The selection process will include government visits to contractor facilities to ensure the plants are capable of meeting the demands of a contract award.

If all goes well, the Army plans to equip the first Brigade Combat Teams with 300 of these multi-use infantry carrier vehicles by March 31, 2001.

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Sounds like this will be a long drwan out process. Since the Brigade Combat Team is expected to fight a "heavily armored foe", why don't we test it at NTC against the 11th ACR? I'm sure Loral could modify MILES to pick up the capabilities of the weapons on the new vehicles. Each contractor could supply a company's worth of prototypes (14-16) and they could be given to a standard mech company to fight at NTC. I think they are afraid that the World Class OPFOR would clean their clock and invalidate the concept just like they proved Force XXI wasn't ready a year or so ago.

Jeff
 
The Army is borrowing 32 LAV-III armored cars from the Canaian army. They will be used by the first two mobile combat brigades at Fort Lewis, Washington as traimimg vehicles. The LAV-III is an eight wheeled armored car and is an improved version of the LAV used by the US Marine Corps. It is armed with a 25mm automatic cannon and can carry six infantrymen and a crew of three. The first four LAV-IIIs have been delivered to Fort Lewis.
 
The army has announced that the initial brigade organizatiom will be three infantry battalions, one artillery battalion and a reconnasiance and target aquisition battalion
 
When the Army gave up the Air Corp, they made a big mistake. If you have to depend on the Air Farce to get you anywhere, when you need to be there, you are in real trouble. Remember all those airliners moving the troops during desert shield? Duh! I know friends in the Air Force who think the same way about the air mobility command.
 
It doesn't seem to matter how light we make our forces; the Air Force doesn't want to move them.

This is from the May 8 2000 issue of Army Times:

AIR FORCE CHIEF SAYS VISION'S AIRLIFT MIGHT NOT BE THERE

by Sean D. Naylor
Times Staff Writer

The Air Force's top officer said his service would not be able to meet Army Chief of Staff Gen. Eric Shinseki's deployment goals for lighter, more flexible units without using all it's airlift aircraft.

In November, Shinseki announced his intention of transforming the Army into a force that can move a division anywhere in the world in 120 hours and five divisions in 30 days.

To achieve this, he suggested the service could transition to an all-wheeled vehicle fleet that weighs 50 percent to 70 percent less then todays armored force.

But Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Michael Ryan said that even deploying the transformed Army envisioned by Shinseki would leave no airlift aircraft available for other services or missions.

"General Shinseki has a goal for his forces to move in that time and actually have them moved." Ryan told Army Times on April 25. "But in reality we will not have enough lift to do that, unless you dedicate all lif to just that. There is a finite amount of lift out there."

Ryan said the decision on how to prioritize available airlift assets would rest with the National Command Authority and the regional commander in chief. "You never have enough lift, be it sea [or] air," he said.

Army spokesman Maj. Bill Bigelow said Ryan's comments did not imply that a transformed Army would not be able to deploy units on the time lines laid down by Shinseki.

"Our task of strategic power projection will involve Air Force assets, sealift and prepositioning of equipment," Bigelow said. "If we are tasked by the National Command Authority to move five divisions in 30 days, we will use every asset necessary to accomplish the mission."

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Once again we seem to be ignoring "Unity of Command" and letting each service go it's own way. I don't understand why we don't make a mission task list for our armed forces establishment and then let the services decide how to accomplish it.

We have the Army lightening itself to the point where it may be combat ineffective so it's transportable on Air Force aircraft, but the Air Force says, we've got other things to do, makes a lot of sense to me.

Jeff
 
Unofficial Motto of the Light Combat Brigade:

"Too light to fight, too heavy to run."

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"Every normal man must be tempted, at times to spit on his hands,hoist the black flag and begin slitting throats." H.L. Mencken
 
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