British Army News and Discussion Not sure that there's one of these, so just thought it'd be handy to create somewhere to lump all British Army stuff in one place. I was just checking out exactly what Army 2020 is supposed to be able to do, as we're all aware after the Afghan drawdown the general idea is that the UK will have the Army broken down into 3 sections; the Reaction Force, the Adaptable Force & Force Troops. The main bit I was looking at was the Reaction Force, essentially the spearhead of the next UK operation post-Afghan. This is made up of 2 major units; 16 Air Assault Brigade and the 1st Armoured Division. The current expectation - AFAIK - is that elements of each brigade will be to at very high readiness but both of the brigades will be deployable at longer notice. That's quite a potent capacity, 16 Air Assault Brigade includes - in terms of combat troops
& 3rd Mechanised Division - IIRC will contain 3 Armoured Brigades (1st, 12th, 20th) which will rotate the brigade at high readiness. Each brigade will include
All the handy stuff like Artillery, Engineers, Medical, Intel etc come under 'Force Troops' and as such will be attached to units as and when applicable. I'm not going to lie, i'd have liked the brigades as port of 1st Armoured Division to have organic artillery in the form of AS90/MLRS. If you're reading this and thinking "Man, the British Army is small", i've not done much reading into the Adapable Force which - I think - is made up of 7 Infantry Brigades which can fluctuate in size but generally would include light cavalry regiments, light infantry batts and 'protected' infantry batts in things like Foxhound, these are the brigades that'd include the TA. Probably a fair bit more i've missed out too. In terms of readiness, there will be an airbourne battlegroup and armoured battlegroup available for deployment anywhere immediately and both brigades would be ready to deploy within 3 months. Factor in the rapid deployability of 3 Commando Brigade (although not Army), IMO that amounts to a decent deployable capability to spearhead UK operations abroad. |
2 Attachment(s) Moved from RN thread Quote:
But saying that, Rapier was handy being able to be carried as an underslung load. I've attached a multi-picture example of what CAMM actually does when it's up in the air. |
That must be an editing mistake. Look at the rest of that line. 500 m (max) to 8 m (min) - unbelievable. Could that be 500 metres minimum to 8 km maximum? |
My thoughts exactly, otherwise that'd surely be a health risk if the Rapier hit an aircraft 8m away ;) Still emphasises the physical advantages of CAMM over Rapier. |
Excellent news from Janes in regards to the Royal Artillery component of the Reaction brigade structure, although they won't technically be a part of the brigade itself they are planning for a 'close support regiment' to be assigned to each brigade consisting of
The link also talks about the Spike NLOS missile, a system which I have no knowledge of & didn't know that the Army got their hands on some from somewhere. In any case, 18 AS90s + 6 GMLRS per reaction brigade. Not bad at all IMO. UK Royal Artillery rolls out new structure |
The one thing out of all this I find quite unsettling is the deicision to withdraw forces from Germany given the problems were facing with both Syria and Iran.Also the decision to reduce the Regular force and have the British Army rely on Resevrve and TA(Territorial Army)forces is a bad Idea.Another thing should'nt the 6 airborne Bde also be list as part of reaction force the Brits are planing to set up? |
16th Air Assault Brigade (the 6th no longer exists, combined with the 1st to get the 16th) IS a part of the reaction forces, I do say that in the original post. Not sure why you find pulling out of Germany to be a particularly unsettling thing, if anything it's a longer & more expensive journey to transport all that armour & equipment from Germany than it would be from the UK. Perhaps you could care to elaborate? |
What a load of shite. There's chatter about the Royal Artillery losing their GMLRS units! There's a Janes link but i'm unable to confirm what's actually in it, but it's an outrage. http://buff.ly/YcZwXN |
That would be so idiotic I can't help but think that it is deliberate sabotage. In an age of ever shrinking troop densities a long range all weather ground based PGM capability is a must have IMO. Western troops rely much on their ability to bring heavy and accurate firepower to bear on their opponents. Taking this tool out of the box is going to diminish the British Armys ability to do so a lot. |
It'd be a farce. However, not that long ago Jane's published how the RA planned to have a battery of GMLRS ready to go with the reactive armoured brigade. I linked it earlier in the thread too. So it seems a bit strange how apparently the RA planned it out and suddenly the weapon system faces outright withdrawral completely from nowhere. The GMLRS was a big point about the future of Army 2020. Hopefully it's an incredibly OTT title, but we'll see what develops. As i said, I can't actually read the title so. |
I remember the heavy criticism the Apache faced and how this changed 180 degrees after it proved it's worth in theater. From the reports I have read I would have thought that GMLRs did the same in Afghanistan. One just has to look at how many armed forces like Germany, Singapore, South Korea, etc. are adding GMLRs to their inventor because of it's performance in the last decade. |
To be honest, that's exactly the sort of thing i'd been hearing from Afghan too. I have to say, apart from the Janes link i've not heard anything about it from anywhere else, not even from the Army's website. Which is beginning to lead me to believe that the article has a misleading headline, it could mean a couple of specific regiments being lost or retasked to the Light Gun or whatever. Here's hoping, anyway. |
Fingers crossed for our partners. It was always nice when one met a bunch of british army guys in the Bergen/Munster area (although the officers seem to be a bit aloft...;)). |
Quote:
|
Quote:
3rd Mechanised Division will be part of the Reaction Force with 1st, 12th and 20th Armoured Infantry Brigades as subordinate commands. Both 7th Armoured Brigade (the Desert Rats) and 4th Mechanised Brigade (the Black Rats) will be converted to Infantry Brigades of the Adaptive Force. Famed Desert Rats to lose their tanks under Army cuts - Telegraph |
| All times are GMT -4. The time now is 04:01 PM. |
Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.7
Copyright ©2000 - 2013, vBulletin Solutions, Inc.
Search Engine Optimization by vBSEO 3.6.0
Copyright ©2003-2011 DefenceTalk.com. All Rights Reserved.