This is a discussion on British Army News and Discussion within the Army & Security Forces forum, part of the Global Defense & Military category; Not sure that there's one of these, so just thought it'd be handy to create somewhere to lump all British ...
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
7th Para Regt RHA (L118 Light Guns)
23 Air Assault Engineer Regiment
1st Batt. Royal Irish Regiment
2 PARA
3 PARA
3rd Regt AAC (Apache)
4th Regt AAC (Apache)
9th Regt AAC (Lynx)
D Sqdn Royal Household Cavalry
Pathfinder Platoon
& 3rd Mechanised Division - IIRC will contain 3 Armoured Brigades (1st, 12th, 20th) which will rotate the brigade at high readiness. Each brigade will include
1 x Armoured Cavalry Regiment (CVR(T)) - 3 Sqdns of 16 + C&C/support Sqdn
1 x Armoured Regiment (CR2) - 3 Sqdns of 18 CR2 +C&C/support Sqdn
3 x Armoured Infantry Batts. 3 Coys with 14 Warrier per Coy + Support Coy
1 x "Heavily Protected Mobile Inf Batt". 3 Coys with 14 Mastiff per Coy + Support Coy
101 Logistical Support Brigade
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.
Last edited by RobWilliams; April 13th, 2013 at 12:46 PM.
Yeah, on the face of it it's going to be a decent step up.12 ready to go instead of 4, Mach 3 over Mach 2.5, more mobile on land. I've got a PDF from the Army it says the actual range of the Rapier missile is only 500m?! The radar range is 16km. [I've uploaded a screenshot of the 'fact file' bit]
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?
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
3 x AS90 batteries (each battery having 6 AS90's)
1 x GMLRS battery of 6 launchers
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.
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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.
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.
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.
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.
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...).
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.
I saw interview material with a GMLRS crew and they seemed to regard the GMLRS capability as a fairly definitive silver bullet option, as in "when you absolutely, definitely have to make something go away" - and of course, it's weather independent, doesn't require air superiority over the target etc so I'd be surprised if GMLRS went away.
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
7th Para Regt RHA (L118 Light Guns)
23 Air Assault Engineer Regiment
1st Batt. Royal Irish Regiment
2 PARA
3 PARA
3rd Regt AAC (Apache)
4th Regt AAC (Apache)
9th Regt AAC (Lynx)
D Sqdn Royal Household Cavalry
Pathfinder Platoon
& 1st Armoured Division - IIRC will contain 3 Armoured Brigades (the 7th, 20th but not sure where the third comes from, the 4th Mechanised maybe?) which will rotate the brigade at high readiness. Each brigade will include
1 x Armoured Cavalry Regiment (CVR(T)) - 3 Sqdns of 16 + C&C/support Sqdn
1 x Armoured Regiment (CR2) - 3 Sqdns of 18 CR2 +C&C/support Sqdn
3 x Armoured Infantry Batts. 3 Coys with 14 Warrier per Coy + Support Coy
1 x "Heavily Protected Mobile Inf Batt". 3 Coys with 14 Mastiff per Coy + Support Coy
101 Logistical Support Brigade
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.
The Telegraph has reported that 1st Armored Division will be the command headquarters of the Adaptive Force under Army 2020. Wikipedia is now listing the Adaptive Force Brigades as 4th, 7th, 11th, 38th, 42nd, 51st and 160th.
3rd Mechanised Division will be part of the Reaction Force with 1st, 12th and 20th Armoured Infantry Brigades as subordinate commands.
