By Ann Roosevelt
After assessing medium-armored forces in past operations, a new study finds that the diversity and complexity of military operations the Army may be called upon to face in the future would be best served by a mix of forces.
“It would be prudent to maintain a mix of heavy, medium-armored, and light forces that can be task-organized and employed in conditions that best match their attributes,” the Rand Arroyo Center study said.
The Army sponsored the study: In the Middle of the Fight: An Assessment of Medium-Armored Forces in Past Military Operations. Researchers used historical cases to look for insights on medium-armored forces from U.S. and foreign operations, running the gamut from the Spanish Civil War through Vietnam and Operation Iraqi Freedom.
The study is likely to shed some light on the way forward as the Army transforms and modernizes in the wake of the administration’s budget request to cancel the manned ground vehicle portion of the Future Combat System, the service examination of its tactical combat vehicles, and a new start for a ground vehicle (Defense Daily, May 8).
In addition, the Quadrennial Defense Review is examining the right force mix for a future to be characterized by persistent conflict as documents from the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) and U.S. Joint Forces Command (JFCOM) discuss.
By Labor Day, the service has said its Training and Doctrine Command should have some results from a reexamination of requirements for future vehicles.
“The primary implication of this study is that the development of the U.S. Army’s Future Force should be framed by a broad conceptual paradigm that embraces the complexity and diversity of the types of military operations that the nation may call upon that force to execute,” study authors wrote.
Without predicting the future, potential problems and solutions have been developed in JFCOM’s Joint Operating Environment and the JCS’ Capstone Concept for Joint Operations.
The Rand study finds that medium-weight forces have “only four clear advantages over heavy armor: rapid deployability (particularly with air-droppable vehicles), speed over roads, trafficability in infrastructure not suited to heavy armor, and lower logistical demands.”
Also, these advantages can be exploited only where the diminution of combat power can be made up with by other means, it said.
Thus, the monograph finds that medium weight forces are useful “only under one or more” of the following conditions: by air in a way that preempts an effective enemy response– as in Czechoslovakia and Afghanistan; against an enemy lacking the ability to deal with any mobile army, as in Panama, Somalia and East Timor; in circumstances where other friendly assets–close air support, artillery, or training–offset enemy capabilities in the first Gulf War, Angola and Operation Iraqi Freedom.
Case studies make the conclusions and implications clear. For example, authors say it was U.S. medium-armored forces in Panama during Operation Just Cause that “provided a needed edge” to light forces, as did the small number of air-droppable armored reconnaissance M551 Sheridans. However, the United States now does not have a forced-entry, medium- armor capability, since the M551 Sheridan is now retired from the inventory.
“Having the capacity to rapidly deploy medium-armored forces (by air or sea) may be an important national capability,” study authors wrote. Such ability was notably important in operations by the South African Army in Angola, the Soviet Union in Czechoslovakia and in Afghanistan, and by Australia in East Timor.
Medium-armored vehicles highlight the fundamental defense-planning difficulties of peacetime choices about the future, study authors wrote. Medium-armored forces experience “the majority of their difficulties when conditions on the ground differed significantly from the predictions used to prepare those forces.”