reverse_engineer said:
My point being that anything that isn't inherently mobile is too vulnerable to enemy sensors (CB radar, OPIR, EW assets to name a few) and counter-battery fire, and thus is of limited utility against a peer enemy that can truly dictate the tempo of operations.
Nothing is ever 100% but no excuse to make things easy for the bad guys. I'm assuming you didn't actually mean "fixed" and that it was just a poor choice of wording.
Cheers
No. Although I didn't use the word fixed, I am comfortable with it. I would also accepted stationary, immobile and motionless.
One of the issues we fail to come to terms with, I believe, is that there are many situations you can't manoeuvre your way out of. Sometimes it is necessary just to join the civilians and shelter in place. Stand your ground. Stand fast. Hold fast. Don't move. And ideally you still want to be able to convince the bad guys to give up and run away before they run out of water, and food, and the dysentery sets in and they die of Covid-19 or other plague of the week. Hopefully we don't get to the Die Hard bit too often.
Its fine enough for us to discuss force protection. It is a critical component of being able to sustain a resistance by keeping morale up.
But, if I remember correctly, Maintenance of Morale is the second principle. The first principle is Selection and Maintenance of the Aim.
Or, putting it another way: Mission; Men; Machines; Myself.
For me, towed guns/missiles/mortars, are not about shoot and scoot tactics, or even the slower, more methodical, fire and retire plan. They are about being able to rapidly establish a fixed operational base that checks the bad guy's intentions as he comes to you. Two requirements for such a base, in my opinion? Lots of engineering support to dig in with lots of overhead cover. Lots of emplaceable fire support that can be fired from under overhead cover. And just enough infantry to protect the fire support assets. We may not want to refight Korea and have visions of redoing Patton, or even the Duke of Marlborough, but there will be more Koreas.
My models are Israel's Iron Dome, Oerlikon's Skyshield, Rheinmetall's MANTIS, Italy's Porcupine and DRACO systems, Kongsberg's NASAMs, or the US's C-RAM..... or any modern surface vessel built for combat. It doesn't matter if a ship runs at 20 knots or 45 knots. It can't really fire and retire, or shoot and scoot, when faced with missiles manoeuvring at Machs 2 to 6. Ships, and their crews, are forced to stand and fight. Unfortunately.
I understand the value of manoeuvre. I understand the need to maintain the ability to manoeuvre at the strategic, operational and tactical levels. And I would want a manoeuvre element operating in conjunction with the fixed element. I just feel that we sometimes forget that there is a purpose to all this manoeuvring and trying to defeat the enemies manoeuvres. And that, the primary aim, the mission, is to protect the civilians who hired us (once upon a time I was one of you).
The 17th and 18th century was a grand era for manoeuvring armies. Armies that ran around Europe trying to ambush each other while trying to avoid being ambushed. In the meantime it was a miserable world for civilians who were regularly starved, besieged, bombarded and even flooded while being forced to pay taxes to support armies that failed to prevent their trials.
Final thought - with respect to the concept of civilian support of the forces - As I consider World War 2 and the Cold War from a civilian perspective - What is the point of hiring a professional force to protect me when the last time around I got bombed out of my home, my kid sister and mother died, we were on starvation rations and I had to go do the job the professionals were hired to do for me. And once I got that mess sorted out for them their next great idea was to offer to blow everything up.
