Tango2Bravo said:
Kirkhill,
Are we back to your garrison artillery bit?
We are. ;D. And I am back on my Meds.
Maybe it is the incurable romantic in me but I do see a continuing role for The Tower of London, Stirling Castle, Vlad the Impaler's castles, the Citadels at Quebec and Halifax, Arafat's 1930s British built Police Fort at Ramallah and CIMIC and Platoon Houses in Kandahar and Baghdad. There is something about them that suggests stability, solidity, presence...security. And they represent a nice warm/air-conditioned location for a good night's sleep for the local "Law/Peace-Enforcers". Part of guaranteeing those guys, I am guessing that means you guys, a good night's sleep means to knock down incoming threats: 82mm mortars, 122mm rockets and 400 man Taliban assaults. And if you are standing on the walls repelling those assaults then you are not getting a good night's sleep.
"A" Battery at Fort Henry supplied a 3 mile umbrella that dominated the waters around the Fort permitting constant patrolling and ultimately peaceful use. As well they represented a local defence force.
All I am suggesting is that:
Local defence forces are required in order to both control and comfort the local population.
The local defence force needs a place to get a good night's sleep.
The place to get a good night's sleep needs to be well defended.
An integrated defence requires active measures as well as passive (more than just thick walls)
Active defences that defend the premises without the need to waken the entire garrison means that the garrison is available for other tasks. If not sleeping they can be out patrolling.
So fixed populations requires a fixed local presence which requires a defended locality.
Given that: how much bang for the buck can we supply now that we have to recruit, train, feed, pay and protect those forces?
I am suggesting that IF you accept my premise that Local Fixed Forces are necessary THEN the question becomes how much influence can they exert, and over what area - all the while trying to minimize the number of personnel devoted to the task of local security.
It is possible to protect a facility with a 50% stand-to, rifles and machine guns but nobody gets much sleep. A well practiced infantry and armoured standard. The Navy used to do things that way but not so much any more.
Warships use active defences that defend the ship with relatively little man-power.
The array of automated active responses currently available at the click of a button from a mouse starts with Claymores, progresses through ROWS installations, CIWS/C-RAMS, Skyguard, Sweden's now decommissioned ERSTA coastal artillery guns*, any artillery piece that can be fired from the cab of the vehicle, any missile that launches itself on detection of the right conditions, any containerized or siloed missile.
That means that instead of "A" Battery dominating the 1000 islands with its 3 mile guns and telescopes that same group of individuals could now be "dominating" Canada, either from their central location or from netted distributed nodes. - Given adequate situational awareness.
I am working from the premise that dispersed local forces to comfort and control the locals is a necessary evil. I am suggesting that those bodies come at the expense of manoeuvre forces. Therefore we should both minimize the numbers necessary and allow them to be useful across the broadest spectrum of operations. Allow them to use their eyes via ROWS, UAVs, Aerostats, Satellites and monitors and allow them to respond over the broadest possible area using systems ranging from the point-defence like the Claymore to the theater-range systems like the Patriot and the ATACMS. Needless to say those latter require central co-ordination of those dispersed firing points.
Now, having said all of that, I have nowhere argued against manoeuvre forces, Quick Reaction Forces, mobile reserves and flexible fire support. All good.
But I don't believe that you can fight Rupert Smith's "War Amongst the People" entirely with manoeuvre forces. You have to give the people of Srebrenica their safehaven. You have to deploy the DutchBat. You have to give them the authority and the means to defend themselves and their charges. Those forces are lost to your manoeuvre elements. You might as well make them as capable and useful as you can. And the more they can support the manoeuvre forces the better.
This is all that I suggest.
As to my "heat of the moment" references to Yanks paying for your CAS - I accept the realities of coalition warfare. And frankly I can't think of any wars that have ever been one from entirely "National" resources. Even Napoleon and the Romans vacuumed up additional support from their "conquered" territories. It makes you wonder how much conquering and how much liberating goes on in these things. 'Nuther tangent.
One of these days I am going to have to buy you a Guiness or two.
Cheers, Chris.
* Relative to ERSTA - I would argue that those were decommissioned NOT because they weren't effective, or cost effective, but because the enemy went away (He may be coming back soon.) But much of that Autoloading/Firing technology is still available on the back of a Volvo truck. I just don't see the need to keep tires inflated and engines maintained if I can achieve the same effect by dismounting the gun-platform from the back of the vehicle, hooking it up to a generator along with 3 or 5 more guns and running a conveyor from a dug in magazine to the autoloaders.
As noted previously and elsewhere by others the Maginot line was not a failure because it existed. It failed because there wasn't enough of it - and that was because it became too expensive to build and operate and that in turn was because of short range weapons and short sight lines and the great need for manpower which had to be fed and protected. The Maginot Line that was built functioned as intended. It deterred and repelled and forced the enemy to go around. Unfortunately the manoeuvre element wasn't prepared to defeat the enemy on the enemy's chosen ground.
