Army to dump LRS companies
The Army has nine Long-Range Surveillance companies, three active-duty and six National Guard, and now that they have to do things like train people who can’t do the job those people want and they have to spend money on healthcare that doesn’t improve combat readiness, they want to cut those combat assets so they can afford to culturally diversify the force instead. From Military.com;
Commanders identified operational LRS units as a low priority, he said, adding that the decision to cut LRS companies was aided by “extensive computer models using combatant commander plans to determine what the Army needs.”
Oh, well, that makes sense – computer models are telling commanders to slash combat units. The Army is betting on drones – but drones only give commanders a two-dimensional look at the battlefield while LRS team provide a three-dimensional view. There is a contextual benefit of having experienced combat troops observe the enemy instead of an airman in a swivel chair thousands of miles from the scene.
It’s more important, though, that the Army spends millions of dollars picking a pistol, picking a new uniform pattern every few years, diversifying the force with deviants, spending money to train people who can’t meet the standard. We can’t cut the flag officers’ transportation, kitchen or household staffs, let’s cut combat assets instead.
If there were two brain cells left in the Pentagon, they’d keep the National Guard companies in order to retain a cadre of folks with the expertise to train up some companies before the next war, but, well….
Category: Big Army
“LRS so easy an F35 can do it”.
Hillary (Not my sever) Clinton.
“We’re willing to put drones and, in the future, unmanned vehicles in more dangerous situations because they don’t have mothers,” [Todd Harrison, a defense budget expert] said. “That makes them more useful to the country and the president.”
More useful? More useful because machines don’t have mothers? I have no idea and I’m afraid to guess.
IMHO the Contractors that build the machines have bribed all the pols they need to make the Army dependent on them.
See the robot video I posted below, API. If that thing doesn’t creep you out, you’re dead.
I believe it. I have heard firsthand a BC say that 1x RQ-11 Raven could provide better ISR than all of his snipers and scouts combined.
But they can’t see in doorways, inside Windows, down covered gangways. Etc.
Maybe they’ll use some of that money their saving to buy the body bags their going to need, or is the next thing that we’ll just leave our dead laying on the field?
OH Flag Officers and their toys. So long removed from the troops they forget the flexibility and talents of their own people. Woe is the leader who has no faith in what is right in front of their noses.
Drones may have better eye sight but they have no smell, taste, or memory of battlefield movements.
I guess the only thing that cannot get to anywhere in the Pentagon in only 5 minutes is good ideas.
BAD IDEA !!!!!!!
‘diversifying the force with deviants’ – that would be more colorful if it were written this way: ‘diversifying the force with people whose sex lives are more important than their ability to fight’.
As for robots/drones not having mothers, they do, too! Robots in manufacturing plants create robots for utility purposes constantly. And there is now a new independent walking robot able to get up even if it’s knocked down.
The Terminator is being developed now. We humans will no longer be necessary to fight wars. (Wait ’til the end of the video.)
See?
https://youtu.be/rVlhMGQgDkY
I am most impressed by the ability of that robot to keep in step while walking in rugged terrain. Just imagine how sharp a batallion of these things passing in review would look! 😉
Every light BDE in the Army has a Cavalry Reconnaissance Squadron (except the rangers). 1 troop has mounted 19D Cavalry Scouts, 1 Troop has dismounted light infantry that serve in a LRS role. The infantry Troop typically requires members to try out for the unit, similar to LRS units. There is also separate MI BDE’s with a light Cavalry Reconnaissance Squadron serving as a Corps Recon asset. The LRS weren’t needed. That’s not a slight against the light grunts that served in those units, but in the land of budget cuts, this was a low hanging fruit.
In Armored and Mech Infantry BDE’s all the Battalion Scout PLTs are manned by Cavalry Scouts and each BDE has a Cavalry Squadron with 3 line Troops of Cavalry Scouts and Mortars and a tank Company.
Reconnaissance is the 19D’s wheel house. Its what we do (well did, I’m retired). Over the last years of Iraq and Afghanistan, we were forced to play as a conventional Infantry unit, but with a fraction of the personnel. IE.. same sized battle space, but 1/3rd of the people. It has actually severly eroded some skill sets as more experienced Scouts left the Army. When I retired, only the E-7s and above had ever led a traditional zone reconnaissance or sat on a screen line. Reconnaissance and Security has traditionally been the responsibility of Cavalry units. Some may be called Cavalry, but their just Infantry units or striker units keeping traditionally historic units alive.
Not trying to get into a who’s MOS is better fight, but that’s the reality.
Those LRS squadrons in the MI brigades were cut to a troop in the FY16 MTOE and are the active duty units on the chopping block.
19D’s have the biggest washout rate in RSLC.
so? Show me the stat or are you just repeating rumor you heard from a guy who heard from a guy. RSLC is a hard course.
I know the infantry find it distasteful, but Security and Reconnaissance belongs to the Cavalry Squadrons when your talking mark 1 eye balls. That’s not a slight on Infantry, but its how the ball is rolling.
in the Armor world, you find no one doing reconnaissance except 19Ds, its what we do.
As far as the FY16 MTOE, I retired in 2013 so each year my personal knowledge grows dated. If they are cutting BFSB brigades, I hadn’t heard it.
I spent about a quarter of my career in LRS/LRRP (yes, that dates me) units. The writing was on the wall as far back as the late 90’s when RPVs started coming on line in force. The wars gave the units a reprieve, but unfortunately when the military won’t use the organic units due to risk aversion the final answer is all to easy to predict.
This requirements for this mission is not going away, its just going to be done by SOF forces, who frankly have the funding and experienced manpower to do it better.
The Army should maintain some capacity in the reserves (which is essentially what was done in the 70/80’s with G/143d and F/425 (ABN RGR)(LRRP), which became the first LRS units in 1986), but it needs to ensure that they are part of an organized structure and not independent companies lost to the will of each state.
Not only do we never learn from the past, but now we do it by computer model. Boy, that’s progress. Anyone remember McNamera and his “whiz kids”?
Ask anyone in the ground Intel community and they will tell you that the demand signal for UAV coverage already far outweighs its capacity. Add to that the fact that the USAF can’t seem to find or keep UAV pilots, and the funding going to support other manned airframes, and you can see that this will result in the same fiction that was the 1990’s peace dividend. In the end, there will be several company commanders walking into a world of hurt because the battalion can’t see beyond the next terrain feature or there isn’t a viable screen established.
Too late for the Maryland National Guard LRS Company and riggers. Disbanded late last year.
By far the best line company in the state. Incubator of the best officers. And they always had a NCO or officer of the year or runner up.
They need the money to reallocated to help transgender folks finish their surgery.
Duh.
If it wasn’t for ISIS, they’d be drawing down Ranger and SF units, but this administration wants to give the impression that they’re fighting terror, so the SF and Ranger units stay for the time being. They cut the wings off of the Airborne Pathfinders at Ft Campbell last year, and now its the LRS Cos.
This is the cycle of stupidity concerning deep reconnaissance, surveillance, and tactical intelligence collectors. The Army does this assuming… “we just make them later”, if a computer is wise enough to tell a modeling and simulation widget to mention “ground recce is important ” to the budget widget. This is the sad state of affairs of the reconnaissance community in a heavily constrained budget. We have been relearning this lesson since the 1930s… or earlier. Good point about putting the units in the NG, but they still require additional resources to access the additional training necessary to make good teams and coherent mission-management approaches. It is a reasonable estimate of 7to 9 months to make a functional recce-Intel unit, but that includes a lot of heavy lifting on the planning support and mission management pieces. Because of fights over personnel billets btwn the MI and maneuver community the Army dumped the battlefield surveillance brigades which was an anemic structure, but as close to “right” as the army has been to a “capable” ground-air recce integrator for the Corps/ division for as far back as 1950s. The battle for soldiers slots and the real battle for O6 bullets is what pops up as a theme in the force structures over time as the target why the Army has this schizophrenic behavior concerning ground+air recce. Recce done cheap is pretty pathetic and risks the lives who are a bit nuts to volunteer for this kind of job. More pointedly, inadequate/ poorly organized recce capabilities = poorly supported commanders… and over-dependence on highly technical systems = low resilience when commanders require dependability and duration on the target. I would not propose just send more teams after targets, but rather a balance in favor of the art of war (leaders) vs. the science of war (support functions… budgets). The quotes from commanders I read and heard first hand don’t wash with the quote box in the short piece above. This is NOT an off the shelf capability, when needed it is a “gotta have now” thing. The belief the we will have platform as… Read more »
I don’t disagree with you here, but I think the big mistake was getting rid of the ACR in favor of the BFSB. We should have augmented the ACR with BFSB capabilities, or plussed up both the ACRs and the old MI Brigades.
We ended up with a compromise on both fronts- an organization that could neither fight for intelligence or provide security for the force while being incapable of really conducting tactical or operational level intelligence on the modern battlefield.
I love LRS- always have. I think it is a great capability, they have an incredible heritage, and they can do great things for a commander that can’t be replicated by an electronic sensor. I do think that we should retain at least one active duty LRSC at the Imperial Corps so we can regenerate this capability if we ever need it. However, as a former Division, Corps, and CJSOTF intel planner and ops guy, this decision does make a lot of sense. LRS has not really been used as designed in a long time. They have pulled security, run Sherrif’s patrol, and done border surveillance in overt positions more than they have done classical LRS missions for several years. We can simply get the intel we need with other ISR sensors with less risk, less use of resources, and more reliability. I’ll lay out why, but first you have to understand where LRS falls in the taxonomy of cool. LRS units are conventional HUMINT assets. Although there are usually lots of Rangers in LRS units (both Ranger qualified infantrymen and former Regiment guys) and an occasional SF dude, LRS belongs to the conventional Army. This is important when we start talking about capabilities and limitations. These aren’t limitations of LRS per se, but of the units that want to employ them. LRS is inserted to collect intel for their commander, either a corps or division CG. Battalions and Brigade Combat Teams do not have LRS, they have scouts and RSTA squadrons, respectively. Special Ops units, to include SF and Rangers, conduct Special Reconnaissance (SR). It will look, smell, and taste just like LRS to most of us, but the fact is that SOF is always Joint, and SR is backed by Joint Special Ops assets, to include the 160th and AFSOF for insertion, Joint Special Ops fires (aka AC-130), and all sorts of advanced comms gear, not to mention CCT and PJs and Combat Rescue for emergency exfil The conventional Army just doesn’t have that. The bottom line is that divisions and corps no longer have the organic means… Read more »
[…] Want To Do This Any More The Political Hat: Belgium Forces Catholics To Kill This Ain’t Hell: Army to Dump LRS Companies Weasel Zippers: #BlackLivesMatter Accuses Pokemon Go Of Inherent Racism. No, Seriously. Shop […]