Hey, hey! Special new stuff: a new episode of the SF Webcomic Podcast is out, featuring an interview with longtime 6-Commando friend and supporter and widely-acclaimed graphic novelist Jason Brubaker, and a discussion with Ewa, Christina Major, Ally Rom Colthoff, Ben Fleuter! It’s a really great episode, so please give it a listen!
And ALSO! Take the opportunity to get in on Ally’s Kickstarter campaign in the final hours:
Not out of the woods yet, here, folks, but a BIG chunk of it was last week. Something like 1200 miles of travelling in two days. This week will be a mere 300 miles or so. Cake walk!
We’re getting there, though. Until then, enjoy some more tasty, tasty military hardware. I know it’s a poor substitute for a page, but it’s not cause I don’t care about you. You know I do.
United Nations Alliance Battle Brigade
Table of Organization and Equipment
UNA Battle Brigades are the main infantry fighting formations instituted by the reorganizations undertaken after the Strategic Posture Review 1985. So named in order to avoid confusion with “Armored” forces made up primarily of tanks and other armored fighting vehicles, they also form the bulk of UNA combat forces, although they are smaller in number since SPR-85 phased out unarmored infantry in front-line combat after 1988.
Battle Brigades vary in their composition to a larger extent than other brigade formations, and have on occasion been referred to as “Brigade Combat Teams,” although the term has yet to come into general use, and is a holdover from transitional formations from the earlier SPR-75 doctrine, which were called Regimental Combat Teams. The typical maneuver unit of the Battle Brigade is the Armored Infantry Battalion, consisting of a motorized Command Company, a Cavalry Squadron, a Heavy Armored Infantry Company, and three Armored Infantry Companies. Of particular note is that the Cavalry units assigned to Battle Brigades have organic anti-aircraft assets, which supplement the AAA units and laser assets attached to the Brigade Fires Battalion. The Brigade also contains an Antitank Battalion, which has a variable composition based on the expected opponent, and typically consists of a mix of Armored Gun Systems and ATGM vehicles, both based on the Alvis Ranger chassis.
Compared to other Brigade formations, Battle Brigades have far larger numbers of both effectives and support personnel, with a full-strength unit numbering more than 6000, with a large maintenance, medical and supply tail. In particular, armored infantry battlesuits require a great deal more maintenance, and armored infantrymen are more susceptible to injury and loss of battle effectiveness than tanks, since their suits place enormous stress on their physical abilities and require a great deal of tuning and other support to remain at full effectiveness. Still, armored infantry formations are among the most effective combat units, and UNA Battle Brigades are among the best-trained and best-equipped combat units in the world.
Like Heavy Brigades, Battle Brigades were internationally integrated into a combined command structure beginning with SPR-85. This task was incomplete by the time of Strategic Posture Review 1995, and full multinationalization of the UNA Infantry Branch has been set as a goal to be met before the next Strategic Posture Review, tentatively scheduled for 2005. At present, the lowest level unit to be completely integrated is the Company. Cavalry Squadrons assigned to Battle Brigades tend to be more integrated than Infantry units. Unit cohesion among infantry squads and platoons tends to be hampered by the fact that most armored troopers are trained as part of their basic service with their national governments, and so tend to work better with other soldiers who receive similar training. Field-level multinationalization is likely to remain the primary policy measure for command integration for the foreseeable future.
Since the completion of SPR-85, the UNA maintains a total of forty-five Battle Brigades as the main constituent forces of the UNA Multinational Forces. War plans call for expansion to 100 total in the event of open warfare with the FSR, 65 total in the event of war with the Arab League, and 75 in the event of war with the Southern Coalition. Much like Heavy Brigades, these forces would be drawn primarily from national reserves, and this would likely further hamper the current plans for force multinationalization. National commands have been carrying out exercises intended to cope with this problem, but results have not yet been fully assessed.
All the best, folks!
Hmmm…no organic air component in the brigade.
Nope. The RCAF and the Continental Air Force are separate issues, though. Not to mention Allied Atomic Defense Command.
Or if you mean Air Cavalry, that would be in Light Brigades or independent squadrons.
Again I do have some questions, I wish you would answer.
Why do they have not organic transport and only command element is motorized? Again do they intend to recreate Somme or Verdun, only in powered armor?
I presume that concept of warfighting changed little from World War I?
Or does that are dedicated shock troops, dedicated for creating breakthroughs in forified positions?
Second question, what are TMSN class of AIs? Are they those battlefield manegement systems we were discussing before?
1) Lack of organic transport is due the the high mobility of the suits themselves, as well as their weight. UN suits weigh between six and nine hundred pounds fully loaded, and the heavies weigh a full half ton. Transports that can haul them are not efficient in combat. However, with suits that can move at a 45-mile-per-hour run, that’s seen as largely unnecessary. Some armored infantry ride on tanks in combat, however.
2) The concept of warfighting that involves large infantry and armor combat is an outgrowth of Plan 1923, which was the first implementation of a Mobile Armored Strongpoint doctrine in the modern sense. Armored units break a line and infantry follows up, and uses the armor as a mobile fire-support platform for both offense and defense.
3) The TMSN is a mainframe computer that controls the Brigade’s end of the Allied Forces Systems Connectivity network. They’re typically deployed at HQ, in pairs – a master and a backup. They’re not as sophisticated as Rumbler computers, but are more efficient in their intended combat role: the accurate processing of battlefield information and its dissemination to individual combat units without distortion.
1. 72 km/h max run speed in ideal conditions I presume?
Also how does look situation with supplying them with power? They are powered with what exactly?
2. And how are they supposed to close the distance to engage the enemy on the battlefield?
3. Also does UNA tanks posses any means of active protection systems from missile and KEP attacks?
4. And why Heavy Brigades are made on 2 x 2 parity of tanks and infantry instead of 3 x 1, which is much more logical and efficient when you need a wedge to plow through enemy line.
I assume that UNA doctrine puts more emphasis on infantry rather than mechanised combined arms?
1) UNA suits are powered by an atomic-radiothermal power coupling.
2) They close with the enemy on foot with armor support. Their armor is comparable to what we would call “mechanized” infantry in our world and so infantry assaults of this kind are far more practical. However they still would not deploy I fantry over open ground any more than we would – they’d use armor to assault exposed enemy lines.
3) The Sentinel tank has a “music box” which can jam incoming missiles. Aside from that, laminate composite armor is the order of the day. Active Protection Systems are mostly in the Point Defense role and not nearly as sophisticated as what you’d find on cavalry fighting vehicles or the SEP series of American battle tanks, for example.
4) 2:2 is where the balance fell after SPR-85. And this structure is just a framework – independent battalions are still a big force component too, so if a brigade were reinforced for an armored attack, they might get assigned additional armor assets to do so. The Heavy/Battle/Light brigade structure is a basic formation to maintain maximum flexibility in a standing force, and could be modified for maximum effectiveness in actual warfare depending on the battle plan.
I should also add that when armored infantry ABSOLUTELY POSITIVELY has to be there right away, there ARE rapid-deployment vehicles for Airmobile operations, as well as special “flight harness” units that make suits themselves capable of long jumps that are essentially limited flight, sort of like Howlers. But these are specialist forces with their own brigade structure and aren’t a core element of the MOBAS doctrine, but a branch of the Special Forces.
There are also Mountain Divisions, Arctic Divisions, etc – pools of specialized combat formations. To outline the entire structure of the Allied Armed Forces would take a large portion of the 6-Commando Tactical Handbook, but I’m not above doing it. It’s just several levels above the TOE’s I’m putting here right now.
A “flight harness”? Isn’t coming into LOS of automatised air defense systems armed with EM guns, wearing atomic radiothermal battery isn’t a bit couterproductive?
Also what about First World War? Why it was waged longer than in real life? Can you shed some light on that aspect?
The United States did not intervene in the Great War – it was neutral throughout (I should say “they were,” since this version of the US is a far weaker government than in our world and is more of a confederation of sovereign nations than a centralized federal republic). The collapse of the Russian front coincided with major financial crises in the Allied countries and it took them another five years to fully defeat the Central Powers. By then, communist uprisings in Austro-Hungary had caused the empire to collapse and things rapidly got much more complicated and chaotic. If you consider them all part of a single conflict, the Great War and its ancillary wars lasted until almost 1928.
Did not intervene in full or only in military capacity?
And how that alternate World War influenced implementation and evelution of armored vehicles and military thinking?
Stayed out of it altogether. The United States didn’t join the UNA until the 1940s.
Yes, still due to lack of organic transport capacity ability to keep up the offensive is somewhat lacking.
Heavy Brigade is too short on tanks and has too many infantry, which will slow it down.
And Battle Brigade lacks armored support. Attaching tank battalion would be wise.
Remember though, that they don’t fight wars the way we do. Their mindset is not on highly mobile warfare the way ours is. They aren’t thinking so much about winning set battles as they are about stalemating the enemy and reestablishing a balance of power because they had no World War II to teach them otherwise. The experience of the XX Century for them has been one of strategic stalemate, not a race for conventional or nuclear superiority the way our Cold War was. They don’t view wars as truly winnable and as a result have a set of strategies to match. The weakness of course is that they had the ability to launch an atomic conflict far more destructive than they were prepared for and so now they’re all dealing with the consequences.
Does that concerns only the UNA? And where does the FSR doctrine falls here? I suppose given their designs, and historical background their doctrine relay more on mobile warfare?
Unless someone for some reason drew trenchline from Baltic to the Carpathians, contrary to the real history, a?
As it were, “From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an Iron Trenchline has been dug across the continent.” 😉
How?
What kind of circumstances made that possible?
I presume that you know that Eastern front of World War One was the “fluid” one?
I’m speaking figuratively, in reference to the Iron Curtain, as described by Winston Churchill, which was a political as well as a military construct. One need not actually dig the trench or form an actual military front for it to be part of the thought process and planning.
Their world is not the same place as ours and doesn’t necessarily function on the same assumptions or intellectual rules as ours does. To them, a big superpower war would be a trench war, perhaps not literally, but in the way it would be fought. That may or may not actually be true but it’s the only way they’ve ever fought a world war and so it’s the only way they can imagine such a war COULD be fought.
Look at how we’re handling warfare now. We have tanks, ships, weapons, all designed to fight Cold War objectives, informed by the experience of World War II and its methods of mobile warfare. We’re adapting, slowly, but our thoughts about war are still locked into that intellectual process. Or look at the Maginot Line – millions of francs sunk into static defenses nobody realized were obsolete. It’s easy to be an armchair tactician with the benefit of our world’s experience, but they don’t have any such benefit and so they do things in a very different way, whether it makes sense to us or not. That’s what I’m getting at, if you follow me.
If the question really is why they don’t do things the way we do them, the answer really is because they haven’t thought of it yet. The only kind of war they have any proof will “work” is a relatively static, infantry-centric conflict with armored formations used as a kind of mobile fortification line. If you told them otherwise, they’d say “prove it,” and they’d have had no World War II, no Blitzkrieg, no Yom Kippur War, no Persian Gulf War, no Chechen War, nothing to say that it doesn’t actually work.
How-EVER! You’d still be RIGHT that it doesn’t work. After all, Major Rucker nearly lost his life charging in where angels feared to tread, following doctrine and getting shot to pieces because of it.
Hopefully you see what I mean by all this.
That’s just like I expected. You could agree with assumptions that I made before.
The question is does Fuller’s concept was paid any attention and does anyone bothered with trying to break a stelemate? If not, then the attritional warfare is, somewhat, justified.
Unless we are operating on the literal meaning of the saying that “generals are always prepared to fight the last war”?