Lord Jim wrote: Does this mean at least one of the Heavy BCTs and the Deep Fires BCT being either prepositioned or deployed in Germany reversing the post 2010 SDSR plan? Another could be that as training with Allies is far more important that national training, could BATUS be closed and the focus move to Germany, Poland and Norway?
Preposition, forward deploy or rotate? Or do all of them in combination. The expanse of training areas in Poland comes close to BATUS but they are more hi-fidelity as for the terrain... and of course we do train in Norway (I'm not sure I have seen many/any lessons learnt from the occasion when a 'surrogate' Strike Bde was added to do a 'long march' to the scene?).Lord Jim wrote:the Army states that they are looking at increasing the lethality of the Boxer but that it will not be used a an IFV is very confusing as an example.
Pivot to the Indo-Pacific, more to the 'Indo' than the Pacific - as per the General addressing the Atlantic Council. And that of course includes the wider Gulf as wellLord Jim wrote: disregard for the common ideology of preparing for the worst cast senario, and instead preparing for the threat we can afford to face.
- there's likely to be/ to have been some behind the scenes 'horse trading' so that American commitment to Europe is maintained (in force levels) and they can draw down in AFRICOM, and in the longer run - meaning if Iran becomes more docile - in the Fleet that is there for the Gulf 'contingencies'. Indeed there has been talk of whether the separate 'fleet number' for that ocean should be deleted
... so it's all in the mix (may I add that there is a moribund 'geopolitics' thread here, would have been useful for discussing the the big picture. Ie. geostrategy - I believe we 'just' published our own, albeit under a different name)