Agreed, and influenced v much by what was deemed to be the primary area for engagement: the N German Plain. Though as both Germans and Russians appreciate from history, it widens up hugely to the N. Europe Plain going eastwards... therefore one party was dead-set on forward deployingwhitelancer wrote: Self deploying long distances is nothing new, though it has been rather neglected.
But I am v much looking forward to your piece on Strike Bde self-deploying. The piece I linked to earlier dealt with the Baltics (i.e. that side of the sea's shores that is mainly made up of the states carrying that description). While the geography and the transport network were both a given, the scale of deployment was not. And for that reason difficulties with rapid deployment were seen through the prism of division/ corps level aspects
... would one expect anything smaller
A. for relevance of the deterrent, relative to the threat, and
B. for the fact that one of the three authors was still the Commander of US Forces, Europe at the time when Aurora 17 (in parallel to Zapad!) took place
Taking a UK-sized EU country for comparison (from my readings) takes away the fixation with a particular battle field (are they ever going to be a given, if the other side exercises strategic thought?) and what makes the comparison, or rather benchmarking, relevant is that the number of MBTs they can muster is about the same as what we are (allegedly) planning for:
- even a bde size is too unwieldy, in the face of strong x-domain opposition, to get to where they are needed in a fluid enough manner
- therefore the mech. force packets are about half the size of the equivalent UK formations (c.2700)
- now comes the important point: the fighting edge is all tracked in its make up (logs not)
- the requirement to self-deploy has been set (meaning also that on arrival the formation should be able to engage straight away)... and the calculations and exercises have come up such a distance to be 300km -ish
- having the time and luxury to utilise railways does not fall within the definition; whereas preassigned HETs do (but as we know, due to being few in number, one would expect most to be operated as a pool)