Battlegroups

[marktigger]

There has been a little debate re the formation of "combined" regiments Armour/Armoured infantry. I personally think its a bad idea and that the Battlegroup is a more flexible way of doing things. In options for change they tried to balance out the Armoured infantry division to create square brigades of 2 armoured regiments and 2 armoured infantry Bns. Which makes sense and a seperate mechanised Division of with brigades of 1 armoured regiment, 1 Armoured inf Bn and 2 mech inf Bns. that also makes sense till you realised our mech inf were in saxons. But they were promised better vehicles (that never arrived). Enter Afghanistan and the "visionaries" in their Maroon and Sandy berets who believed that warfare would just be Counter insurgency in the 3rd world and the army was re-roled into a counter insurgency force.
But the battlegroup has evolved to meet these changes. And before then was flexible to take units from different brigades and combine them as they did on Op granby. The armoured division at the height of the cold was wasn't consistant having different combinations of armoured & infantry. I found an old listing in an "offical" publication and it goes something like this:-

1st Armd Div

7 armd Bde: 2 Armoured Regt 1 Armoured Inf Bn
12 Armd Bde: 1 Armoured Regt 2 Armoured Inf Bn
2 armd bde: 2 Armoured regt 2 Armoured inf Bn

4th Armd Div

1 armd bde: 1 Armoured Regt 2 Armoured Inf Bn
2 armd Bde : 2 Armoured regt 1 armoured inf bn
19 inf Bde: 1 armoured regt 3 Inf bn

3rd Armd Div

4th Armd Bde: 2 Armoured regiments 1 Armoured inf Bn
6th Armd Bde: 1 Armoured regiment 2 Armoured Inf Bn
33rd Armd Bde 1 Armoured Regiment 2 Armoured inf Bn

so the army has always been set up to mix and match units and sub units to operations. As to create Battlegroups units have to move between brigades. its a very flexible structure and actually one that works well as ops have shown.

[ArmChairCivvy]

I think it was unfortunate that this one moved under Units & Personnel as BGs are not units but ad hoc formations and don't have (permanently) assigned personnel.

Generall discussion about Battle Groups centers around their use as a measure for fighting capacity of the army, and it is here where both the kit and Army structure interfere.
- as we started the discussion under "kit"
- I will add some thoughts about "structure"

... by pasting an excerpt from the evidence given by Dr. Duncan Redfors in the 2010 SDSR context
"Pre-SDSR, the British Army had the capability to form 46 battlegroups; post-SDSR, assuming the disbandment of a single multi-role brigade of six battlegroups, the total should be 40 battlegroups. However, the British Army only has engineers, medical, signals, 1st line logistics and artillery units to support between 26 and 30 battlegroups. At least 25% of the total number of battlegroups the British Army could form is therefore not usable, except in the most benign (and therefore unrealistic and inflexible) peace-keeping scenarios. Even then, given the lack of logistic and medical support, these units would not be able to be deployed for long on peacekeeping operations. It is not possible to rob supporting units from the deployable formations as this would impact on the training, rest (and retention figures) of any unit that was re-tasked and also mean that the deployable formation, which has lost its combat support or combat service support, would not get the training it needs or be available for either enduring or short-term operations. In short, the Army's unbalanced force structure does not promote flexibility or adaptability in the short, medium or long term."

So the cuts and the army structure have (had), roughly, an equal effect on what actually can be fielded. The reconstruction of the Gurkha Bde (neither of the two Rifles bns were impacted) is a sensible move: as the other bn is always away, at least you can deploy the one here as a BG, just add some artillery. How this goes together with the new role as an air assault bn is not clear... or may be that is exactly it, as the Para bns do not have such inbuilt support (and, hence would not be able to be deployed for long).

[marktigger]

it's always been the issue, the line units are more emotive to mess around with than the support arms and services. Without proper numbers of Artillery, Engineers, Signallers, Logistics, and medical properly resources. The infantry and cavalry can't go anywhere and have the degree of influence. But its easier for A supply company or artillery battery to be disbanded than an Infantry bn. but without them that infantry bn might as well not exist for the use it is.
Many medics, engineers and loggies have significantly more operational tours than many infantry soldiers of the same age and length of service