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Korea
May 15, 2015 9:19:59 GMT -6
Post by dave on May 15, 2015 9:19:59 GMT -6
Kim Jong-un seems to be eliminating all high level officials as well as family members who were part of the previous regime. I wonder if his erratic behavior might prompt a "regicide" action by military leaders similar to that against Hitler? Is Kim's mercurial demeanor more savage than that of his father and or grandfather? Regards Dave
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Korea
May 15, 2015 9:28:32 GMT -6
Post by Yan Taylor on May 15, 2015 9:28:32 GMT -6
Chuck, I referring to your example of 12 x gun per battery, with three batteries per battalion (36) and three battalions to each regiments (108), then later I realised that you meant battalion not regiment, sorry.
Would those eight gun batteries be able to split into two gun sections of four to be able to fire on two different targets?
The MLRS was a saturation weapons, imagine what damage they could do to if fired all together on a particular area.
Yes it makes sense to dedicated one battery to each manoeuvre battalion, this gives each battalion support fire on tap, at first there was a slight difference in the amount of guns available to each BTC;
Stryker BCT: 18 Infantry BCT: 16
And this was improved with the extra battalion to 18.
Ian.
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Korea
May 15, 2015 9:29:14 GMT -6
Post by quincannon on May 15, 2015 9:29:14 GMT -6
The problem up there with plotting is that you cannot trust anyone. I think if Chubby Cheeks is going to get bumped off it will be from a lone actor, and a long held grievance. It may be an instance of jumping from frying pan into the fire, so his elimination may just bring on more problems then we already have. So I don't think any organized plot is in the cards, but the lone actor a distinct possibility.
I think the levels of cruelty and paranoia have increased on the journey from grandfather to grandson, but when you start off with a paranoid whacko the increased level of whackoism are rather hard to detect.
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Korea
May 15, 2015 9:39:31 GMT -6
Post by quincannon on May 15, 2015 9:39:31 GMT -6
Ian: There have NEVER been three battalions in any field artillery regiment of the U S Army except the 17th and that was a complete outlier. Regiments of field artillery were gone in the U S Army by 1942 with one or two exceptions that lasted until 1943
The field artillery that support divisions up until 2005 were organized into a DIVISION ARTILLERY, commanded by Headquarters and Headquarters Battery Division Artillery. They consisted of three direct support (separate numbered artillery meaning not part of any regiment that did not exist) battalions, and a general support battalion. Above division levels field artillery was controlled by a headquarters and headquarters battery of a field artillery group, to which two to five battalions could be attached by mission on a very flexible basis.
Please dismiss from all your thoughts that a field artillery regiment has or does exist in the United States Army from 1942-43 onward.
The present title we give a battalion of field artillery, for instance 1st Battalion, 5th Field Artillery Regiment (Alexander Hamilton's Battery) is a work of fiction dreamed up by the Center of Military History to connect existing units to units of the past. IT IS FICTION. HISTORICAL FICTION. LIKE THE SHARPE NOVELS, PLESANT TO READ BUT HAVING LITTLE IF ANYTHING TO DO WITH REALITY.
Yes they could be spilt into two platoons and fire at different targets, or from different locations or both. With modern fire control we have the ability to do the same thing on an individual gun basis. The days of a six gun line of metal are long gone.
If you look at the tables of organization that have existed since 1941 you will find that the DIVARTY has a ratio of one battery of (DS) guns to each maneuver battalion, and the GS battalion has one batter per major maneuver command, be in brigade (post 1962) or regiment (WWII-Korea). There are exceptions but not many.
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Korea
May 15, 2015 12:34:18 GMT -6
Post by Yan Taylor on May 15, 2015 12:34:18 GMT -6
I am finding conflicting data concerning the use of 155mm guns attached to US field artillery regiments, some say that all three battalions had 105s and some say that a battalion of 155s were the norm.
I thought that all British and US Infantry divisional artillery regiments/battalions had 25 pdrs & 105s, with the armoured divisions receiving Sextons & M7s.
Chuck you will have to forgive me, as I am both reading your post and working on about three different artillery set ups from Britain, Belgium and Bulgaria (as you can see I am up to the Bs in the site), I have been through binary, triangle and square formations on one screen with this site on the other and trying to do two things at the same time.
Ian.
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Korea
May 15, 2015 13:12:16 GMT -6
Post by quincannon on May 15, 2015 13:12:16 GMT -6
THERE ARE NO U S ARTILLERT REGIMENTS IAN.
YOU MUST DISMISS FROM YOUR MIND AND CONSCIENCENESS THE BRITISH TERMINOLOGY OR YOU WILL BE FOREVER IN THE DARK - WONDERING AIMLESSLY ABOUT TRYING TO VISUALIZE AND UNDERSTAND U S ARMY ORGANIZATION.
U S Armored divisions had three 105 mm self propelled battalions in World War II, each having three batteries of six guns. They were under control of the Armored Division, Division Artillery, which was sometimes referred to as Artillery Command to be consistent with Combat Commands A and B and Reserve Command. Their official designation though was Division Artillery.
WE ARE DIFFERENT FROM EVERYONE ELSE IN THE KNOWN WORLD IN HOW WE STRUCTURE AND TO UNDERSTAND YOU MUST NOTE AND UNDERSTAND THE DIFFERENCES.
What you call a regiment of field artillery, we call a battalion. What you call a battery, we call a battery
What you call and armored regiment we call a tank battalion, but we do not have them anymore in favor of the combined arms (infantry and armor) battalion
What you call a squadron, we call a company, or if it is in a cavalry unit that functions as cavalry, meaning used for reconnaissance purposes we call a troop.
What you call a cavalry regiment we call a squadron (but only in the cavalry that functions as cavalry, meaning having a reconnaissance mission. Something that might be called cavalry (historically) that is Stryker Infantry, Mechanized Infantry Tank, or a combined arms battalion, is referred to as a battalion
IT'S ALL FICTION IAN, MADE UP POOP FOR THE MASSES AND HAS NO RELATION TO REALITY.
What you call a regiment of Infantry is nothing more than a depot that trains and administers combat battalions associated with that regiment (i.e. The Royal Regiment of Scotland has seven constituent battalions last time I looked). There is no counterpart to that arrangement in the U S Army NONE, NADA.
Now how do we do it, and follow closely because we do not even understand it:
The 1st Battalion of the 1st Infantry regiment is the direct lineal descendant of Company A, 1st Infantry. It is a battalion that shares nothing with any other battalion of the 1st Infantry save the name. IT IS MADE UP FICTION dating from 1957 and screwed up again in the mid 1980's to compensate the Rini's and Clairs of this world that morn the loss of the obsolete regimental structure which in our army was once both a TACTICAL AND ADMINISTRATIVE organization. IT IS MADE UP FICTION. Keep in mind in the Royal Regiment of Scotland using it again as an example, the RHQ and Depot were the administrative entity of the regiment, the battalions are the tactical.
If you set out to number your regiments by the order in which they were created 1st being the oldest, followed by 2nd, 3rd 4th and so forth, a rational well grounded man would assume then that the oldest regiment of Infantry would be the 1st. To understand the United States Army you must first understand that our oldest is the Third, and understanding that means you are well on your way to understanding the rest.
THERE ARE NO ARTILLERY REGIMENTS IN THE U S ARMY IAN.
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Korea
May 16, 2015 6:05:26 GMT -6
Post by Yan Taylor on May 16, 2015 6:05:26 GMT -6
Chuck that system of three or four artillery battalions (depending on either armored or infantry division) to each division was known to me and I should have remembered that, but it was the command element what threw me, I knew you had three or four battalions of artillery allocated to each division but it was how it was grouped that confused me, I thought with being battalions that these would be grouped in some sort of structure, now I thought that it would be either a regiment or brigade, otherwise you would have three or four independent artillery battalions under the control of divisional HQ. So I should have looked into it more closely and located this “artillery command” unit, because not many diagrams of US divisions even show it.
The British and French have a similar set up and call it divisional artillery, keeping to our own we have a divisional headquarters royal artillery, now this is a similar concept to yours except we coin the term headquarters Div RA. But this differs as this unit controls all not only the field artillery but AA and AT assets too, see below;
Anti-tank regiment Anti-aircraft regiment 3 x Field artillery regiments
The main difference is like you said, battalion rather than regiment.
Ian.
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Korea
May 16, 2015 6:37:01 GMT -6
Post by montrose on May 16, 2015 6:37:01 GMT -6
Do we still need artillery?
Units have organic indirect fire. Mortars and the awesome Mark 19 automatic grenade launcher.
Mother Air Force provides the next step of fire support when organic weapons are not enough. I use the term Air Force out of habit. What I mean is the "internet" of fire support. Air and space platforms that provide both intel and combat power. I had a B52 take out an enemy mortar with a cruise missile, position was found by an agency drone. Ummm, and I was working the CFA (Call for Fire) for a heavy machine gun.
Artillery would be my third choice, maybe fourth. It has limited range, and requires extensive pre combat preparation. I have to move tons of material around in close proximity to my target. The effort to use artillery has such a massive footprint, my targets have days or weeks of advanced warning.
Or I call in a drone 12,000 miles away, since the pilot is in Nevada or Idaho. He kills the bad guys, gets in 9 holes of golf, and picks up his kids from day care on the way home. The enemy he kills never know he is there.
The concept that war is supposed to be fair is for the lunatic board. Thank God for unfair battles. In numerous combat deployments my single US fatality was from a heart attack. And for host nation forces,...friendly fire, is not.
I can explain in further detail the issues with range and combat, if we use reason. Kinda tired with emotional arguments at the moment.
Respectfully,
William
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Korea
May 16, 2015 7:01:14 GMT -6
Post by mac on May 16, 2015 7:01:14 GMT -6
montrose makes a lot of sense to me. Cheers
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Korea
May 16, 2015 7:01:48 GMT -6
Post by mac on May 16, 2015 7:01:48 GMT -6
QC Thanks for the answer. Cheers
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Korea
May 16, 2015 7:07:42 GMT -6
Post by montrose on May 16, 2015 7:07:42 GMT -6
Regiments do not exist in the US military.
At the end of the day, the USA has a very simple system to see who belongs where in an organization. Who is your rater, and who is your senior rater?
Your report card determines who you work for. The regiment concept is useless in the USA, has no relevance.
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Korea
May 16, 2015 8:21:21 GMT -6
Post by Yan Taylor on May 16, 2015 8:21:21 GMT -6
The airplane (or bomber) was suppose to take over the role of heavy artillery, a few countries went along those lines in the interwar period. The German tactic of adding dive bomber (with ground to air radio officers) to support there panzer attacks had good results in 1939-42.
I don't think any army would fully replace their artillery units with drones, helicopters or aircraft. Just look at the way the allies called on their supporting 105s to hit enemy targets in Afghanistan, now these howitzers could be brought to bear in minutes and were deadly.
I mentioned before about British anti-tank units being under the control of the Royal artillery, well these included tank destroyer regiments too, and the only other nation who did this were the Germans as their Sturmgeschütz crews (Stug IIIs) regarded themselves as artillerymen and not panzer.
Ian.
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Korea
May 16, 2015 9:20:39 GMT -6
Post by quincannon on May 16, 2015 9:20:39 GMT -6
I am in agreement with what Montrose stated by PM. Infantry, Armor (including those units of Armor with reconnaissance missions we call cavalry) will merge into a Maneuver Branch, and the hard part is already done with the advent of the combined arms battalion. The Infantry and Armor Schools are right down the road from each other at Benning, one on main post and the other in a brand new complex at Harmony Church. The old Infantry School is now the Maneuver Center and the schools of Infantry and Armor are now subordinate to the MCOE commander. Many if not most of our officer assigned to "cavalry" units are now Infantry Branch, and rightly so, because of the general lightening up of the equipment of those units.
Cavalry today has become the ground component of reconnaissance, and is or will soon be fully integrated with all information gathering assets regardless of branch, service, or national asset, regardless of where the come from.
Artillery, I think, could be fully integrated into a future maneuver branch as well, and Will if you see this please PM me with the argument they made to stay out When we find a way to extend the range of the simple, relatively light weight, easily transportable mortar to 30 plus kilometers, and we will, the artillery can hang up their rammer staffs and find new employment.
Warfare Ian is as different today from WWII as WWII was from the Teutoburger Wald. What the Brits, Americans and Germans faced in the Villers Bocage, or Saint Lo, is nearly irrelevant to today, save for an examination of decisions made and successes achieved or failures endured.
The U S Army could divorce itself from all this regimental nonsense, and very simply. If you want a battalion in the 1st Division to historical decent from the 18th Infantry Regiment, you designate it the 18th Infantry Battalion, carrying the history and trinkets of the former regiment and call it a day. You remove the fiction AND the regimental fan boys (and if you think Custer has fan boys, you have seen nothing until you see the number of them that come out of the woodwork, when a special favorite is on the chopping block) KISS, KISS and more KISS. Keep it Simple Stupid. Sometimes I get so frustrated with this stuff I feel like digging up Mary Lee Stubbs and standing her in the corner face to the wall with a dunce cap on her head.
There ain't no such thing as winning a battle by simply showing your enemy the brightly colored ribbons appended to your Colors.
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Korea
May 16, 2015 10:38:14 GMT -6
Post by quincannon on May 16, 2015 10:38:14 GMT -6
Ian: In WWII regardless of the type of division, be it Infantry or Armored, artillery was controlled by an organization called Headquarters and Headquarters Battery, Division Artillery. Their job was to supervise the training of all of the artillery in the division, even providing technical assistance to the Infantry regiments cannon companies (but not command). They were also the agency that controlled the fire of ALL of the artillery associated with that division, including those outside of division artillery groups, WHEN the mission called for a massing of fires by the divisions total assets (meaning every piece of artillery in range of the target regardless of where they come from or who they "belong" to) it was the job of HHB DIVARTY.
The general practice though was to assign one direct supporting (105mm) battalion from DIVARTY to each of the three regimental combat teams or combat commands within the division, retaining the general support (155mm) battalion under DIVARY control, available on call for all. When a DS battalion became part of an RCT or CC it was under the operational control of the RCT or CC commander for the duration of that attachment. There is a difference between command and operational control, and it is always a temporary set up.
We do things our way, and with artillery, I don't think there is anyone better at fire control than we are. It is more science than art, but still science without art is stuffy and artillery always has and always will add dignity to what otherwise would be a vulgar brawl.
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Korea
May 16, 2015 10:56:44 GMT -6
Post by tubman13 on May 16, 2015 10:56:44 GMT -6
Chuck your old stomping grounds still two small pieces of what used to be called light infantry(VA&PA Guard), as well as some in TX. My son tells me they are quickly going the way of the Dodo Bird. Will all be mounted/mobile, very soon.
You are right about unit patches, while they can allow the individual some sense of pride, they are not the mark of the man or the unit. I think at one time that the Army allowed for a secondary patch to be worn if you had served with that unit. Not sure about this. My son the medic, has patches of unit he deployed with, but has much pride in home unit. Wears what is prescribed, no more.
We have a family full of patches: Big Red 1 WWII my uncle, My dad's WWII was in CIC, my AF/NG clutter, both my son's.
Regards, Tom
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