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Army announces 10 brigade combat teams to be cut

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  • Army announces 10 brigade combat teams to be cut

    I knew that this was in the works, but I was still curious to know which units would be affected. I wonder what will happen to the Strykers from the brigade that is being cut. Another NG Brigade perhaps?

    Army announces 10 brigade combat teams to be cut | Army Times | armytimes.com


    The Army will cut 10 brigade combat teams over the next four years, bringing the number of active-duty BCTs to 33, Chief of Staff Gen. Raymond Odierno said Tuesday.

    The affected BCTs are:

    3rd BCT, 1st Armored Division, Fort Bliss, Texas

    4th BCT, 82nd Airborne Division, Fort Bragg, N.C.

    4th BCT, 101st Airborne Division, Fort Campbell, Ky.

    3rd BCT, 4th Infantry Division, Fort Carson, Colo.

    3rd BCT, 10th Mountain Division, Fort Drum, N.Y.

    4th BCT, 1st Cavalry Division, Fort Hood, Texas

    3rd BCT, 1st Infantry Division, Fort Knox, Ky.

    4th BCT, 1st Infantry Division, Fort Riley, Kan.

    2nd BCT, 3rd Infantry Division, Fort Stewart, Ga.

    4th Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division, Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Wash.

    In addition to these 10 BCTs, which will be inactivated by the end of fiscal year 2017, the Army has already announced the inactivation of two BCTs in Germany — the 170th and 172nd BCTs.

    In the future, another BCT, this one overseas, will be identified for inactivation, Odierno said, bringing the final number of BCTs to 32.

    These cuts are line with the Army’s effort to shrink the active-duty force to 490,000 as it transitions from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Odierno emphasized that these decisions are the result of the Budget Control Act of 2011, not sequestration, which potentially could mean even deeper cuts.

    The Army also will reorganize its remaining BCTs by adding a third maneuver battalion to its remaining armored and infantry brigades. The BCTs also will receive additional engineer and fires capabilities, Odierno said.

    These changes will make the Army’s remaining BCTs “more lethal, flexible and agile,” he said.

  • #2
    Makes sense. More on this tomorrow.
    “Loyalty to country ALWAYS. Loyalty to government, when it deserves it.”
    Mark Twain

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    • #3
      The way I count this, the Army is going to lose 21 maneuver battalions by cutting these 10 brigades, but by adding an extra maneuver battalion to the Infantry and Heavy brigades left in the force, will be adding 26 for a net gain of 5 maneuver battalions. Am I right on that? If so, I don't really see a downside here.

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      • #4
        Originally posted by HKDan View Post
        The way I count this, the Army is going to lose 21 maneuver battalions by cutting these 10 brigades, but by adding an extra maneuver battalion to the Infantry and Heavy brigades left in the force, will be adding 26 for a net gain of 5 maneuver battalions. Am I right on that? If so, I don't really see a downside here.
        If they lose the BSTB then you will most likely lose some capability in the separate companies. I'm also curious to see if the BSB is sufficiently beefed up to account for that extra maneuver battalion. Getting to see the heavy side of the house, I am astonished at how much ass they have to run logistics right now. Strykers always seem to be operating on a shoestring by comparison.

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        • #5
          Other than that you are correct. More teeth and less tail/top heaviness is rarely a bad thing.

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          • #6
            Originally posted by lwarmonger View Post
            More teeth and less tail/top heaviness is rarely a bad thing.
            Captain, you're trading staying power for hitting power.

            The way I read this, the USArmy is adding more TF while reducing brigade groups.

            Here's the problem - a brigade is NOT 3 or 4 battalions.

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            • #7
              Originally posted by Officer of Engineers View Post
              Captain, you're trading staying power for hitting power.

              The way I read this, the USArmy is adding more TF while reducing brigade groups.

              Here's the problem - a brigade is NOT 3 or 4 battalions.
              That's exactly what the military is doing sir, but ultimately I see the sustainment piece just being pushed higher or being farmed out.

              For those unfamiliar with current American BCT force structure, the Brigade Special Troops Battalion (BSTB) manages your specialist companies. Stryker Brigades currently (and the new model heavy and light brigades from my understanding) won't have that in exchange for a 3rd infantry battalion. End result is you tend to have less capable separate companies (since typically what brigades do is give the separates to the line battalions to own) at the BCT level, since generally an infantry battalion has no clue what a signal, military intelligence or engineer company needs to train its job. There are ways around this (I did note a far higher proportion of S-4's for the infantry battalion that owned the engineers were former engineer company XO's), but your separates at that point are really only going to be as good as their company commander. I think this has led to contractors (at least from what I see) taking up a fair amount of slack which has its own set of disadvantages.

              Insofar as staying power, the largest issue with Strykers was always an inability sustain fuel wise a large scale advance for an extended period of time with internal assets. For that we almost always needed direct support from a sustainment BDE in some capacity at the BDE level. My battalion rarely received our own fueler's to own, and we generally had a very minimalist support package from the BSB (and certainly nothing to compare with a Field Support Company that comes standard to a heavy battalion... more like an ad hoc platoon of loggies). To put that in perspective, an Armored Company (14 tanks), as I am finding out, is generally given almost as large of a support package on average as my Stryker Battalion (80 Strykers) was. While you can make do with fewer mechanics and figure out the Class I piece operating on a shoestring, the fuel isn't negotiable, and if the BCT's don't have the carrying capacity then a sustainment brigade is going to have to take up the slack. If they don't plus up the BSB in heavy units sufficiently to account for that new infantry battalion, it just means that while the BCT's get leaner and have more teeth, the sustainment piece will have shifted to become larger and more centralized further up the chain.

              Where a lot of the real savings occur here, in my opinion, is you have that many fewer brigade staff's around. A lot of those positions just go away.

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              • #8
                The Forward Support Companies in the disbanding BSBs go with the maneuver battalions to their brigades. Also some of the BSTB assets split between to surviving BSTBs and the corps brigades (ENG/ BfSB, etc).

                Where the big savings is in

                a) Reduction of brigade HQs staff. The increase of another maneuevee battalion does not increase span of control issues.

                b) Reduction of 12 supply warehouses (SSAs) in the reduced BSBs. This is a HUGE cost savings. The amount of dollars in stockage in a BSB SSA is from $15 - $30 million per. That is almost all in spare parts. An M1 tank pack (engine/tran/transfer) costs $600k. A Heavy BCT BSB SSA stocks several of these. And the stocks on hand in 1 SSA can handle 3 TFs easily.

                c) There can be 25 to 39 soldiers in an SSA warehouse platoon. That's almost 500 soldiers right there that can be reduced from the overall structure. Start getting rid of the redundant HQs etc and you have more savings.

                This are just some of the areas where the Army can save a lot of money.

                The 4 BCT divisions were sustainable when we were using contingency dollars augmenting our normal appropriations. They are not affordable in the future environment.

                I can also see within my own professional ranks, the Army Acquisition Corps, a reduction in the number of slots for military by at least a half. Civilians could do almost all of these functions. Why do you need a LTC to be the PM for the Army program which procures hand held scanners? Why can't a government civilian do that? The prefessionalizing of the Acquisition Corps has improved greatly. We stil need soem military but not as much as we see.
                Last edited by Albany Rifles; 26 Jun 13,, 14:53.
                “Loyalty to country ALWAYS. Loyalty to government, when it deserves it.”
                Mark Twain

                Comment


                • #9
                  Originally posted by lwarmonger View Post
                  Insofar as staying power, the largest issue with Strykers was always an inability sustain fuel wise a large scale advance for an extended period of time with internal assets. For that we almost always needed direct support from a sustainment BDE in some capacity at the BDE level. My battalion rarely received our own fueler's to own, and we generally had a very minimalist support package from the BSB (and certainly nothing to compare with a Field Support Company that comes standard to a heavy battalion... more like an ad hoc platoon of loggies). To put that in perspective, an Armored Company (14 tanks), as I am finding out, is generally given almost as large of a support package on average as my Stryker Battalion (80 Strykers) was. While you can make do with fewer mechanics and figure out the Class I piece operating on a shoestring, the fuel isn't negotiable, and if the BCT's don't have the carrying capacity then a sustainment brigade is going to have to take up the slack. If they don't plus up the BSB in heavy units sufficiently to account for that new infantry battalion, it just means that while the BCT's get leaner and have more teeth, the sustainment piece will have shifted to become larger and more centralized further up the chain.

                  Where a lot of the real savings occur here, in my opinion, is you have that many fewer brigade staff's around. A lot of those positions just go away.
                  Captain, you ripping off a very painful scab over a gapping wound. I was part of a task force at CASCOM which was looking at the sustainment piece of the Strykers. I kept telling folks they were under planning the needs for fuel HEMTTs. I was basing my analysis on 2 things; the heaviest variant of Stryker (which is what they all are now) and the rest used the lighter variant....a delta of 3200 pounds, and; my experince as a mech battalion task force S4 after we converted from M113s to Bradleys...and they left me with TPUs instead of HEMTTs in my Support Platoon. My support platoon had 7 ea 5 ton TPUs with 1800 gallons each (could only carry 1500 for safety reasons) to support 4 M2 companies, an E co with 12 M901s and an HHC. The tank battalion next door had 12 ea 2500 gallon M978 HEMTTs. I lived the fuel issue and I kept telling these guys we weren't doing enough to provide sufficient CL III support. I got ignored by the "smart guys". I went back top my PM and volunteered to lead a fielding team headed to FT Drum in the winter to get out of that duty...I got the better of the deal.

                  This was more of Rumsfeld's RMA coming home to roost.
                  “Loyalty to country ALWAYS. Loyalty to government, when it deserves it.”
                  Mark Twain

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                  • #10
                    I can only imagine. From what I recall of our Brigade, our BSB had 16 HEMTT fuelers by MTOE (for the entire brigade), but they frequently only had the deployable personnel to utilize 8-12 of them. That meant they were entirely at the mercy of whatever sustainment brigade was pushing us fuel. Typically this was not a problem during wide area security or stability operations as we could establish carrying capacity in various locations scattered throughout the battle space... whenever we trained in an austere environment on the other hand, things became very difficult very quickly. Suffice it to say tailgate resupply was a pretty rare phenomenon even in the defense.

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