FDR – LAND (Army Structure Alternative)
This short article focuses on the ‘teeth’ arms and specifically armour and infantry units, because everything else, capability wise hinges on these two main elements.
Current organisation
In total the British Army has 36 Regular Battalions available for service and this total combined with the 14 TA battalions (excluding The Royal Gibraltar Regiment) could give a mobilisation strength of 50 infantry battalions.
1st Battalion, The Parachute Regiment is not counted in the above total, as it constitutes the core of the Special Forces Support Group.
On the armoured side there are 6 Challenger 2 regiments, one of which is the training regiment and 5 Formation Reconnaissance Regiments.
The Army is organised into a number of divisions. The ‘readiness divisions’ constitute the core of our land power and are allocated to the NATO Allied Rapid Reaction Corps (ARRC), these are:
1st Armed Division – British Forces Germany
- 7th Armoured Brigade (Germany) (1 Challenger Regiment, 2 Armoured Infantry)
- 20th Armoured Brigade (Germany) (1 Challenger Regiment, 2 Armoured Infantry)
- 4th Mechanised Brigade (UK) (1 Challenger Regiment, 1 Armoured Infantry, 1 Mechanised Infantry)
- 102nd Logistics Brigade (UK)
- Formation Recce Regiment
- Artillery regiments are deployed at Brigade level
3rd Division
- 1st Mechanised Brigade (1 Challenger, 1 Armoured Inf, 2 Mechanised Inf)
- 12th Mechanised Brigade (1 Challenger, 1 Armoured Inf, 2 Mechanised Inf)
- 19th Light Brigade (3 x Infantry Battalions)
- 52nd Infantry Brigade (3 x Infantry Battalions)
- 101st Logistics Brigade
- Formation Recce Regiment
- Artillery regiments are deployed at Brigade level
The so called ‘regenerative divisions’ replaced the old Military Districts in the UK and host the remainder of the infantry battalions in ‘General Service’ role.
Re-org constraints
- Can’t put more forces in Germany
- Can’t have more than 6 regular tank regiments
- Can’t have more than 7 Warrior battalions
- Can’t have more than 36 Infantry battalions in total
- Don’t want to increase budgets !
- Don’t want to reduce size due to operational tempo and requirements
Suggestions
So in a very brief article, with much detail on vehicles and equipment to come in follow up articles, this is my suggestion for a re-organization of the Army:
1st Armed Division – British Forces Germany
- 7th Armoured Brigade (Germany) (1 x CV90120T Regiment, 2 x Armoured Infantry)
- 20th Armoured Brigade (Germany) (1 x CV90120T Regiment, 2 x Armoured Infantry)
- 4th Armoured Brigade (UK) (1 x CV90120T Regiment, 2 x Armoured Infantry)
Turn 4th Brigade back into Armoured Brigade and give it a second Warrior battalion. Cut 7th Warrior battalion from orbat – spread the resulting surplus Warriors around (more on this later).
4 regular Army armoured Regiments convert to CV90120T (oh oh, this is actually spending money on a new requirement !).
4 x TA Infantry Battalions convert to Armoured role on Challenger 2.
Final (5th) regular Armoured Corps regiment would provide squadron strength regular cadre’s to the TA Challenger 2 regiments, thus a deployable Challenger 2 regiment could be pulled together at reasonably short notice without activating TA.
A single Royal Armoured Corps training regiment would have both CV90120T and Challenger 2. This is an increase in armoured capability, and introduces a considerable medium armoured capability via the CV190120T.
3rd Division
- 1st Mechanised Brigade (1 CV90120T, 3 Mechanised Inf) – Mechanised Infantry (Tracked)
- 12th Mechanised Brigade (3 Mechanised Inf) – Mechanised Infantry (Wheeled)
- 52nd Infantry Brigade (3 x Mechanised Infantry Battalions) – Mechanised Infantry (Wheeled)
- 12th Mechanised Brigade loses its Armoured Regiment, although technically on paper this could be the Challenger 2 regiment composed of the regular Cadre’s for the TA armoured regiments.12th Brigade would be ‘Wheeled’ mechanised infantry using RG35 and LPPV (Ocelot) variants
- 1st Mechanised Brigade based on Warthog as ‘tracked’ Mechanised Infantry. All variants used including repair and recovery, command, armoured logistics, flatbed logistics, ambulance and 120mm mortars
- 52nd Infantry Brigade – would become fully mechanised using Mastiff 2 / Wolfhound / Ridgeback vehicles and LPPV (Ocelot) as required
- 19th Light Brigade be removed from 3rd Mech Division and re-role as GS Infantry as part of one of the regenerative divisions.
Infantry re-org detail – : If we take total of today’s 36 ‘line infantry’ battalions and swap them around:
Current structure is 37 with 1 Para not counted (so 36) and with 18 battalions allocated to 1st and 3rd Divisions plus 2 air assault = 20. Leaving the 3 ‘regenerative’ divisions with 16 infantry battalions. Add 1 Para (SFSG) back and the tilt is slightly towards ‘readiness’ formations at 21 to 16.
If all below are allocated as ‘special to role’ and not available as ‘standard’ infantry battalions
- 3 x Para battalions as ‘Para-Rangers’ Special Ops
- 2 x Air Assault Infantry Battalions
- 1 x Army Commando
That leaves 31 Battalions.
With 1st Armoured Div and 3rd Mechanised Div having 18 infantry battalions as the ‘readiness’ forces, that leaves 13 battalions as part of the ‘regenerative’ divisions. Add the 6 special to role battalions and that gives a 24 / 13 split.
If 19th Brigade is moved from readiness to regenerative then that evens out at 15 ‘standard’ battalions each. So we get a 21 / 16 split i.e. the same as we have now.
So what do I mean by ‘special to role’ battalions ?
I am against the ‘light’ role as a title.
Light fighters should be specialists with a very special role. In my opinion there is no room in the modern battlefield for non-armoured / mechanised infantry unless they have a special role to play. The fact that ‘general service’ infantry battalions in the ‘regenerative’ divisions are seen as ‘light’ roled is simply because we cannot afford enough armour for everyone – but more on this in a later article.
So I would turn all the Para battalions into “Para-Rangers” – a level of Special Operations Forces below the Special Forces themselves (essentially similar to the US model). This would thus acknowledge that these highly trained light fighters have a special role. Similarly two replacement infantry battalions allocated permanently to the air assault role would train in a specialized light fighter role and would be the experts on air mobile / heliborne operations.
Finally I leave an extra Army battalion allocated to 3 Brigade, Royal Marines. Simply adding another RM Commando is not realistically achievable. With an Army battalion allocated to the Viking based ‘mechanised amphibious’ role, fully trained Green Berets can concentrate on their specialist light fighter role while the Army Commando’s could be put through at least the All-arms Commando Course at a whatever pace is realistic given the training resources available.
What if further cuts were demanded (god forbid) in order to fund various programmes ? Well we can fantasize about a Government that cuts international aid (or something) and increases defence spending, but……..
If we had to, I would contract the above scheme by 3 Brigades / 6 Battalions – removing one Mechanised brigade from 3rd Division and one general service brigade from the regenerative divisions.
Don’t forget if we cut these ‘teeth’ units there would be other cuts to supporting elements too, reducing manpower further.
Of course the politicians would then have to commit to not over-committing the armed forces !
5 comments
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LOL – Fair cop guv’nor you caught me red handed…. :-)
Jed
While I am aware of the brigade organisations provided by armedforces.co.uk, afaik they actually have nothing to do with the real organisations of the army brigades.
I instead worked from the information about what battalions are actually present in each brigade. Now admittedly this info is from Wikipedia and I can only personally confirm about 3/4 (the other ~ 1/4 battalions I couldn’t find any evidence they were attached to a brigade, usually because they are or were recently deployed to Afghanistan) of the listings given, but the presence of a FRR and a Light role in each brigade can be confirmed more often than the presence of armoured regiments and armoured infantry brigades.
On TA FRR
The The Queen’s Own Yeomanry is a FRR
The Royal Yeomanry is CBRN rece in support of the joint CBRN squadron
The Royal Yeomanry and The Royal Wessex Yeomanry are Challenger 2 MBT crew replacements.
Light role, I don’t think we had disagreements, I was just providing a complete listing of roles and numbers.
Air assault. In addition to 2 and 3 PARA, The Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, 5th Battalion The Royal Regiment of Scotland and the 1st battalion, the Royal Irish Regiment are both air assault trained (don’t know if that means walk of a heli or throw yourself out of a plane though) and permanent components of 16 Air Assault Brigade.
Lastly, my experience with armedforces.co.uk over the past few years is that while it is still updated regularly, it is not necessarily kept up to date in all areas. This is primarily because the organisation section of the website is provided as background information to it’s main purpose as a news and defence supplier directory.
Ashley and Tank, you may well both be absolutely right in pointing out any discrepencies. In the long run I don’t think they make any difference at all to my final structure, but I will make some comments:
1. I based my orbat on http://www.armedforces.co.uk – it seems to be kept up to date.
2. Force Recce – I left out the 5 Formation Recconaisance Regiments, in hind sight this was an oversight, but although ‘on paper’ there is one for each of the 5 divisions (2 readiness, 3 regenerative) in reality they are attached where ever HQ LAND see’s fit. Ashley as far as I know there is no TA FRR, there are 4 x Yeomanry regiments, which are recce units. They used to be on Fox armoured cars, these days I think its all Wolf WMIK.
3. Light role battalions – I think we are both right, I think I stated the ‘peace time’ orbat, which is enhanced with an additional light role infantry battalion as required from the ‘pool’ of the regenerative divisions as required for operations / general mobilization. But I could be wrong…
4. Air Assault Infantry battalions – only 2 not 4, 2 bttn’s of the Parachute Regiment are ‘permanently’ assigned to 16 Air Asslt Brig. in this role, 2 other light role infantry battalions are added as required.
All in all, I could be wrong on all of this but I don’t think it makes any difference to my suggested outcomes, but thanks for reading and noticing :-)
I can confirm what Ashley says, 4th,7th & 20th all have a light Role Bn and a Formation Recce Regt.
In addition 52 Bde is disbanding with 2 Bn’s going to 4X and 2 Bns to 3XX (1 to 1Mech & 1 to 19 Light)
I’m afraid if my information is to be believed about the current army Brigades, then some of your info is a little off.
7th and 20th armoured and 4th mechanised all have a force rece regiment and a light role battalion in addition to what you stated.
1st and 12th mechanised only have 1 mechanised battalion and an additional force rece and light role as with the armoured brigades and 4th mechanised.
Also 19th light brigade has 4 light role battalions.
On numbers 1st Royal Tank Regiment supplies two squadrons to the CBRN regiment permanently and the rest is permanently a training establishment, this there are only 5 MBT Regiments.
Also while one armoured infantry regiment is deployed as the Land Warfare Training Battalion, this is only a deployment and is rotated through three battalions (who’s names I can’t find at the moment) and thus there are 8 Warrior Batallions.
Thus Armoured and infantry numbers are
Challenger 2 MBT – 5 regiments
Force Rece – 5 regiments
Armoured infantry – 8 battalions
Mechanised infantry – 3 battalions
light role – 20 battalions
air assault – 4 battalions
Commando infantry – 1 battalion
There are also 14 territorial infantry batallions of their own unique company centred organisation (on which I may write a piece), 2 Challenger 2 replacement regiments (afaik, crews only, no tanks) and a Force Rece Regiment.
I shall comment on the rest of your piece later once I’ve had a chance to analyse it in detail.