A "budget brigade" for 2020

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Modern military equipment is expensive, and small ground forces have a hard time building and maintaining full competence in the full range of specialisations in a well-rounded army.

One example: The Czech military has only about 20,000-25,000 military personnel including the air forces - a typical divisional slice (army personnel per division) used to be in excess of 30,000 personnel in the Cold War NATO. It's impossible to maintain even only a division and some participation in a corps HQ with such a small military.

I'd like to propose a specific approach to get the best value for the money in such cases, and it takes into account what I wrote earlier about the need to resist enticing "balanced" forces. It is not my intent to propose to degrade small alliance members into pools for very specialised auxiliary troops, of course. Ideas such as one country specialising its entire military on NBC defence are nonsense. Such a national military should maintain the ability to revert to a national defence doctrine without allies in the short term.

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My proposal is to set up versatile "budget brigades"* and to attach them to corps (or divisions) of allies, including a detachment of officers and NCOs contributing to the divisional or corps HQ and as liaison officers and NCOs at divisional or corps support troops. A small allied country would not need to raise or maintain specialised support troops this way.

The first principle for such a budget brigade is thus to shed specialised support and instead arrange for receiving such support from a higher level HQ's (foreign) support units. This greatly reduces the quantity of different jobs and career paths in a small army.

The second principle would be to cut costs by never paying development costs directly, save for communications compatibility or language translation. It just makes no sense to develop anything much more sophisticated than a shovel specifically for very small armed forces. The British were able to throw away hundreds of millions of pounds for preliminary development work on some already existing armoured vehicles without getting a single one into service. This makes no sense for a force with but a single tank battalion (or even only for the British). A group of small allies with small individual armed forces could ask arms makers to develop a certain item and then pay for this as part of the purchase deal, of course.

The third principle would be to keep training simple and equipment standardised. The quantity of different vehicle and engine types in the brigade should be cut to a minimum to make maintenance and repair training easier. Compliance with alliance-wide (de facto) standards enables the use of their supplies in times of crisis,exploiting alliance-wide economies of scale.

The fourth principle is to control one's desire for great quality and high technology. 'Great' is the #1 enemy of 'good enough'. KISS - Keep it simple stupid. One needs self-discipline in developing a reasonable force structure with very constrained resources.

A "budget" brigade could look like this:*

HQ Coy (including signals and MP platoons)

2 Infantry Bn (mobility by bulletproofed 6x6 lorries)

1 Tank Bn (3 Coys with MBTs, 1 Coy HAPCs with dozer blades)

1 Artillery Bn (24 105 mm SPGs based on bulletproofed 6x6 lorries)

1 Logistics Bn (15 ton 8x8 lorries mostly)

1 Engineer Coy (4 recovery and 2 bridgelayer tanks, few bulletproofed 6x6 lorries with dismounting engineers)

Sophisticated surveillance (air search and artillery radars, passive electronic intelligence, aerial reconnaissance) would be omitted. Reconnaissance at short ranges would be done by the line of sight combat battalions themselves (tank Bn mounted recce and security, infantry Bn dismounted and small flying RPVs/UAVs).

Engineer support for river crossings would be omitted. Air defence would be limited to jam-proof Bolide missile launchers and machineguns in use with artillery, infantry and logistics battalions' support companies. Long-range artillery and all mortars would be omitted in favour of a modest calibre howitzer artillery. The artillery's mission thus includes the support tasks usually assigned to heavy mortars, but does not include fire support for distant non-organic forces (neighbouring brigade, armoured reconnaissance forces).

Anti-tank tasks would be shared by all combat battalions (tank, infantry and artillery) without any special vehicles or dedicated AT small units.

Expensive infantry fighting vehicles would be done away with, replaced by heavy armoured personnel carriers (HAPC, if available) in the transport role (battletaxi doctrine) without the burden of many expensive electronics. Remotely controlled weapon stations with a 20x102 mm gun on each MBT turret (operated by the loader) would substitute for IFV autocannons. The HAPCs should be left unarmed to guarantee that they will neither be misused as combat vehicles nor be put at risk without MBT support.** They should be able to double as medical evacuation vehicles (stretcher-compatible seats, combat medic backpack onboard). Air defences are limited to (V)ShoRAD, unable to defend against attacks from medium altitudes with precision-guided munitions.

Electronic warfare capabilities would be limited to warning and self-protection jamming.

My compromise in favour of 105 mm artillery is in part driven by the cluster munitions ban and in part by the rise of effective multiple rocket launcher ranges, the combination of which removed the original reason for NATO standardising on the 155 mm calibre. 105 mm is still a common-enough calibre for the ready availability of shells, propellants and fuses and it's very efficient.

The brigade could quickly road-march ready for a defensive task and would become capable of participating in an operational offensive action once the tank battalion was unloaded from rail wagons, did a road march to the brigade and completed the then advisable maintenance and refuelling break. The extra expense of tank transporters is not to be expected.

Small NATO members could afford one useful manoeuvre brigade or even several such brigades with this approach. Useful pairs for bi- or multinational corps (or binational divisions) with such brigades could be:

 

Belgium + France

Czech Republic + Poland

Denmark + Germany

Lithuania + Poland 

Netherlands + Germany***

Slovakia + Poland****

Slovenia + Croatia*****

Portugal + Spain

Cold War NATO did arrange for national commitments for certain forces during the early Cold War, at least for Central Europe. Members pledged to provide a certain quantity of divisions (Germany pledged 12 of 26, provided 11 real  divisions and additional troops). This fizzled away after the end of the Cold War  - nowadays there's seemingly little common orientation. Individual governments create 'balanced' military forces coined by seemingly arbitrary budget changes, a desire to keep a seemingly balanced and complete force and an interest in non-defence missions such as occupations of some Muslim countries, blue helmet missions et cetera.

A definition of a small NATO brigade template and individual small members' pledge to provide a certain quantity thereof might be a good idea. It would re-focus military force structures on the alliance's deterrence and defence purpose, and help these countries to stay on track towards actually useful manoeuvre formations instead of assortments of individual battalion equivalents of questionable utility.

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

P.S.: An example for 15 ton 8x8 lorries is the 8x8 15 ton HX series. "bulletproofed" means in this context simple welded RHA plates compliant with STANAG 4569 level 2, including roof.

Bn = battalion, Coy = company

*: Working title only. A realistic final title could be "NATO standard brigade".
**: This is essential to keep a company-sized element in action past the first two days. It's utterly counter-intuitive to keep a heavily protected vehicle unarmed without a red cross on it, but it sure makes a lot of sense. These HAPCs should seek concealment (including smoke) or cover instead of firefights. A look at a vehicle can easily lead one to think of it as an individual vehicle instead of as a tiny part in a larger organisation. That's how early tank developers mounted guns and firing ports in all directions instead of having tanks rely on all vehicles of a platoon supporting each other, for example. A RWS with a 20 mm gun would be no technical challenge for a HAPC, but it would entice the troops into overly risky behaviour, and the vehicles would be lost for their actual purpose; protected mobility for infantry under fire. 
***: There's already close cooperation and integration.
****I assume Slovakia would want to confirm its independence by not cooperating with the Czech Republic on this. 
*****: Binational Divisional HQ and national divisional support battalions. I suppose the nationalistic Hungarian government would not be available for a cooperation.

edit 2016-09: Some more explanation about the choice of 105 mm over 155 mm: The extra range of  155 mm guns would hardly be exploited by the brigade because other than firing at objects on maps it would lack the organic targeting capability. Interoperability with other armies' artillery fire control systems would incur extra expenses. The brigade would likely not disperse enough for 105 mm ranges to be inadequate because such dispersion would weaken the brigade too much considering its simplified equipment. Thus I assumed 155 mm and MRL support for long range fires to be provided at divisional or corps level, by better-funded allied forces.

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