Quote:
Originally Posted by Panther Al
Heh. Well...
About sneaking about in vehicles, speaking from personal experience in the 3d, says something quite the opposite: the M1A2 is a great recce vehicle compared to the Brad, quieter by a long shot, lower profile, and much better optics. When we rolled north from Kuwait it was the Abrams sniffing and the Brads in overwatch with the TOWs. No problems there and when we pulled the trick on sister units before Iraq it always worked out quite well against other 1st line units. And that was using us as we was intended to: force on force recce at a divisional/corp level which is a lot different than an infantry brigade's scout platoon doing double duty as a in house ersatz "special op" detachment. That's not cavalry.
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Yeah that is one of the thing I never understood when people talk about M1 being noisy. They can be very quiet with the correct training.
As for them being used for recon, well I think that is part of the reason why the 1st Cavalry, 1st Armor, 1st Mech, 3rd Mech, and 4th Mech all had slightly different Divisional Cavalry Squadron at their troop level. One had M1 in the Cavalry Squadron while another was using HMMWVs, while another had M3 still listed, and the other two had mixture of the the three!
As for the Armored Cavalry Regiments one wouldn't get no argument with that they should be retained in their original format. It is a shame that the 2nd Cavalry was converted to a light unit under the guise to provide the XVIII Airborne Corps with a Corps asset. Then to convert it into Stryker Brigade was insult in my opinion. While leaving the XVIII Airborne Corps without a Corps level asset. I always thought the Corps asset should of been freshly raised units instead of going through the re-flag shell game. I can understand keeping certain HQ alive for heritage sake, but then again there seemed to be enough room with one ACR left in Germany, one in the states assigned to the III Corps and the final one left in the Middle East as part of the force that was left after Operation Desert Storm to protect Kuwait.
Damn shame they re-flagged the 177th Armored Brigade to the 11th Armor Cavalry Regiment too. I hope the Pentagon isn't looking at changing the 3rd ACR. If anything the last decade should of taught the US Military is that, any serious shooting war will likely move too quickly for any one side to build the military they had needed to begin with. With modern aircraft and subs, we don't have the luxury of fighting them at arms length distance either...