A Quick Reflection on 1999

[Webstral]

I’ve given my 7th Graders a quick writing assignment. I’m typing this in the few spare minutes I have…

While in the car for the daily commute, I’ve been thinking about my grenadier-dragoon-cavalry model and how it might apple to the US Army in WW2 and the Twilight War. Though the US Army probably wouldn’t like the labels (too Euro), the idea might have application. I have been thinking that given the heavily motorized condition of the US Army in North Africa and Europe, the light infantry ought not to be organized into divisions. In the European/North African theater, I think grenadiers would have been most effectively operated in separate brigades which receive all of their heavy support from corps-level assets or a division to which the brigade is temporarily attached. The brigades would be separate, independent maneuver elements similar to the Red Army’s rifle brigades. I’m up in the air about whether the brigades would have field pieces (75mm or 105mm). However, they would have organic motor transport. (Organic motor transport, used correctly, would free the grenadiers from carrying the godawful field packs US troops have been carrying at least since WW2. Less encumbered-soldiers would stay fresher and be better able to do what light infantry do). If a corps had multiple grenadier brigades, the brigades would be combined into a brigade group. The group would be little more than an administrative structure.

It occurred to me that there is a setting in which this idea can be applied. As so many of us have observed, 1999 is a quiet year in Europe. I believe there is a general consensus among us that 1999 is a time of reorganizing and husbanding resources in Europe. Most of the action seems to be light infantry actions. While I was driving, it occurred to me that many US divisions might reorganize themselves into internal light/heavy models. 1st ID, for instance, might concentrate operable AFV into a single brigade and turn all other maneuver elements into light infantry. As time went on and both internal troop strength and operable equipment numbers went down, the heavy/light structure could be either contracted to have heavy task forces and grenadier battalions combined in brigades or battalion task forces with single heavy company teams and multiple light infantry battalions. As the number of operable AFV diminishes, the remaining armor might be concentrated in company teams held at the division (!) level.

All of this goes to my fixation with how the military deals with increasing chaos. Yes, there is a degree to which worsening circumstances will cause units to collapse. Yes, there is a large degree to which things will simply fall apart. The militaries of Twilight: 2000 will resist this trend to the greatest degree possible, though. Individual soldiers will desert. The system will attempt to adapt to changing circumstances. Thus I believe the mechanized formations of USAEUR will develop internal light/heavy splits in a rational and orderly way that both preserves the combat power of massed AFV and exploits the ability of the light infantry to stay in action even when the logistical situation has deteriorated badly.

Webstral