Alright, this is pure amateur hour so my apologies in advance, but here I go.
Armoured recce in terms of Irish cav doctrine is basically, get out of dodge when you meet any armour or anti-armour.
Which is right, of course. But once upon a time when we had a few tanks there was actually the capability to support cavalry with armour - in practice, if not in doctrine.
It seems to me that the DF's greatest gap is in combined arms capability. A tank squadron that dreams of being part of a regiment but will never be, artillery that doesn't really do joined-up thinking with the supposedly mobile units the rest of the infantry and cav thinks it provides. The idea that, on deployment as part of a larger multinational force, these heavy elements are supplied is well an good but if the DF can't train at home to act organically as part of a combined arms team then how well can it integrate with foreign formations it doesn't consistently train with?
Surely we need either self-propelled artillery or some other mobile indirect fire weaponry, as well as anti-armour capability, so that even if the DF doesn't actually deploy the whole combined arms team, each part of the team is well-versed in the practice? Cavalry should never move without fire support, if the Scorpions are ever replaced with something up-gunned then that small squadron should be dedicated to escorting APCs. If artillery can't keep up, and scoot before the counter-battery kicks in, then it's not fit for our purpose.
I think in the long run the DF should aim to field a brigade that, theoretically, can bump into an armoured brigade and fight it, once.
Armoured recce in terms of Irish cav doctrine is basically, get out of dodge when you meet any armour or anti-armour.
Which is right, of course. But once upon a time when we had a few tanks there was actually the capability to support cavalry with armour - in practice, if not in doctrine.
It seems to me that the DF's greatest gap is in combined arms capability. A tank squadron that dreams of being part of a regiment but will never be, artillery that doesn't really do joined-up thinking with the supposedly mobile units the rest of the infantry and cav thinks it provides. The idea that, on deployment as part of a larger multinational force, these heavy elements are supplied is well an good but if the DF can't train at home to act organically as part of a combined arms team then how well can it integrate with foreign formations it doesn't consistently train with?
Surely we need either self-propelled artillery or some other mobile indirect fire weaponry, as well as anti-armour capability, so that even if the DF doesn't actually deploy the whole combined arms team, each part of the team is well-versed in the practice? Cavalry should never move without fire support, if the Scorpions are ever replaced with something up-gunned then that small squadron should be dedicated to escorting APCs. If artillery can't keep up, and scoot before the counter-battery kicks in, then it's not fit for our purpose.
I think in the long run the DF should aim to field a brigade that, theoretically, can bump into an armoured brigade and fight it, once.
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