United Earthlings wrote:Omission on my part that I missed as it was getting late, I didn't mean all planning and preparation is shit, only that I disagreed with your use of the term meticulously. Good planning and Preparation is it should go without saying or not as it would seem, important, but to me it seems your use of the term meticulously implies that your generals, soldiers, politicians have planned and prepared for every possible enemy contingency and as a perfectionist, I know planning and preparing for all eventualities is an impossibility. That's what I meant when I said every war doesn't ever go to plan, which to me isn't a complete contradiction of all military history. Even the hugely successful planning and preparation for Operation OVERLORD encountered quite a few SNAFUS once it got underway that had the Germans reacted better could have had serious consequences on the outcome of the war. Thankfully the Germans didn't and the outcome was what it was.
Overlord was meticulously planned. The trend against meticulous planning has been something that has arisen because of the smaller size of the forces involved. You can't fight across a front with a million men and expect not to get away without having planned meticulously your expenditure of consumables and without having gone through consistent combat-outcome modelling (something every competent military does, seemingly.) You can do that with a brigade though, and on a smaller tactical level, yes.
United Earthlings wrote:As for NATO members, preferring "intent" instead. Can't speak for all NATO members, but from some quick research it seems the US, Germany and the British trying to, but failing prefer the mission type tactics.
Mission type tactics are a thing in all NATO armies, but the overriding concern is centralised intent but decentralised execution. What I am saying is not against that, but the scale of the execution actually affects how much planning you need. To move a platoon from point A to point B requires very little planning or preparation. In that sense you can simply says "yo lieutenant dudikov, I want your troops on the hill by X time, bear in mind it might rain." If you are moving a whole army corps it's a different matter completely.
United Earthlings wrote:Slightly larger as compared to what though? I'm assuming you didn't mean the 24,000 reserves added one as depending on the exact modern US division and whether Marine or Army that's more then slightly larger in a good many cases.
In full mobilisation a US army division is something like 18-20,000. So I guess yeah it is a bit bigger, but 24.5k isn't undoable, although it is admittedly very large.
United Earthlings wrote:13,300 might seem small, but it packs a lot of firepower. You also have to keep in mind the operational requirements of the Commonwealth, which goes back to what some of us keep trying to tell all those people who keep asking for help in creating a military. The Commonwealth is a Maritime Power {full Maritime as we share no land borders with any other nation} and hence since the closest landmass is thousands of kilometers distance, any land force can only be transported by either sea or land, mostly by sea though. Goes without saying that smaller divisions create less of a logistical footprint. Additionally, all our tanks use a autoloader hence 3 man crews hence the elimination of hundreds of unnecessary personnel. Same reason are infantry divisions are in the 14 to 15 thousand range.
Unfortunately there are few ways to decrease manpower but increase firepower.
Logistical footprint consists of two parts: how much the total equipment and personnel of a division weigh, and how much they consume in combat. The former is especially important for you because you want to maintain a low logistical footprint while being unable to transport forces via land to enemy borders. A US Army light division of 11,000 men weighs just 17,000 tons. Enough to put one one large ship, if you had the physical volume. A US Army mechanised division, however, with 18,000 men - a 163% increase in manpower - weighs 110,000 tons. - a 647% increase in actual weight. You can make the division small, but if it's packing heat it's going to weigh a lot, because weapons are heavy.
The second part is how much forces use in battle. I haven't divisional figures, sadly, but I do have brigade figures. A US army heavy brigade of only 3,100 soldiers uses approx 600 tons per day. An airborne brigade of 3,400 soldiers, half that (despite having more men.) And a stryker brigade about 400 tons, with the most men at 3,900. The lowest manpower sized force still uses the most supplies per day because it is mechanised, and - it has less troops but uses up twice as many as a light infantry unit. Here's where it gets interesting. The heavy brigade uses 300 tons of fuel compared to the 85 tons of the airborne brigade, and 60 tons of ammo compared to the airborne brigade's 10 tons. But the smaller heavy brigade uses only 130 tons of water whereas the airborne brigade uses 145. Figures for the stryker brigade are similar. Fuel, dry stores, and ammo increase as mechanisation increases - only water and food increases as manpower increases (food is part of dry stores, but so are things like mechanical components.)
So here's the other thing: firepower is mechanised. Broadly speaking, if you want firepower, you need mechanisation, because weapons systems need to be carried. The main equipment of a heavy brigade is 58 M1A2 and 109 Bradley FV (at the time this source was written) and 43 APC, supported by 45 humvees, 23 ARV, 451 utility trucks and 218 cargo trucks. An infantry brigade is 75 humvees, 16 heavy trucks, 25 "medium tactical vehicles", 13 "light tactical vehicles," and 263 utility trucks. It's obvious which has the more bang for its buck. Except in city-street fighting, the mechanised brigade is more useful each time - unless you have a strict hard-limit on how many resources you can funnel into an area, which is why low-footprint reaction forces are usually always light infantry or light mechanised, and which is why they tend not to be packing a lot of firepower.
You are trying to decrease footprint but keep firepower the same by reducing the number of personnel in your divisions. As the evidence shows, the source of a footprint is basically the fuel usage of a unit, as well as its ammo and spare parts. Food and water play a large role but do not change drastically as a unit size increases. So in one sense that is already fighting a losing battle. The other problem is this: manpower is necessary. You shave off men, you shave off combat service support units. So the unit fights less efficiently and its staying power in the field is reduced - less repair-men, less transport drivers, less cooks, less signals men etc. You're shaving off these men, and crewmen of vehicles, to make a logistical saving - but you're not making a big saving because if you want heavy firepower, you need a large logistical footprint.
A Soviet division was small because it had small subunits because it had granularity of formations, and because they also wanted this feature as part of their larger corps and armies. The Soviets also tried to keep manpower down wherever possible because there is one advantage that I haven't said yet, which is that a smaller unit can be moved more quickly (but not more cheaply in terms of logistic footprint: that doesn't matter if you don't expet a division to last longer than a week.)