The Right Division for the Fight: Force Design and Force Structure Lessons from the Cold War -...

Excellent share. What worked for previous generations is not necessarily what today’s force needs. Constantly reviewing what went right and what can be improved and looking at what went wrong and what the cost was helps makes our future actions and decisions adapt

I served in Division 86, Airland Battle and Light designed Divisions from 1982 to 1995. While I am somewhat skeptical of the AirLand Battle concept, probably because I carried a Dragon for part of the early 80's and there were 30,000 tanks in the Warsaw Pact that all had better range than the Dragon. However, the results of Division 86 and AirLand Battle was what you saw in the Gulf War and I think it would be difficult to point to a conflict that the results were that lopsided against an enemy that was large and modern, at least on paper.

What scares me is the fact that no one is around today that learned to fight a Division, let alone an Army. We spent about a decade and a half training for "Operations Short of War", then "Light Wars", as in the concept that came out of the counter insurgencies and the Light Divisions after 9/11. Is there any of use left from the Gulf War era?

One thing I will point out that he didn't mention is that during that Gulf War period, Engineer support to the Maneuver units went from an Engineer Battalion per Division to an Engineer Brigade per Division, usually broken out as a Battalion per Brigade. Somewhat copied from the old Soviet Divisions, but it put a lot of Engineer capacity in the hands of the Brigade Commanders, if they knew how to deploy it.

I'm of the mindset that it is always easier to pare down/task organize a Division organized for peer-to-peer warfare in order to fight a limited war or insurgency, than it would be to strengthen a Light Division.