US and British Army attempt to Strike

Nicholas Drummond, ex-British Army officer and now consultant and commentator for defence industry, has decided to start a new blog, focused chiefly on the Land environment. I've had the honor of providing one of the posts with which the blog is beginning its journey, which will hopefully be long and rich of satisfactions.

In my post, which might be followed by a wider discussion on here in the coming months, i've decided to compare what the US Army and the British Army are doing to tackle the same problems. Multi Domain Battle and Integrated Action / Joint Land Strike are far closer in concept than some may realize, but the differences in approach and in proposed solutions could hardly be any more diverse.

The Reconnaissance and Security Strike Group and the Strike Brigade are on two parallel courses. They are not entirely different, yet they never seem to touch.
It is worth spending some time reflecting on similitudes and differences, and see what makes sense and what does not.

I recommend you visit the blog and read the article.

The enduring role of the Amphibious Force

The MOD defines Littoral Manoeuvre as the “exploitation of the sea as an operational manoeuvre space by which a sea-based, or amphibious force, can influence situations, decisions and events in the littoral regions of the world. This will be achieved through an integrated and scalable joint expeditionary capability optimized to conduct deterrent and coercive activities against hostile shores posing light opposition.

In simpler terms, the ability to insert a significant land force from the sea is one of the primary outputs of a Navy and one of the key attributes of Sea Power. Keeping things equally simple, this is because the overarching truth of war is that the final effects of any military operation are felt on land. Theorists of Land Power like to remind everyone that wars are ultimately won on land, and that is certainly true. As long as humans will live on land, that will always be the case. The whole utility of Sea Power is not conquering salt water, but influencing events ashore through the denial of the sea to the enemy; the protection of own forces and economy freedom of movement at sea and sea-based strikes through Fires (missiles, naval gunfire), airpower (the carrier air wing) and land power (the landing force).

The golden age of Britain coincided with the historic period that saw economies worldwide at their highest ever dependency upon the sea. The Royal Navy dominated those times through a form of sea denial (working to keep the main competitors “trapped” in European waters) while projecting british power abroad with its ability to put enormous pressure ashore. The “gunboat” diplomacy was literally built upon the Navy’s ability to bombard ports and littoral towns into submission, land naval brigades to storm targets ashore and sail up the major river networks to reach deep inland.

Amphibious warfare became more complex and demanding over time, and it soon became impossible to land a “naval brigade” from a single warship and have sufficient strength in it to achieve decisive results; yet there are signals of a partial return to the age of “every ship an amphibious ship”. The embarkation of a relevant number of Marines in frigates and destroyers is becoming increasingly important once more in an age of hybrid threats. Marines are excellent to counter piracy; Marines can go ashore for small raids, rescue operations, first response to terrorism or disasters and for many other tasks, from defence engagement and local capacity building to more kinetic operations.

In modern times, a fleet on fleet clash has become a very rare occurrence, while the need for rapid response to events ashore has increased steadily: gunfire support, deep strike inland, blockades, counter piracy and disaster relief are frequently required.

The MOD’s Future Character of Conflict document notes that human populations and their economies remain dependent on the sea, and they are once more gravitating towards the shore.

‘In the future, we will be unable to avoid being drawn into operations in the urban and littoral regions where the majority of the World’s population live and where political and economic activity is concentrated’. (Future Character Of Conflict)

70% of the world’s urban areas are found within 60 km from the shoreline, and a further 10% growth in urbanization is expected in the coming years. 8 of the world’s 12 megacities are in the littoral zone.

 ‘We will not want to fight in urban areas, but the urban environment represents in my view a highly credible worst case – and we would be foolish indeed to plan to fight only convenient battles against stupid adversaries. Urban areas are where politics, people, resources, infrastructure and thinking enemies converge’
 (Designing the Future Army: Ex URBAN WARRIOR 3 First Impressions Report – 14 Nov 11)

The Army has concluded in its “Agile Warrior” studies that it is highly likely that over the next ten years it will be called to operate in a densely urbanized battlefield; and human geography dictates that this is highly likely to happen close to the sea.

The urbanized littoral

There is a current of thought that sees the increasingly urbanized littoral as an issue for amphibious operations. The proliferation of man-made infrastructure on the coast might negate or complicate beach landings, and the number of ports is constantly increasing.

In reality, urbanization of the littoral is at least as much an opportunity as it is a problem. Landing a military force in absence of port infrastructures is a very complex and dangerous undertaking. Amphibious forces land on beaches not because we want to capture a sandy strip of shore, but because the enemy will be closely guarding its ports. The whole point of any amphibious operation is to remedy to the impossibility to land directly in a port, and in any major operation the amphibious force’s first objective would be to secure some port infrastructure to exploit.

Beaches are more numerous than ports, more dispersed, and thus far harder to guard and defend. Littoral manoeuvre seeks first of all to land where the enemy is not. When talking of amphibious assaults most people appear to think of the scenes of Saving Private Ryan, but that is completely misleading. There is no country in the world today that can build up an Atlantic Wall, and the amphibious force commander will always seek a weak spot to violate. Think San Carlos waters: that is an opposed landing, with a very dangerous air threat, but with little immediate presence of enemy troops close to the beach. The Royal Marines were able to land in Egypt as well, during the Suez crisis, without any "Omaha beach" scene. They also stormed Al Faw peninsula in Iraq in 2003, although mostly by helicopter insertion from the sea side, as their supporting vehicles took an indirect route, avoiding the beach initially selected for the assault because it was mined. In that occasion it was not thought necessary to clear the beach, and the risk was simply bypassed. 

There is a perception in some quarters that amphibious operations are too risky and are not realistic anymore, but insertion from the sea has actually been one of the most frequent actions the British forces have been asked to carry out beween 1945 and today. 

The ever growing number of harbors and ports on the world’s shores is seen as a negation of action spaces for the amphibious force, but in truth it represents a new opportunity: any port, even a small one, is better than a beach as it immensely simplifies and speeds up the flow of stores, vehicles and troops ashore. In light of this single truth, more ports means that the enemy has even more entry points it needs to guard and protect. This will force an even greater expenditure of troops and resources in the attempt to defend the coast. In turn, this will leave beaches even more exposed.

The amphibious force in the urbanized littoral will need to be able to clear more and greater man-made obstacles and will need to be prepared to fight in an urbanized space, but on the other hand will have greater chances to secure port facilities early on. This makes entry from the sea more viable, not less. 

Urbanization of the littoral also means that more and more economic interests will be concentrated in “easy” reach of the sea-based force. A highly mobile force inserted by the sea could rapidly inflict crippling damage to an enemy nation's infrastructure.

A2AD and STRIKE

Anti-Access, Area Denial (A2AD) is today’s main concern in military planning. Whether we should consider this a new thing is at the very least debatable, since warfare has always comprised a whole series of efforts to prevent the enemy’s movement into a given area. Some area-denial systems have been around for decades (the ever present mine, but also, to stay in the littoral, the shore-based missile or gun battery) and others are more recent and descend from the normal evolution of technology (UAS, the ubiquitous shoulder launched missiles, both anti-air and anti-tank, all the way up to ballistic missiles, including the nascent anti-ship ones). Is A2AD truly new? Arguably, no. The means have evolved, the aims and the application, not so much.

Is A2AD a reason to abandon amphibious operations? No. What concerns military planners is not the enemy’s wish to deny an area, as this has been a fact of life in warfare since the night of times, but the perception that, in the endless fight between “sword and shield”, the sword currently has the upper hand.

Whenever amphibious operations or aircraft carriers are called into question the real problem that emerges is an evident lack of faith in the current escort ships and their weapon systems, for example. In the land domain, there is finally an awakening to the fact that there are rivals out there which could actually strike western forces by the air, something for decades has been more or less unthinkable. Different other areas of warfare that the west has neglected for many years are now, inexorably, advantages that opponents are well equipped to exploit.

Few of the problems that compose the A2AD conundrum are genuinely “new”.

The US and British Army, which both came out of Afghanistan and Iraq in a bad position and in countries now very much averse to new ground operations abroad, have immediately picked up on the A2AD discourse to find new arguments for Land Power. In the US this has generated the Multi Domain Warfare doctrine; in the UK it has brought about “Joint Land Strike” and the Strike brigade.

The underlining argument is that in presence of A2AD threats which could deny access to air force and navy elements, the land forces will manoeuvre in deep against the adversary to take out key nodes of its multi-layered defences.

There are many questions connected with this concept, particularly in the British case which puts way too much emphasis on Ajax and a wheeled 8x8 APC, formulating highly questionable hypothesis about what they will achieve once teamed. There are also some merits, however, and the expectation of having to deal with a wider battlefield involving great distances to cover seems justified by recent experiences, from Iraq to the Ukraine conflict.

The Strike Brigade is based on the ambitious concept of deploying a medium armour force ahead of the heavy armour brigades. From the Air / Sea Port of Debarkation, the brigade would then be asked to move up to 2000 kilometers to secure objectives and hit enemy weak points through mobility and a greater freedom in the choice of routes. Dispersion is the key to Strike, with the experimentation seeing independent groups from Battlegroup down to Troop level operating independently in up to 60 points of presence. Among the many doubts that this concept raises is the very issue of theatre entry. An Air Port of Debarkation is mentioned but it is pretty much impossible for the UK to ever be able to deploy a Strike Brigade by air. The US Army once hoped to deploy a Stryker brigade by air thanks to the USAF’s C-130 fleet, but it soon became evident that only C-17 had an hope and the whole concept more or less vanished away. It takes 15 C-17 sorties to deploy a single Stryker company group, which the US Army keeps at high readiness in support of its air assault component, and that is with an APC that weights a good 10 tons less than any British Army MIV candidate. To do the same, the British Army would require the maximum lift capacity the RAF is equipped to express. 

The Strike Brigade, just like the armoured brigade, is firmly tied to a Sea Port of Debarkation. The crews might well come by air, but their vehicles almost certainly will not. One of the hypothesis of employment that have circulated include the “replacement” of an amphibious landing by a debarkation in a friendly port in a nearby country followed by a road move to the objective, in order to avoid the enemy coastal defences. While this might have some merit in some circumstances, unanswered questions include how the Strike Brigade would deal with the Land and Air firepower available to an enemy well equipped enough to put up such an A2AD bubble. An enemy with the kind of capability required to shut the Royal Navy out of the picture will be more than able to batter back Ajax and wheeled APCs and moreover will have the capability to strike back against the nearby country which allows the Strike Brigade to disembark. This, in turn, might well mean that said nearby country will not want to open its ports to the british contingent to avoid being drawn into the conflict. A2AD includes not only the kinetic means of area denial, but also the political ones: lack of access to an area can be due to multiple different factors.

The need for a sea port is unchanged, and will remain unchanged until air transport becomes able to deal with the weight and volume associated with military operations. Today it simply is not an alternative.

As long as the vast majority of goods in trade and supplies in war will need to travel on ships, ports will be the key to a country’s future and to the feasibility of any military option.

The amphibious force is the only instrument the UK has to gain access to a shoreline when ports, for whatever reason, are not immediately available.

For the rest, the Strike concept borrows quite a few pages from amphibious forces’ concepts and doctrine. After an amphibious landing it is important to move rapidly inland and secure objectives before the enemy can respond in force. The mobility and dispersion of Strike have much in common with the attributes and needs of littoral manoeuvre.

Increasingly, amphibious forces around the world are seeking speed and agility to evade the threats lined up against their operations. Fast landing craft make it possible to keep the amphibious ships far from the shore, out of range of most weapon systems. From there, fast landing craft can take multiple directions, further complicating the task of a defender.

Long range insertion of troops by helicopter is used to create a defensive screen around the landing zone and to beat back the enemy presence. The USMC has brought this concept to its present day pinnacle thanks to the MV-22 Osprey, that has the range and speed to push one thousand miles inland when necessary.

Once ashore, the landing forces are relaying on increasingly mechanized elements that give the protected mobility and firepower needed to push deep inland. “Strike” as a concept is familiar to any amphibious force. The USMC is looking for an 8x8 armored vehicle to increase its ability to push rapidly and decisively inland. 

The Royal Marines have sadly fallen behind these developments. They were the first to employ helicopters for vertical encirclement during the assault on Suez, but in more recent times their attempt to stay up to date has been frustrated by lack of funding. Their Fast Landing Craft programme is on hold, leaving them to operate the terribly slow LCU MK10, which requires the amphibious ships to sit just a few miles away from the shore. Their Force Protection Craft requirement remains unanswered, meaning that they lack the fast, agile combat boat they need to escort the landing craft in and out of the littoral area; to suppress enemy defensive positions on the coast; to insert small reconnaissance and raiding teams and to push deep inland exploiting rivers. Their mechanization has not progressed beyond the Viking, while elsewhere 6x6 and 8x8 are becoming increasingly common.

ARES trials: beach landing from an LCU MK10 

There is an unjustified disconnect between the Army and the Marines, despite the fact that their operations are always closely connected. Any “Strike” concept worth of the name should be very much part of the amphibious capability discussion and vice-versa.

The Royal Marines, conversely, have attempted to carry on bypassing the constant cancellation of their equipment programmes by promoting themselves as a lighter, “quasi Special Forces” element with their “Special Purpose Task Group” approach. This is single Company groups, inserted chiefly by air and carried by a single ship, useful for very small scale, very short term raids.

While this approach has its own uses, it is not amphibious warfare and it will not represent a strategic option for the UK nor a role substantial enough for the Royal Marines to survive. There is no specific need for Royal Marines for boarding an helicopter and going ashore light for a short, quick task. Plenty of other infantry units, beginning with the PARAs, can do that, and the entire Corps would end up crushed to death between a Navy short of money for ships and an Army eager to protect its own capbadges.

A USMC MEU is always resourced with a troop of Abrams tanks. MBTs remain invaluable for clearing out enemy resistance and provide protected firepower. The british amphibious force should see heavy armour with much greater frequence as well. 

The amphibious force’s true value is in the fact that it gives a capable, medium to heavy entry option that air assaults simply cannot match. Ships and landing craft carry everything that helicopters and cargo aircraft cannot carry or anyway cannot insert in enemy territory. Landing craft can bring ashore a mechanized battlegroup mounted in Viking and reinforce it with anything up to Challenger 2 MBTs. This is the true value of the amphibious force: it deploys with the protected mobility and firepower needed to carry on complex, demanding tasks which are beyond the possibilities of an air assault force.

It is time for the Marines and the Army to forge a much closer alliance and work together on ensuring that the UK retains an adequate forcible entry capability.

Be a hero where you need to be and where you can be one

The UK does not have the budget to do everything it wishes or even needs to do in order to be a global power. For example it is not in a position to be a major continental power matching the mass of armoured and mechanized forces fielded by its allies.

What it needs to do is decide where it wants “to be a hero” and resource those areas appropriately.

Amphibious warfare is one such area. The UK needs to retain its amphibious capability because:

-          Any operation it decides to mount abroad will pass through one or more ports. Without adequate amphibious and port opening capabilities in support, any future operation will only be possible if someone else secures a port of entry. It would signal a dramatic loss of operational independence, much more definitive than the current limitations imposed by lack of mass.

-          As “Global Britain” attempts to secure new allies and new markets in the Middle and Far East, its naval group will become more important than ever. The Navy’s Expeditionary Force will be the face the UK shows to potential allies and opponents in Asia, in an area where the sea, islands and shores are key. Lacking the ability to go ashore in force would severely curtail the value and capability of the task group.

-          There is every reason to believe that the urbanized littoral is where interests, risks and opportunities will concentrate. Human populations continue to concentrate near the shore or along rivers, canals, estuaries and lakes for their economic value and for their impact on a nation’s road network.

The UK is in a good position to be a world leader in the amphibious arena as it has arguably the greatest treasure of know-how of anyone in the West, thanks to a history of operations that include Suez, the Falklands, Kuwait and Al Faw. It already has most of the pieces in service and paid for. It already has one of the most significant amphibious components in NATO.

With the carriers coming online the big pieces are all in place, and the United Kingdom, in a rare moment of wisdom and awareness of its potential, had actually also taken leadership of a NATO Smart Defence initiative to develop a strategic Port Opening capability to enable theatre entry. Unfortunately, nothing has ever been heard about it since then, even though this is a capability that would be simply invaluable both in war and in peace (for example for disaster relief, such as after the Haiti earthquake, when establishing a point of easy access from the sea is vital). The UK can be a world leader in this area, with relatively tiny investment.

The blueprint for the UK to be a leader and framework nation in littoral manoeuvre is also the blueprint for the survival of the Royal Marines in the future. Going lighter and lighter will soon make the Corps redundant. The future of amphibious capability is “Strike”. While the current Army “Joint Land Strike” concept is very questionable and the structure proposed for the Strike brigade completely out of tune with the stated ambition, the value of an expeditionary, mechanized force is not in question.

Such a force hinges on a Sea Port of Debarkation, and the Marines are a key capability to ensure there is an entry point. Unsurprisingly, one of the very first scenarios to be war-gamed in the simulators at Warminster for the Strike Experimentation saw the Strike Brigade, supported by the amphibious task group, enter a notional African state where they faced a “multi-faceted” threat dispersed in a complex environment.

The key to the future is going ashore heavy, not light. A mechanized force is required to face complex threats and deal with vast battlespaces. The Marines must focus on how to be part of that force, and on how to get a larger army force where it needs to be. In the short term this means retaining the LPDs because they are key enablers for such a “heavy” entry.

Longer term, resurrecting the Fast Landing Craft is a key requirement to increase the survivability of the whole force by enabling the amphibious vessels to launch the assault waves from over the horizon.

The Force Protection Craft should become a primary responsibility of 42 Commando now that it has been forced into becoming the “Maritime Ops” specialist. The FPC is needed to accompany the Fast Landing Craft in its long transit from amphibious ship to shore, protecting it from threats including fast attack boats, suicide boats and other hybrid threats that could be lurking in the littoral. The firepower of the FPC would also provide intimate support in the early phases of the landing. It will be particularly important for suppressing enemy anti-tank missile teams, which represent a grave danger to the landing crafts.

The FPC should also be used to regenerate a true, powerful riverine capability to perpetuate Strike along the waterways.

A US Navy Riverine Command Boat (a development of the swedish CB90) operating from a RFA Bay class LSD in the Gulf. These assets provide force protection and reach, including up rivers. They can operate hundreds of miles away from a mothership, turning a single vessel into a "task group" perfect for Littoral operations and counter piracy 

The Marines and the RLC’s Port regiment should work together around that “Sea Port Opening” capability that the UK took the lead of within NATO but never did anything about. Opening a port is fundamental for progressing an operation after the initial landing: the UK is only equipped to land a single battlegroup, and can only augment that assault force by reactivating the mothballed LPD and by taking ships up from trade.

Large transports, beginning with the Strategic Sealift RoRo vessels (the Point class, unfortunately cut from 6 to 4 ships in the 2011 round of cuts) need to insert a larger army force if the operation is to achieve its aims.  

What would be lost along with the Albion class

In light of the above considerations, few cuts proposals ever made less sense than the rumored withdrawal of the Albion-class LPDs.

An Albion can operate 2 Merlin or even 2 Chinooks at the same time, but does not have a hangar. That is an unfortunate weakness, but when the two LPDs were designed the expectation was that there would be two LPHs to accompany them. Surface assault and air assault were deliberately split on two separate platforms, but problems began very early on when the two LPHs became one, today’s HMS Ocean.

With hindsight, a class of two large LHDs, combining the surface assault and air assault capabilities in a larger hull, would have been a more sustainable choice, but there is no easy correction now. With air assault needs covered by the second of the QE class aircraft carriers, it is imperative to maintain the LPD capability until the ships are due for replacement, in the early 2030s.

The Bay class LSDs have a flight deck that can land one single Merlin. They have no hangar. Today they are regularly seen with a shelter that provides an enclosed maintenance space, but for a major amphibious operation this structure might actually need to be removed to restore the full capacity of what was designed as cargo deck.

The LPD carries 4 LCU versus 1 and has four times more well dock space, enabling two lanes operations and keeping up operational tempo to enable the delivery of more waves during one night period. The Bay class ships have a well dock dimensioned for a single LCU MK10. This was a welcome last-minute addition to their design. Still, a single Albion carries one LCU MK10 more than the whole fleet of 3 Bay LSDs put together.  

The importance of the LCU is that it is the only landing craft able to carry any kind of payload up to a Challenger 2 MBT. The mexeflote raft can carry even greater payloads but it is extremely slow and unprotected and is more suited to follow-on reinforcements than first wave insertions.

The LPD carries 4 LCVPs versus zero on the Bay. The latter can only embark them as deck cargo, stealing space otherwise destined to stores and containers. It is worth remembering that an amphibious operation would already see the Marines’ LCACs (light hovercraft) carried on deck, and the group would also carry at least one of the four army workboats that are used to aid Mexeflote ops (towing, tugging etcetera) and dracone ops for delivering fuel ashore.  

Some of the LCVPs should be eventually replaced with the Force Protection Craft. In 2011 the Marines trialed the Swedish Combat Boat 90 and demonstrated its compatibility with the LCVP davits.

The LPD is fitted with the command and control spaces and communication outfit needed to run the amphibious operation, while the Bays have a much more basic communications fit, which has only been enhanced somewhat in recent years using equipment taken out of the prematurely decommissioned Type 22 Batch 3 frigates.

The Bay has twice as many lane meters of storage space for vehicles and embarks more or less the same number of troops. The tables normally detail 305 for an Albion and 356 for a Bay, but the crew of the LPD includes 40 or more men of the Beach Tactical Party, which goes ashore with the HIPPO beach recovery vehicle, a communications team, excavators and trackway dispenser to open a safe exit from the beach, enable movement of wheeled vehicles on soft terrain and push back landing craft if they ran aground, so the difference is actually much smaller.

Losing the LPD means losing the dedicate amphibious C2 centre; some aviation assault capability; most of the group's landing craft; the tactical beach party; a good share of the capacity for stores within the group and a Company-group worth of accommodations for Marines and support elements.
That is before considering that one third of the Bay class is regularly Gulf-bound, where it serves as MCM mothership, and another ship of the class ends up spending Hurricane season in the Caribbean as a disaster relief first responder. While they could both be recalled ahead of a large amphibious operation, the UK conversely would probably not want to gap those standing tasks in “peacetime”, so that without the LPDs the Marines would often literally have no amphibious ship available at all.

Without the LPD and its landing craft the UK would no longer be able to insert the current battlegroup (1800 strong including its support elements) and, moreover, it would lose the capability to insert a mechanized element. Today, an amphibious group including an LPD and a couple of Bays can send ashore the beach tactical party and a whole company group mounted in Viking armoured vehicles (16 troop carriers, command and recovery vehicles plus 4 mortar carriers) in a single wave of 6 LCUs. Without LPD this capability is destroyed. 

The Viking provides protected mobility and firepower. It is amphibious, but too slow to routinely proceed on its own from an LPD to the beach. A Royal Marines company group can be mounted, along with its Mortas section, in 20 such vehicles. An 

The loss of the LPDs would have a completely disproportionate impact on the amphibious capability of the UK, and any claim that the Bays can fill the gap is at best misinformed and completely dishonest at worst.

What the UK can have with the Albion class

Within a few more years, the bleeding capability gap caused by the early demise of HMS Ark Royal will be closed with the entry in service of HMS Queen Elizabeth. At that point, if the UK does not mutilate further its capabilities in the ongoing “review of the review that isn’t really a review”, the Royal Navy will be able to match the Expeditionary Strike Groups of the US Navy.

With one QE class at the center, carrying a company group of Marines in addition to their helicopters and at least a squadron of F-35B, the group would then have one Albion and at least two Bay LSDs. The landing force would be closely comparable to a Marine Expeditionary Unit of the US Marine Corps. This would be a potent expeditionary force, able to threaten the sea side of any opponent and valuable enough to gain influence for the UK East of Suez, an area which is inexorably growing again in importance as the economies of Asia gallop and the world’s money increasingly goes east.

The USMC MEU. The United Kingdom lead commando battlegroup resembles this force. Centered on a QE carrier, an LPD and a couple of Bay LSDs, it could field a substantial air element; 6 LCU MK10 and 4 LCVPs. The armoured element would come with Viking, with non-armoured BV-206 vehicles in support. The RM also employ Jackals. 

The acronym CEPP, Carrier Enabled Power Projection summarizes what the carriers really are about: they ensure the fleet has the air support it needs to operate in the congested, cluttered, contested, connected and constrained environment of current and future warfare. Without organic air power, a fleet cannot venture far from the air cover coming from land bases. Without a fleet capable to go into a contested environment, far from home and potentially far from friendly land bases. there can be no power projection at any serious  scale. With the Navy planning to have one carrier at Very High Readiness (5 days notice to move) and the other at 20 to 30 days notice to move, continuous carrier capability is a realistic aim.

A USN Navy Expeditionary Strike Group: the Royal Navy expeditionary group would have Queen Elizabeth in place of the LDH; an LPD and a couple of LSDs plus Type 45s, Type 26s and an SSN, with the RFA in support. A full spectrum response force which would be the face the UK shows to the world. 

Air power is a fundamental requisite but it is also primarily a support element. Ground operations of some sort will always be required to achieve the desired results, and the naval expeditionary force can only be considered complete if it maintains this equally important element of capability.

The value of an Expeditionary naval group is summarized as follows:

-                     It safeguards the UK’s forcible entry option, albeit limited by considerations of mass. The UK simply does not possess the numbers required to mount a large operation independently; but a powerful naval group preserves a degree of operational freedom and puts the UK in a position of leadership within a coalition effort.

-          Its global deployment is a statement of intention that is not matched by any other short-term deployment form. At the same time, it does not come with the dangers of a long term presence in foreign territory, which can generate as many bad feelings as good ones.

-          It is valued by the US as it helps cover all stations, enabling the progressive shift of US naval groups to the Pacific. The UK has not been able to provide a comparable level of assistance since its last aircraft carriers helped cover the gaps created by the US involvement in Vietnam.

-          It represents a capability that, in Europe, only France can, in part, replicate. The amphibious force is also closely integrated with the Netherlands’ own Marines and is an enduring connection link between UK and Norway as the Marines are the UK’s arctic specialists and the designated reinforcement for NATO’s northern flank.

Army 2020 Refine: even worse than expected - UPDATES

23 February 2017 UPDATE: the Royal Engineers are working on their own restructuring plan for Army 2020. What is already decided is that 35 Engineer Regiment, on return from Germany, will re-role to EOD & Search. As part of the process it will lose 29 Sqn, re-subordinated to 21 Engineer Regiment; and 37 Squadron, which will go to 32 Engineer Regiment. This will bring the future Strike Brigade engineer regiments up to strenght. Currently, as part of the earlier Army 2020, both 21 and 32 are severely understrenght, missing a whole regular sub-unit, although they control a reserve squadron each. 
At the moment they are under control of 12 Force Support Engineer Group, but they continue to support the brigades in the Adaptable Force.

The enlarged EOD & Search group will be reorganized, but details are still being worked out.

Growth is expected in Wide Wet Gap Crossing, which might be a way to say that some regulars will get back in the M3 rig business, after it was offloaded to 75 Engineer Regiment (Reserve) in the earlier version of Army 2020. Another effect of the "return to East Europe"?

Works Groups will also face a reorganization, and Royal Engineer Reserve units will be realigned to better support the new structure and new aims.


16 February 2017 UPDATE: the composition of the STRIKE Brigades artillery regiments (3 RHA and 4 RA) will be: 

HQ Bty
2x Gun Bty
3x Tac Gp Bty

3 RHA is ending the 3 gun batteries "experiment" (an attempt to avoid shrinking to just two gun batteries by having 3 batteries on 4 guns rather than 2 on 6 guns as for initial Army 2020 thinking) and is pulling the guns out of J (Sidi Rezegh) Bty.
The regiment expects to grow by some 110 posts.


1 February 2017 UPDATE: the Attack Helicopter Force 

While the Army Air Corps waits to learn the fate of its bases, which is being decided in a separate and specific review of infrastructure and could still result in closures (Middle Wallop, close to Salisbury Plain but with less machines than ever because of the smaller fleets under UK Military Flying Training System Rotary Wing; or Wattisham, less geographically fortunate but full of stuff that would require quite a few quids to relocate...?), the Attack Helicopter Force is being asked to modify its Readiness mechanism to deliver even more with, if not less, the same. 

Up to the end of 2016, 3 and 4 Regiment have been alternating yearly in High Readiness. During the year at High Readiness, each regiment aligned one Apache squadron with the Lead Air Assault task force and one with the Lead Commando Battlegroup.

From 2017, the mechanism is changing towards one of "permanent readiness". Gone is the training year, and the demands increase a lot as 4 Regiment is assigned permanently to support of 16 Air Assault Brigade and 3 Commando, with 664 Sqn specializing in Land Air Assault and 656 Sqn in Maritime operations.

3 Regiment, on the other hand, will align with 3rd UK Division. Details are still to come, but it seems reasonable to assume that its two frontline Apache squadrons will be required to align to the Armoured and Strike Brigade that will hold Readiness every year.



31 January 2017 UPDATE: some confirmations. 

SOLDIER magazine of February provides another partial update on Army 2020 Refine, which contains confirmation to some of my assumptions. Among these, the role of 3 RIFLES, 21 Engineer Regiment and 3 Medical Regiment. 
Some unit moves are detailed, although not with dates. All should happen within 5 years, apparently. The new readiness mechanism, with one armoured and one Strike brigade at readiness at once every year, should become operational around 2023.
Some moves were already known and planned, some others are new.

Household Cavalry Regiment will move to Bulford from Windsor

Scots Guards to Catterick from Aldershot 

1st RLC from Bicester to Catterick 

3 Medical Regiment from Preston to Catterick (this is the image of the Army's incoherent planning: from Catterick to Preston and back again) 

21 Engineer Regiment, from Ripon to Catterick 

Royal Dragoon Guards, from Catterick to Warminster

1st YORKS, from Warminster to Catterick 

Royal Lancers, from Catterick to Warminster

4th Royal Artillery, from Topcliffe to Newcastle 

2 Close Support REME, from Leuchars to Catterick 



16 January 2017 UPDATE: The Army finally speaks. 

The armoured brigades of Army 2020 Refine will be 20th and 12th Brigades. 

The Strike Brigades will be 1st Brigade, converted from the armoured role, and a "new" brigade. 
This year will see the Scots Guards and the Household Cavalry move into a "Strike Experimentation Group. In 2019 they will be joined by King's Royal Hussars and 4 SCOTS, and at that point the Group will become a brigade, picking a badge. To me, 4th Infantry Brigade, being based in Catterick, continues to look best positioned candidate, but it seems the deal is not quite sealed. 

The Specialised Infantry Group will form during January and will take command of 4 RIFLES and 1 SCOTS in April, to achieve an IOC hopefully by the autumn. The Specialised Infantry Battalions are expected to take a permanent regional focus, and probably, for obvious reasons, the first two will probably be Middle East and Europe. 

Nothing on the surviving Armoured and Infantry brigades. Note that Strike Brigades are peculiarly described as something that will "enable maneuver at Division level", which reinforces my feeling that these weird things are supposed to be kind of like the Division's reconnaissance element. 






The first announcement about Army 2020 Refine is out, and the news it brings are even worse than expected. General Carter apparently wants to shed Challenger 2 tanks quickly, before his successor can perhaps think again about it: the King's Royal Hussars will be put inside the first Strike Brigade, which can only mean losing Challenger 2 to get Ajax instead. Rushing the cut through is the only explanation for converting one of just 3 tank regiments before converting the cavalry formations that were due to get Ajax in the first place.
The Royal Lancers were planned to be the first regiment to get Ajax, and this statement throws that very much in doubt. Why should the few and precious Challenger 2s go out of the window before Scimitar does, considering that it is the latter that badly needs replacement and is supposed to be entirely gone by 2026? 

There is no telling yet whether or not the armoured brigades will get their own cavalry regiment, and how Ajax will now be distributed and employed. Horribly, the Chief of Staff now openly calls it a "medium tank" in its video to the troops.
A MOD-supplied written evidence paper draws a line between "cavalry" (reconnaissance) Ajax regiment and "Medium Armour" regiment, with each Strike Brigade to have one of each.
What the actual differences will be isn't easy to guess. Unless the Army is in the budgetary position to resurrect the Medium Armour variant of the vehicle, which was to be armed with a 120 mm smoothbore gun, the key piece in either formation will be the same Ajax in Scout configuration. Same protection, same firepower. Same thing. The difference could thus be mostly about numbers, sub-variants distribution (the very few Joint Fires and Ground Based Surveillance vehicles would go to the recce cavalry, one would guess) and the number of Ares APCs and, consequently, of dismounts.
Of course, if the Army had the money to procure an actual "medium tank" or direct fire vehicle for the Strike Brigade it would probably purchase a wheeled one based on the MIV hull, so i don't expect Ajax Medium Armour to return. That means Scouts will become "medium tanks" by virtue of empty words. This is a lie that will break the army's back with this ill informed reform and that will one day cost lives if some politician unaware of what a tank is ever believes to the statement.

Due to the Christmas break, a video message to reach all our soldiers about the statement in Parliament today https://t.co/hURWkxiGxG pic.twitter.com/Jb6RPFRebR

— Gen Nick Carter (@ArmyCGS) 15 dicembre 2016

The other Ajax regiment will be the Household Cavalry (no change, it was already going to be an Ajax regiment), with the infantry represented by the Scot Guards and 4 Scots. Both battalions were already planned as Mechanized infantry as part of Army 2020.
The Household will move out of Windsor, heading probably for Salisbury Plain, and the Welsh Guards will move in to replace them. 

No clue to the identity of the brigade, but it seems pretty much certain that it'll be either one of the currently armoured brigades or 4 Brigade by virtue of its base already being Catterick.

Whether the RLC regiment(s) assigned to the Strike Brigades will be suitably restructured to give a bit of credibility to the talk of these brigades moving rapidly back and forth across as many as 2000 km on land to dominate "vast battlespaces" is an open question. The French have created combat companies within each logistic regiment so that they can self-escort and fight through, and this appears to be one of many key requisites for the Strike Brigade concept to make any kind of sense. We'll see if anything is done about it.
The direct mention of RLC units is interesting in itself, however: is the Army backtracking on its earlier decision to pull the supporting regiments out of the manoeuvre brigades? Is it true only for the Strike Brigades due to a "french-like" approach for them? We do not yet know, since nothing else is said about the shape of the Strike Brigade and even less about the future of the remaining Armoured brigades.

Strike Brigades: the first Strike Brigade will operate from Catterick and Salisbury Plain and will be composed of the Household Cavalry Regiment, The King’s Royal Hussars, the 1st Battalion Scots Guards and The Highlanders, 4th Battalion The Royal Regiment of Scotland. A number of Royal Logistic Corps (RLC) and Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineer (REME) units will be allocated to provide close support logistic support, beginning with 1 Regiment RLC and 1 Close Support Battalion REME.

UPDATE 23 December 2016: 

Collating together the various news and an ORBAT table for the second Strike Brigade which the MOD passed along to Jane's, the intended structure for the two Strike Brigades is as follows in the tables:

CORRECTION: The 1st Brigade will eventually convert from Armour to Strike. 
The other Strike Brigade (which might actually be the first to form, though) will "pick a badge" in 2019, evolving from what will start this year as "Strike Experimentation Group". 

20th and 12th brigades will stay in the Armoured infantry role.

I also don't yet know the identity of the medical regiment that will be aligned with the first Strike Brigade, although 3rd Regiment looks to me to be relatively well positioned for the role. 
There is no official confirmation of 21 Engineer Regiment being assigned to the first Strike Brigade either, but being already based in the right place it seems an obvious pick. 


UPDATE: the reserve tank regiment, Royal Wessex Yeomanry, a 3rd Division asset, is getting a modest uplift in manpower, in no way substitutive for the loss of a regular tank regiment. 

Message from the Commanding Officer of the RWxY.

On Friday, the detail of Army 2020 Refine was announced. For our Regiment, it is excellent news that sees you and RWxY rewarded for all of your individual and collective efforts. You have demonstrated that the Reservist can train on and operate the CR2 platform with a success that has attracted CGS' attention. From 2017, the RWxY will continue to deliver the Armd Reinforcement Regt, but will also take on an additional Armd Replacement role. Y (RWY) Sqn is now a fully established sub unit on our orbat with the benefits of Perm Staff that that brings. Each Sqn will also grow in size by an additional tank crew per Troop. This will strengthen each of our Sqns by another 20 Officers and Soldiers. This is exactly what we asked for and have worked hard for.

For sure, 1st YORKS is due for transition from Warrior to MIV in 2020. Remarkably (but unsurprisingly), the commanding officer himsef knows little of what is to come:

I have received orders yesterday confirming that 1 YORKS will redesignate to the Mech Inf role in 2020. The Bn is expected to relocate from WARMINSTER to CATTERICK in 2020.
At this time, we understand little about the detail of this change and I would encourage you not to speculate. I have been told that our establishment will grow, with bigger rifle platoons and a larger REME Light Aid Detachment. There is more work to come to confirm our mix of vehicles, which barracks we will occupy in Catterick and the finer details of the move.

The Fusiliers will retain the Armoured Infantry role on Warrior and will see their reserve battalion strenghtened: 

First Fusiliers will remain in Tidworth in the Armoured Infantry role. Part of 20 Armoured Infantry Brigade it will remain on the tip of the spear for the UK Reactive Force. Fifth Fusiliers will grow to incorporate MG Pl in Bury, A Company in Sheldon and C Company in Balham. This is a significant win and will see us once more with a Regimental C2 node in each of our recruiting areas. The Fifth Battalion will also become officially 'paired' with First Fusiliers, presenting further opportunities for training and operations.

UPDATE: Within 1st UK Division, the 1st Royal Irish will lose Foxhound and re-convert to Light Role, rebuilding the 3 platoons lost with the Army 2020 downsizing. It will also move to a new home which has yet to be chosen.

Basing: Barracks will close in 2022 and 1 R IRISH will move to a new location. There has been no decision yet as to where this will be.

Role and establishment: 1 R IRISH will convert to Light Role Infantry. The battalion will also increase in size, growing by 3 rifle platoons and some positions within the Quartermaster’s department. The regular/reserve partnership with 2 R IRISH will remain and 2 R IRISH will also grow by 3 platoons.

Infantry division affiliation: Both 1 and 2 R IRISH will remain under operational command of 1 (UK) Division. The administrative infantry division - which coordinates career management and appointments - will change. The Regiment will become part of a new infantry division, with the Royal Welsh & the Royal Regiment of Scotland. This new division will bring Regular and Reserve posting opportunities for our soldiers within the Armoured, Mechanised, Light Role and new Specialised Infantry career fields.

UPDATE: the Mercian regiment enjoys stability and will keep its two regular and one reserve battalions. It is also confirmed in the current roles, (1st battalion is Armoured Infantry and 2nd is Light Role). 

Two battalions will be downsized and transformed into Defence Engagement / "Specialized Infantry" battalions during 2017:

The Royal Scots Borderers, 1st Battalion The Royal Regiment of Scotland    (Light Role) 4th Battalion The Rifles   (Mechanized Infantry / Heavy Protected Mobility infantry) 

4 Rifles is a Mechanized Infantry Battalion in Army 2020, so a unit of 700 men. It'll be savagely slimmed down to 300 with excess manpower progressively redirected elsewhere.
Come 2019, they are due to be joined by

2nd Battalion The Princess of Wales’s Royal Regiment (Light Role)2nd Battalion The Duke of Lancaster’s Regiment (Light Role) 

UPDATE 16 January 2017: The Duke of Lancaster's regiment future has emerged thanks to a House of Commons Written Answer which also provides useful information that probably applies to all battalions in similar roles: 

1st Battalion will stay as a Light Role formation and will rebuild the missing Rifle Platoons lost under the earlier version of Army 2020. Its regular liability is exected to go from 560 to 630 men as a consequence of the restructuring. All Light Role infantry battalions should be rebuilt in similar fashion. 

2nd Battalion will become a Specialised Infantry formation, as announced, and will drop from 560 to as few as 270 regulars. 

4th Battalion, in the Reserve, is expected to grow from 400 to around 500 men. 

The regimental headquarters is based in Fulwood Barracks, Preston, which is planned for disposal under the Better Defence Estate Strategy in 2022. A future location for the regimental headquarters will be determined following a process of detailed assessment and planning.



UPDATE 16 January 2017: It is not yet possible to confirm this news, but it seems that Army 2020 Refine intends to reconvert all Light Mechanized Battalions into Light Role infantry battalions. Foxhound-mounted battalions would cease to exist as a permanent ORBAT feature very soon after appearing. 
The future of the Protected Mobility fleet (Mastiff, Ridgback and Foxhound, chiefly) remains uncertain at this stage. 

Specialised Infantry Battalions

In 2017 the Army will also create the first two new Specialised Infantry battalions to pioneer this new capability. These units will be The Royal Scots Borderers, 1st Battalion The Royal Regiment of Scotland and 4th Battalion The Rifles, the former relocating to Aldershot from Belfast by 2019. A new Group headquarters for the units will be established, initially based in York alongside the 1st (UK) Division of which the Group will be part, before moving to Aldershot by 2020. To reinforce this capability the Army plans to create two further Specialised Infantry battalions by 2019. These units will be the 2nd Battalion The Princess of Wales’s Royal Regiment and the 2nd Battalion The Duke of Lancaster’s Regiment both joining the group in Aldershot by 2020.

Let's recall Carter's words about the Specialised Infantry Battalions: 

General Sir Nicholas Carter: Putting that smartly to one side, what it actually means goes back to when I talked about specialised infantry battalions in answer to the very first question. These creatures, which will only be about 300 strong, allow me—because they will be built from battalions that are 550 strong—to be able to reinvest over time the 250 saving which you make into the other infantry battalions around them to make them more resilient.

General Carter oral evidence to the Defence Committee




"Adjustements" are to follow within supporting units and it is here that the pain spikes up, as the Army seems to be rushing towards the loss of the capability to work to a "1 in 5" rule as it has so far. The pain hits all trades but the Signals, with regiments "rationalized" to feed what remains: 

32 Royal Artillery  (currently one of the 2 UAV regiments, alongside 47 RA) 
35 Royal Engineer  (currently an armoured engineer regiment) 
2 Medical  (Adaptable Force) 
33 Field Hospital (one of only 3 regular field hospitals) 
HQ 4 Regiment Royal Military Police
HQ 64 Works Group Royal Engineer 

102 Logistic Brigade HQ will also be "rationalized" as had already been reported. 

21 and 32 Engineer Regiments, based in Catterick, are in the intended "Strike Brigades" home, so they can expect a manpower, equipment and structure uplift as they feed on the remains of 35 Engineer Regiment. A number of Titan and Trojan will no doubt be lost as a consequence.

UPDATE: 35 Regiment will become the new EOD unit to be formed in the reserve.

In the artillery, the loss of 32 Regiment is curious, given that it currently operates Tactical Batteries equipped with the Desert Hawk III mini-drone. The UAV mission is not going away, i assume (you never know, in these days no decision is too insane, apparently...) so either 47 regiment will be enlarged to take on the totality of the UAV role or something else is brewing. Probably one of the other regiments will replace 32 RA in the role, i'm guessing. The selection of 32nd RA for disbandment is probably mostly tied to the fact that it will be easier to convert one of the gun regiments already in place for the Strike role. 

UPDATE: 32 Regiment won't be cut before 2021. Until then, business largely as usual although the Force Generation cycle will change in 2019 to follow the army-wide change to a 2-brigades-at-readiness stance. 

UPDATE: a letter from 1st Artillery Brigade HQ has been published that provides some more information about the future of the Artillery. 
The Precision Fires Batteries that have been built within the heavy artillery regiments after 2010 and which are equipped with regular-crewed GMLRS and EXACTOR will be removed from the regiments and concentrated into Larkhill, under 26 Royal Artillery which becomes a Division Fires Regiment, with 101 Royal Artillery keeping the reserve GMLRS role. 

26 Royal Artillery will take under command H Bty and 176 Bty, while its AS90s and Tac Group will be redistributed. The change of role comes in 2019. Equipment will be GMLRS and EXACTOR. 

"Subject to further planning" 101 Regiment's future will be as follows: "Regimental liability will be reduced to better reflect a modern expeditionary division. The Regimental structure of 4x Sub Units and an RHQ will remain the same.

3 Royal Horse Artillery and 4 Royal Artillery will become the Strike regiments and a "new medium weight wheeled gun" will be put into service before 2025". STRIKE 155, the artillery programme for the Strike Brigades, maybe has a budget after all. 
If i have to guess what will be picked, i say CAESAR or M777. If the Royal Artillery is extremely lucky, it will be able to purchase the proposed 8x8 CAESAR, which unlike the variant already in service in the Armee de Terre is a true self-propelled gun, automated and with no requirement for the crew to leave the armoured citadel. The BAE-Bofors Archer would be better, but cost and political considerations probably mean CAESAR is the favorite. It has also already been trialed by british gunners in several occasions. 
Both regiments to be based in Albemarle Barracks in Newcastle, but 4 Royal Artillery will not move there before 2026. 

Base CAESAR

The CAESAR 8x8 with autoloader and increased protection and mobility, in a photo from Eurosatory by Army Recognition

UPDATE: Jane's says it has been given a briefing about the new Army structure and is reporting that 3 RHA and 4 RA will lose their guns for good and that 155 STRIKE is not happening.  
I have no reason to doubt of Jane's word, yet the report clashes with what the COs of both regiments have been saying in the last few days and also with the 1st Artillery Brigade's letter to the troops. 
The COs messages: 

4th Royal Artillery

Army HQ has confirmed that 4 Regt RA will convert to become a STRIKE close support artillery regiment. This means that over the next 10 years or so our Light Guns will be replaced by a new medium weight gun and our tac gps will be mounted in a combination of brand new wheeled and tracked armoured vehicles. This is great news and an exciting time for the Regiment! The Army has also confirmed that we will arms plot to Albemarle Barracks in Newcastle, but NOT BEFORE 2026. Full details will be briefed to the Regiment in the New Year. This announcement brings stability in the short term and some fantastic opportunities in the longer term.

3rd Royal Horse Artillery 

The Army 2020 Refine announcements will hit the press in the next couple of days. We have time scheduled in the New Year to brief in detail, but I wanted you to know the headlines for Our Regiment now:
- 3 RHA will stay in Albemarle Barracks. 4 Regt RA will join us here in around 10 years time.
- We will become a Strike Regiment, affiliated to a Strike Brigade. I'll brief you in more detail on this but essentially we retain the same capabilities but grow a little.
- PF will move South in 2019. We will fully support our Gunner brethren in the interim and in the move.
- Training programmes will change slightly to enable us to more efficiently support affiliated Brigades.
That's all you need to know for now, it's all good and the Mighty Third goes from strength to strength. More to follow, and have a great Christmas and New Year!

Note that, whatever happens to 3 RHA and 4 RA, the regiments will indeed not be organic to the Strike Brigades: they are part of 1st Artillery Brigade and only "aligned" to the Strike Brigades. The same is true of 1st RHA and 19 RA in the Heavy role. 
Also note that Jane's talks of a reduction from 6 L118 regiment to 4. This is again puzzling: the british army has 4 regular and 2 reserve L118 regiments, so it would in theory go down to 4 if the guns are removed from 3 RHA and 4 RA. But since 104 RA is being converted to L118, we get back to 5. 
Somewhere, there are misunderstandings at play here. 

If Jane's is right, the Royal Artillery officers and units have been fed with horribly inaccurate information in these days. 
What i think can be said with confidence at this point is that the Army 2020 Refine "announcement" is a monstrosity, a crime and a complete failure. The CDS posted a useless two minutes video on Twitter and provided no information at all; the secretary of state provided a statement completely devoid of detail and officers have been left in the dark. In the last few days there have been COs writing that they literally don't know what is going to happen to their units and that they were looking into the announcement. 
This is amateurish at best, and criminal at worst. This is not how you deliver such important news to thousands of families and to the country. 



UPDATE 22 December 2016: 3 RHA reaffirms that it and 4 RA will field guns and that STRIKE 155 is funded.

Just to make you aware, there is an article circulating that suggests that ourselves and 4 Regt RA will not be equipped with guns under the A2020R structure.
The journalist has got his facts wrong and the Chain of Command may consider a rebuttal or correction to the story. Rest assured, A2020R structures see us still equipped with guns as part of our larger Joint Fires Orbat, and the Gunners have a funded medium-weight gun capability to replace Light Gun.

103 Royal Artillery will stay as a Close Support gun regiment, paired with 4 Royal Artillery. 
105 will continue to support 3 Royal Horse Artillery.  

104 Royal Artillery, currently the reserve ISR / mini-UAV regiment will convert to the Light Gun. Again, this is the biggest surprise in the plan for me. I did not expect the ISR component to suffer, and now the question is how the capability will maintained in the future. Apparently, nobody yet knows what (if anything) comes after Desert Hawk III in 2021, and there is a need for "resilience" in the Close Support role right now. 

It has now been confirmed that as part of the Army’s reorganisation, 104 Regiment RA will be re-designated as a Reserve Close Support (CS) artillery regiment and will re-role to light gun. This will take place from 2017 (date tbc) and will see the Regiment re-subordinate to 1 Artillery Brigade and provide support to an Armoured Infantry Brigade. The construct of the Regiment will remain unchanged with a HQ Battery and 4 equipment batteries and there are no associated basing implications (less those already announced concerning the Royal Citadel and 289 Tp). In due course we will be paired with a yet to be confirmed Regular CS Regiment.

Many of you will no doubt be asking what has brought about this change. Simply put, it is because the wider restructure of the Army, and the rationale underpinning aspects of that change, requires a Reserve component structured to meet the demands of a modernised expeditionary division. For us as a Regiment, at a time when the delivery of future MUAS capability was still to be determined and the need to enhance resilience in CS artillery was apparent, redesignation was the most sensible course of action. As we look forward, it is also opportune to reflect and you should all be immensely proud of what has been achieved both on operations and in training as a MUAS regiment. Make no mistake, you have proven the provision of MUAS capability was well within your gift. 

UPDATE: My personal attempt to divine the new role of 104 Regiment leads me to guess that it might provide reserve support to 29 Commando and 7 RHA. Both regiments are known to need such support: 7 RHA has recently formed a reserve gun troop within the Honourable Artillery Company and 29 Commando was looking at the possibility of forming its own Reserve troop. 
Of course, if 3 RHA and 4 RA truly do lose their guns, the role of the reserve Close Support regiments will get even more demanding and vast.

1 Royal Horse Artillery and 19 Royal Artillery will stay in the armoured role and will keep AS90. 3 batteries each, apparently re-absorbing the Tac Group battery within the gun batteries and the wider artillery brigade. 1 RHA will lose H Bty to 26 RA and L Bty (Tac Gp Bty) to 3 RHA, but not before 2019. 

Exactly how it all will work out is all to be seen, but a cut to the number of AS90 is assured as one armoured brigade vanishes. Hopefully GMLRS will escape undamaged by virtue of 26 Royal Artillery becoming a Div Fires regiment.

The letter provides hints of what happens to the Royal Artillery

UPDATE: regarding the Royal Signals, there is no certainty yet that there won't be cut backs, but there should not be. The 5 multi-role signal regiments are barely enough to assign one to 3rd Division HQ and one each to the major brigades, so i wouldn't expect cuts. General Carter also went on record saying that they would "think long and hard" about how to improve manpower figures for the key signal brigades, so he is at least aware that this area is particularly problematic. 

Announcements on the future of the Royal Signals might have to wait until sometime in early 2017 when the "Information Manoeuvre Command" is expected to stand up to manage all things Signal, ISR, Cyber. 

Support

The changes announced will require adjustments in some supporting and enabling elements of the Army. HQ 102 Logistic Brigade, 32nd Regiment Royal Artillery, 35 Engineer Regiment, Headquarters 64 Works Group Royal Engineers, 2 Medical Regiment, Headquarters 4th Regiment Royal Military Police, 33 Field Hospital and 104,105 and 106 Battalions of the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers reserve will be rationalised, with all manpower in those units being redeployed to other areas of the Army in its refined structure.

Only the reserve gets somewhat good news. 3 REME battalions (104, 105 and 106) will be rationalised, but two new infantry and one EOD regiments will be formed beginning next year. 

UPDATE: 105 REME battalion will change name and will be restructured into a new "101 Theatre Support Battalion", tasked with supporting 5 TSB REME, a regular unit supporting 3rd UK Division.  

105 Battalion REME will change its name to 101 Theatre Support Battalion in 2019 (the name 105 will cease to be used, as will 104 and 106). It’s new role will be to support 5 Theatre Support Battalion REME in the regeneration of theatre-level equipment during a time of war.It will consist of Bn HQ and four sub-unit locations (names not yet known) as follows:

HQ 101 Bn REME will be in KEYNSHAM

Sub unit 1: BRIDGEND & GLOUCESTER Sub-unit 2: SWINDON & BRISTOLSub-unit 3: LIVERPOOL & BELFASTSub-unit 4: TELFORD & WEST BROMWICH

UPDATE: apparently, the Strike Brigades will, for whatever reason, be supported by a "super" CSS regiment formed by merging one RLC and one REME battalions.
One such regiment will be formed by 2 REME and 27 RLC, according to reports by The Courier. 2 REME will apparently become part of a regiment in combination with 27 RLC in 2021, but it'll be 2030 before the REME element leaves Leuchars to join the rest of the unit in Catterick.

The other CSS regiment should at this point be born out of 1 RLC and 1 REME. The ministerial statements name both units as parts of the 1st Strike Brigade but fails to mention the merging.

The merge of RLC and REME does not seem to extend to the rest of the Army. Support to the armoured brigades seem set to stay "in traditional format".
7 RLC and 6 RLC will transit into 101 Logistic Brigade, presumably to become Force Support elements for 3rd UK Division:

The Army 2020 Refine (A2020R) results are out. The key points are:- 7 Regt will continue to exist under A2020R.- It will remain in Cottesmore until 2029, when it is due to move to Topcliffe (near Dishforth).- The Regt will come under command of 101 Log Bde in 2019.- The detailed structure and role are still being worked on but will likely require only a small adjustment.

- 6 Regt will continue to exist in the future.- The Regt will come under command of 101 Log Bde in 2019 (102 Log Bde will disband).- The Regt will remain in Dishforth until 2030 when it will move to Topcliffe along with 7 Regt RLC.

I've seen suggestions that 9 RLC will move to 104 Logistic Brigade instead, but i have no way to confirm this as of now.

Army Reserves. As part of our continued investment in the Army Reserve we will build on the success of the Future Reserves 2020 plan. We will optimise reserve structures to better support the modernised division, embed the successful pairing of regular and reserve units and increase the number of reserve combat units supporting the division. As a result, two new reserve infantry battalions will be created from 2017. These are 4th Battalion The Princess of Wales’s Royal Regiment and 8th Battalion The Rifles. A new reserve Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) regiment will also be created.

4th PWRR is expected to be formed around one company taken from the LONDONS and two newly formed companies: 

4 PWRR

Battalion Headquarters and Headquarter Company will set up in Crawley on the site of 103 Bn REME. 

A Coy, 3 PWRR in Farnham will re-subordinate from 3 PWRR 

B (Queen's) Coy in Edgeware will re-subordinate from the London Regiment 

A new Company will then be created in either Southampton or Portsmouth. 

A replacement company for 3 PWRR will be formed, again location still to be decided. More detail to follow as it becomes known.

The London Regiment will take back a company from 7 Rifles and create a new one to make up for the losses, It will also be more formally aligned with the Guards battalions: 

B and C Companies will transfer next year to, respectively, a new 4th Battalion Princess of Wales’s Royal Regiment and 5th Battalion Royal Regiment of Fusiliers. In partial replacement, we will welcome back F Company 7th Battalion The Rifles in 2017 as an integral part of the Regiment. We have also been tasked to generate a new company next year, in a new location, which raises exciting possibilities.The reformed London Regiment will retain its historic name but will become known colloquially as the ‘Guards Reserve Battalion’ and will become a single-capbadge Regiment, grouped within the Foot Guards Division of Infantry.

8 RIFLES will include existing RIFLES reserve elements in the North East, Yorkshire, Shropshire and Birmingham. 



A number of batteries, squadrons and companies across the army are going to re-subordinate over the next few years and at the moment it is not possible to track all moves from outside. 

Changes are coming in the Administrative infantry divisions as well, with regiments being grouped differently: 

Renaming of administrative structures The introduction of the Specialised Infantry capability will mean some reorganisation of the infantry divisional structure, within which infantry regiments are administered, from seven to six divisions. The Scottish and The Prince of Wales’s Administrative Divisions of Infantry will merge, incorporating The Royal Regiment of Scotland, The Royal Welsh Regiment and The Royal Irish Regiment. This administrative division will be called The Scottish, Welsh and Irish Division. The Mercian Regiment from the Prince of Wales’s Division will join with the King’s Division. Army administrative divisions of infantry are the groupings within which the Army manages its infantry soldiers and officers to give them the necessary broad spread of relevant career experience from across a number of different units and activities. They have no operational role. There will be no changes to the names or regimental construct of The Royal Regiment of Scotland, The Mercian Regiment, The Royal Welsh Regiment, or The Royal Irish Regiment as a result of these administrative changes. 

A lot of things continue to be shrouded in mystery and we've not heard the last of the bad news for sure. The prominent thing that emerges so far is CUTS. Regiments, tanks, heavy artillery. All cut back. 
And this is just the beginning. A bad one.


UPDATE 27 December: Army 2020 Refine's big day is January 17, when CDS is planned to finally unveil the new "Land Operations" doctrine. Not clear how public that will be, but hopefully some information will be released.
Briefings for the army personnel seem scheduled to begin from 4 january.