Memes aside, unbiased take on the cav scouts.
>>65093659My friend was in that group, I'm not military so I don't know what you'd call it.101st Airborne, he rode around in Blackhawks and blew up other helicopters or vehicles that were disabled so Taliban wouldn't get to them.But 101st airborne is massive idk how deep it goes beyond that.
Watch me piss everybody off with a single sentence:>Cav scouts are pretty much like infantry, but better.
>>65093659Proactive
>>65093659Do they actually do horse stuff? If so, they're a criminally underrated niche that had a good showing in GWoT. If not, then eh.
I like them in W:RDtemu maglans
>>65093659I knew exactly one and he spent years hating on me online for reasons I have never gleaned, never deployed, got sent to TRADOC as an E4, and got promoted to corporal, and afaik got transferred someplace else to a new MOS without ever deploying.In the time it took him to do that I got my bachelors, became an E5, got my masters, and became an O1
>>65093659My dad was a cav scout back in the 80s. Graduated TRADOC. Made E4. Got sent right back to TRADOC as a corporal. Eventually reclassed to MLRS to escape the nightmare.
>>65094606no, they ride around in armored personnel carriers or IFVs and then hop out and do light infantry things
I feel like it depends on how aggressive the brigade/division commander wants to be with his cav scouts that determines how lame/badass/horrific being a cav scout would be. If he's using them Patton style than these guys would effectively be the rare exception of being in a more dangerous and insane position than infantry as they would effectively be doing hasty attacks and ambushing against unknown enemies nonstop. Even with the more standard use case for cav scouts; they're unique within the world of reconnaissance for being the ones who can truly perform reconnaissance in force properly. And even with conducting security tasks. That could be as lame as just sitting in a bush watching over a road, but that could also mean conducting a brutal mobile defense against a far superior force in order to buy time for the main unit to complete their objective(s). Going beyond the memes and shitposting among all the different MOS's. It's a combat MOS, combat is combat, and it doesn't matter if you're a cav scout, an MP or a combat engineer. If you're dismounted engaging the enemy, you're doing infantry shit. And with the cav scouts you're doing infantry shit usually against an enemy you have little information about. So while I bet they wouldn't see prolonged fights compared to being in a line unit. The fights they do get into will most likely be far more high risk high reward type of fights. At the end of the day, you could be just fighting the enemy forward reconnaissance elements, or you could be running into an entire mechanized battalion without realizing it. Also you get a cool cowboy hat so there's that.
>>65096146Pithe>Stetson
>>65094606They do a spur ride which is sorta like an EIB type of thing but not really. Apart of it is knowing how to ride a horse so that you get your cowboy hat and spurs so that you can be the biggest, gayest cowboy on ram ranch. If WWIII were to happen though and supply lines start eating tactical nukes then it wouldn't be that crazy to have cav scouts unironically riding on horseback to act as forward scouts. But that would be an extreme case.
>>65096157>embracing loyalist history of gay colonization >not embracing patriotic yeehaww cowboy history of murdering the fuck out of indiansPathetic
>>65095714How the fuck did one "graduated TRADOC"? That was literally Training and Doctrine Command, midwit. You either got through your basic training and MOS specific shit, or you washed the fuck out. And I hate to break it to you, but Corporal isn't a promotion from E4. Whatever "nightmare" you're imagining, it's okay to stop doing that now. Everything you wrote there is retarded.
>>65093902>101Get fucked with the "airborne" crapola for that division. There is only one AIRBORNE division left in the US Army and every single one of those dopes-on-a-rope knows which one it is.
>>65096213>gets shot down by Muhammed with a manpadnothin' personal
>>65096146Hmmm. You're either an ROTC hopeful, a National Guard d-bag with a deployment, or two, or a bitter enlisted support fag with some sand in your crack (those things aren't mutually exclusive).
>>65096225>Wishing isn't a strategy
>>65096165This>>65093659I had fun, because i only did 4 years mostly training kek, cool job
>>65096306Forgot pic
>>65096233None of the above
>>65096338lmao, I guess I was spot on then.
>>65093659Cav scout fella here, been in for about 10 years, I've been light and heavy for about equal time in my career. Feel free to ask what you like. I'm enlisted and I've served in most roles except for driver maybe, up to Section Leader. (Squad Leader) I've not been to combat but I've had rotations to Europe a few times, currently in one of the last serving light units. I've been active the whole time as well, not NG or reserve.>my current takeCurrent status of the cav is confused and miscommunicated, and it often was even prior to that. Like people have pointed out it really depends on the brigade commander but it also depends on the squadron/battalion commander. My honest opinion is that the current army structure is kind of rotted by a lack of force-on-force contact that highlights the need for some kind of advance party to fix an enemy force, or even to survey and exploit landscape. The 10,000 IQ take is that drones do it all but there's definitely situations where drones do not replace human sensors, few as they are. What you're going to see in alot of new formations coming up are people doing reconnaissance and security, it's just there won't be as many of them and they won't have a separate MOS code just for that. Alot of institutional training was not great for 19Ds, but I blame that more on GWOT, where we kind of had a different purpose. The cav's future is currently restricted to armor formations, which makes more sense and are more decisive/important anyway, even with the advent of drone warfare we still see alot of mechanization being important in recent Ukrainian counterattacks and they are a common factor in Russian attacks as well. The future though is very difficult to read. Current admin is quite corrupt and this, to me, will reflect in the upper echelons of the Army's leadership and what choices they make in restructuring. I personally view much of it as deeply unserious, but this could also just be my own bias.
>>65096146Biggest difference between a cav formation and an infantry formation under current doctrine is really in the setup of the platoon and its lack of personnel. A cav platoon simply has half of the personnel an infantry rifle platoon is alleged to have, so you are fighting at a severe numerical disadvantage, and because of certain mathematical laws regarding a deliberate attack we lack the criteria to really engage anything above maybe a squad as a platoon. Our squad and team sizes are even less. Training is quite similar to Infantry and really the training quality of many infantry formations are quite bog standard.
>>65096213>There is only one AIRBORNE division left11th and 173rd
>>65096405I feel like the two biggest challenges currently are on the employment of cav's, especially given both the lack of force on force that you brought up and also the emphasis on risk aversion since the GWOT days. And drones. My personal take is that drones, since we're only just entering the stopgap era of trying to deal with them, remain as a major disruption. Although in time once we begin to see armies start to equip and properly integrate weapon systems into the doctrine that serve as proper counters to drones, the level of disruption that drones cause will greatly diminish. Which I think is leading into a sort of putting all eggs in one basket sort of situation. Along with this, I'm no expert at all and can only pull from historical uses of cav scouts but to me; probably one of the biggest roles beyond recon and security is to shape the big fight (decisive action) through a series of supporting actions which historically seems to be knocking the enemy off balance as much as possible. A concept and form of maneuver I feel given the risk aversion that I already stated is likely not going to happen. Especially with the reliance on weapon systems like missiles and drone use, which I think leads into the same eggs in one basket problem as before. It's like the concept of not just cav scouts, but simply having an advanced guard type of element has just faded out of existence which leads me to believe that God forbid we get into a big ground war against whoever is going to inevitably lead to horrific casualties, mostly through stupidity and awful planning that will stem from a complete misunderstanding of the realities on the ground in favor of the pipe dream plan conjured up by higher ranking officers sitting in an office in Tampa or D.C.
>>65096412I always wondered how frequently cav platoons/troops fight dismounted. I'm just a gaymer who plays too much combat mission and steel beasts so I can only go off of that. The idea of like 6-16 dismounts fucking off and running combat patrols or doing whatever they do is just asking for a 125mm HE round from a T72.
>>65096427>It's like the concept of not just cav scouts, but simply having an advanced guard type of element has just faded out of existence which leads me to believe that God forbid we get into a big ground war against whoever is going to inevitably lead to horrific casualtiesI think so too, and alot of that has to do with the assumption of a drone warfare fight being the end of maneuver-based doctrine and now putting us into an industrial-warfare type scenario, but like you said if we adjust to that for the interim, it is inevitably going to go away and then we will be outdated again. I think that this is fine, even natural for military development cycles. I am mostly dissatisfied with the choice to take the 19D MOS as a literal armored branch job. In my view, the branch aspect of the US Army can be a detriment to the force as a whole and it restricts certain techniques and knowledge that ought to be centralized in order to ensure success. Imagine if we had a branch where the only concern was RSTA from a manned perspective? You would not need to detail infantry to recon platoons that ultimately are still split in their TTPs and other methods of instruction with regular infantry rifle plt/squad tactics. In my view, it was just a mistake that 19Ds wound up as under the armor branch, because if we had not had that we would be better off as an organization, I think. It also has traditionally affected alot of the slots that people get for schools. Because you are still a 19 series, alot of your ranger, RSLC, pathfinder, etc. are limited because most of the slots will go to 11 series. These are relevant schools that are not getting into the job that is supposedly created to govern RSTA chiefly.
>>65096436>The idea of like 6-16 dismounts fucking off and running combat patrols or doing whatever they do is just asking for a 125mm HE round from a T72.I have played Combat Mission Black Sea and I love it. Really the defense against a T-72 is camoflauge, defilade, and a small footprint. Typically in my experience on exercise we never really exceeded maybe 4 dismounts operating very close together, and 1-2 of those may be in security posture further back at a rally point. So now you have 1-2 dismounts, which can be difficult to see depending on the model of the AFV (writ large term for tank, APC, etc), in defilade under camo, it can be effective. Combat Mission does a great job of simulating the LOS aspect of the field, same with the CFF aspect and having to adjust fire. There's a standalone mission I believe with a VERY old-school RSTA formation with FIST teams and all kinds of very obscure attachments where you have to attrite an armored force exploiting key terrain in a valley. It's extremely difficult and challenging, you should give it a try if you haven't already!
>>65096447I get it from the perspective of using the Bradley's. But cav's also do a lot of dismount shit, so it's kind of in a weird middle ground. Making it into an 11D would mean manning the IFV's with guys who do that and only that. But keeping it as a 19 series probably makes it kind of shit in order to train the whole "once we're out of the Bradley" portion of the job. I'm still in the faction that thinks GWOT laughably fucked up the US military as a whole. I'm pretty sure most battalion commanders don't know how to use their scout platoon, much less a brigade or division commander wielding an entire squadron. I honestly don't know how many officers exist in the Army who can actually coordinate any sort of movement beyond a single brigade. When's the last time entire divisions+ conducted maneuvers whether in training or in actual combat? I don't even think NTC rotations focus on that.
>>65096457Doesn't the army use a modified version of combat mission for training or is that just a meme?
>>65096460>I'm still in the faction that thinks GWOT laughably fucked up the US military as a whole.It did as a whole yes, and we're still dealing with the repercussions of that. The lack of airburst munitions or AD development at the battalion level, etc. >I get it from the perspective of using the Bradley's. But cav's also do a lot of dismount shit, so it's kind of in a weird middle ground. Making it into an 11D would mean manning the IFV's with guys who do that and only that. But keeping it as a 19 series probably makes it kind of shit in order to train the whole "once we're out of the Bradley" portion of the job. When I was in a Bradley formation being a crewmember was kind of a rotational thing, the only deal was that Section Leaders and up were kind of hard-slotted to Bradleys, maybe you had a high speed NCO who could be 'Dismount Section Leader' but that wasn't really in an MTOE for a Bradley platoon IIRC.>I'm pretty sure most battalion commanders don't know how to use their scout platoon, much less a brigade or division commander wielding an entire squadron. I honestly don't know how many officers exist in the Army who can actually coordinate any sort of movement beyond a single brigade. When's the last time entire divisions+ conducted maneuvers whether in training or in actual combat? I don't even think NTC rotations focus on that.I have a very negative opinion of flag officers, their job seems very political and realistically I don't think it's really them making the calls on that level as much as it is the battalion commanders and below. Really I think their biggest job is to give a general scheme and that's about it. The rest of it is just communicating with lower echelons and higher echelons. I have to question that in an industrial-warfare scenario with limited maneuver, really, how relevant they would be. We see in Ukraine alot of things like independent platoons and companies, so there's alot of pruning to the command structure.
>>65096465There's not really a 'standard' universal program used for everything, nah. At some point maybe there was but that's definitely been diversified. There's also so many simulator games out there that are fantastic for training purposes.
>>65096405Have you done RSLC? If so, how was it?
>>65096160>then it wouldn't be that crazy to have cav scouts unironically riding on horseback to act as forward scouts.It would be absolutely retarded. Despite popular belief horses are extremely needy creatures and you would have to have a lot of specialized supplies and expertise to use them in any significant numbers. Their biggest advantage, that they eat grass instead of consuming fuel, becomes a liability when the grass will make them drop dead.
>>65096405Also have you attended Bradley and/or Stryker leader course?
>>65096590As compared to what? Just walking? If you're still trying to shoot assholes in different uniforms even after nukes have dropped than that implies it's either not that bad or that it was bad but the time has past where the bulk of the radiation has decayed away and fighting has resumed. Having some dudes on horseback who can scout ahead multiple kilometers to the front rapidly would be a nice thing to have when everyone else is just walking.
>>65096405new formations coming up are people doing reconnaissance and securityexpand on this more
>>65096447Is RSTA still a thing? Were they platoon or company sized?
>>65096457I thought each section was supposed to have 6 dismounts making 12 from the two sections, plus an additional 2-3 from the platoon HQ?
>>65096417>11thonly partial>173rdnot a division
>>65093659>unbiased take on the cav scouts.It is very heartwarming to see LGBT+ representation in the military. The Gay Community loves the CavScouts. Death before dismount!~
I wish they had more Javelins in Broken Arrow
>>65096417You're apparently too stupid to understand what what DIVISION means
>>65096338>None of the aboveI see. "Fat kid with a big mouth" should have been included in the answers. Thanks for the feedback.
>>65096585I have personally not no, but I have met people who have. They say it is a decently challenging course that's quite weird to get a slot for, usually SOF likes to send their people to that and their scheduling is kinda scarce. The most recent guy I had go to it went when he was at the 101st and that was when they did a mobile training team for it there however long ago.>>65096591I have not attended either. When I was on Bradleys I was a gunner for about 3 years (E4-E5) so going to the course was kinda outta the way for me and I think when they did offer it we had just gotten a bunch of new retards including a PSG from 82nd who was retarded around Bradleys so they needed old hands around to not completely fuck the bradleys>>65096605Not really an interesting answer, just someone will have to do the screening for any kind of brigade+ activity. >>65096610Battalion sized, the idea behind the Cav Squadron is that you had RSTA for the BDE. That's largely gone away now outside of armored brigades though.>>65096615Right, but those sections are usually acting independently together, and you rarely have full manning for a platoon. The only people in platoon HQ that would really dismount are medics or FIST teams, and usually the medic is back with PSG to help CASEVAC
