Future Scout Vehicle: M113 GAVINs Save Day in Iraq 1/3

The dirty secret of the 19D Scout MOS community is in BOTH Iraq nation-state wars (NSWs); Desert Storm in 1991 and Iraqi Freedom in 2003, their MTOE organically-assigned, Humvee trucks were too vulnerable and lacking in cross-country mobility to move forward of the main body and make first contact with the enemy. TRANSLATION: they could not do their jobs as CAVALRY of screening ahead when saddled with impotent wheeled trucks!

Why don't we have a light mechanized CAVALRY in the U.S. Army?

LTG Gavin asked this very question in 1954:

http://www.combatreform.com/cavalryandidontmeanhorses.htm

And then he ANSWERED the problem by creating the M113 to be the go-anywhere, cross-country, amphibiously-mobile light tracked armored vehicle mount for SKY CAVALRY from air by parachutes and short-take-off and landing aircraft:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zD4RWmotso0

In this amazing video adapted from Captain John Tien's great article in the March-April 1993 issue of U.S. Army ARMOR magazine, he reveals how Gavin's M113s saved the day to enable his 19D Scouts to successfully act as Cavalry in Operation Desert Storm's maneuver to expel the Republican Guard from Iraq and are actually the defacto FUTURE SCOUT VEHICLE (FSV) the U.S. Army needs--if you read carefully in-between-the-lines of what he is saying since everything he advocates for the FSV can be applied as "icing" technology insertions to the GREAT M113 Gavin platform "cakes" we already have.

http://www.combatreform.com/itmaneuversabattalion.htm

The U.S. Army had better unfuck itself and quick--this Humvee and Stryker wheeled truck non-sense must end before we have a major NSW disaster at the hands of our many foes who are doing their professional, due diligence homework and air-mechanizing themselves into light tracks with shoot-on-the-move weaponry like the Red Chinese Airborne with their ZLC-2000 light tank/APC:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTwWuBKxxks

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• M113
• Gavin
• future
• scout
• vehicle
• cavalry
• 19D
• scouts

[dynmicpara]

BoarHawg writes:

"I was a 19D Scout for 11 years, the first six on 113s, then the piece of s**t Brads. For Scouts, it couldn't get worse than the Bradley....too big, too heavy, too loud, too complex, and too slow to keep up with the M1s it's supposed to support. A 113A3 runs rings around it, the only advantage a Brad has is firepower, but if you're a bigger target than a tank without the armor to take hits like a tank, a Brad's firepower doesn't mean a thing."

[drfan2004]

Interesting,a note to the pundits of Britain's Warrior AFV who favour newer European produced models with TOW missles attached,such vehicles are essentially self defeating since they compromise essential mobility and put the lives of 8+3 men at risk.

[oozie101]

CAV SCOUTS RULE!!!!