War leads to changes in the 'division ready brigade'

[babylonsister]

http://www.knoxnews.com/kns/national/article/0,1406,KNS_350_5435684,00.html

War leads to changes in the 'division ready brigade'

By JAY PRICE
March 21, 2007

The U.S. military could take days rather than hours to respond to a surprise international crisis because all four of the Fort Bragg-based 82nd Airborne Division's combat brigades will be in Iraq and Afghanistan later this year.

The deployments have forced the 82nd to begin transferring responsibility as the Army's only short-notice "division ready brigade" to the 101st Airborne Division at Fort Campbell, Ky. But the 101st, which specializes in air assault by helicopter and fixed-wing aircraft, can't deliver a major force via parachute, so for some missions it could take days longer to strike, said John Pike, an analyst at GlobalSecurity.org, a think tank that tracks international military issues.

If the objective is safe enough to land transport planes, the 101st should be able to arrive just as quickly as the 82nd, at least once it has learned the procedures for shipping out rapidly, he said. But an emergency mission requiring helicopters, say for a well-defended target, could take much longer because of the logistics of moving so many helicopters by cargo jet.

The 82nd's division ready brigade - about 3,300 soldiers - is always on call, ready to begin flying anywhere in the world in 18 hours. It has been assigned that job for decades, in part because it is the nation's only full division of paratroopers. It's an integral part of the identity of the division, which bills itself as "America's 911 Force."

A spokesman for the Army's Forces Command at Fort McPherson, Ga., which controls the assignment of the ready brigade, said the change wouldn't slow the Army's ability to respond. The 101st is a capable unit, and there are other units that the Pentagon could call, Barry Morris said. Among them are several smaller units that can parachute into battle, such as the Rangers.

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[jmowreader]

1. In some ways this is better

One of the central tenets of the 82nd Airborne's structure is that everything they have must be airdroppable if it won't fly on its own.

Because the 101st actually lands the airplane before they take the cargo out of it (as opposed to the 82nd who would throw their own mothers out the back of the fucking plane in flight if they thought they needed to take her on the op) they can take heavier equipment and a lot more of it.

The 101st's structure is superior also to the Light Infantry Division concept, of which the (ugh) 10th Mountain Division stands as shining proof that it is possible to prepare a Table of Organization and Equipment for a n entire division while your head is shoved up your ass and have it be approved. I could rant for days about how fucked up light infantry divisions are, but I'll save you the chore of reading it.