ORIGINAL: sstevens06
ORIGINAL: golden delicious
ORIGINAL: sstevens06
Interesting. If I'm not mistaken what you describe is pretty close to the NATO defensive doctrine at the time. US (and Belgian) Infantry (Mechanized) Divisions of the period were organized according to the "Pentomic" TO&E, in which the Divisions were divided into five "battle groups" of approximately reinforced battalion-stength. The thinking was that each "battle group" was powerful enough to hold ground, but not large enough that a concentrated nuclear attack on one would significantly diminish the Divisions' overall combat power.
Was this system in place by the time of your 1961 Berlin Crisis? I would think you'd want the OOB to reflect this structure.
Yes it was, and the US OOB in Berlin Crisis 1961 definitely reflects this structure. Even the US Airborne Divisions (82nd and 101st) were organized as "Pentomic" Divisions.
I believe the US Infantry and Mechanized Infantry Divisions adopted the "ROAD" structure (10 conventional battalions organized into 3 Brigades) around 1963. A good source of information on this topic is:
http://www-cgsc.army.mil/carl/resources/csi/Doughty/doughty.asp#THREE
This is correct. In 1963 the army did change, and it changed again in the 1980s, in which not only were there three maneuver brigades, who would pull in extra divisional assets (engineer, artillery, signal, MP, etc) to form "Brigade Combat Teams (BCTs). Inwartime these extra assets would fall under the combat brigades during wartime, but peacetime would leave these extra assets under the command of their respective commanders (i.e. Engineer Brigade, Division Artillery brigade, Signal Battalion, MI battalion, ADA battalion, MP company).
Around 2001 the army went to the
Force XXI structure, and in the past couple of years the army has changed once again to the Modular Force structure. Modular Force basically revamps army divisions into actual BCTs where the extra units that it would receive in combat are assigned in peacetime, thus removing the need for external divisional assets in other units (engineer, artillery, etc). In addition, the divisions would now incorporate 4 BCTs, and the army would transition from a "heavy" structure to a "lighter, mor mobile" one. (I wholeheartedly disagree with this concept, as it "lightens" the Army, and makes it more like the Marines....we already have a force like that, and we don't need another one.) Also, full divisions won't normally deploy together any more. BCTs would deploy, based on what the commander in the field would need, and these units would come under a division HQ that would deploy, thus commanding those separate BCTs from other divisions. (One can se this with the force structures in Iraq and Afghanistan.)
