Reimagining Combat Power for Tomorrow’s Battlefield: The Enhanced Brigade Combat Team

Joshua Suthoff

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Recent pictures of webs of fiber-optic cables draped on tree limbs on the front lines in Ukraine—cables from expended one-way attack drones—are reminiscent of the mounds of expended artillery casings in World War I. Both images of the detritus of war, separated by more than a century, are stark reminders of the continuous effort by belligerents to gain an upper hand through technology, tactics, and attrition. In the near future, the US Army could be called upon to project combat power into an operational environment defined by the current array of threats with little notice. In such a scenario, every logistical action to move brigade combat teams into position would be under threat, with moves constrained by limited sea and air assets. Every modal move counts in order to deliver the most credible combat formation and critical logistics to the conflict area. And once these brigades arrive they will face a myriad of enemy threats including robotics, rockets, and missiles, all designed to cheaply counter the US brigade combat team construct. The United States cannot enter a war of attrition—certainly not on these terms. Formations need to be agile and efficient to fight and exploit success in the opening engagements of a war all while relying on limited logistical resources. For the Army, there is a solution: reorganizing some of its armored brigade combat teams into enhanced brigade combat teams.

The current Army brigade combat team (BCT) designs (infantry, armor, and Stryker) vary in their ability to rapidly deploy to a combat zone and then survive. Their strengths and weaknesses are not balanced within the formation, but normally require task organization and teaming to meet mission requirements. Infantry and Stryker brigade combat teams (IBCTs and SBCTs) both have significant numbers of infantry, and both lack organic armor support. The M10 Booker mobile protected firepower platform is an attempt to improve IBCT lethality. However, an M10 is not a tank and units equipped with them are not organic to IBCTs. The reverse is true for armored brigade combat teams (ABCTs): They present large signatures, require significant logistics, and need more infantry.