US Army NLOS-C Battery

[Mountie]

Does anyone know how the US Army plans to organize their artillery batteries once they are equipped with the NLOS-C variant of the Future Combat System?  The only thing I could find was that a battery was to have two platoons of 3 x NLOS-Cs each.  There will be no FO/FIST teams since with all the technology available to the infantry and armoured commanders they can call in their own fire support.  This leaves only 6 NLOS-C systems each with a 2-member crew and two small platoon headquarters.  Plus their whole concept is to reduce logistics, so even with some ammunition vehicles and other support vehicles, how big can the battery get?  The six NLOS-C systems only require a total of 12 crew members.  What will the TO&E look like?  What kind of rank progression will there be with only a 2-man gun crew?

 

[tomahawk6]

http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0PAB/is_1_114/ai_n9488823#continue

This article may fill in some blanks for you.

 

[Mountie]

That article was about the reorganization to Unit of Action BCTs not the Future Combat System UA BCTs.  But I had a personal message from someone working on the project who said that what I had previously read was pretty close to what the TO&E will likely look like.

 

[Infanteer]

Interesting article Tomahawk.  It seems that busting an artillery battalion up within a Brigade is now the norm rather than the exception.

I wonder if there is any implict advantage of 2 batteries of 8 (broken into 2x4 gun "platoons") over a more conventional 3 batteries of 6 (aside from dropping two guns from the unit).  The article states what they can do with the gap in the organizational structure:

Because the fires battalion is now a two-firing battery organization, there is essentially an open battery from a command, control, and training perspective. It may be a good idea to assign the maneuver battalion's heavy mortar platoons to the fires battalion for training and certification--they would move out with the maneuver battalion for combined arms training and execution. The mortars always have been sacred--an organic fires capability for the maneuver battalion commander--and so they remain. Again, it is an issue of how best to train and certify individual and collective fires tasks demanded of these tremendously capable combat arms soldiers.

At least they recognize the importance of mortars to the maneuver battalion.... :