Great Power contentions

[Montmorency]

Seems like the US has secured bases in the Philippines, compensating for the Solomon Islands.

Norway will buy 54 new generation Leopard-2A7 MBTs to replace its older versions of the same model, and has an option for 18 others, the government announced on Friday. The South Korean MBT K2 lost this competition.

Germany intends to transfer 88 Leopard 1 and 15 Gepard to Ukraine. The good thing about the Leopard 1 is that its armor is definitely not worse than the AMX-10RC, but its latest projectiles should have a decent ability to defeat the side armor of any Russian tank except maybe T-90M, assuming very, very careful deployment. But we should really be planning a general strategy around L2/Abrams going forward, rather than diluting Ukraine's limited tankist corps among scads of obsolete equipment.

Hopefully the arrival of GLSDB, even just a few dozen through the first half of the year, will neuter Russian initiative by disrupting their logistics as acutely as HIMARS did in July of last year. Unless the Russian offensive comes this month, we're going to see a lot of tectonic energy released around May-June.

The EU plans to increase the number of Ukrainian servicemen who will be trained by Western instructors and on European training grounds from 15 to 30 thousand.

As part of the EU mission, the Bundeswehr offers, among other things, combat training for companies and tactical training for the brigade headquarters and its subordinate battalion headquarters. The German proposal also includes instructor training, medical training and weapons systems training in close cooperation with industry.

According to initial plans, Germany wanted to train a brigade of up to 5,000 Ukrainian soldiers within the first few months. The number should also depend on how many soldiers the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine will be able to send for training given the ongoing war.

Spurred by Russia, Germany rolls out 3-year plan to fully equip all armed forces personnel

Elsewhere, Germany has agreed to provide NATO with a first operational land division in 2025 to support the Very High Readiness Joint Task Force (VJTF), while long-term targets of providing a modern mechanized division by 2027 and a further two divisions, to the alliance by 2031, both remain.

?We are talking about 30,000 army personnel as opposed to 6,000 [to support the new land division plan],? noted the official. ?These are units that will have to go into battle, with what they have at their disposal, on a permanent basis.?

[US] Army network design for 2025 to focus on division level for first time

The Army has adopted a multiyear strategy involving the incremental development and delivery of new capabilities to its integrated tactical network, involving a combination of program-of-record systems and commercial off-the-shelf tools. Those ?capability sets? now provide technologies to units every two years, each building upon the previous delivery. Capability Set 21 was primarily designed for infantry brigades, whereas Capability Set 23 is focused on Stryker brigades and Capability Set 25 is focused on armored brigades. However, Capability Set 25 will also focus on the division holistically for the first time.
[...]
?Like all things, we change, right? We change, we adapt, based on what our adversaries are doing, based on the environment around us. For many, many years now, we?ve been in a brigade-centric Army. As I?m sure everybody in this room is aware, we are now going back to the division as the unit of action,? Potts said.
[...]
With Capability Set 23, the Army for the first time will field its integrated tactical network equipment to a division headquarters as well as enabler units, creating a communication bridge from maneuver brigade combat teams, to their support elements, to the division headquarters. It will be fielded to the 82nd Airborne Division in Fiscal Year 2023.

Told you. It doesn't take a strategic genius to figure this out.

Gosh, mid-2023 is set to be the most brutal phase yet.


EDIT: jfc even the French deploy Company Tactical Groups (SGTIA)