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Rapid Deployment is the central theme shaping today's war preparation scenarios, equipment acquisitions and combat support operations. Today's military strategists argue that the combat force that can "see first" and then "shoot first" is the one that will prevail in battle. If this is so, then war-planners cannot hide from the pressing need for rapid deployment competency.
That ancient US military adage, "He who gets there FIRSTEST with the MOSTEST, wins," is therefore as relevant today as when first presented, providing that MOSTEST is understood by military planners to usually mean, "Less is MORE". This famous American saying is now, without any doubt, a driving principle behind what this century's military forces are doing to modernise and acquire in order to "see first, shoot first."
When the then US Army Chief of Staff, Gen. Erik Shinseki announced the beginning of US Army Transformation in 1998, an effort that would evolve sequentially via so-called Legacy, Interim and Objective Force developments and fielding, a leading staple and guideline was, "It had better fit inside a C-130 transport plane". It was then that the relationship between (a), Light and/or downsized combat equipment, and (b), Fastest and most reliable platforms for combat-zone delivery, was raised from having been only for certain segments of a fighting force to now being a proper and leading duality for entire combat divisions operating within a particular combat theatre, nation-state or region. The previously not directly related notions of "rapid deployment" and "see first/shoot first" were suddenly transformed into twin and closely interlinked concepts for winning the new century's wars.
Consequently and almost overnight, "heavy" became a secondary rather than primary mobility concept, and so there would be no new generations of expanded and extended series of Main Battle Tank (MBT) models unless MBTs could be made to shrink and lighten very significantly without any loss of firepower and survivability. Rather, wheeled vehicles would dominate, and perhaps tracked mobility would go the way of the horse.
The deadly seriousness of this "heavy-to-light" change and its momentous implications struck cold and sharp when the US Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, decided two years ago that the US Army should drop development of the CRUSADER, a "heavy" 155mm SP artillery weapon system, in favour of...