3/3 My consolidation into slides, was sent by a nice DM, but traced back to the very useful MoD Imagery site (www.defenceimagery.mod.uk) so if you share onwards be aware of copyright. All seem to be standard MOD Crown Copyright News / Editorial Licence - GOV.UK

2/3 Page 2 is the combat support gang - Argus, Atlas and Apollo. No sign of Ares in all this but Athena or Atlas minus the extra bits pretty much covers it for silhouette purposes.

@thinkdefence.bsky.social

P.S. I have a longstanding X account (x.com/JonHawkes275) from which I'll be posting some of my favourite threads here. First am catching up on these bridging threads so I can continue with Part 3 onwards, which is long overdue.

That’s part two on the need for bridges, stay tuned for part three – whats the problem with Titan?
For new joiners, the series started here: bsky.app/profile/jonh...

An end note that I am no combat engineering or logs expert, so the many learned people in that domain on twitter can fill in blanks and do some interesting threads on this stuff in more details. But hopefully this sets the broad scene with as few glaring errors as possible.

What those models look like in the post-Ukraine UAS saturated landscape is unclear but will certainly only strengthen the case for having a good quantity of fast operating systems and a coherent doctrine for their use, or we have seen the consequences.

The result is that planners should allocate between 3 and 5 AVLB for each opposed crossing seeking a reasonable likelihood of success (essentially a full AVLB company/squadron in most militaries).

…suggests that around 30% of opposed crossings fail, and that you need at least 2 concurrent crossing sites for a battle group formation to maintain useful momentum and successfully pass an obstacle.

Where the crossing is actively opposed, you also need equipment redundancy and multiple backups. There are lots of ways to model opposed crossings, but historic evidence (though few countries have conducted an opposed crossing since WW2)…

You need to work out how to present as broad a presence as you can in the area, to conceal the crossing point and prevent issues stemming from the massing of forces at the assembly areas and crossing itself and ensure rapid dispersal on the exit bank.

RISK OF GAP CROSSING
The big risk with gaps is that crossing them is an inherently slow process that can be predicted to varying degrees. To successfully cross your recce forces need to validate the crossing site (they will have been pre-selected, but reality must be confirmed)

So, you will encounter gaps a lot, and you cant rely on local infrastructure if it is still standing. The result is that to avoid being very predictable in your manoeuvres and/or be readily canalised into an opponents planning, you need integral organic gap crossing capabilities.

As long as there have been bridges there have been tanks collapsing them. In Baltics & Eastern Europe infrastructure is notoriously low MLC capacity. Many reports from Ukraine of bridges collapsing when crossed by T-72/T-80, which it is worth noting are <60% of what CR3 weighs.