Experience suggests that grouping UAS capabilities together is more effective than spreading them amongst an organization. Your proposed Regiment may be more effective with two or three gun batteries and a separate UAS battery.
Yeah. That's another issue that I've been wrestling with. Earlier versions of a CS regiment that I had did have a separate UAV battery. I then started to looking at the "dispersed operation" concept and started thinking about how best to do operations. As a start point I look at the guns.
Technology is now at the point where guns can deploy and manoeuvre pretty much independently. The limiting factors are security and logistics. From a technical gunner point of view a single command post can easily control three or more dispersed guns. I use three because one TSM and troop recce party can easily manage the deployment and logistics of three guns running independently. Security is degraded by single gun deployments which means a level of risk and guns being within (as much as possible) mutually supporting gun positions. That does make them a bit more vulnerable to special ops interdiction but increases safety from counter battery and UAVs.
One battery's logistics system can support three troops handily with its own BK, BSM, ammo party, and CSS troop.
My rationale behind having a UCAV troop with a battery parallels the DS concept. It provides a supported battalion with guaranteed gun and UCAV support increasing the precision munition availability to the battalion without any additional logistics support requirement for the regiment. It also simplifies the allocation of manoeuvre areas for both guns and launchers in DS of a battalion. I see better coordination of resources if one Bty FSCC commands and controls all the indirect fire coming into its supported battalion's AO. If greater resources are needed in one particular AO, a gun or launcher troop from a different battery can be attached in a reinforcing role to a given battery.
Pooling the UCAVs in one battery would, IMHO, not increase the overall effectiveness or availability to the brigade as a whole but would require and increase in both the regiment's manning requirement and logistics burden by way of an additional battery headquarters structure and CSS troop. I'm not sure if I see any advantage in having a UCAV FSCC at bde level which is where it would end up (or merged into the bde FSCC). Would the UCAV troops ordinarily be kept centralized or attached to batteries? If the latter than there is nothing gained by centralization.
I'd be interested in looking at some of the experience behind grouping UCAVs. I can't say that I've actually come across any papers or discussions on how its done - I presume in Ukraine - and if that is a "war specific" experience. If you have anything on that, I'd be happy to see it and rethink the issue.
As an aside, has your branch, or you, given any thought of the division of UCAV capabilities within the company and battalion level? I'm a believer in redundant and layered systems.
