More recently, the US Army Chief of Staff, General Eric K. They supposedly are well-suited to establishing a sort of "military omnipresence" which is essential to the restoration of law and order in peace support/peace enforcement operations. Underlying this development is the assumption that such light units are more appropriate than the traditional "heavy mix" for patrolling and controlling relatively large stretches of land. In this context, light ground forces, and especially those riding on wheels, have gained a more prominent role. Since the end of the East-West-confrontation, there has been in NATO and in non-aligned countries as well a general drive to develop expeditionary forces in order to deal with regional crises and conflicts. First, they thought that wheeled armored transport would be better than tracked in moving large masses of soldiers over long distances second, they thought these vehicles could do the job at relatively low cost. The Warsaw Pact's military leaders had two reasons for giving wheeled vehicles a big role.
In addition there were relatively strong components of armored reconnaissance that to a large extent also had light wheeled vehicles, including the BRDM 1 and 2. Indeed, two out of four regiments in a motor-rifle division rode on wheels (BTR 60/70/80). Even after the advent of tracked mechanized infantry fighting vehicles during the 1960s (for instance, the BMP and its forerunner the BTR 50), a large part of the Soviet infantry continued to ride on wheeled platforms. One notable exception to the trend was the Soviet Army.ĭuring the 1950s the Soviets put the bulk of their infantry on wheeled armored carriers. Among the armies following this line of thought were both the British and the French, due in part to their long tradition of expeditionary activity.
Wheeled armored vehicles, if used at all, would be confined to the roles of light reconnaissance and armed area control. Most armies with fighting experience in World War II drew the lesson that in future ground combat the hard currency of power would be medium to heavy tanks - accompanied by tracked platforms carrying infantry and artillery. Composition of Future Intervention forces
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