THE MECHANISED ARMY.

Hawera Star, Volume L, 23 October 1930, Page 4

THE MECHANISED ARMY.

Since the mechanisation of land warfare lias probably advanced as far in Great Britain as anywhere, the members of the Imperial Conference who witnessed some manoeuvres at Aidershot, a day or two ago, must have been deeply impressed by the extent to which the machine and the mechanic have displaced the fighting man, and perhaps were trouble by strange visions of a modern battle, with no man visible. But the full tactical value ofa mechanised army has not yet been determined, and probably never will be I until warfare tests it, which it is to be |hoped will be never. In the meantime I Army exercises in Britain provide scope tor interesting experiment and | ground for speculation. Those held near Tidworth in August were marked I by the introduction of two “experimental'’ brigades, which took the field to carry out a scheme of training designed to discover what is the ideal infantry brigade with mechanised equipment, and what improvements can be made in the Lloyd-Cardan type of carrier, from which the machine-guns were fired. A writer commenting on these experiments suggests that mechanisation is more useful to an attacking than to a defending force, and, more strikingly, that it restores to war the mobility which was lost in the long deadlock of the trenches in the Great War. Further, “the lost art of surprise" returns with the development of swift, small, mechanical forces. No large body of troops can escape detection from the air; it moves too slowly. But while an infantry division does well to cover twelve miles in six hours, and is a conspicuous object for all of that time, a,

mechanised force would cover the distance in one hour—and might choose its hour well enough to be concealed by rnin. Of course a new mobility would create problems, in addition to solving them. A commander would have to overcome great difficulties of control and restraint. “Getting there,” as this writer observes, “does not mean being able to stop there, or even being able to get back.” Nobody knows for certain, of course, what machines can and what they cannot do; oven experiment is handicapped by the fact that armies are still “mixed.” If the mechanised units move as fast as tliey r can they get out of touch; and if they slow down their advantage is gone. The only thing that is quite certain is that another war would not be repetition of the last, though it would probably prove that the day of the soldier wli* moves on his feet instead of on caterpillar wheels is by no means over.