In a June 11 announcement, the Army officially canceled the M10 Booker Combat Vehicle. The fate of the 80 or so M10 Bookers that the Army did take delivery of has been left open-ended.
Enter the Marines. Two in particular. Marine Lt. Col. John Dick and Lt. Col. Daniel D. Phillips, the commanding officer and executive officer, respectively, of 3rd Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion, have an idea of what the Army could do with the not-so-light tanks they didn’t want.
In an op-ed for Task & Purpose, the two make the case for the Marine Corps, and specifically light armored reconnaissance (LAR) battalions, to adopt the unwanted Booker. They argue that the Marine Corps’ plans for a future conventional war, detailed in Force Design 2030, while necessary, have left some significant gaps in mechanized reconnaissance units that procurement hasn’t yet caught up with, and may not catch up with for years.
In this week’s video, we dig into the Booker, LAR, and the case for how the vehicle would fit into future operations.
Their proposal to roll the Bookers into the four light armored reconnaissance battalions, which are transforming into mobile reconnaissance battalions (MRB), is an interesting one, but not as outlandish as some may think. The Booker would address the firepower and survivability concerns that some in those units have, especially around the Ultra Light Tactical Vehicles, or ULTVs, which are a key component of the MRB.
Incorporating the M10 Booker into LAR battalions as a replacement for the ULTV or even as a stop-gap replacement for the aging Light Armored Vehicles (LAV) until the Advanced Reconnaissance Vehicles (ARV) hit the fleet would give Marines more firepower, a more survivable vehicle, and a host of advanced communications and electronic warfare suites.
The plan does have some flaws. The Booker is a large vehicle, weighing in at 42 tons, and is only transportable by C-17s or heavier aircraft, which is one of the reasons the Army called it quits. The 13-ton LAVs are capable of being sling-loaded beneath CH-53 helicopters or transported by C-130s, both of which are organic to the Marine Corps. The M10 would require Air Force support with the C-17, or Navy support with LCACs, which stands for Landing Craft Air Cushion, introducing complexity into an already challenging environment like the Indo-Pacific.
Marines also don’t have the maintainers or crew for the Bookers, or the ability to train them currently. To support the vehicles, they’d have to create a new training pipeline for mechanics and operators, or use the Army’s — and they’d have to get around the whole “right to repair” thing, which the authors get into in the op-ed.
Since the Bookers are already bought and paid for, the Marines, long known for taking scraps from the Army, which the LAVs were in the first place, could take ownership for relatively little in up-front costs.
And if the proposal does gain traction, it’d kill two birds with one not-so-light stone: Marines in light armored reconnaissance units would get some added firepower and they’d be able to gripe about how, once again, they’re getting the Army’s hand-me-downs.
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