Armored Cav: A Guided Tour of an Armored Cavalry Regiment

Rating:
Summary: A persuasive argument for a strong Armored Cavalry.
Review: If the folks in Washington who set the defense budget and determine how much money is to be allocated for army ordnance and materiel were to read this book, I think it would help clarify for them why exactly we need to maintain a strong armored cavalry to support our U.S. ground forces. We have grown too complacent if we believe that all security threats can be resolved by simply launching missiles from the sea or dropping bombs from the air, hoping to cow the enemy into submission by sustained and heavy bombardment. There comes a time when the surgical excision of a belligerent element or hostile force is more necesary and, in the long run, more effective and beneficial, both economically and politically. But such action requires a powerful wall of mobile armor to ensure that the men and women participating in any such operation are defended by the best MBT's and IFV's that money can buy. Tom Clancy descibes in magnificent detail some of these vehicles, and gives examples of the hardware in action against Soviet-made tanks during Operation Desert Storm. The book also includes informative interviews with some of the outstanding individuals who've helped raise the army to the standard it is today, and who hope to keep those forces strong through the next millenium. It is a sobering book and especially relevant at this time.

Rating:
Summary: Average Work
Review: If you have read any of the other books in the series then you know what to expect with this one. The book follows the familiar format, it details out the machinery used, the troops, the division make up of the topic in the armed forces, a few interviews and it ends with some fictionalized short stories describing the expected types of encounters this area would face in the future. All in all a basic book on the armored cavalry that gives you all the basics. The Clancy style of writing, lots of facts and plodding movement work well in this type of book given that you buy it to learn about the subject.

Overall it is a good effort and if you have been happy with the other books in the series you will enjoy this one. My only complaints were that there did not seam to be enough photos of the equipment for me. Sure they had all the main items, but I wanted a picture of every truck and tractor covered in the book. I also would have liked to have seen a comparison of the other counties main battle tanks - something he did with his Submarine and Aircraft Carrier books. And one last little complaint - what was with his ending every chapter with some junior high school type rah-rah cheer. We are talking about the military; do we need this type of comic book love-fest mentality?

Rating:
Summary: Average Work
Review: If you have read any of the other books in the series then you know what to expect with this one. The book follows the familiar format, it details out the machinery used, the troops, the division make up of the topic in the armed forces, a few interviews and it ends with some fictionalized short stories describing the expected types of encounters this area would face in the future. All in all a basic book on the armored cavalry that gives you all the basics. The Clancy style of writing, lots of facts and plodding movement work well in this type of book given that you buy it to learn about the subject.

Overall it is a good effort and if you have been happy with the other books in the series you will enjoy this one. My only complaints were that there did not seam to be enough photos of the equipment for me. Sure they had all the main items, but I wanted a picture of every truck and tractor covered in the book. I also would have liked to have seen a comparison of the other counties main battle tanks - something he did with his Submarine and Aircraft Carrier books. And one last little complaint - what was with his ending every chapter with some junior high school type rah-rah cheer. We are talking about the military; do we need this type of comic book love-fest mentality?

Rating:
Summary: Global, go-anywhere Cavalry with combined arms effects
Review: Its hard to compress more information in one small book than Clancy has done in Armored Cav, if you want to quibble with details write your own book and do better! Clancy has to take what he's been given and make an educated opinion of things to say what he has to say. He is wrong about the M551 Sheridan and the BFV for example, but that's ok, he has no direct personal experience.

This is a good REFERENCE book to quickly educate whoever it is you are teaching, which includes America's Soldiers who are still taught by rote memorization their specific tools and not the context of the modern battlefield--Clancy expresses the heavy fight here better than anyone so far. This is a fight with an armor versus firepower versus mobility struggle at its core, and its equipment driven. His biggest failing is not starting with the tracked tank in WWI and progressing through to Vietnam and giving us the historical context of Cavalry and how light tanks and tracked APCs in the jungles of Southeast Asia rumbled all over the countryside and trounced the enemy with light casualties. He avoids this controversy seeking instead to "plant the seeds" of a lighter, more rapidly deployable air-cavalry by describing the M8 "Buford" Armored Gun System as a replacement for the M551 Sheridan light tank, and conveniently not mentioning the latter was parachute airdropped into combat by the 3/73d Armor BN attached to the 82d Airborne Division for Panama. He then doesn't even mention the M8 in Airborne!, his other non-fiction U.S. Army book. This is a serious oversight. Clearly, Clancy knows the Armored Cav he is writing about is too heavy to rapidly deploy and he is trying to "nudge" it in the right direction without the 2-D tanker-mentality realizing it will have to fly in aircraft and parachute jump and have a negative knee-jerk reaction. But by not describing how U.S. armored vehicles were inferior in some ways to German tanks in WWII, Clancy fails to explain why we went overboard with the M1/M2-M3 families, creating the not-enough armor inferiority complex which drives many in Armor branch which has made the force too heavy to move and irrelevent in a world that moves by air.

However the "silver lining" in this "cloud", is that Clancy explains how the Armored Cav is a mini-combined arms team; with almost all the elements of combat power and if he had the history covered up front (easy to do---get Iron Chariots author Ralph Zumbro and add to the beginning) he could have shown that this combined-arms organization came out of WWII mechanized cavalry experiences when we had to fight for our reconnaissance. Clancy needs to mention briefly how the 1st Cavalry Division was once a helicopter Air Cavalry Division and what went wrong in Vietnam and why it reverted back to a heavy formation.

If you pay attention you will see that Major MacGregor was the S-3 for the Desert Storm armored fight described--he is now Colonel Douglas MacGregor whose book, "Breaking he Phalanx" enlightened the entire Army to the benefits of combining arms on a permanent basis--its his Cavalry mentality that is the inspiration behind the Army's current Brigade Combat Team "transformation" effort. Of course, it cost Colonel MacGregor his career for writing the book because he had a few ideas that were best not presented.

This book is a best-seller; I see no reason why it couldn't be updated with a history of mechanized cavalry to the present (pay attention to what the 11th ACR in Vietnam did), the portions on the M551 Sheridan/M8 AGS corrected and it taking on some new ideas and present the need for a lighter tracked AFV equipped "Global Cavalry" (not on road bound armored car wheels) that would be air-transportable in BOTH USAF fixed-wing aircraft and Army helicopters to effect decisive, 3-Dimensional maneuver capabilities. Such a 3-D force would be the ideal compliment to a heavier, 2-D force (not all of the force to conserve weight for strategic lift) composed of M1/M2s. The 3-D/2-D combination would make this force the force of choice for the 21st century.

Update this, book Mr. Clancy!!!

Airborne!

Rating:
Summary: Global, go-anywhere Cavalry with combined arms effects
Review: Its hard to compress more information in one small book than Clancy has done in Armored Cav, if you want to quibble with details write your own book and do better! Clancy has to take what he's been given and make an educated opinion of things to say what he has to say. He is wrong about the M551 Sheridan and the BFV for example, but that's ok, he has no direct personal experience.

This is a good REFERENCE book to quickly educate whoever it is you are teaching, which includes America's Soldiers who are still taught by rote memorization their specific tools and not the context of the modern battlefield--Clancy expresses the heavy fight here better than anyone so far. This is a fight with an armor versus firepower versus mobility struggle at its core, and its equipment driven. His biggest failing is not starting with the tracked tank in WWI and progressing through to Vietnam and giving us the historical context of Cavalry and how light tanks and tracked APCs in the jungles of Southeast Asia rumbled all over the countryside and trounced the enemy with light casualties. He avoids this controversy seeking instead to "plant the seeds" of a lighter, more rapidly deployable air-cavalry by describing the M8 "Buford" Armored Gun System as a replacement for the M551 Sheridan light tank, and conveniently not mentioning the latter was parachute airdropped into combat by the 3/73d Armor BN attached to the 82d Airborne Division for Panama. He then doesn't even mention the M8 in Airborne!, his other non-fiction U.S. Army book. This is a serious oversight. Clearly, Clancy knows the Armored Cav he is writing about is too heavy to rapidly deploy and he is trying to "nudge" it in the right direction without the 2-D tanker-mentality realizing it will have to fly in aircraft and parachute jump and have a negative knee-jerk reaction. But by not describing how U.S. armored vehicles were inferior in some ways to German tanks in WWII, Clancy fails to explain why we went overboard with the M1/M2-M3 families, creating the not-enough armor inferiority complex which drives many in Armor branch which has made the force too heavy to move and irrelevent in a world that moves by air.

However the "silver lining" in this "cloud", is that Clancy explains how the Armored Cav is a mini-combined arms team; with almost all the elements of combat power and if he had the history covered up front (easy to do---get Iron Chariots author Ralph Zumbro and add to the beginning) he could have shown that this combined-arms organization came out of WWII mechanized cavalry experiences when we had to fight for our reconnaissance. Clancy needs to mention briefly how the 1st Cavalry Division was once a helicopter Air Cavalry Division and what went wrong in Vietnam and why it reverted back to a heavy formation.

If you pay attention you will see that Major MacGregor was the S-3 for the Desert Storm armored fight described--he is now Colonel Douglas MacGregor whose book, "Breaking he Phalanx" enlightened the entire Army to the benefits of combining arms on a permanent basis--its his Cavalry mentality that is the inspiration behind the Army's current Brigade Combat Team "transformation" effort. Of course, it cost Colonel MacGregor his career for writing the book because he had a few ideas that were best not presented.

This book is a best-seller; I see no reason why it couldn't be updated with a history of mechanized cavalry to the present (pay attention to what the 11th ACR in Vietnam did), the portions on the M551 Sheridan/M8 AGS corrected and it taking on some new ideas and present the need for a lighter tracked AFV equipped "Global Cavalry" (not on road bound armored car wheels) that would be air-transportable in BOTH USAF fixed-wing aircraft and Army helicopters to effect decisive, 3-Dimensional maneuver capabilities. Such a 3-D force would be the ideal compliment to a heavier, 2-D force (not all of the force to conserve weight for strategic lift) composed of M1/M2s. The 3-D/2-D combination would make this force the force of choice for the 21st century.

Update this, book Mr. Clancy!!!

Airborne!

Rating:
Summary: Guided Tour series continues....
Review: Like the other six books in the Guided Tour series, Tom Clancy and John D. Gresham take the reader on a behind-the-scenes field trip of a military unit. This time, the focus is on an Army armored cavalry regiment, its equipment and personnel, the history of armored cavalry, and two short fictional scenarios depicting the use of this type of unit in combat.

The one new feature (later included in all the later books) is a softball interview with now-retired General Fred Franks, former commander of the VII Corps during Desert Storm and later commander of TRADOC, Training and Doctrine Commmand. Although informative, Armored Cav is more of a love letter to the Army than an unbiased piece of reporting. Still, fans of Clancy and of military hardware should not pass this book (or any of this series)up. Just park high expectations at the roadside and you'll enjoy this for what it is, and not what it could have been.

Rating:
Summary: Guided Tour series continues....
Review: Like the other six books in the Guided Tour series, Tom Clancy and John D. Gresham take the reader on a behind-the-scenes field trip of a military unit. This time, the focus is on an Army armored cavalry regiment, its equipment and personnel, the history of armored cavalry, and two short fictional scenarios depicting the use of this type of unit in combat.

The one new feature (later included in all the later books) is a softball interview with now-retired General Fred Franks, former commander of the VII Corps during Desert Storm and later commander of TRADOC, Training and Doctrine Commmand. Although informative, Armored Cav is more of a love letter to the Army than an unbiased piece of reporting. Still, fans of Clancy and of military hardware should not pass this book (or any of this series)up. Just park high expectations at the roadside and you'll enjoy this for what it is, and not what it could have been.

Rating:
Summary: Great reference on CAV hardware.
Review: This work provides excellent and detailed reference on the various equipment the Army uses.However the interviews with General Franks are quite simpilistic and childish in some cases,it seems they were conducted to give the book some volume. One example of this is Clancy explains in DETAIL the difference between a Tank and an APC. However in the interview section he presents this question to the general and continues to give a full 1&1/2 pages of reply which the reader is already familir with.There are some prejudices in the book as well such as the labling of southestern individulas as "charging fanatics"and the need for a better ammunition for stopping them in their tracks. Try to ignore the authors personal opinions and interviews presented and this will make a great and detailed reference work on Army technology.

Rating:
Summary: Good reference material
Review: Very good book to be used for technical reference. It is NOT a novel (a la "Hunt For Red October"), so if that is what you are looking for, look elsewhere. Fairly accurate, if a bit dated. A lot has happened since this book was published. The M8 AGS was never fielded, the 2d ACR-L is now a Stryker Brigade, both 2d ACR and 3d ACR have seen combat in Iraq and elements of 11th ACR are heading over, and the then CPT H.R. McMasters of E Troop, 2d ACR (see battle of 73 Easting) is now COL McMasters and the 71st Colonel of the 3d ACR. So Mr Clancy, you have a lot of catching up to do! Till then - "BRAVE RIFLES!" Aiee-yah.....



Rating:
Summary: Lacking
Review: well, in first place i love clancy's non-fiction book, and this one is great! it makes a full review of a army's cavalry brigade organization and composition, and at the same time a review of all the heavy weaponry used by the US army, the tanks, armored transports, the artilery, well, just abou everything! if u want to learn all about that, just go running to buy this book, u'll love it... i did :)