Let’s say that instead of 4-door metallic vehicles with some armor patrolling the streets, we had mounted patrols consisting of men with heavy body armor mounted on horses with light body armor (of course, all bullet-resistant, and he would be armed with the standard infantry weapons, since we don’t have power armor yet and he would be weighed down by the armor.)
How effective would this be versus automobiles? There are some advantages:
– Better mobility and line of sight in snap situations.
– Harder to hit with rockets.
– Harder to hit with pressure-activated bombs (I don’t know how much these are used in Iraq nowadays, versus remote-detonation or suicide.)
– If all your squad is mounted, you don’t have one point of failure with regard to transportation.
Now, the disadvantages:
– If you do get hit with a bomb, your armor won’t do much even if it is totally bulletproof.
– Suicide bombers would have a field day. Run up and detonate. Might be easier to spot and take down, though, if you have several people getting each others backs that have a 180 line of sight, rather than limited sight that comes from a vehicle?
Perhaps I’ve answered my own question: even if the military thought outside the box and did this the casualties would be great from suicide bombers.
A second question: would mounted cavalry with barding be better than lightly armored vehicles for a traditional urban battle? In addition to the advantages above, they are probably more durable in combat since there will be more bullets and fragments flying versus close-up explosions that kill with pressure as much as by fragments.
OTOH, they wouldn’t have much of an advantage in a traditional fight versus infantry with no transportation at all. In a traditional battle (versus long-term patrolling punctuated by periods of great violence,) you don’t have the need for medium-term endurance and short-term speed the horse brings.
Rake machinegun fire low across a street and suddenly your patrolling cavalry is infantry. The cavalrymen themselves have a nice high profile as targets. Both cavalrymen and horses may have a better chance of dodging fire when moving fast, but when patrolling a single RPG or grenade may do more damage than it would to soldiers in a vehicle. Lastly, it’s hard to mount a grenade launcher or heavy machinegun on a horse, so you’d lose any advantage - however small - from vehicle-mounted weapons.
Not to mention training of soldiers, training of horse, the fact that horses don’t like gunfire… sensitive ears and all. Potentially dealing with wounded horses…
But, despite all that, cavalry was successfully used in war long after the introduction of firearms. It was only the invention of the machine gun that made it obsolete. Presumably, horses (stupid creatures that they are) can be trained to ignore or endure the sound of rifles and cannon.
Elephants, OTOH, seem to be too intelligent to risk death for their human masters’ sake; war-elephants, from what I’ve read, were notoriously unreliable and panic-prone even in Hannibal’s day.
Single shot rifles, yes. But machine gun fire will drive them up the wall. I honestly don’t know if you could shoot a M-16 repeatedly from a horse’s back.
You certainly could train them, but it’d be a lot of work. Not to mention logistics. Medical care… shoes…
Cavalry has not historically been of much use in other than open terrain -with the exception of crowd control.
Cavalry was dead as a modern combat arm by the middle, despite the denial on the part of most powers. How often in the (American) civil war was cavalry (as cavalry) successful against a prepared infantry force? The only advantage it has over infantry is mobility.
Besides, my guess is I can make and distribute shitloads of caltrops before you have your cavalry ready for combat.
That’s not really an issue as horses have been used with guns in many wars.
That’s kind of the point. Mobility. Cavalry are not heavy shock troops. Cavalry, from horse cavalry to modern armored and air cavalry are best employed in a role of reconaisance, screening and flanking opperations force security and raiding. The horse mounted frontal assault was made obsolete as soon as the first general realized it could be countered by equiping his men with long pointy sticks (pikes) or bows.
Actually, I take that back. In addition to it’s scouting and recon role, the heavy mounted cavalryman was used as a high speed shock troop. But once projectile weapons could unseat the advantage of being mounted, that role wasn’t taken up again until the invention of modern mechanized tanks and APCs.
Back to the OP. A horse has no place in modern urban warfare. You can’t armor every inch of horse and rider. Most modern rifles can shoot through body armor anyway. You can’t mount a .50 cal or a TOW missle on a horse like you can a Humvee. And granted my experience is playing Battlefield 2, but a modern tank or APC is pretty formidable in an urban battlefield. It’s nearly indestructible to small arms fire and it bristles with weapons. Plus it’s just intimidating as hell. You just want to hide and get away from it.
First off a horse is very, very vulnerable in modern war. It has been long known that to stop a cavalryman you need only shoot his horse. Nowadays, the battlefield is full of hot sharp, fast things any of which will make a horse pack it in.
Next is the issue of training. A remarkable number of Americans can ride, but still that is nowhere near to a majority. Such a unit would need unique training in any case.
Then there is the matter of expense. Such a unit would need many, many special pieces of kit. Is it worth the trouble to fill the system with “Harness, medium, leather, black” and whatnot?
And that is the bottom line. Is it worth it?
Such a unit would be war cool. It might even have some special advantages in special situations. But would it be a good general-purpose outfit? Why go to the trouble to field a unit that could do a few unusual things very well when it is easier and cheaper to field a number of larger teams that can do most things well enough.
I was just telling my students how both Japan and Germany in WWII discovered that it’s a lot easier to build an airplane than to train a good pilot. By the end, both of them had more planes than worthy pilots.
My problem with the horse idea is that the replacement time is going to be HUGE. You can’t just build factories in a few months using already planned out designs and processes. You have to breed the horses to breed more horses, and you have to train the horses. No amount of three-full-shifts-a-day will get you any more horses when you need them THIS WEEK. Machines are more repairable, more controllable, and easier to make and modify, and they don’t need to be trained for months in a personal manner.
Just from a support point of view - horse would probably require as much or more maintnance as a fleet of hummers, and you can’t swap out parts on a broken horse. (Just a simple thought and to mee a funny picture: “Hey sarge, we’ll get going soon as we replace the front driver side leg on your gelding there, Sir!”)
First you have to train the horses and riders. You’d have to train an awful lot of both to reach the numbers needed. Training either to the level needed takes a substantial amount of time–it’s not something you can do in a 6 week crash course (at least not to the level of skill you’d need for either to be effective in a battle situation). And where do you get that many horses? If you breed them, you have to wait several years before they’re ready. I don’t know how old the average mounted police horse is, but I’ll bet it’s a lot older than the 3 year olds you see racing. The youngsters would be much too skittish. You could buy them once they’re older, but that could get expensive.
You’d also have to transport them to the battle zones. That would be a lot of horse trailers moving along the supply line. You can’t really ride or even pony them from the nearest port into Bagdad unless you want to go very slowly and end up with a bunch of exhausted horses. You’d also have to transport all their gear, and horses need a lot of stuff. There’s all their tack (saddles, bridles, halters, etc.); farrier, vet, and dental supplies; blankets/fly sheets/wraps/etc.; grooming equipment; barn supplies (buckets, feed bins, wheelbarrows, bedding, pitchforks, shovels, etc.); and all their feed and hay.
Then you’d need to maintain them. Horses are high maintenance animals. You’d need a staff of vets, farriers, horse dentists, and barn workers. On average, horses need shoeing/trims every 6 weeks, teeth floating a couple times a year, and twice a year shots and vet check ups–that’s just maintenance outside of battle injuries. Horses aren’t like jeeps that you can park and forget about until needed. They need constant care. They eat, drink, and poop a lot; can be picky about drinking water from a new location; can colic if their feed changes (either in what it is or the routine in which it’s given); get ulcers or other ailments; and they have an uncanny knack for injuring themselves even outside of a battle situation. You’d also have to figure out how to deal with all their waste and spoiled bedding (did I mention they poop a lot?).
I can see how horses may have an advantage in maneuverability and can go places a motorized vehicle can’t. But I’d still rather ride in a jeep or on a motorcylce if I had to go into battle. If a motorized vehicle gets hit with a bullet, it may keep going long enough to get me out of danger. If it doesn’t, I can likely jump out of it (unless it explodes). A horse with a bullet wound isn’t as likely to keep moving. If it’s mortally wounded, it will very likely fall–and it’s not always that easy to jump off a suddenly collapsing horse. I really don’t want a 1200 lbs animal falling on me in the middle of a battle (or ever, for that matter).
Back when we were actually doing something useful to find Bin Laden in Afghanistan, some special ops troops actually did use horses on the battlefield. article here
Despite a certain amount of romanticism about horse-cavalry (Half a league, half a league, half a league onward), horse-cavalry was obsolescent by the time of the First World War and obsolete by WWII simply because mechanized infantry did the job so much more efficiently and economically. Small special purpose mounted units are useful for things like crowd control, rough ground search and routine park policing but the cost and wastage of introducing (reintroducing) large, heavily armed horse dependent formations into combat is simply prohibitive.
Horses have always been an inefficient way to wage war. They eat a lot, they get sick, they break legs with alarming frequency, they require a fair amount of training and constant care. Germany had a fair amount of horse transport in WWII as did Russia but primarily because there was a lack of alternative motor transport. In addition it is a whole lot easier to transport petroleum fuel and spare parts than to provide the fifty pounds of fodder and four or five pounds of grain a single horse requires every day to keep it is shape for heavy use, to say nothing of the large remount pool necessary to replace the inevitable wastage.
This doesn’t even begin to consider the vulnerability of a one thousand pound beast, five feet tall and five feet long to small arms fire, automatic weapons fire and high explosives, whether the beast is armored or not.
Too expensive, too vulnerable, too wasteful, too inefficient. There is a reason that the last US regular army cavalry was dismounted during WWII. Simply because there is a cheaper, more effective way to do all the stuff traditional cavalry did.
I did forget about several huge factors, and thanks for reminding me of them:
– Lack of armor everywhere on the horse (can you even armor the legs for movement purposes?)
– Lack of training for the riders
– Long replacement cycle for injured horses
And perhaps the biggest challenge,
– Breeding and training true warhorses.
The expense to do this, to breed and train horses that can stand the sounds of combat AND can carry a heavy load, would likely make them even more expensive than a decently-armored automobile.
However, I still would think that in crowd control situations, one might apply armor to horses effectively. In many situations, you’re not sure if you’ll just be forming a line to cordon people, knocking people with blunt sticks, or firing carbines at fleeting pistol-wielding rebels. If you’re going to use a horse for crowd control in a potentially dangerous situation (which I’m not sure you’d do anyway,) might as well give it some protection from the types of bullets that are easily concealed.
If you go to Ybor City, Tampa’s main bar district, on a Friday or Satuday night you will usually see one or two cops patrolling on horseback. I’ve always wondered why so many police departments still use horses. Where can they go that a car, motorcycle or bicycle can’t go? In Central Park in NYC, I can see the sense of it, but otherwise . . .
Basically, they’re great for crowd control, when you don’t need to worry about them being shot. They loom. They’re good public relations, they’re able to go anywhere, and they’re intelligent. They can act independently, and more importantly, they let the cop riding them act independently. The horse can do the driving, and the cop can watch the people. And there is a huge difference between being on a bike and being on a horse, for purposes of social interaction. Height alone, and the fact that a cop on a bike looks silly.
A horse is more intelligent than a car – the fly that bites a horse’s rump is more intelligent than a car – but I thought horses were actually rather stupid as domesticated animals go. Was I wrong?
It’s hard to say. How do you define “intelligence” in a horse. Certainly some of the things they do can seem stupid to a human. I can trot by a trash can innumerable times to the right, only to have my horse spook to high heaven the first time we pass it to the left. Seems pretty silly until you realize that horses have eyes on either side of their head (unlike the forward facing eyes of humans) and what they see out of one eye may seem very different out of the other one. In fact, the whole spooking/running away thing can make them seem stupid to us. How stupid do you have to be to spook because of a piece of paper blowing by? However, as prey animals, it’s what they should do. They don’t have to hunt or scrounge for food, it’s pretty much there for the most part. So curiousity and bravery isn’t rewarded so much as “run away from anything you don’t understand” is.
On in the intelligence side, they have very long memories and are extremely trainable. We couldn’t use them like we do otherwise.
Using their intelligence comes into play in situations like going down a hill on tricky footing. With a bike, you’d have to pick your own path and decide exactly where you go. With a horse, you can let him have his head and pick out where to put his feet. In that case, you only have to give directions to the horse if he stops moving forward or gets too far off the track. I imagine it would be similar in a crowd control situation where there’s lot of debris on the ground. The rider would just direct the horse forward and let the horse choose how to avoid the debris. Not so with a bike where you’d have to steer around it.
A horse is more intelligent than a car – the fly that bites a horse’s rump is more intelligent than a car – but I thought horses were actually rather stupid as domesticated animals go. Was I wrong?