Horses are also much more maneuverable than cars. Not to say faster, but they can weave in an out of crowds, stuff like that. With a car, I’d love to see a cop try to weave in and out of a crowd like a cavalry officer (or horseback officer?) can.
Plus, they’re threatening as hell. A 500 pound beast standing about seven feet tall, with a fully armored police/riot officer riding it? Unless I had a gun, I wouldn’t think about it, and if I had a gun, I’d either be using it for something other than cops (stealing, mugging, etc.), or the riot I would be in would have a hellova lot more to worry about than guys on horses.
Cavalry:
-High targets.
-Need a lot of food.
-Spooked (Don’t lie: I’m sure that the horses can get the crap scared out of 'em too.)
-Tons of training.
-Big targets, easy to hit.
-Not stable enough to be able to mount a vehicle weapon (50 .cal, TOW missile, etc…etc…)
-Probably be hard to aim with anything other than a carbine on horseback, especially if the horse was moving.
You have to remember, Horses as gunpowder units didn’t last long. The Tercio system in the 1600’s (I believe) had carabiners using a caracole system with their riflemen. Just line up horses and men with their carbines, have them fire, file to the back, guys in front fire, etc…etc.
It basically made them mobile riflemen with less effective weapons and a higher target. Of course, you had specialized troops such as the ones in India/Pakistan using rifles, but they had been raised on them by birth, and they used a very special weapon (the stock looked like something of a fish hook, iirc).
Not to mention, today you have things they didn’t have to worry about.
-Rapid fire weapons in vast quantities.
-Man-portable explosive weapons (grenades, RPG’s, anti-tank munitions)
-Motor vehicles, 100-ton tanks.
-Snipers (even though they did exist back then)
I could POSSIBLY see a use for cavalry troops as recon, it might make them slightly less noticable than say, in a recon vehicle. But the recon vehicle doesn’t tire (unless something breaks), moves faster, and could probably defend itself better.
You can’t armor every square inch of a horse and rider? Why in the world not? Modern body armor for riders is limited by what a grunt can pack on his two legs. If he is riding a horse, there is no reason that the level of armor cannot be vastly upgraded. There is also no reason the horse cannot be armored from ears to hoofs. The armor that bogs down a walking human is peanuts to a heavy horse.
Cavalry was deemed obsolete in warfare a century ago? So? Apples and oranges. We had no way to armor horses a century ago. A century ago we were talking about using them in open warfare, not city patrol.
Sitting duck to machine guns? We design defenses based on the threat likely to be encountered. The majority of the threat in city patrol in Iraq is NOT machine guns. It is small arms and roadside bombs. And properly armored, the horse can have and provide some protection vs light machine guns. Sure, you’re not going to survive a burst from a .50, but then neither is a Humvee.
Sitting duck to RPG’s? Actually, as the OP pondered, the total squad would be less vulnerable to RPG’s. Instead of the metal jet from the rpg squirting through the armor of the humvee and spraying hot metal around the inside of the whole cab, it would take out one horse, and only possibly it’s rider.
Vulnerable to roadside bombs? Not as much as Humvees. The horses would be less likely to set off various automatic detonation devices. The patrol could be staggered by 10 or 20 ft per horse, making the damage from directed detonation devices a couple of horses and riders instead of the whole crew.
Take too long to get them trained? The OP didn’t mandate that they be put in place immediately. Non-issue in the debate.
More vulnerable to suicide bombers? It is unclear to me how this would be the case. As with roadside bombs, tactics could make them less vulnerable.
Too much support network required? Sheesh. Compared to what? If you compare them to Humvee maintenance, it’s not really that much. At least grain does not blow up when you are attempting to get it to the front like fuel does. Would you rather be hauling straw to the front lines or gasoline?
The OP was not talking about vast cavalry charges across the fields to replace tanks. Once trained, we are not talking about thousands of replacement horses every week. The US has a HUGE ability to raise and train new horses if it wants to (obviously not overnight but that is not the concern as noted above.)
So… Given innovative armor design for the horse and rider, I’d say that this could very well be an effective tool in an environment like Iraq.
But…
it’s too site specific for it ever to be developed. Humvees are very multi-purpose, so while they are fairly vulnerable in Iraq, they can also be tasked with following up the armor charges, hauling luggage, or mounting tank killing rockets. Armored horse and riders would be soley for a job that the military really does NOT want to have.
Also, if the crowd does get rowdy, a cop on a bike is easily knocked over. A cop on a horse, not.
Returning to the OP: Are horses susceptible to heat stroke? Maneuvering in full armor under the Iraq sun would be pretty dangerous for them if they are. Even for humans, from what I’ve seen in museums, full plate body armor covering all limbs and the head was a Northern European thing. In more southern climes, armor leaves parts of the arms or legs uncovered (Greece, Rome) or is made from small hinged steel plates (Rome again) or chain mail instead of solid plate (providing more ventilation), and helmets don’t cover the whole head and face like a bucket.
Someone commented that fodder should be easier to transport than gasoline because it doesn’t explode. Maybe not, but hay does spontaneously combust on occasion. Fodder can also spoil, and attract vermin; gasoline doesn’t.
Deployment of horses would also be limited by disease. There are many countries (including most of sub-Saharan Africa) where diseases like sleeping sickness, rinderpest and hoof-and-mouth disease remain endemic and could quickly turn horse cavalry into casualties (not to mention make it impossible, under USDA rules, to return the survivors to the US without lengthy quarantine). Vehicles are pretty indifferent to local germs and insects.
Body armor useful for anything but deflecting shrapnel and low-calibur rounds is heavy. Most modern body armor, unless a ceramic plate is placed within the armor, which significantly increases its weight, really isn’t the cure-all for bullets. As well, you’re covering a horse in something that very well could keep him from cooling off. Remember, you’re in the desert.
I fail to see how it’s apples and oranges. Horses were used solely in warfare on the open range, and any general to bring them into close quarters was probably pretty stupid unless he knew what the hell he was doing. This is partially the reason why steppe tribes (Mongolians, Tartars, Huns, etc.) were horse-based. Horse warfare is ideal in the wide, open ranges of the steppe. And this was before ranged weapons were invented on the scale we’re talking about - during the time of Attilla and before, unless arrows were used on massive scales (i.e., Persians, Huns), the arrowheads were rather ineffective, because they couldn’t be launched with enough power to penetrate much armor.
But now you’re talking about having thousands of soldiers armed with weapons that could outshoot and outdamage longbowmen and recurved bow troops. Do you think horses would survive long?
As well horses, weren’t made to clash head on with other soldiers. They were chosen for their speed - they utilized the classic surprise tactic, as well as shock. If we have vehicles which can travel at twice, or even three or four times their speed, why do we need them except for riot work?
But a HUMVEE can also be used in many tasks, is faster, and can carry troops as well as supplied. Not to mention it can be mounted with a .50 cal gun for protection.
Nice. Now you’re having trained horsemen and horses act as RPG fodder?
I’ll have to agree with you here, they’re more maneuverable than the HUMVEEs, so they may be able to navigate roadside bombs better.
Actually, it is an issue. Why? Because having horses and horsemen that could be trained for modern battlefield conditions takes a while, and directly affects the idea’s relative effectiveness. It’s a cost-benefit analysis. “It takes me three months and $100,000 to put a horseman on the battlefield. If he gets killed without doing too much, that certainly puts the time and money to waste.” Which isn’t to say that it will, but that the training time for both the soldier and the horse directly affect the effectiveness of a horse unit.
Bad part is, 1) the horse has nowhere to run but forward and back, or maybe into a small alleyway. 2) A HUMVEE can be manned with troops to watch out for such a thing. 3) A HUMVEE stands a small, but existant, chance of surviving the bomb. A horse doesn’t, unless the bomber was incredibly incompetent.
One: Straw takes up more space than gasoline.
Two: A HUMVEE can’t starve.
Three: Since straw takes up more room than gasoline, you need more trucks to carry the gasoline. You need to fuel those trucks. Therefore, you need more fuel to fuel the supply trucks. That means the supply line is longer, and requires more troops to adequately protect.
Those charges may be the only thing a horse is ever good at, besides crowd control. The horse in a military sense is made for speed. The horse, properly bed into a warhorse, is a beast that’s about 6-7 feet high. It’s not going to be hiding.
Not to mention: Horses aren’t like people. You just can’t up and replace horses with some more horses. For the military, you need a very specific breed of horse, a conditioned type of horse, to fight. Not to mention you need to train it heavily to withstand the shrill noise of gunfire. Sure, the US COULD replace them, but the time and money could probably go elsewhere.
Their only advantage in modern warfare would be that they have a lower thermal signature than motorized transportation, making them less vulnerable to heat-seeking weapons. But this hardly outweighs the many disadvantages already noted.
Slight hijack: it’s interesting how soldiers aren’t the only one’s who must feel war’s saddnes at being a long way from home. Cairo’s taxis are pulled by descendants of horses abandoned by the Australians after WWI; bloodlines developed by the Moors wound up being ridden by Commanches; and although mules can be bred in the British ilses as easily as anywhere, the Indian Army imported theirs from Missouri.
A horse, at least the sort of horses used for military purposes in the West, both for cavalry and as artillery draft, weigh in at from 1000 to 1200 pounds and stands from 15 to 16 hands at the top of the shoulder – a hand is 4 inches, so from five feet to five and a half feet tall. Smaller horses can’t carry the weight required and bigger horses eat too much and require a ladder to mount.
The maximum load a military size saddle horse can carry day-in and day-out is about 250 pounds. To make this work you have to restrict the amount of equipment, water, rations, spare shoes, grooming and personal items, arms and ammunition you strap on the beast and you have to use smallish cavalrymen. In the old days the army tried to avoid horsemen who weighed more than 150 pounds. How do you armor a horse without overloading it?
In order to stay in usable shape a working horse need to be fed and watered twice a day. A working horse will easily go through a 40 or 50 pound bale of quality alfalfa hay and five or eight pounds of grain (oats and corn mix, preferably). If not fed and watered properly a horse will go out of shape pretty quickly. If not groomed morning and night, if not unsaddled, it will develop open sores on its back and become unusable. Same thing if the saddle doesn’t fit or is not properly padded. The animal has to be fed and watered and groomed regularly, no matter what it is doing or what the tactical situation is.
On a day-out-day-in basis you can not march a fully loaded horse for much more than 30 miles a day. A fifty mile march on a horse that is already hard used might well kill it, resulting in a dismounted, and therefor useless trooper, sitting at the side of the trail with 100 pounds of saddle, bridle, water, rations and Lord knows what else.
Horses are a big target. They are not skilled at finding cover of concealment. They resist camouflage clothing. They sicken of bad feed or water. They are suseptable to all sorts of contagious deceases. You really can’t paint them desert tan or woodland green.
When horses were widely used for military purposes almost everyone knew the rudiments of horsemanship. Back then the people who knew horses knew what a pain they were and many joined the infantry during the American Civil War just because they didn’t want to spend 12 or 18 hours a day taking care of a horse. I suppose the last war that the horse played any significant combat roll was the Second Boer War on the South African Veldt or WWI in Palestine. Today there are few young men or women who know anything about horsemanship. Training cavalry would be a gigantic under taking. The British Army does it for the parade squadrons of the two Horse Guard regiments but that is a comparatively small number of people and horses every year and they are not trained as tactical horsemen.
In my judgement the use of mounted soldiers in warfare, especially the war the US now finds itself in in Iraq, is just impractical. There are better ways to do it.
One BIG disadvantage occurs after the horse has been killed. It wouldn’t go over well on CNN et al. That might seem a trivial point, but an awful lot of viewers (voters) would be mightily pissed at seeing a dead horse.
Gene Wolfe addressed this topic rather nicely in one of the essays from The Castle of the Otter. He doesn’t think cavalry is necessarily a thing of the past and that opinion is rather well thought out. Well worth reading of you can locate a copy.
We are not talking about bringing them into army on army combat! We are talking about using them to get patrols from place to place.
The Humvees on patrol are not using speed! They humvees are not attacking anything! It is not a combat situation. Our soldiers are very rarely being killed by combat, very often by roadside bombs.
You mean exactly like I ended my last message by noting?
??? Is this something new to Iraq? How are using horses as cannon fodder worse than using men riding in Humvees as cannon fodder as we are now? Damn right I’d give up a trained horse over a young soldier.
And this is worse for horsemen than for Combat Medics or Humvee drivers? All military personell require training.
1)Horses can go sideways far more easily than vehicles. 2) You don’t think the men riding the horse would look out for bombs? 3)Yes, you would be more likely to have the one man on the horse that was targetted killed. Sure kill of one versus probable kill of 4.
[QUOTE=Robert Emmett]
Two: A HUMVEE can’t starve.
[quote]
A Humvee also can’t find it’s own fuel in the field.
Once again, apples and oranges. We are not in open battle. We are not fighting rows of tanks. We are not fighting hundreds of troops with machine guns. Humvees are not being used as fighting vehicles. They are being used as a way to get troops around town to show a presence.
The stuff about being overheated in the desert may very well be valid. However, we know that people have ridden horses in the desert for ages. I am unsure how a horse cools off and how that would be able to be incorporated.
Whatever the arguments might be for using horses in modern warfare, I hope they never convince the Defense Department.
I’m no PETAn, I’m not even a vegetarian. But I think it’s bad enough humans have to kill each other in war, without dragging those beautiful animals into it, to get horribly slaughtered for reasons that mean nothing to them, and that they are incapable of understanding. Let’s keep them on the racetracks and off the battlefield.
