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"Equally, they're conducting the helicopter assaults in comparitively benign conditions - i.e. not against heavily defended air space, requiring the close co-ordination of AEW, Fast Air, AH, artillery, support helicopters and Hercs. "

Errr, try telling the Black Watch that, but book the ambulance first, and their operations include all of your list. As do those of many other battlegroups and company groups in Afghan over the past couple of years, hell, even the logistcs patrols involve all those.

Your point supports concentrating those capabilities in a single formation, because as Ive now mentioned several times, its the grouping of your air assualt-para capable combat support & CSS elements in the brigade that really make it effective (compared to the old 5 Aib - 24 Amb Bdes) and I see no purpose dispersing them across two weaker formations even if on paper they result has more troops.

Much more useful would be another light brigade or 2, which is acheivable within the force structures (as evidenced by 11 & 52). With the mass high end air assualt role you mention being a 1 per decade or so event then 16 is more than adeqaute to provide that specialism as 3 Cdo does the amphib. so use the rest of the line brigades for numbers & sustaining operations on a more modular basis (each Bde able to operate as a mixture of mech and light roled battlegroups with asociated equipement and vehicle fleets, as all have and are doing, but a clear and overiding lesson from ops is that all formations, armd-mech-light-air-cdo need ready access to lots of helos, attack, utility and support.