The Armoured Cavalry Commander

Maj Nick Homerski - September 25th, 2025

Reading Time: 15 min

Manoeuvre as the Corps Raison d’Être

The War in Ukraine provides us a modern example of how attrition focused warfare quickly results in a stalemate, costing an unfathomable loss of life and resources. The historical solution to this has been manoeuvre warfare through which operations are planned to seek to defeat the enemy by shattering their moral and physical cohesion – their ability to fight as an effective, coordinated whole – rather than by destroying him physically through incremental attrition (paraphrased from our Canadian Land Operations doctrine). Reviewing the principles of manoeuvre warfare, it is evident why Armoured Cavalry is so well suited. However, to refine the scope of change needed within the RCAC at the tactical level, it is important to note that Mission Type Orders focus on the effects to be achieved.

The ACRIB defines manoeuvre as the “employment of forces on the battlefield through movement in combination with fire, or fire potential, to achieve a position of advantage in respect to the enemy in order to accomplish the mission. Although manoeuvre incorporates both fire and movement, it is distinct. For [armoured] forces, manoeuvre is cunning actions taken whose intent is to achieve a relative advantage.”³ The Armoured Cavalry TTP further explains that “the purpose of armoured cavalry today is to provide the Canadian Army (CA) with a versatile, agile, rapid, and lethal manoeuvre force. The armoured cavalry commander must possess initiative, flexibility, quick thinking, and a high degree of adaptability to employ their crews in the full spectrum of offensive, defensive, stability and enabling tasks.”⁴

However, there has been a CA fixation on the Advance To Contact and Hasty Attack as the combined arms “manoeuvre”, “offensive” operation. Over the years, many mechanized brigades, battle groups, and armoured squadrons have participated in multiple iterations of Ex MAPLE RESOLVE and Ex COMMON GROUND. These mounted forces would always conduct these operations by occupying wide and vast battlespaces with the comfort of the linear contiguous area of operations (AO) mindset. This comfort meaning that in a linear contiguous AO, ideally flanking forces are advancing in symmetry; thus, the threat is always to the front. As such, we pay lip service to rear and flank security, as we fight this attrition style warfare.

By reshaping how the Armoured Cavalry Commander understands and achieves manoeuvre, the RCAC can capitalize its new breadth of doctrinal utility.

Task versus Effect versus Drill

Much like planning by way of Battle Procedure, we must find a way to teach the execution of manoeuvre as a mindset. We have relied on TTPs to describe exactly how to do something. However, manoeuvre requires flexibility and rapid analysis of the fast-changing situation to adjust. When TTPs are too prescriptive, we write a script. A script is predictable. Predictable actions cannot outpace an enemy’s decision-action cycle. Armoured Cavalry Commanders need to be taught how to create an effect that achieves a task.

Task – Mission/Task Verbs (MTV) “are the lexicon of operations. Each verb has specific definitions and their usage removes ambiguity from formal military discussion and direction.”⁵ It is the what that needs to happen.

Effect – Determining the how is where the Armoured Cavalry Commander’s key critical thinking skillset is applied: the effect on the enemy that needs to be created through applying movement and fire (or fire potential).⁶ A clear understanding of enemy TTPs can enable some predictability to be leveraged; however, many factors need to be assessed in order to build a flexible manoeuvre plan that can be constantly adjusted during execution. It cannot be a scripted action.

Drill – These are applied as mitigation to small, limited situations of known or predictable risks, where there is less of an option for an enemy’s variance in actions. Repeatedly practiced and refined in past theatres of war, these drills have proven to be the best, initial threat mitigation.

For too long, we have been hung up on tasked based in the box thinking by holding a blurry line between tasks and effects while trying to make drills out of them.

Erasing the Script and Jumping Out of the Box

The Hasty Attack has very quickly become our one tool in the toolbox to manage contacts. We have drilled into our heads that a platoon objective requires a Hasty Attack. Our script banks on the fact that this platoon is isolated, as we try to achieve the ideal 90-degree angle between fire base and avenue of approach from the attack position. Should the enemy force have mutual support, the armoured force in its consolidation positions (ring of steel) would most certainly be in contact with the subsequent objective. It is impossible to manage this on the combat team net, concurrent to the infantry fighting through the objective. It also hopes that the enemy has not assessed the terrain and used it to their advantage to mitigate probable actions against it. Dominating lines of sight from the fire base on a position of advantage would certainly be registered for defensive fires or perhaps it is the reverse slope KZ itself.

The Hasty Attack is defined in ACRIB as an “… attack from the axis of advance … with readily available tps involving minimum preparation time. It is designed to maintain the momentum of the advance and take advantage of the enemy’s lack of readiness. The term ‘attack from the axis of advance’ is used to make the point that this attack should flow from the advance without a delay from which the enemy could take advantage.”⁷ By this definition, an Armoured Cavalry force alone could achieve the effect described; however, we have so closely tied this task to the drill outlined in the script of the Hasty Attack performa that we cannot divorce them in our minds. What is known to us as the way to conduct a Hasty Attack is very much a combined arms operation. ACRIB makes several references to the inclusion of other arms in the various stages of all attacks (hasty or deliberate). To employ an assault force or intimate support on an objective without infantry comes with extreme risk. Gun depression, sight, and blind spot limitations of AFVs makes a close fight extremely difficult – we are vulnerable to SRAAWs, as well as concealed mines or demolitions. Additionally, the limited tactical mobility of a wheeled platform slows the speed of advance considerably, thus, making them an even easier target.

From the enemy’s perspective, if there is an isolated platoon sized element in a defensive context, it is likely employed as a Combat Security Out Post (CSOP). These CSOPs are positioned forward of the battle zone with the purpose of forcing its opposition to prematurely deploy and lose momentum in the attack. Delaying or disrupting are its key tasks. Nevertheless, our automatic reaction to a platoon sized objective is to conduct a Hasty Attack. When following the script, this takes upwards of (and most often more than) an hour from first contact to consolidation. When decisively overmatched, CSOPs will withdraw to depth positions. Therefore, by initiating a Hasty Attack, we have achieved their objective for them and may not even have the chance to inflict any attrition. Additionally, it is not an economical application of combat power. From a force ratio perspective, we aim to achieve 3:1 in the offence. With an Armoured Cavalry squadron alone, we are at a 6+:1 ratio against a three AFV platoon – never mind the usual full application of a square combat team that doubles this. Lastly, we have seen the Russians take advantage of the predictability of moving onto and consolidating on an objective by sighting defensive fires, as well as rigging them for a type of reserve demolition. The ground is laden and rigged with explosives that are triggered once the opposition force takes the objective.

Taking these facts into consideration, Armoured Cavalry Commanders need to be taught the Attack By Fire as their key task to achieve effects to support manoeuvre. In the Attack By Fire, we can leverage standoff and movement space to maintain the advantage. Accounting for battlespace geometry and using multi-axis fires, half of a squadron can achieve a 3:1 ratio, while enabling the other half to bound past and maintain momentum. The application of fire onto the objective would simply be in the form of a troop shoot or troop fire control, in order to achieve the desired effect. Furthermore, we have made the MTV DESTROY synonymous with CLEAR. It is not necessary to inflict one hundred percent attrition on an objective to destroy it, by definition. Adherence to this further reinforces that moving onto an objective is not a necessary action.

AOs are becoming larger, and technology has necessitated greater dispersion with only rapid and decisive concentration of force. Marching line abreast towards the enemy in modern conflict is similar to the tactics of the War of 1812 with the attrition outcome of World War I. A key aspect of Armoured Cavalry is its operational mobility: “…the ability of forces to transition from one mission to another in different areas of the battlespace.”⁸ The infantry has always had the close fight. Rapid relocation to achieve effects across a dispersed AO needs to be the vital ground of the Armoured Cavalry Commander’s credibility in the Canadian Army. The LD, LOE, left and right boundaries have literally trapped us in a box.

Our doctrine mandates (for a good reason) that the squadron is the smallest manoeuvre element.⁹ To achieve these manoeuvre effects, we must develop the subcomponents of movement and fire at the troop and crew level. Troop fire management is the key skill and responsibility of the Troop Leader. There are three components to it:

Troop Fire Control – This pertains to the distribution of fire when multiple contacts present themselves. Troop Leaders must provide direction as to who engages what to ensure all contacts are engaged, there is no wasted ammunition by multiple vehicles engaging the same target, and to avoid contact fixation (whereby all involved in the contact are focused inward and there is loss of sight on what threat could be in mutual support or in reinforcement of it).

Troop Shoot – These are intended to have an effect across a target area over time. The effects support other elements of the manoeuvre plan. The Troop Leader must carefully consider where the rounds will impact, the volume of ammunition expended over time, the frequency of fire, as well as ammunition remaining versus requirement for resupply. It is critically important that a Troop Leader understands the fragmentation radius of the ammunition type they are employing to ensure coverage of the objective area. Current and future ammunition variants may require them to determine whether delay, impact, or airburst fuze setting will best achieve the effect, in a direct or semi-indirect application, based on angles of impact at various distances. When applying fire from a 25mm or 40mm platform, Troop Leaders need to consider dividing the objective into smaller engagement areas and giving the crew commanders the flexibility to adjust fire between bursts to obtain better coverage. Using a 100 rate of fire as opposed to 200 on the 25mm turret may also provide a more distributed and economical effect.

Ammunition Expenditure – Ammunition should be viewed as a key component in assessing combat power. When fire is required to achieve an effect, the rate of expenditure and holdings in all echelons is directly correlated to how long an operation can be maintained. Across the squadron, the Battle Captain is ultimately responsible for ammunition management as a function of combat power management. The Troop Leader’s role in supporting this is ensuring economical expenditure and accurate reporting. A Troop Leader must be aware of the duration of effect they can achieve based on calculations of ammunition holdings, considering the intervals of fire. They must frequently update the Battle Captain using the MASH format after every few contacts. This will enable the Battle Captain to redistribute ammunition, as well as the SSM and 2IC to forecast resupply based on the operational tempo.

Changing the Mindset

Depending on the concentration of force required to achieve the effect of the task, the movement aspect of manoeuvre may be prescribed by the OC. Troops may be moved by the OC as if they were chess pieces in order to obtain a position of relative advantage over the enemy. Principally, however, movement requires precise reading of the ground weighed against an enemy’s likely position and intention. Gone are the days of any AFV, including tanks, being the

king of the battlefield. Modern ATGMs, loitering or top-attack munitions, PGMs, and OWADs are easily capable of destroying AFVs. We simply cannot bound by taking positions on dominating terrain. This has closed the AFV engagement ranges to less than 1000m in Ukraine. Terrain must be used to maximize cover and concealment until the decisive moment when unmasking and the application of fire is required. We need to develop the skill of fighting around high features, not from them. Depression limitations on the LAV platforms force make it very difficult, if not impossible, to adopt a proper fire position.

The Armour Cavalry Commander’s mindset and capabilities must permeate down to the crew commander level. Advance To Contacts have turned our crew commanders into automatons – following along, being told where to go and when to shoot. There is no flexibility for independent action that is in line with a manoeuvrist “spirit,” nor does it enable what is supposed to be the fundamental way we operate: Mission Command.

All factors evaluated in the combat estimate have always enabled a commander to assess what force composition is required to achieve the effect and accomplish the task. A commander must develop COAs with an understanding of how it will be achieved two levels down, while building in flexibility for subordinate elements to apply Mission Command. Yet, at the Armoured Cavalry subunit level, we have become fixated on a prescribed, task tailored ORBAT that will mechanically conduct drills as dictated in reconnaissance or tank specific TTPs. With 19-20 AFVs within a squadron, nothing should preclude a squadron commander from task tailoring troops with more than four vehicles.

The principles of manoeuvre warfare outline the foundation upon which we can build the RCAC’s application of it – specifically, we must train within an environment that enables us to challenge Armoured Cavalry Commanders at all levels to act boldly and decisively. We must re-envision our training to leverage our most unique and important characteristic: being crew centric. This means placing “an emphasis on [training] crew [commanders] and members who are bold, imaginative, and aggressive in their approach to achieving mission success. [Armoured cavalry] soldiers … [must be] trained to be mentally and physically agile, to manoeuvre quickly and to apply mission command.”¹⁰

Maj Nick Homerski is an armoured cavalry officer currently serving as Officer Commanding B Sqn of the Royal Canadian Armoured Corps School in Gagetown, NB. He has been attached to multiple battle groups from 2 & 5 CMBG, been an armoured cavalry instructor, and has worked in planning capacities for armoured cavalry regiment sustainment and CMBG HQs.

End Notes

1. B-GL-305-001/FT-001, p 1-1.
2. Defence Terminology Bank (DTB), record 69215.
3. B-GL-305-001/FT-001, p 1-4. Note: this definition is inline with DTB record 4717.
4. B-GL-305-008/FT-001, p 1-1.
5. B-GL-331-002/FP-001, p 6C-1.
6. B-GL-305-001/FT-001, p 1-4.
7. B-GL-305-001/FT-001, p 5-9.
8. B-GL-305-001/FT-001, p 1-3.
9. B-GL-305-001/FT-001, p 1-4.
10. B-GL-305-001/FT-001, p 1-2.