Thread by @anpidilufe

The Portuguese Army commitment for NATO’s VJTF22, its ORBAT and some of the issues it ended up facing;

1/The composition of the VJTF22 is a simple one, an HQ, a Mech Coy and Supply Coy from 13th Infantry Regiment, the 2ndMech Coy is from the 14th Infantry Rgt, a Combat Support Company from 6th Cavalry Regiment and lastly the crown jewels, the Tank Squadron from the Tank Btn;

2/The Portuguese contribution was inserted in the Franco-German Brigade, it consisted in total of 609 men, 54 Pandur 8x8, 14 Leopard 2A6NL and other vehicles, with the possibility to receive further assets in case of a deployment;

3/Before we continue, I should state that not all 54 Pandur’s are seen in the ORBAT, this happened due to the lack of sources for the last remaining Pandur and where it would be allocated, I do apologize for that;

4/Staring with the “boring” units we have first a supply company with its resupply platoon, of whom it was sadly not possible to find much about, however the trucks seen here in the picture are most likely the ones serving in such platoon

5/After that we have a Signals Platoon, a Medical Platoon and lastly an Engineering unit, a unit on whom sources disagree on its size, hence why I have decided to not give them an echelon, all three units use the Pandur II 8x8 in their respective variant;

6/Moving into the Infantry Companies, they are the standard Mechanized (Wheeled) Infantry Company in Portuguese service, a Signals Section, HQ, three Mechanized Platoons and a “Gun” Section;

7/The “Gun” Section is composed of two Pandur II 8x8 IFV’s, each one armed with the MK 30-2 30mm autocannon the IFV’s serve as a direct fire asset to the infantry platoons;

8/The Infantry Platoons are meanwhile composed of 4 Pandur II 8x8 ICV’s, split between a command section with 5 men, and three infantry sections, each with 10 men, 8 of them being dismounts, and indeed all Portuguese ICV’s have exposed gunners;

9/The 1st Tank Squadron from the Mechanized Brigade is your typical NATO Tank Company, two Leopards on the Coy HQ, followed by three Platoon of four Leos each;

10/Moving on to the Combat Support Company, it provides the Mechanized Group with fires support, an anti-amor capability and a recce force;

11/Two RQ-11B Raven drones from the 5thArtillery Regiment provide an important ISR capacity, with ground battlefield surveillance being a responsibility of the 6th Cavalry Regiment’s Battlefield Surveillance Section and their four Pandur II 8x8 REC;

12/The Anti-tank Platoon’s four Pandur II 8x8 ATGM’s and their TOW 2’s gives the commander a highly mobile armor killing platform, while the Mortar Platoon provides some fires support capacity with their two towed 120mm Tampella mortars;

13/Lastly the Recce Platoon with a Recce Section carrying a total of 16 dismounts and an Infantry Section

14/Now, just a small note on the units we see with the dotted lines, apart from their unit symbols no source ever states exactly their size, unit or equipment, but given the Army’s severe limitations not much of such units should be expected;

15/In particular the engineering unit shouldn’t really be much more than some truck mounted bridging assets and/or some bulldozers, the EOD unit would be entirely by foot and air defense no more than Stinger teams;

16/Turning our attention into some issues; first regarding the Combat Support Company, section level training ended up starting later than what was predicted and without all the men that was planned to, and platoon level training only started at Orion 21;

17/Company level cooperation also proved somewhat difficult due to ever lower opportunity of the troops to train, both due to shortages of personal and lack of equipment available, COVID of course also proved an issue during this time;

18/Besides that the Mortar Platoon while it was said that it showed a major upgrade in its performance this was at the same time hampered by the lack of modern equipment to support and sustain the evolution of the soldiers performance;

19/The Anti-Tank Platoon also witnessed some issues with the virtual non-existence of doctrine and tactics even tho the Platoon existed since 2018 and the unit itself is also often compared to MBT’s in Army circles;

20/Lastly a major issue was also faced by the Tank Squadron, first it was not reportedly possible to maintain the same 14 crews during the whole period with constant exits of soldiers who either left the Army or changed bases

21/Besides that and perhaps the ultimate issue was the allocation of ammo to the Tank Squadron, in order to of course maintain training standards Army logistics reportedly allocated a total of 21 120mm munitions for the entire unit for the whole year of VJTF;

22/A number which only allows each crew to only fire 1.5 rounds during the entire year to train, and of course one mustn’t forget that the Army was not able to maintain the same 14 crews during the entire VJTF22;

23/Such numbers while unconfirmed are not a surprise, talks with servicemen inevitably end up with “ammo and training are very scarce”, for example during the last Orion exercise Portuguese Leopards only reportedly fired one shot, while Spanish ones fired about a dozen at least

24/Now to close I would like say thanks for reading and a reminder that’s its very much possible that I got something wrong, and if so I do apologize.
Thanks to Fórum Defesa for helping out and being one of many sources alongside Army, Cavalry Magazines and etc