Article in Military Review
I wrote an article for Military Review (with a retired Sergeant Major of the Army and a former CSM of Ops Grp) on the subject of small units. We started at the company and went down to squad.
We argued for a larger squad built on 3's and providing a maneuver, support, and a breach element. We wanted to make the squad as much a combined arms element as we could and we also sought to make it more self-sustaining. I advocated 3 man versus buddy teams; 3s provide greater duration and depth.
My argument also looked at tests run by GEN DePuy as the 1st TRADOC commander. DePuy tested everything; in this case, he tested the various combinations of support and maneuver ; by a clear margin the best ratio of support to maneuver was 2 to 1. A balanced squad cannot do that as it is organized; it must reorganize and/or be reinforced.
You can read about DePuy's tests in Gorman's Secret of Future Victories
My article is at Military Review
Best
Tom
The problem is our system
You needn't coach me on our personnel system, I am painfully familiar with it, but this is the essence of the majority of our problems, and why I think we'll more outsourcing of security in the future (see John Robb's blog for details on outsourcing). Our military organization does not adapt quickly, so we're forced to fight with inefficiently designed organizations. Our non-state enemy on the other hand can adapt overnight. We're forced to some extent (though commanders can task organize the forces they have within limits) to fight with what we have, and a squad and platoon, and company and so forth we're designed to fight a major land battle in the Fulda Gap (and we're not ideally organized for that). The danger is we design tactics based on the design of our organizations, thus in reality we define the tactical problem to fit our preconceived solution. What is a particular mission called for a 15 man squad, and another called for a 6 man squad? Of course we can do it, but how often do we? Buddy you can't grab my people, stay out of my rice bowl.
METT-TC should drive task organization, not just we need two squad here, a platoon there, but we need two squads that look like this, and a platoon with this capability.
Obviously our MTOE system doesn't allow us to simply have a pool of bodies that we can plug and play with. Furthermore unit adhesion is a combat multiplier, so the risk of too much flexibility is limited cohersion. I think our enemy gets past that with a powerful ideology.
O.K., I got that off my chest, so back to the ideal squad (presumably for combat maneuver). I think it is 12 men. A four man assault/manuever force, a four man support section, and a four man C2/floater section (sqd ldr, medic, two rifle men) that not only direct the effort, but can weight the effort either towards maneuver or support element, depending on where the squad leader places this section. I went with four per section instead of three to facilitate maintaining a viable force even with a certain % of casualties. No I didn't base this off an ODA, a perfect ODA should probably be around 15 men, and they shouldn't be maneuvering like a squad.
Good post. Having worked with both the
13 man Marine rifle squad (prior to the M-79) and the old 11 man Army Rifle Squad (too old to have suffered the current very, very dumb 9 man Squad) in peacetime and combat, I have absolutely no doubt that the 13 man is the best solution. By a very significant margin.
Also agree that a well trained rifle Squad can do all it's jobs; that one going in -- preferably by infiltration -- and two in support is vastly preferable to the old 'two up and one back' routine.
I think that Platoon operations should be the norm but that independent squad action in a great many situations is desirable (particularly in COIN). Such independence is, I think limited by two factors; most commonly fear of loss of oversight and thus being blamed if something goes wrong; and a failure to understand that the average unit can be trained to do far more than we normally allow them to do.
I'm not sure we can afford that hesitation and lack of faith given todays costs in dollars and difficulties in recruiting for other than combat jobs -- the latter meaning that the CSS tail has to be cut because the sharp aggressive kids will not serve there by choice.
Lot of wasted potential...
1 Up, 3 Back - Over the Pond and Down Under.
It seems someone in Britain has been testing much the same sort of infantry tactics as Rommel and DePuy were into. David Kilcullen found that the Brits were doing heavy suppression work back in the '90s (I seem to remember that the Brits were somewhat unsettled by the infantry losses they suffered at the hands of poorly-led Argentinian, and must have pondered what would have happened if they'd had to face a rather more competent enemy. Apparently, British Army experiments came to the conclusion that a ratio of 3 suppression elements to 1 assault element produced a successful "repeatable formula" (I cringe when I hear that sort of langauge) to be used in the infantry attack.
Kilcullen subsequently tested this "formula" out on the Indonesians in East Timor in 1999, and he recalls that it worked like a charm. Here's the article he wrote on this whole matter:
http://www.defence.gov.au/army/lwsc/AAJ_I1.asp
It's less comprehensive than DePuy's studies, and more or less follows Rommels' and DePuy's own observations, as it offers much the same sort of tactical "solution" to the infantry attack but from a different perspective. but I think that it's still worth a look. Particularly interesting are his observations on how infantry actually move in contacy; autonomously and without orders, yet doing so fully in accordance with the tactical situation in mind - what he calls "Flocking".
Your's weren't the only ones.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Ken White
Most of our minor tactics are marginal to poor. He mentions in there that the lead element often got pinned down and could do nothing. Our doctrine says that the lead element 'returns fire, suppresses enemy fire and develops the situation.' I saw that done repeatedly in Korea -- and I saw that it flat did not work. :(
Speaking of poor minor unit tactics, the reason why I even became interested in the subject in the first place and not just mindlessly accept "the Doctrine" was when my section commander told us that an 8-man rifle section would lose 60% of its strength in the first 24 hours of offensive operations. Well, that got my attention. Here's an article that gives an idea of just how bad the supposedly very "professional" Canadian Army's basic infantry tactics had become when I was in - this was written some years ago by Captain Mike O'Leary, the current Regimental Adjutant of the RCR:
http://members.tripod.com/Regimental..._atk_part2.htm
From this article, you can see that there is some substance to my concerns over the state of minor unit tactics, especially at squad/section level.
At first, I thought that the "solution" so to speak, was simply to increase squad size, and that's when the USMC rifle squad really caught my attention. But I really didn't understand the tactical significance of having 3 rather than just 2 fire teams. It wasn't until I read an article on an RPA rifle squad (organized into 3 teams) attack on a Rwandan Government rifle squad in a house, and win without real loss to itself, that I began to appreciate the virtues of a 3-fire team squad. Go figure; a rebel army from the African-country-in-chaos pick of the year demonstrated what proper infantry tactics were, while the Canadian officer (from a modern, Western, "professional" Army) watching the fight was left scratching his head so to speak and call into serious question the stuff his own army had taught him.
As such, I do rather think that the USMC rifle squad is probably about the best rifle squad organization overall, and when it uses DePuy-type "1 Up, and 2 or 3 Back" formations during offensive operations, then that's proper infantry tactics too. The only major modifcation I would like seen made to the Marine rifle squad would be to do what Tom proposed in his "Transformation: Victory Begins With Small Units" article, and have two NCOs in the Squad HQ; the Squad Leader to fight the squad (while listening in to the Platoon/Company net), and the Assistant Squad Leader to handle squad administration/logistics and to handle sitreps for platoon/company and send in resupply requests, etc., so the squad leader doesn't have to be doing two separate jobs at the same time.