May have left the question
lost somewhere in the other jibberish. I was wondering if anyone knew why 12 men or was it more of that is just the way it worked out after looking at leadership requirements and having 2 of everything? Didn't know if some one thought 12 was the right amount of personnel and then tailored the make up to this number or the other way around. Understand the comparison is apples to oranges in some aspects.
A question that arises is also mobility assets. Under the current composition a 9 man squad can move by two gun trucks or 1 UH-60(seats in of course). If the squad size increases then do our mobility platforms need to increase in size as well or do we simply increase the footprint (more vehicles). Might simply be to far into 9 man squads in the Army to change at this point. How do the other services handle this?
The number was based on taking the needed
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Originally Posted by
ODB
lost somewhere in the other jibberish. I was wondering if anyone knew why 12 men or was it more of that is just the way it worked out after looking at leadership requirements and having 2 of everything? Didn't know if some one thought 12 was the right amount of personnel and then tailored the make up to this number or the other way around. Understand the comparison is apples to oranges in some aspects.
skills, generally doubling the number for redundancy (and insuring cross training to reinforce that) and was broadly based on the organization and experience of OSS Detachment 101 in Burma during WW II, by far the most successful large irregular warfare operation and way ahead of the success of the Jedburgh Teams.
The very different US Rifle squad, OTOH, is based primarily on Korean War experience and the two fire team leaders specifically date from there and a perceived need to have another NCO for both redundancy and for the training stream. The AR Man in each team (as opposed to a Machine Gun / Gunner) was due mostly to lack of an acceptable MG at the time plus the old "not invented here" syndrome which says that if another nation is doing 'A' we must do 'B.'
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A question that arises is also mobility assets. Under the current composition a 9 man squad can move by two gun trucks or 1 UH-60(seats in of course). If the squad size increases then do our mobility platforms need to increase in size as well or do we simply increase the footprint (more vehicles). Might simply be to far into 9 man squads in the Army to change at this point. How do the other services handle this?
The nine man squad is an abortion; it was introduced in the 80s simply to free up the other two men from the Squad to provide numbers to increase the number of Army divisions -- a process that sliced TOEs to the bone and really hurt the Divisions even as it created two more from the same manpower. Dumb idea then and a dumb idea now. Much more effective was the 11 man squad -- more staying power, also...
Part, not all , of the size of our vehicles is based on justifying that nine man squad -- can't be like anyone else...
Other organizations handle larger sizes with (a) bigger vehicles; and (b) splitting their squads -- just like the US Army has to do all too often...