Abandon squad/section levels of organization?

[William F. Owen]

How? US attack helicopters are incapable of carrying any meaningful load.

With great ease. You just trade one or more pylon loads for a re-supply pod. I am told the design exists, and I have it on some good authority that it would be easy to adapt the ferry fuel tanks for than role.

Each pylon can take about 500kg IIRC. I crunched some numbers a while back and that indicated that 1 x AH-64 could easily deliver most of the small arms ammo, rations and water needed for a dismounted company of 3 platoons. Volume seems more of an issue than weight.

SOCOM folks tell me that this was widely discussed for SF, but it went away as no AH-64s were on the SOCOM OOB at the time. - eg MH-60 would be the preferred method.

...and of course AH pilots don't want to haul ammo and rations!

[Uboat509]

With great ease. You just trade one or more pylon loads for a re-supply pod. I am told the design exists, and I have it on some good authority that it would be easy to adapt the ferry fuel tanks for than role.

Each pylon can take about 500kg IIRC. I crunched some numbers a while back and that indicated that 1 x AH-64 could easily deliver most of the small arms ammo, rations and water needed for a dismounted company of 3 platoons. Volume seems more of an issue than weight.

SOCOM folks tell me that this was widely discussed for SF, but it went away as no AH-64s were on the SOCOM OOB at the time. - eg MH-60 would be the preferred method.

...and of course AH pilots don't want to haul ammo and rations!

Can you provide a link to some info on this? I have not heard of it. 500 KG seems a bit high honestly, that would be over a ton with both pylons loaded, but I have never really been around them.

I am not really sure how many Ah-64s there are in the inventory. I don't remember seeing any on my last trip although I did see a lot of Kiowas. I doubt that the would allow any to be used for logistics rolls. I doubt there are any in theater that are not already committed to combat patrols. In any case there are a lot more utility helicopters than attack helicopters in the inventory and they already do logistic resupply. Why would we need to use attack helicopters for this roll? It strikes me as being like using an Abrams tank to carry logistics instead of a cargo truck.

SFC W

[William F. Owen]

Can you provide a link to some info on this? I have not heard of it. 500 KG seems a bit high honestly, that would be over a ton with both pylons loaded, but I have never really been around them.

SFC W

I crunched these numbers a while back. IIRC this is based on the an AH-64 using a 230 US gallon external tank. That's 871 litres. IIRC to calculate JP-4 weight you x0.8 so 871 litres = 696kg per tank.

Even if those are 771 litre tanks they'll weigh 616kg approx

I know Apache pylons can take over 200kg because they can load 4 x AGM-114 plus the launcher on one pylon.

[Tukhachevskii]

With great ease. You just trade one or more pylon loads for a re-supply pod. I am told the design exists, and I have it on some good authority that it would be easy to adapt the ferry fuel tanks for than role.
Each pylon can take about 500kg IIRC. I crunched some numbers a while back and that indicated that 1 x AH-64 could easily deliver most of the small arms ammo, rations and water needed for a dismounted company of 3 platoons. Volume seems more of an issue than weight.

...when I first read this comment, oh a while ago now, it bugged me that I was sure I had seen something like this depicted somewhere. It kept bugging me (typical duyslexic trait that, to keep fixating on an item of information, among many such items, until you find it) until yesterday evening. I was clearing out my room (a rare enough occurance that) and found a load of old books I bought as a teen. Flicking through one of them, I found this!

[Infanteer]

I miss these threads...it's what brought me to the SWJ.

[gute]

I miss these threads...it's what brought me to the SWJ.

You mean you did not come to the SWJ for the threads about the NBA finals - I'm shocked

Seriously, I'm with you. I miss the discussions regarding squad, platoon, ad company organizations; squad, platoon weapons; use of fires, etc. I would like to see some of these discussions re-energized with what has been learned during the last 10 years+ and the inclusion of anticipated new weapons.

[Fuchs]

Infantry squad organisation and equipment is very, very sexy to many people. It's not very important, though.

Infantry action is more important at the platoon level, and in the modern Western model of warfare even the infantry platoon is only a tiny component of the whole, as quite often the difference between tactical success or not is predetermined irrespective of the platoon's quality, TO&E and equipment.

Speaking of TO&E; it's not even relevant for training. Most training is done in understrength, and the understrength issue becomes even more severe if an army deploys many formations simultaneously (thus being unable to cannibalise some to fill up the deployed ones). The de facto TO&E after the first few contacts will bear very little resemblance to the TO&Es in field manuals which are the subject of so much discussion.


Infantry quality is about intangibles and improvisation much more than about the sexy items and charts discussed so repeatedly and vividly.


The one question regarding infantry small unit design that I'm still interested in is whether one should focus on burst or sustained capabilities. I lean towards burst, as competent hostiles could have so much fire support on call that breaking contact after at most two minutes should be a habit.

[Infanteer]

TO&Es are accountants tools. How many people and equipment should I give to this organization?

By D+1, you ain't fighting by a TO&E.

[gute]

Infantry squad organisation and equipment is very, very sexy to many people. It's not very important, though.

Infantry action is more important at the platoon level, and in the modern Western model of warfare even the infantry platoon is only a tiny component of the whole, as quite often the difference between tactical success or not is predetermined irrespective of the platoon's quality, TO&E and equipment.

Speaking of TO&E; it's not even relevant for training. Most training is done in understrength, and the understrength issue becomes even more severe if an army deploys many formations simultaneously (thus being unable to cannibalise some to fill up the deployed ones). The de facto TO&E after the first few contacts will bear very little resemblance to the TO&Es in field manuals which are the subject of so much discussion.


Infantry quality is about intangibles and improvisation much more than about the sexy items and charts discussed so repeatedly and vividly.


The one question regarding infantry small unit design that I'm still interested in is whether one should focus on burst or sustained capabilities. I lean towards burst, as competent hostiles could have so much fire support on call that breaking contact after at most two minutes should be a habit.

IMO flexibility of the small unit of action is key. Allowing the small unit leaders to have a free hand to organize their unit (platoon, company, battalion) to meet their assigned objectives.

A few months ago there was an interesting article about that buzzword "transformation" and the next transformation would be battalion combat teams. The author argued in his article that battalion task forces or battle groups are the logical next step and would allow the U.S. to more easily serve alongside our European allies. He also argued the small unit of action would no longer be the squad, but a section of 18-20.

Word association and mindset IMO go hand in hand. Maybe we need new words for small unit organizations. New words which emphasize flexibility. The swarming model discussed here at SWJ had such words such as pods and clusters. I don't like either - can you imagine being assigned to "cluster F"

[Tukhachevskii]

Infantry action is more important at the platoon level, and in the modern Western model of warfare even the infantry platoon is only a tiny component of the whole, as quite often the difference between tactical success or not is predetermined irrespective of the platoon's quality, TO&E and equipment.

Funny you should say that. I was reading Royal Marines and some things really caught my eye. From 1943 to about the early 1960s (maybe a bit later for some units) the RM Cdo was organised into five troops with a HQ and Weapons troop (2 x mortar 2 x MMG). Each troop (a large platoon sized org) had 63 all ranks. Organised as either four ten man sections, a 10 man spt section and a 13man HQ (1943) or two 26 man sections (two 11 man sub-sections and a fure support sub-section) c. 1950s. There simply was no Sqn (Coy) HQ. From I have read the Company organisation was introduced for better interoperability with Army units when rotating especially during the whole East of Suez drawdown. Given the mission of the RM I suppose it made sense to have large Troops. Would love to know how well the system worked (i.e., without a Coy HQ/layer of command) though in practice given it lasted over 20 years and was tested by WWII combat conditions.

[gute]

Funny you should say that. I was reading Royal Marines and some things really caught my eye. From 1943 to about the early 1960s (maybe a bit later for some units) the RM Cdo was organised into five troops with a HQ and Weapons troop (2 x mortar 2 x MMG). Each troop (a large platoon sized org) had 63 all ranks. Organised as either four ten man sections, a 10 man spt section and a 13man HQ (1943) or two 26 man sections (two 11 man sub-sections and a fure support sub-section) c. 1950s. There simply was no Sqn (Coy) HQ. From I have read the Company organisation was introduced for better interoperability with Army units when rotating especially during the whole East of Suez drawdown. Given the mission of the RM I suppose it made sense to have large Troops. Would love to know how well the system worked (i.e., without a Coy HQ/layer of command) though in practice given it lasted over 20 years and was tested by WWII combat conditions.

The U.S. Army Rangers organized the same way. If you go to Bayonet Strength you can look at the MTOE for British Commando, etc.

http://www.bayonetstrength.150m.com/...l/site_map.htm

[gute]

Infantry action is more important at the platoon level, and in the modern Western model of warfare even the infantry platoon is only a tiny component of the whole, as quite often the difference between tactical success or not is predetermined irrespective of the platoon's quality, TO&E and equipment.

So tactical success or failure is determined by leadership?

[Fuchs]

So tactical success or failure is determined by leadership?

At times.
But most often, logistics, peacetime training, heavy weapons, fire support, "do and don't" orders, sensors, terrain, the enemy's nature, missions and at times even *gulp* planning limit the range of possible outcomes so much that individual platoons are really just a small part of the whole.

I suppose very few infantry platoons (if any) had a substantial impact during the invasion of Iraq 2003.