Abandon squad/section levels of organization?

[Norfolk]

Very much agreed Ken.

This does not make for either a cohesive, let alone sustainable, fighting element. Using a four man brick to patrol the streets of Belfast in an Aid to the Civil Power operation is one thing; clearing such a city in an actual war is quite another. Use a 4-man brick to clear houses, and one of the times it goes into one, it will never come back out. That's a squad's/section's job; not a fire team job, not a platoon job. Same thing with clearing an enemy trench position. Sure, a fire team (led in turn by a buddy-team, one man covering, the other grenading/shooting/rolling-in/bayoneting/changing-mag/giving-thumbs-up for rest to move in, etc.) makes the break-in, and then the rest of the assaulting squad moves in; one fire team clears ahead, another guards the break-in point, and if you're USMC, you can rotate the fire teams doing the clearing with hardly skipping a beat - not giving the enemy any let-up. Meanwhile, the rest of the platoon watches your back and suppresses the enemy until they're sent in covered by the rest of the company.

To do the same thing with Owen's organization, the whole 30-man platoon would be required to do what a 13-man Marine squad can do all on its own, and half of that 30-man platoon would be better used elsewhere. One 5-man assault team makes the break-in, covered by the rest of the platoon, fine. Then another 5-man assault team has to follow to either cover the break-in, or to take over the lead during clearing. The rest of the platoon continues to cover. But there's a problem with this.

The 5-man assault team has only 2 riflemen to clear with. You don't clear unless you have to with an LMG, there's often not space, and it's too heavy to bring to bear before someone with a rifle or carbine beats you to the draw. Dead gunner. An LSW is even worse, being longer and almost as heavy - and having to be reloaded as often as a rifle. Dead LSW gunner. The Grenadier is also handling an unwieldy weapon, and if he's the team leader, dying early on would be rather bad form. And so, just because there's 5 men in the trench, doesn't mean you've got 5 guys to clear with. There's only 2, the others amounting almost to dead weight in close-quarters. So, a third 5-man team has to come in to rotate with the lead 5-man team clearing. That leaves a fourth 5-man assault team and a 5-man fire support team and a 5-man Plt HQ team (some Sherry while you wait, Sir?) more or less idle and taking up space, as the other platoons should be covering the assaulting platoon. But there's not enough strength left in the assaulting platoon for even another squad-level clearing. Wasteful.

And if you want to clear houses, you'll have to reorganize the entire platoon before doing so.

So, anything from an 8-9 man Section/Squad or a 13-man Marine Squad, and 3 of each per platoon = 24/27/39 infantry (not including Plt HQ), plus varying heavy weapons. Compare this to 30 per platoon (including 5 at Plt HQ and another 5 are with Heavy Weapons - leaving 20 for digging out and killing the enemy. And this is just at the beginning of a war (and assuming everyone's authorized TOE is full to start with - hehe).

In practice, cohesion matters aside (Ken took care of this once and for all), the 30-man platoon is going to die real fast. The 5-man assault teams will be down to 2 (at most) within a couple days of heavy, sustained battle, whereas the Commonwealth/US Army 8-9 man sections/squad will be down to about 4 men at most - a fire team. The USMC 13-man squad will still muster at least 6-men much of the time. So much for Owen's 5-man "Assault Team" in real-war conditions. Not to mention, with an LMG and an LSW, plus a grenadier, the 5-man "assault team" is left with only 2 riflemen best suited for the actual assault. The LMG is necessary, and so is the Grenadier, and so are the riflemen - but not the LSW.

If you want a dedicated rifleman to take out enemy crew-served weapons and other long-range targets, put a few riflemen with AR's with bipod and telescopic sight (like the LSW) at platoon HQ to do that; attach a said-equipped AR man to squad from platoon if tactically necessary - but don't task the assault team with both the close- and long-range firefights. At section/squad, they may be too preoccupied with suppressing the enemy immediately to their front to be able to deal with enemies further back.

And if the GPMG crews in the fire support team each need 2 guys to carry 2 belts of ammo, they better send their unfit carcasses to the rear and bring the physically fit forward. I carried the GPMG (my pet name for it was the "G-Pig") and not less than two belts of ammo on my person (only about twice did I carry more - one time was out of newbie stupidity [4 belts], the other time was against my will). A couple other guys were to carry three belts each (and this was as a Platoon-level weapon). At Section level, 2 belts of ammo carried by each individual GPMG gunner (so long as they are not assigned SF tasks as well, just the Light Role) is enough to start.

If you are using GPMGs as heavy weapons, and especially in the SF role, you need at least 4 men per gun, preferably 6. Each GPMG gunner (at platoon or company level in commonwealth Armies) is issued with 8 boxes of ammo (1,760 rounds); an SF Kit with Tripod (weighs more than the GPMG), spare barrel, two Tritium aiming lamps, aiming stakes, mortar dial-sight, tool and cleaning kit, spare parts, etc.; spade; plus his own and the team's personal weapons and kit. In addition, the Gun Commander has binoculars, range-finder, and a 1:50,000 scale map. And I'm not even adding a Gun Controller here to coordinate the fires of the guns.

Even without the Gun Controller, the 5-man fire support team is seriously undermanned (and I suspect rather under-equipped and under-supplied) to effectively crew 2 guns - and before battle losses. There are good reasons the USMC holds GPMGs at Company level, and only detaches them out to platoons when tactically appropriate; Commonwealth Armies typically either hold a single GPMG at each Company and Platoon HQ (the Brits briefly experimented with 2 GPMGs at Platoon, and scrapped it), or hold them all in a MG Platoon at Battalion. I have doubts about the US Army practice of 2 GPMGs at Platoon level.

What these articles don't seem to grasp is that the 8-man Commonwealth Section was too small for the jobs it had to do; it used to be 10 in practice and up to 11 in theory. Likewise for the 9-man US Army Squad; Army testing determined that a 13-man Squad was best, but an 11-man squad was cheaper and could still do the job - but for a shorter time than the 13-man squad, and once that squad reached 8, it could no longer function effectively as a squad. Turning around and saying that 5 men can do an 8-9man job is dubious; it is downright erroneous (attributable it seems to ignorance - Owen gives no indication that he is aware of what the size of the Commonwealth Section/US Army Squad was in fact intended to be in order to carry out its tasks) to say that 5 men can do the job of what has been found to require 11-13 men. Both the Commonwealth Armies and the US Army determined that not less than 11 men were required for the Section/Squad - not 10, not 9, not 8, and certainly not 5.

What Owen is describing is a reinforced Section, but calling it a Platoon.

Finally, Infantry NCOs should receive formal, thorough training at all levels. Owen is alright here. In the Commonwealth, each private infantryman should have six months of good solid basic infantry training, and in his first year in his Battalion, have received an additional 3-6 weeks advanced infantry training in either reconnaissance, machine-guns, mortars, AT, or assault pioneering. After about 3-4 years in the Infantry, he should go on his NCO course. In the Commonwealth, this may be either an Infantry Section Commander Course of about 14 weeks (qualifying the new NCO for command right through platoon sergeant), or separate Junior and Senior Leadership/Command Courses, taken a few years apart; either way, an NCO's basic NCO training should amount to 3 months of good, thorough training. And before anyone thinks that this is excessive, the Wehrmacht used to make its sergeants undergo as little as 3 and up to 6 months of NCO training.

I apologize for this long post, it's a fault of mine.