I think the confusion is caused by the Marine Corps overcomplicating the whole issue. All DO is is independent fire team ops. All ECO is beefing up the Company HQ to better support those teams. USMC infantry (and I'm sure US Army infantry) has always had the capability to punch out a fire team if need be. Hell, in the early days of OIF, Marine units would punch out buddy teams or buddy teams (+) to catch bad guys emplacing IEDs. Companies/platoons/squads aren't going to lose their ability to operate as such, we're just going to specifically train the fire teams to act as fire teams and enable them with specific training/wonderful toys. I don't see anything really new or revolutionary in ECO, it's basic just a nice package to get Congress to buy us all those wonderful toys. However, I'm saying this as a Marine, but an outsider to the program. I could be way off. For some reason, they didn't consult me before coming up with this program.How would these "Enhanced Companies" operate in an environment in which C4I would be severely degraded/disrupted say by an EMP? or, in systems terms what if sub-systems were severed from their parent organisation and deprived of battlespace awareness from Bn, Bde and national intel sources....surely then the guides/scouts and their traditional role of "finding" in order to Fix and Kill would become paramount again?
As for what will happen if individual teams get cut off, they'll probably do the same thing a Marine division/battalion/company would do in that situation: collect all the serialized gear that retreating Army units leave behind and blast their way to the sea.
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