Rifle squad composition

[Rifleman]

Some random thoughts:

The two fire team Army squad can't deploy one up, two back as is; however, the lead squad in a platoon movement to contact usually has a machine gun team directly attached, making it a defacto three team squad.

A two team squad alone will often still be suppressing with about 2/3, even though it's not configured in thirds. Often, out of an entire squad, only two or three men are moving at once. One fire team suppressing and one assaulting or bounding forward, of course, but not everyone in the assault team is moving at once. Part of the assault team is suppressing too.

I can see how the 13 man Marine squad is advantageous; however, is the advantage so great that it's worth the doctrinal change? The two team squad Army squad has been doctrine since about 1957. How long does it usually take for new doctrinal thinking to permeate a service culture at the tactical level?

All things considered, maybe the best thing for the Army to do would be to keep the two team squad but go back to larger fire teams.

What am I not seeing clearly?

[jcustis]

Some random thoughts:

The two fire team Army squad can't deploy one up, two back as is; however, the lead squad in a platoon movement to contact usually has a machine gun team directly attached, making it a defacto three team squad.

A two team squad alone will often still be suppressing with about 2/3, even though it's not configured in thirds. Often, out of an entire squad, only two or three men are moving at once. One fire team suppressing and one assaulting or bounding forward, of course, but not everyone in the assault team is moving at once. Part of the assault team is suppressing too.

I can see how the 13 man Marine squad is advantageous; however, is the advantage so great that it's worth the doctrinal change? The two team squad Army squad has been doctrine since about 1957. How long does it usually take for new doctrinal thinking to permeate a service culture at the tactical level?

All things considered, maybe the best thing for the Army to do would be to keep the two team squad but go back to larger fire teams.

What am I not seeing clearly?

I think you're seeing everything clearly, as yours are very reasonable questions. Deciphering possible advantages has its difficulties though, as we might be hard pressed to find a full-up platoon of complete 2-team or 3-team squads that has fought in either OIF or OEF. There are always the ones and twos who are on light duty, detailed elsewhere, etc. The evidence of any advantage may be anecdotal as best, and we'd be faced with the claims of if it ain't broke don't fix it.

As for doctrinal change, well that's a tough one. We may be driven to doctrinal change through the future platforms that provide mobility on the battlefield.

I'd like to see a reference to the Corps' scaling back to a 12 man squad, because this is the first place I've heard of it. Does it have to do with the incessant search for a true automatic rifle perhaps?

[Norfolk]

I'd like to see a reference to the Corps' scaling back to a 12 man squad, because this is the first place I've heard of it. Does it have to do with the incessant search for a true automatic rifle perhaps?

jcustis, here it is:

http://hqinet001.hqmc.usmc.mil/i&L/v2/L/Doc/SES.pdf

It's a schematic on page 22 showing the proposed new Distributed Operations platoon structure that's being tested at MCWL at the Sea Viking Division.

I don't like it already.

[Norfolk]

All things considered, maybe the best thing for the Army to do would be to keep the two team squad but go back to larger fire teams.

What am I not seeing clearly?

I don't think you're seeing any less clearly than most of the rest of us Rifleman. As is, we're bothing coming from the same worm's eye-view: you were a fire team leader, and I was an acting section 2i/c (and therefore automatically commander of one of my section's two 4-man assault groups as well). And this, IMO, is not necessarily a disadvantage, especially given that a lot of infantry officers (curiously) tend to be less than well-aware of, and properly-trained in, squad/section-level tactics and conditions. The whole business of minor infantry units and tactics is ambiguous at times. Hey, if even General DePuy himself, a master tactician, found himself having to settle for a two-team squad (as much out of manpower limitations as anything else), then clarity just isn't going to come easy.

Putting a pair of MG teams at platoon as US army and British Army does detract somewhat from their effectiveness; attaching one out to two of the three squads/sections, can considerably reduce their overall effectiveness, even if the particular squad/section they're attached to isn't exactly complaining. The USMC holds those same MGs at company level, where their fires can be massed and controlled for maximum suppression of the company objective. They only detach MGs out to platoons (and sometimes thence to squads) when cover or terrain makes massing and coordination of fires at company level practically impossible or not worth the effort. In WWII, the Germans were famous for their ability to win the firefight quickly through the use of an MG platoon either attached or organic to each rifle company that suppressed the company objective with the massed fires of 4 MG-34s or MG-42s.

Also, I think someone earlier on this thread mentioned that the USMC found that removing one of the 3 LMGs from each rifle squad could not be compensated for in practice even with MMGs at higher levels. An LMG can is easier to keep supplied with ammo under fire (no-one has to get up and run off to a vehicle or to company HQ to get more MMG ammo in the midst of a squad/section fire-fight, not unless the entire squad is running out,and then elements behind should be bringing that ammo up), and an LMG is rather easier to handle in an assault than an MMG. If one of your fire teams is wiped out, the MG Team may be hard pressed to provide suppressive fire and ammo resupply and its own local security while the other goes into the assault.

Then there's the squad detached out on an independent mission. With only two fire teams, it'll need one of the platoons's MG teams. That leaves the platoon commander with only two squads and an MG team to handle the enemy should contact occurr. Not a good position to be in to begin with, even worse when half your MG's are gone. USMC rifle squad can handle this task without reinforcement, and leaves all MMG teams intact.

In short, the USMC rifle squad can pretty much cover all its own bases (with occasional exceptions) organically, and leaves the MMGs most of the time up at company, where they can have the most effect, most of the time.

Larger fire teams, admittedly, would let a fire team continue to clear trenches and rooms, etc., after losing a rifleman; the 4-man fire team/assault group has something of a weakness in that regard, although for room-clearing the squad reorganizes anyway and this is less of a problem.

Once a squad gets much over a dozen men though, you start to have second thoughts. And this is where it really starts to get murky for me. The USMC 13-man rifle squad is based on the Chinese 10-man rifle squad, that Evans Carlson personally observed in the 8th Route Army's operations against the Japanese in northern China during 1937. The Chinese organized the squad with three 3-man "Cells" and a squad leader. Their tactics (based upon suppresion provided by a single LMG) so impressed Carlson, that when he formed the 1st Raider Battalion in WWII, he used the same organization. After the Raiders were disbanded, the USMC as a whole adopted the same rifle squad organization in early 1944; in late 1944, a fourth man was added to each Fire Team to allow it to sustain the level of losses that came with frontal attacks on Japanese positions.

There is an argument to be made that if "1 Up, 2 Back" type suppression-heavy/assault-light attack formations were used for squad-level offesnive operations, that perhaps the 4-man fire team could be reduced back to 3, returning to the 10-man squad. But with both the LMG and the M203 in each fire team, that would leave only one rifleman per fire team to clear trenches, rooms, etc. The four-man fire team has to stand for the time being.

Yep, things are still kind of murky.

[Cavguy]

Reminds me of Churchill's quote (paraphrase/adapted below) -

"It's the worst possible solution, except for all the others"

[jcustis]

Also, I think someone earlier on this thread mentioned that the USMC found that removing one of the 3 LMGs from each rifle squad could not be compensated for in practice even with MMGs at higher levels. An LMG can is easier to keep supplied with ammo under fire (no-one has to get up and run off to a vehicle or to company HQ to get more MMG ammo in the midst of a squad/section fire-fight, not unless the entire squad is running out,and then elements behind should be bringing that ammo up), and an LMG is rather easier to handle in an assault than an MMG. If one of your fire teams is wiped out, the MG Team may be hard pressed to provide suppressive fire and ammo resupply and its own local security while the other goes into the assault.

Hmmm, an interesting point. Where does it leave us when we consider this type of "team" organization? It was definitely a different type of fight, but a COIN/small wars type of fight nonetheless:

Each stop had four soldiers. One was the commander, with a radio, a FN FAL, 100 rounds (7.62 × 51 mm NATO), several types of grenade. One was the machine gunner, with a FN MAG machine-gun and carrying 400 rounds. The other two were riflemen with a FN and 100 rounds, grenades, rifle grenades and medical equipment. By 1979 one of these two was issued a radio.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhodesian_Light_Infantry

[Norfolk]

Hmmm, an interesting point. Where does it leave us when we consider this type of "team" organization? It was definitely a different type of fight, but a COIN/small wars type of fight nonetheless:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhodesian_Light_Infantry

Actually jcustis, I rather like that team organization. This is very similar to what a lot of SAS patrols used in the Falklands (exchanging SLRs for M-16s mind you). With 3 riflemen (granted, armed with SLR battle rifles rather than assault rifles, but the Rhodesians sure knew how to use them), that team was fully prepared for close-combat; if it had a grenade launcher though, that would clearly be reduced. Also, the FN rifle isn't exactly ideal for said because of its length, but still doable. The only big problem is ammo resupply for the MAG; well, that, and the lack of a grenade launcher, although I believe the Rhodesians still carried the requisite cups for rifle grenade (indirect to 150m). The Rhodesians (I think) tended to fight very light, so carrying a lot of MAG ammo might have been rather less of a problem, especially given that the Bush War was not over-all a high-intensity one, like NATO Armies have to prepare for (theoretically at least). That said, there's an important counter-example to that.

The WWII panzergrenadier squad (initially 12 men, plus 2 drivers, eventually 9 men with 1 driver) carried a pair of MG-34s or (later on) MG-42s. The Germans emphasized "effect over cover". Well, with two MG-42s per squad, you pretty much had all the cover you could ever want. In the attack, the Sqaud Leader would control both GPMG teams while the Assistant Squad Leader would lead the assault. The Germans did not use Fire Teams per se, nor even Battle Drills. Granted, the panzergrenadiers (theroretically) had either half-tracks or trucks with them, but ammo resupply must have been quite the challenge. So far as I know, there's not a standard rifle squad on earth that surpasses the firepower of the WWII panzergrenadier squad. But in its days of offensive successes, it doctrinally had 12 men; during the later defensive portions of the war, it was doctrinally down to 8-9 men.

There's a part of me that would very much prefer to have at least a pair of MAGS (maybe 3) per squad, and be done with the Minimi or any future AR. But I'm not sure that the ammo carry/resupply situation, never mind the unwieldiness of the MAG in CQB, could be satisfactorily overcome. Yet the Germans appear to have done so (from what info is available anyway). I think MCWL should maybe ditch MERS and test out a Rifle Squad with M-240s instead of M-249s. That would be interesting.

[jcustis]

The interesting this about firepower in a future distributed operations squad is that it does rely on fighting light, as the Rhodesians did. Lightening the load is one of the objectives clearly laid out on the document you graciously provided Norfolk (I had not seen that one before).

At 700 rds carried across a stick, that's close to what you might get out of an attached MG team anyway, and if the riflemen of a current squad are carrying extra belts, it's the age old problem of getting it to the team(s) or moving it once it's been dropped off. Similar issue with mortar rounds.

If I remember correctly, indirect firepower was achieved by the Rhodies through the use of rifle grenades, and Marine Gunner Eby wrote an excellent piece for the Marine Corps Gazette some years back that pushed for a rifle grenade capability. They've got bulk to them, but you're talking about a capability for all of the riflemen, not just you're M203 owners. I think better range and casualty radius were touted in the article as well. I don't believe accuracy is comparable though, but I'd have to research that a bit.

[Norfolk]

The interesting this about firepower in a future distributed operations squad is that it does rely on fighting light, as the Rhodesians did. Lightening the load is one of the objectives clearly laid out on the document you graciously provided Norfolk (I had not seen that one before).

At 700 rds carried across a stick, that's close to what you might get out of an attached MG team anyway, and if the riflemen of a current squad are carrying extra belts, it's the age old problem of getting it to the team(s) or moving it once it's been dropped off. Similar issue with mortar rounds.

If I remember correctly, indirect firepower was achieved by the Rhodies through the use of rifle grenades, and Marine Gunner Eby wrote an excellent piece for the Marine Corps Gazette some years back that pushed for a rifle grenade capability. They've got bulk to them, but you're talking about a capability for all of the riflemen, not just you're M203 owners. I think better range and casualty radius were touted in the article as well. I don't believe accuracy is comparable though, but I'd have to research that a bit.

What really bothers me most about the DO platoon organization isn't just cutting the USMC rifle squad back to 12 men; it's all the "C2". Out of the 12 man squad, there are just two 4-man Fire Teams, and an entire 4-man Command and Control Team (albeit fully-armed). And if that's not sick enough, then the Rifle Platoon HQ has no less than eight men in it, in two 4-man C2 Teams, one led by the Platoon Leader, and the other led by the Platoon Sergeant.

As for the matter of grenade launchers and rifle grenades, I wonder if bringing rifle grenades back and replacing the actual grenade launchers with an RPG-type rocket launcher wouldn't be a better way to go; but then that would make it that much more difficult to mark targets and lay smoke...hmmm.