Rifle squad composition

[ROKMAN]

ROKMAN, were you in the infantry, and if so, what rifle squad composition did you find yourself either favouring, or just simply having to make the best of while over in the Sandbox? Your platoon or company - mech, air asslt? Your command - Plt, Coy?

No, I spent all my time with tanks. I lack the experience of small unit tactics since the use of tanks is inherently for large scale battle and often employed as a battalion. I know that the future wars most of the conflict will involve small units. Which I don't really have experience but do read quite a lot of.

There are four general options that I am currently studying, which led me to this forum.

The Commando 21 organization used by the British Royal Marines. On a large unit viewpoint I like it. Basically it is a battalion sized unit, consisting of a logistics company, a C4ISR company, 2 firepower support companies that "shoots in" the 2 close combat companies. Each close combat company has a dedicated firepower support company. Hence this battalion generally has two field commands mimicking the "Combat Command A/B" system used by the US in WWII. However the close combat company is based on the 8-man squad. Is this squad too light or does it matter at all, since they have the support of a firepower support company. Should or shouldn't such firepower assets be allocated at lower echelons, like Tom Odom's idea.

The US Marines Distributed Ops is another candidate, based on experience in Iraq and Afghanistan but are they too focused on COIN? What about the case for conventional wars where the enemy is not an insurgent?

Tom Odom's idea, tested in experiments but creates a rather large platoon of over 60 soldiers and a company of over 300 soldiers, do we have the manpower for this? Or is it the case where the brigade treats these units more like mini-battalions and thus will be employed as such? Also there seems to be a lot of specialization, wouldn't it be better to arrange for general purpose unit organization.

German Panzergrenadiers a squad of 10 soldiers, a Squad Leader and Assistant Squad Leader, 2 Machine Guns, 2 Assistant Machine Gunners, 4 Rifleman. The squad can be split into two just like how the British do with their 8 man squads. However this seems that the squad can only operate as part of a platoon. (They basically operate like typical platoon of 3 squads.)




Another question is which performs best in terms of Squad organization the ones in current usage that I have are these:

The old 11 man Army squad of 2 teams plus Squad Leader.

The Marine squad of 13 man of three teams plus Squad Leader.

The DO Marine squad of 12 man of three teams with the Squad Leader embedded in a team.

The Army mechanized infantry platoon of two 9 man squads plus a five man machine gun team of two machine guns (the 2 X 9 plus 5).

The German 10 man squad of two teams with a Squad Leader and Assistant Squad Leader.

The British 8 man squad operating (similarly to the German squad) within the British Commando 21 system in all its entirety.



Gotta ask.... and appreciate the responses.