Quote Originally Posted by William F. Owen View Post
I believe Platoons should be optimised for their dismounted role. Mounting them in a vehicle or APC is just getting them from A-B. (MICVs are a whole different box of frogs!)

You do have to make a choice about total number of men versus available vehicles, so that does have an effect. "If" your platoons are 30 men, and your vehicle only carries 6 men, you'll need 5 APCs versus the 4 you'd need if they carried 8 - so the budget might not be their, and there might be logistic penalties as well. 3 APCs or MRAPs that can carry 10 men would life the whole platoon, but you'd have no spare seats.
Wilf, completely agreed on the point that all Infantry Platoons need to be optimized for thee dismounted role. Closing with and destroying the enemy is their raison d'etre.

I think our concern with Section/Squad size has to do with their ability or inability to perform Fire-and-Manoeuvre. It's the old, does the Section/Squad do one or the other (the "Old" way) or does it do both (the "New" way)? The "Old" way, when the Section/Squad either Fired or Manoeuvered within the context of the Platoon Attack made it possible to have maybe 10 men between the Gun Group and the Rifle Group, and Bob was your uncle. Now, the "New" way of course has two Fire Teams/Assault Groups alternating Fire-and-Movement all the way in during the Platoon Attack, as if the rest of the Platoon isn't even there.

That's wrong, and with only 8 men in the Section or 9 men in the Squad and no more or less stable base of fire to support them (like the old Gun Group did), they take a lot of looses on the way to the objective. In The RCR, we were told that an 8-man Section would take 60% losses in the first 24 hours of offensive operations (this was presumably against an entrenched Soviet Motor-Rifle Troops, with dug-in Tanks, IFVs, the lot).

If you have the time, sometime, these two pieces by my Regimental Adjutant
may provide an idea of where we're coming from:

http://regimentalrogue.com/papers/sect_atk.htm

http://regimentalrogue.com/papers/sect_atk_part2.htm