It makes a great deal of difference considering the amount of firepower, and thence, the ability to win the firefight, when considering the difference between 3x12-man Sections and 4x10-man Sections. The former has 3 LMGs and 3 UGLs between its 3 Sections, whereas the latter has four of each; and at the end of the Firefight, the enemy position still has to be assaulted. At the minimum, this means that one Section must perform the Assault while the other Sections continue to suppress the enemy position. With only 3 Sections, you suffer a much greater loss of firepower than with 4 Sections; while seemingly small, the Germans thought it so significant that they reorganized their Infantry Platoons into 4 Groups each with an LMG from 3 Groups after the Polish Campaign, and retained it through the rest of the war. And the Bundesheer retained it until just the past couple years for their non-Armoured Infantry.Originally Posted by William F. Owen
It's also pretty tough to reorganize your Sections and your Platoon in the midst of a Firefight or an Assault to make up for casualties sustained in the midst. Bulding a certain level of anticipated casualty-replacement into your Sections helps to mitigate, though not entirely eliminate, the potential for such inconvenient situations arising whilst under fire. Yes, you can certainly lose 3 out of 4 men in your Fire Element, and the Section will be in a right state after that, but you also may lose those 3 men across the Section as a whole; in any event, short of disaster (which happens), you may still have 3 other Sections in good fighting order to carry on.
If you don't have even this level of redundancy built in to your Sections and your Platoon, you'll be in a right state almost from the start, and certainly after having lost several men from a 24 or 30-man Platoon. Even taking 2 casualties in a 6-man Group means effectively that there are only 4 Riflemen available for CQB - not good odds when trying to Assault and Clear a Platoon objective. Even when reinforced by a second such 6-man Group, Assaulting, Breaking-In, and Fighting-Through the Objective, there are at most 12 Riflemen to clear a Platoon objective. Should they take 30% losses, they are down to 8 or 9 men.
Now, offhand this isn't as bad as some make it out to be; our own Doctrine says that a Platoon takes an enemy Section's position, but Kilcullen observed while he was attached to the Brit Army how a reinforced Section of 12 or so men could clear an enemy Platoon position (a Company objective). But that was with over 3/4s of said Company suppressing the enemy Platoon position. Granted, the 24 or 30-man Platoon of 4 or 5 6-man Groups would only be taking on an enemy Section, but it would only have a pair each of GPMGs, UGLs, and ATGM Lunchers to win the Firefight and then Suppress the enemy Section position. The enemy Section alone may possess at least one MG of its own, possibly two, as well as its own UGL (or two), its own rocket launcher or recoilless gun (or two), and as such would make winning the Firefight very difficult. There would be little possibility of achieving overwhelming Fire Superiority over the enemy Section, especially if it is entrenched. This is problematic to say the least.
The 20-30% casualty rates are not abstractions, they are based on wartime experience, and provide a guide as to how to anticipate what may happen casualty-rate wise. You may well suffer the 60% casualties in a day that we were told the expect in The RCR, or you may suffer light casualties such as in GW1 - or not so light such as in some battles in the Falklands. You may even suffer the loss of entire Companies or Battalions in a few days or even hours of ferocious fighting. But you don't know when and where that will happen; but you do know that the historical average has been on the order of 20-30%, so it makes sense to take heed of that, and plan accordingly. Like all plans, it is a basis for change; the wastage rates of North Africa in WWII proved quite inadequate for North-West Europe, but had even that much not existed and been taken heed of, the replacement situation would have been even worse than it was.
When an 11-man Section, having already suffered 30% losses, suffers an addditional 30% upon that, it is reorganized within its Platoon (ideally not under fire), and a 4-Section Platoon provides more of a margin for the effective loss of a Section than a 3-Section Platoon. But it is preferable to having to reorganize a 4 or 6 man Group or Section as soon as it takes its first or at most second man killed or wounded. The 11-man Section, in a 4-Section Platoon, is much less likely to be caught short in mid-stride than a Platoon of four or five 5 or 6 man Sections. And once the 24 or 30-man Platoon has taken heavy losses, it is effectively down to being a large Section, and can no longer perform Platoon tasks at all. In such an event, its parent Company must be reorganized or taken out of line, whilst the 50-man Platoon may simply reorganize into 3 Sections of around 30 or so men, and still available to perform Platoon missions. There is no point in fielding sub-units or units that have little to no chance of lasting beyond the first few minutes of shooting; a level of built-in redundancy is essential, even if it is not foolproof.
Wilf, I grasp, though perhaps not to the same extent that you do perhaps, the need for effective control and the ability to move under cover and concealment on the battlefield. I do not go for the open-order, neat battlefield formations advancing in full view of the enemy bit, whenever that can be avoided. I am very much about moving from fire position to fire position using cover and concealment as much as possible; sometimes, that is not available, but it must be taken when it is available. And I expect Sections to move in small teams to make best use of available cover and concelament as they move from fire position to fire position; the Section is not an indivisible monolith to be led by one man and one man only, though one man is ultimately in command.
I will say though, that Advance-to-Contact and the Attack, nor even the Defence and the Delay, are Patrol Operations. Although there are many common elements and procedures, they are not the same. Patrolling is about do,minating the ground between yourself and the enemy, and gaining information about him whilst denying the same about yourself to him. It is essential, but it is subordinate to the act of closing with and destroying him. What works for Patrolling does not necessarily and automatically apply in Battle.
You would not catch me doing a Recce with more than 4 other men, and preferably no more than 2 or 3; just too noisy and too hard to control in tight places except for very extraordinary reasons. I was in a 6-man Recce once, but that was to recce and secure an LZ for a Battalion-level Helo pick-up prior to an Air Assault - OPFOR was 3 Commando, CAR, and they weren't fighting nice that night. But I would not consider taking on a Platoon objective with 4 similar sized teams, even with 6 men apiece. 4 Sections of 10-11 men, sure, because I could take losses and probably still have a Reserve to Assault with after the Firefight, or to deal with a nasty piece of business that happens to unexpectedly occur. And each of the Sections has two NCOs (not the Brit Corporal and his Lance-jack) - and I go for the German System here, not ours - with the Section CDR in charge of the Fire Element, and the Section 2i/c in charge of the Assault Element (itself broken down into 2x3-man Teams to start with, plus the Section 2i/c controlling the two Team leaders). Battle has its own characteristics, different from Patrolling. The Section must be organized for Battle, and not just Patrolling.
But I would encourage greater consideration of your Section proposal of 4x5-man Teams, indeed I would go so far as to join jcustis in his consideration of James Webb's proposal for a 19-man Squad of 3x6-man Fire Teams; I think that your proposal is comparable. There may be a way of sidestepping the one-Team/two-Team Squad/Section controversy here by differentiating between the Squad and the Section (the former being sub-unit subordinate to the latter), and organizing the latter out of a few easily controlled Squads, so long as such a Section organization is not intended to supplant the Platoon.
Phew! That was a long one, even for me!
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