Redundancy in small unit organization

[Norfolk]

Yep that was long.

Couple of points that jump out.

A. You keep stating things as though they are well understood rules of thumb, like X number of men to assault, and 30% casualties, or even X has an LMG and a UGL. These are arbitary assumptions. They are not understood as absolutes, so I don't know where these come from. The OA from the Falklands disproves all these assumptions. The Final assualt on Darwin Hill was carried out by 22 men, mostly officers, NCOs and Radio Operators - and no fire support. The rest of A Company stayed put. This was a Paratrooper Company that had suffered IIRC, 3 dead and 12 wounded. A company was organised as 3 platoons of 32 men, with 6 GPMG per platoon, each operated by a 4 man fire team, in an 8 man section. Sections and platoons did re-organise in contact.


B. Kilcullen helped enginner the new Aussie Platoon orbat of 40 men, which is 10 x 4 man fireteams, to be organised anyway the platoon commander sees fit. There are fireteams and fire support teams. The platoon is the basis of organisation and not the squad or section. I had some long talks with him about this when he was in London and presenting to the School of Infantry. I think he's pretty on the nail. We both agreed that section defined concepts had very great limits.

C. Patrolling is nothing to do with dominating terrain. That's a Commonwealth Army's definition and it's provebaly wrong. How do you dominated ground between you and the enemy if you don't know where the enemy is? An advance to contact is reconnaissance. It may even be an advance to maintain contact against a moving enemy. Dismounted reconaissance is patrolling. Patrolling is dismounted or even mounted maneuver aimed at carrying out or supporting the core functions. It's like folks who fixate on AMBUSH instead of an attack on a moving enemy.

D. Fixating on the idea that the Ideal section is 11 or 9 men, or even X-men leads you down the same blind alley, because it is not based on the real world constraints and human factors that define how infantry operates. Redundancy is just a function of absolute numbers. Nothing more.

These are not arbitrary assumptions, these are real tactics, based on real-world requirements, and have been used time and time again in battle; none of what I offered was abstract, but was instead grounded in both wartime experience and present Doctrine (such as the latter may be). I refer you to both the Melody and Karcher pieces presented on the threads in this forum, and to current Infantry Doctrinal manuals in the Commonwealth and the US.

That a 22-man element of A Coy, 2Para carried out the decisive assault at Darwin does not in any way detract from what was proposed in my last post; following the same line of logic, we might be led to consider that all we need to take on an enemy Infantry Battalion, reinforced by AA Guns and with an Air Force Garrison taking up space too, is some two-dozen men. That obviously, does not follow. Yes, Sections and Platoons may have to reorganize in battle, but you want to avoid that if possible, not least because you do not want to lose momentum, which is what occurred at Darwin; a very near-run thing as Wellington said of Waterloo.

The whole point of Patrolling is to control the ground between yourself and to gain information on the location and disposition of the enemy, whilst denying same to the enemy. How is this provably wrong? And who said anything about limiting Fighting Patrols to fixed Ambushes? If you have to raid or occupy a fixed enemy position, then they may well be entrenched, which makes your job that much more difficult; if they are moving, then it's all gravy. A Meeting Engagement may be fluid, that the advantage more often than not goes to the boldest and most flexible side in such circrumstances. Good stuff.

An Advance-to-Contact is certainly about locating the enemy, but how do you carry out Patrol functions in the midst of a Battalion Attack, Deliberate of Hasty, with Tanks, Artillery, Engineers and the like, or even in the Pursuit? While I haven't heard what the latest diesel engines for MBTs sound like, I certainly know what the old ones sounded like, and I certainly knew that the enemy would likely hear us coming; gas-turbines on tanks like the M-1 are a different story, you hear their tracks long before you hear their engines. One of the problems with Mechanization is that you have to forgo stealth much of the time. That does not mean that you cannot practice Infiltration with MBTs and APCs, you certainly can, but your options are much more limited than with dismounted Infantry.

I do quite disagree that a given number of men per Section is pointless; I continue to argue that it is very much useful. You need to be able to have effective control while remaining dispersed and using cover and concealment to move from fire position to fire position; this is much facilitated by lightweight communications kit that we have now, and are much more liberally-supplied throughout the Platoon and Section than in the past, when a Section may have two or only one radio, and the Platoon usually only one, maybe two.

Take for example, the 11-man Section. The Section CDR deals with the Section 2i/c who leads the 7-man Assault Element, and his own 3-man Fire Element - no more than 4 men that he has to control in total. The Section 2i/c in turn, controls the two Team leaders (of 3-man teams) under him. Even in the old system of two radios per Section, the Section CDR and his 3-man Fire Element in the lead as per the German System and the 7-man Assault Element moving somewhere behind, provides for effective control whilst maintaining dispersion and using best available cover and concealment. With presently-issued small radios, the 7-man Assault Element can move in two separate 3-man Teams, controlled by the Section 2i/c (and he accompanies one of those teams).

But the same Section can come together very quickly for Battle. As per the German System, when Contact is made, the best available fire positions are taken, and until Effective Enemy Fire leads to the Firefight, the Section remains hidden. The Section Firefight is fought with the LMG and the UGL of the Fire Element, and possibly the RPG of the Assault Element; the Riflemen remain under cover unless ordered to join in the Firefight. After the Firefight is won, the Fire Element continues to Suppress, and the Assault Element infiltrates, if possible, to an assault position, and then carries out its work. Trench-clearing and the like is manpower-intensive, and heavy losses typical; that of course is why German Rifle Troops and Commonwealth Rifle Groups ideally numbered 6-8 men in a Group/Section.

As typical Section Battle in WWII strengths were 5-6 men out of an authorized 10 men, an 11-man Section with built-in redundancy does not seem so arbitrary, often allowing for the minimum 6-7 man strength that I described in a previous post. Replacements will be coming in periodically to replenish, at least partially, the strength of the Section, but persistent losses are likely to keep the Section down to said typical levels. This is not to say that there will not be 9 or 10-man Sections nor 3 or 4-man Sections, but redundancy does go some way to providing sufficient manpower in Sections, Platoons, and Companies to maintain effective fighting sub-units with the minimum required reorganization. And it is rather easier to do so than starting out with 5- or 6-man Groups trying to perform the same tasks as a Section.

Yes, I have followed Kilkullen's work now for a little while, and am intrigued by his Platoon organization for Oz. To be honest, while I remain unconvinced by it, I see so much potential in it that I am certainly open to see it further explained and developed. But I read recently that Oz may be abandoning this structure and moving back to 3 Sections of two Fire Teams plus a GPMG Team. Do you know more about this, or is it just a rumour? Superficially, it sounds simply like habitually associating each of the GPMG teams with a pair of Fire Teams, and in good hands, no Platoon CDR would hesitate to reorganize as he sees fit to meet whatever tactical demands are at hand; though I much prefer to avoid reorganization when and where possible.