I think it can be said less harshly than RTK did (though I know the harshness was necessary):

Timothy: Combat, war, is not about numbers and math and equations and formulae. I've never experienced it but through games, reading, and history, and I know this.

You are trying to impose math and metrics upon something which is, in its most final analysis, about people. Real, non-integer people.

I've done it myself - it's an easy trap to fall into. It's incredibly seductive to just go "Well, I'll use new whizbang 728 with 23 guys to a squad and..." But it is wrong.

Don't think about the numbers. Throw the technical details out the window.

The people are the key. The people who wear the uniform and man the units, the people who make up the opposing side, the people who decide the context of any particular event.

What RTK is asking for is a question, or set of questions, you really, really need to have answered before you consider anything else:

"Why am I putting 18, 19, 20 year olds on a plane and sending them to a dangerous place? What are they intended to do when they get there? What do we hope to achieve with those people I have sent to a dangerous place, and why do we hope to achieve that?"

If the answer is "I am sending them to Europe to potentially defend against Soviet actions that may be part of a general war that may involve the use of nuclear weapons", you are going to have different parameters than if you're sending them to Afghanistan to fight an insurgency, support a government, and basically make things peaceful and prosperous. If you are sending them to Korea to defend against the KPA as they come across the DMZ, you have yet another set of parameters.