Good metaphor!
Hmmm...that was the point of my question above. I'm not proposing anything, I'm asking!
So let's try this.
To all individuals who proposed or commented upon TO&Es in related threads: What were your assumptions that guided your comments?
If you proposed a given unit organization, what was your assumed mission? Your operating environment? ROE? etc. Was it to be a jack-of-all trades? Why did you propose what you did? Was your proposal based purely on conventional OpFor, purely counter-insurgency, or a combination? When two individuals with military experience see "small raiding force" and "set-piece battle" in the same train of thought you know they're on the same planet but from different worlds.
From my amateur perspective, here's what I've observed with respect to the bulk of American front-line trigger-pullers. And by that I mean our light infantry such as airborne and rangers, our marine rifle battalions, our mech infantry and cav in Brads, and our new Stryker-mounted units.
They've been tasked with various missions related to the initial invasion and occupation of a third-world country. They've been asked to engage conventional if poorly equiped/trained/led "regular" forces, civilian militias, experienced foreign fighters, terrorists, and reluctant civilians. And they've been asked to provide security like neighborhood police in the midst of warring factions and outright thugs and criminals. They've faced AFVs with autocannons and tank guns (even if in very poor condition and poorly manned), regulars in fixed positions with heavy machine guns and mortars, civilian militia with AKs and RPGs, experienced foreign fighters with sniper rifles, dads being forced by terrorists to plant IEDs because they need the money, and even kids and moms being used as spotters.
So, from initial invasion to conventional combat to counter-insurgenecy to "police-work" the "line troops" who make up the bulk of our front-line forces have been asked to face all of those things with a paper TO&E that's fairly consistent (either 9 or 13-man squads in 4-man fire teams, a couple of platoon-level GPMGs and AT teams, sometimes company-level 60mm mortars, usually battalion-level 81mm mortars, and a battalion-level recon platoon.)
So, if you (as in vous/y'all) proposed or asserted anything in the related threads about TO&E for squad to battalion, what were your assumptions?
In the absence of your assumptions, just look at the varied operating environment and threats faced by our airborne, ranger, mech, cav, and marines in Iraq and test your ideas against those parameters since they're all real-world based.
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