Rifle squad composition

[Norfolk]

Coming from the old school of "Follow Me" and pride in my ability to "BELLOW" orders and a great command of hand and arm signals, I knew the first time I was trying to run a squad through a life fire exercise that voice, and hand signals were not an efficient way to do the job. Standing up and yelling and standing up and making eye contact to pass on hand signals got many a man shot.

Is there a tactical inter Squad comm net available for rifle squads to use to improve efficiencya nd surivability?

This question is an obvious one and I'm curious why we are not talking about communications down to the rifle man.

3 four man fire teams to a squad gives great manueverbility and a lot of fire power. In my day the B.A.R. was the base of fire volume for assualting fixed positions if we didn't have a brace of LMG 30 assigned to our rifle platoon for that coverage.

Wouldn't a comm connect between the SL and all the squads troops be a necessary enhancement.

I realize that there are multiple radio security issues, but in todays electronic wizard era a simple, and safe commo connection should be do able.

Hello RJ,

Great point. I think jcustis and a few others have used the new squad-level radios that each soldier carries - great piece of kit, apparently.

Yes, using these radios enables the Squad to move in very different ways potentially, than with the old spoken orders and visual signals. When rounds are going downrange, orders can't be heard, and hand signals are, obviously, rather attractive to enemy bullets. Not to mention that men have to be bunched up to within 5-10 m of each other in order to "retain" (and I use that term advisedly) control.

The distances that Ken described are only sensible, and intra-squad comms allow not only for greater dispersion whilst improving control, they also permit the Squad to break down into its constituent Fire Teams. The Fire Teams can then move semi-autonomously and take full advantage of available cover and concealment in order to minimize their visibility and sign. Basically, it allows them to seek and find the enemy without being themselves seen as easily as if advancing in the formally taught field formations. In that respect, the Fire Teams may sort of take on an SF-patrol type mode of movement, but with an obvious difference being that the Infantry are still going out of their way to look for trouble, while the SF are usually (not always of course) trying to avoid it.

The essential criteria of what makes for a Squad is "the smallest unit commanded by a single man". Clearly, the "Squad" as it presently exists doesn't really fit into that definition; the Fire Team is the "Squad", and the "Squad" has become a "Section" since the introduction of the Fire Team - the true Squad. Intra-Squad/Section radio communications are more and more making this so, and Squaddies in the future may increasingly come to both operate as and identify with, their "Squad"/Fire Team than their Squad/Section. Especially as Fire Teams disperse over ever-wider areas of the battlefield; the Squad/Section, as we know it, is in danger of becoming the Platoon of the future in that sense. At this point, Wigram's and Wilf's ideas on Platoon organization are brought increasingly into consideration.

KiwiGrunt, even if belt-fed guns are not the way to go below Company-level (normally, but with exceptions), I still share your view that something along the lines of the 6.5mm Grendel should be the common cartridge of the Squad/Section. The 5.56mm is not fully adequate, and as the 6.5mm gives something close to 7.62mm performance at typical infantry engagement ranges and at a substantial reduction in weight, it's probably most suitable for Platoon needs.

A belt-fed weapon, especially if the belt is contained in a box like on the Minimi LMG/M-249 SAW, can make a terrible racket when a few guys are trying to avoid being heard by the enemy in the bush or during the night. Magazine-fed is definitely preferable here, particularly if Infantry Squads/Sections are going to spend a lot more of their time on the battlefield moving from cover-to-cover, firing position-to-firing position as semi-autonomous Fire Teams in order to minimize detection and losses, and to maximize surprise and shock effect. The big guns, like the MAG/M-240 were used with good effect in Rhodesia and the Falklands, amongst others, in four-man teams, but again that was mostly with SF and Commando Forces. When the big guns are attached to regular Squads/Sections, as Ken says, it's usually in order to make up for inadequate individual and sub-unit training standards - but not always.

In any case, while "small wars" may allow for the comparative luxury of attaching heavy weapon to minor- and sub-units, "big wars" rarely do, and the German and USMC Machine Gun/Weapons Platoons at Company level were the products of wartime experience; in the former case, drawing on the lessons of WWI as well as WWII, and in the latter, as a result of the experiences of fighting in the Pacific. Taking together, the German and USMC experiences (which included far more close-quarter fighting than almost anything since then) arrived at pretty similar conclusions despite very different experiences, of what worked, in most places, most of the time. And of course both were readily able and willing to adapt to the circumstances at hand.