Rifle squad composition

[Rifleman]

I posted this on another board and didn't get much response. I'm curious to know what people here might think of it.

I was brought up in the doctrine of balanced fire teams, two in the army light infantry squad that I knew, or three in the bigger Marine Corps squad.

I've read some articles that advocate a squad design made up of a light fire team and a heavy fire team. This is somewhat closer to the WWII squad design of scout group, rifle group, and gun group. The light fire team is usually envisioned as riflemen and grenadiers, with the heavy fire team as some combination of belt fed weapons, rocket launchers, and designated riflemen (squad sharpshooters).

Your ideas about the exact specifics of weapons mix; squad size and numbers; two fire teams v. three; four man fire teams v. five man fire teams, etc., isn't what I'm asking about.

I want to know what folks think about the current doctrinal principal of balanced fire teams v. light and heavy teams in the same squad.

I'm more comfortable with balanced fire teams from experience, but I find the light/heavy idea interesting.

What say you?

[Tom Odom]

I wrote an article for Military Review (with a retired Sergeant Major of the Army and a former CSM of Ops Grp) on the subject of small units. We started at the company and went down to squad.

We argued for a larger squad built on 3's and providing a maneuver, support, and a breach element. We wanted to make the squad as much a combined arms element as we could and we also sought to make it more self-sustaining. I advocated 3 man versus buddy teams; 3s provide greater duration and depth.

My argument also looked at tests run by GEN DePuy as the 1st TRADOC commander. DePuy tested everything; in this case, he tested the various combinations of support and maneuver ; by a clear margin the best ratio of support to maneuver was 2 to 1. A balanced squad cannot do that as it is organized; it must reorganize and/or be reinforced.

You can read about DePuy's tests in Gorman's Secret of Future Victories

My article is at Military Review

Best

Tom

[RTK]

I wrote an article for Military Review (with a retired Sergeant Major of the Army and a former CSM of Ops Grp) on the subject of small units. We started at the company and went down to squad.

We argued for a larger squad built on 3's and providing a maneuver, support, and a breach element. We wanted to make the squad as much a combined arms element as we could and we also sought to make it more self-sustaining. I advocated 3 man versus buddy teams; 3s provide greater duration and depth.

My argument also looked at tests run by GEN DePuy as the 1st TRADOC commander. DePuy tested everything; in this case, he tested the various combinations of support and maneuver ; by a clear margin the best ratio of support to maneuver was 2 to 1. A balanced squad cannot do that as it is organized; it must reorganize and/or be reinforced.

You can read about DePuy's tests in Gorman's Secret of Future Victories

My article is at Military Review

Best

Tom

In support of Tom's point, when you look at the operational requirements of the missions typical to a squad, there are usually three elements there (for instance, in an attack there are operational requirements for an assault force, a suppression force, and a breach force). It seems to make sense that the types of units who will routinely have three operational requirements would have three different sections or teams.

[marct]

In support of Tom's point, when you look at the operational requirements of the missions typical to a squad, there are usually three elements there (for instance, in an attack there are operational requirements for an assault force, a suppression force, and a breach force). It seems to make sense that the types of units who will routinely have three operational requirements would have three different sections or teams.

I think Tom makes a good argument, here. I'd be interested, however, in seeing what people think about this when we take highly varying terrain and ROEs into account. Part of the reason for this is that I have been thinking about possible squad level IO/intel training/use.

Marc

[Stu-6]

Although army doctrine during my time on active duty called for two balanced teams we often used two or sometimes three teams of different compositions due the availability of personal and weapons. While this prevents a squad leader from having interchangeable fire teams it can give some advantages; for instance a heavy team (2-3x M249 1-2x M203) can generate a lot of suppressive fire allowing a lighter team more freedom of maneuver.

[jcustis]

I think Tom makes a good argument, here. I'd be interested, however, in seeing what people think about this when we take highly varying terrain and ROEs into account. Part of the reason for this is that I have been thinking about possible squad level IO/intel training/use.

Marc

While terrain is a factor, I think ROEs are less important. Remember that in the Marine Corps, we already have a mantra that every rifleman is a collector, if that's the thrust of what you're saying marct.

Now, does this translate into profitable collection exercises? Not always, especially if you are in high-intensity COIN ops, conducting multiple offensive ops, or even keeping your head down during the last month of rotation.

[Bill Moore]

You needn't coach me on our personnel system, I am painfully familiar with it, but this is the essence of the majority of our problems, and why I think we'll more outsourcing of security in the future (see John Robb's blog for details on outsourcing). Our military organization does not adapt quickly, so we're forced to fight with inefficiently designed organizations. Our non-state enemy on the other hand can adapt overnight. We're forced to some extent (though commanders can task organize the forces they have within limits) to fight with what we have, and a squad and platoon, and company and so forth we're designed to fight a major land battle in the Fulda Gap (and we're not ideally organized for that). The danger is we design tactics based on the design of our organizations, thus in reality we define the tactical problem to fit our preconceived solution. What is a particular mission called for a 15 man squad, and another called for a 6 man squad? Of course we can do it, but how often do we? Buddy you can't grab my people, stay out of my rice bowl.

METT-TC should drive task organization, not just we need two squad here, a platoon there, but we need two squads that look like this, and a platoon with this capability.

Obviously our MTOE system doesn't allow us to simply have a pool of bodies that we can plug and play with. Furthermore unit adhesion is a combat multiplier, so the risk of too much flexibility is limited cohersion. I think our enemy gets past that with a powerful ideology.

O.K., I got that off my chest, so back to the ideal squad (presumably for combat maneuver). I think it is 12 men. A four man assault/manuever force, a four man support section, and a four man C2/floater section (sqd ldr, medic, two rifle men) that not only direct the effort, but can weight the effort either towards maneuver or support element, depending on where the squad leader places this section. I went with four per section instead of three to facilitate maintaining a viable force even with a certain % of casualties. No I didn't base this off an ODA, a perfect ODA should probably be around 15 men, and they shouldn't be maneuvering like a squad.

[Norfolk]

I wrote an article for Military Review (with a retired Sergeant Major of the Army and a former CSM of Ops Grp) on the subject of small units. We started at the company and went down to squad.

We argued for a larger squad built on 3's and providing a maneuver, support, and a breach element. We wanted to make the squad as much a combined arms element as we could and we also sought to make it more self-sustaining. I advocated 3 man versus buddy teams; 3s provide greater duration and depth.

My argument also looked at tests run by GEN DePuy as the 1st TRADOC commander. DePuy tested everything; in this case, he tested the various combinations of support and maneuver ; by a clear margin the best ratio of support to maneuver was 2 to 1. A balanced squad cannot do that as it is organized; it must reorganize and/or be reinforced.

Gen. DePuy's tests were certainly rigorous, and as shown in Gen. Gorman's book as well as Gen. DePuy's own papers those tests arrived at what were considered surprising, even shocking results at the time. It's too bad that some of DePuy's innovations were either stillborn or faded out over the years.

The 3-man team, as Tom Odom said, offers greater depth than the traditional buddy team. If one man goes down in a firefight, there still two more to carry one, rather than a lone rifleman left stuck looking for someone to watch his back. And it's a lot easier to construct, man, fight, and maintain a battle trench/foxhole with three guys than just two. The PLA, the PAVN/NVA, and the VC amongst others all insisted on the 3-man cell as the ideal building block of the infantry squad (squad leader and 3 cells). Besides providing either a full crew for a machine gun or rocket launcher, or an assault team for breaking into trenches or clearing rooms, it provides moral (and morale) support in a way that you just can't get with a buddy team. As the saying goes, 'Three's Company". Less isolation and loneliness and more hands to do the work. Except during battle or on patrol, one guy on the parapet, one guy cooking, cleaning, or working, and one guy sleeping.

Of course, there are some issues to deal with. As the Marines found in 1944 after converting to the 10-man squad with three 3-man fire teams, battle losses compelled them to add a fourth man to each team. Gen. DePuy remarked at least a few times that a squad would often routinely operate with only 4, 5, or 6 guys (out of what was in his TRADOC days an 11-man squad). That adds up to two 3 man teams at most; a 13-man Marine squad might make 6 men more or less consistently under conditions of heavy battle attrition. I see Tom Odom's article recommends a 14-man squad for most battle functions.

You've also got to have enough men, for enough teams, to avoid having to constantly reorganize the squad for each task that come up, even after suffering battle losses. Frequent reorganization disrupts and even breaks down working relationships between individuals, and this loss of cohesion is felt afterwards until everyone settles down and gets to know how each person works. And of course, battle attrition lends itself to the need for frequent enough reorganization as it is.

But DePuy (as both Gen. Gorman and Col. Odom point out) had an answer (actually two) to this battle attrition problem, the "One Up, Two Back" formation in the attack, and the PARFOX in the defence. DePuy himself of course tested this using the squads in the platoon, and when platoons used one squad to first make contact while keeping the other two in reserve, then suppressing the enemy with two squads and assaulting with the third, something like 88% of these "One Up, Two Back" platoon attacks were successful. Attacker losses were reduced by something like half if I remember correctly. None of the other platoon attack tactical formations even come close (even the one with attached AT team). Now, given that the squads themselves just had two fire teams each, it's not necessarily proven, but certainly logical that the same tactics would work for a squad with 3 fire teams if it was detached on an independent mission. And in the defence, the innovative Parapet Foxhole (mind you, with 2 guys in the hole) also reduced losses by about half compared to the ordinary foxhole, and led to a much greater rate of success in the defence.

A counter-argument to this might be that, well, the squad is just a fire unit and it's the platoon that is the basic manoeuvre unit, so it's not necessary for the squad to have more than two teams; it just has to alternate fire and movement between teams until one is close enough to assault, and that the other squads in the platoon can provide suppression throughout. Well, suppose that's so. With apologies to the late Gen. DePuy, how are any of those squads supposed to maintain at least 6 men (in two 3 man teams) in order to keep fighting out of just a 9 man squad (which was forced upon DePuy and his successors due to manning restrictions)? And this is assuming a full-strength 9-man squad to begin with, quite an assumption to make. And of course, a two-team squad renders it incapable of using the "One-Up, Two-Back" attack formation that is so crucial to both a successful attack and cutting you losses by up to half compared to other tactics.

I think that when all is said and done, the 13-man USMC rifle squad, for most conventional infantry operations, is the best bet overall (notwithstanding the Marine's 15-man CAP squads in Vietnam, mind you, but that was still unconventional warfare): leadership and supervision (4 NCOs per squad - ideally); tactical flexibility (3 teams and a squad leader free to move where he needs to go, and not have to fight a team of his own); staying power (4 man teams to absorb losses); firepower (3 LMGs, 3 underslung grenade launchers); and enough straight rifleman (6) to clear trenches and rooms while sustaining losses.

As for Col. Odom's making a permanent distinction between breach squads and assault squads, I have to say that each rifle squad should be trained to make the breach even if one squad is already designated as and kitted out for, that task in say, a deliberate attack. Something might happen to that squad or it may become so depleted by losses that another squad may have to make the breach instead. Granted, I'm coming from a Commonwealth Army background, and circumstances in the US Army (or USMC for that matter) may be substantially different, but we certainly trained to make the breach, and doctrinally we were to have an assault pioneer platoon (from battalion) and possibly a field engineer troop (from brigade) in support of an infantry battalion for that purpose. But we weren't allowed to think for a moment that we weren't expected to do that ourselves, with or without the help of the pioneers or the engineers. We had the training and the equipment, all of us in the rifle platoon.

I'd feel a lot better though, if having to do that for real, I had a 13-man squad, and not an 8-man section to do the job.

[Ken White]

13 man Marine rifle squad (prior to the M-79) and the old 11 man Army Rifle Squad (too old to have suffered the current very, very dumb 9 man Squad) in peacetime and combat, I have absolutely no doubt that the 13 man is the best solution. By a very significant margin.

Also agree that a well trained rifle Squad can do all it's jobs; that one going in -- preferably by infiltration -- and two in support is vastly preferable to the old 'two up and one back' routine.

I think that Platoon operations should be the norm but that independent squad action in a great many situations is desirable (particularly in COIN). Such independence is, I think limited by two factors; most commonly fear of loss of oversight and thus being blamed if something goes wrong; and a failure to understand that the average unit can be trained to do far more than we normally allow them to do.

I'm not sure we can afford that hesitation and lack of faith given todays costs in dollars and difficulties in recruiting for other than combat jobs -- the latter meaning that the CSS tail has to be cut because the sharp aggressive kids will not serve there by choice.

Lot of wasted potential...

[Norfolk]

It seems someone in Britain has been testing much the same sort of infantry tactics as Rommel and DePuy were into. David Kilcullen found that the Brits were doing heavy suppression work back in the '90s (I seem to remember that the Brits were somewhat unsettled by the infantry losses they suffered at the hands of poorly-led Argentinian, and must have pondered what would have happened if they'd had to face a rather more competent enemy. Apparently, British Army experiments came to the conclusion that a ratio of 3 suppression elements to 1 assault element produced a successful "repeatable formula" (I cringe when I hear that sort of langauge) to be used in the infantry attack.

Kilcullen subsequently tested this "formula" out on the Indonesians in East Timor in 1999, and he recalls that it worked like a charm. Here's the article he wrote on this whole matter:

http://www.defence.gov.au/army/lwsc/AAJ_I1.asp

It's less comprehensive than DePuy's studies, and more or less follows Rommels' and DePuy's own observations, as it offers much the same sort of tactical "solution" to the infantry attack but from a different perspective. but I think that it's still worth a look. Particularly interesting are his observations on how infantry actually move in contacy; autonomously and without orders, yet doing so fully in accordance with the tactical situation in mind - what he calls "Flocking".

[Ken White]

Most of our minor tactics are marginal to poor. He mentions in there that the lead element often got pinned down and could do nothing. Our doctrine says that the lead element 'returns fire, suppresses enemy fire and develops the situation.' I saw that done repeatedly in Korea -- and I saw that it flat did not work.

I always told folks that the job of the lead element coming under fire -- when they almost certainly were going to be out gunned and have little idea where the opposition was -- was too get under cover and simply stay alive and that the next element in line was to lay down heavy suppressive fire to help the lead element get out or just survive. The third element would do any maneuvering required.

One up and two back -- three back is better -- has always been the way to go.

[TROUFION]

Rifleman,

Back in 2000-2001 the Battalion I was part of was tasked with this very same question you ask. The three line companies each redesigned the basic squad organization from the standard 3, 4xman teams. We had to form two 5 man teams with a squad leader (11 man squads). While this was mainly a reaction to the under manning of the battalion at the time we did get the opportunity to try different squad design.

My rifle company reset the squad to have a heavy squad and a light squad. I spent a great deal of time researching different organizations from history to find the best design I could. What I found was that basing the squad on the light machine gun or SAW was still the best approach. The design I put in place massed two SAW/LMG in the heavy or support team. The team had two assistant automatic riflemen armed with M16A2's and a team leader armed with a 203.

The other team was the scout/assault team and had a team ldr (M16A2), a grenadier (203), a designated marksman (M16A2 with ACOG), and 2 rifleman/scouts.

We tested this formation for a period of 7 months mostly on UDP to Okinawa (to include in the NTA), on Guam and Camp Fuji on mainland Japan.

The company operated mainly as a helicopter borne unit and spent most exercises as footmobile light infantry.

That said the experiment worked fairly well when we could keep our manning level up. That was a difficulty that caused our AAR to carry the load of two men and to support two SAW's. However, that aside the massed firepower and 'talking guns' capability of massed SAW's was excellent for covering the assault team as it manueverd onto objectives. The downside was that the squad would split and the potentiality of the a team becoming isolated was a reality.

-T

[Schmedlap]

I've read some articles that advocate a squad design made up of a light fire team and a heavy fire team. This is somewhat closer to the WWII squad design of scout group, rifle group, and gun group. The light fire team is usually envisioned as riflemen and grenadiers, with the heavy fire team as some combination of belt fed weapons, rocket launchers, and designated riflemen (squad sharpshooters).

...

I want to know what folks think about the current doctrinal principal of balanced fire teams v. light and heavy teams in the same squad.

...

What say you?

From a practical standpoint, I'm just envisioning a 4-man fire team and a 3 to 5 man "heavy" team, bounding by team. One element is significantly slower than the other. Throw in a third team - you've still got a slow team. Task organize in a way to disperses the heavy weapons guys among the squad - now you've split up fire teams.

From a training perspective, how many skill sets is the squad leader going to be responsible for training and tactically employing? I already see this problem at the BN level, let alone company, platoon, or squad. Now that we've created heavy maneuver battalions composed of engineer, armor, and infantry, the battalion commander is no longer the guy blessing off on platoons. He handles the company of his branch. Hopefully the S-3 is another branch, so that he can take those companies. And then you've got one more branch. With an Armor BC and an Infantry S-3, who blesses off on the Engineer platoons? Delegate down from O-5 to O-3? Find an O-5 Engineer?

The heavy concept might make sense for a mech infantry unit where the vehicles are the designated SBF and provide an array of other benefits (most notably transportation for all of that heavy stuff). My old mech platoon dismounted with M240B's, Javelins, AT-4's - we were ALL heavy in one way or another.

From the standpoint of a light/aaslt/abn platoon, why so many tasks and so much equipment for one squad? Someone mentioned assault and breach - shouldn't this be a platoon effort? We've gone so far as to push out 3-man teams to operate independently for up to 72 hours, but those guys aren't doing raids - and they were not alone when moving into their hide sites. If you're doing an assault that requires a breach, I'm not comfortable sending a squad - not even if it is a 12-man squad. That is especially so if we're talking urban terrain. And as for better maneuver afforded by 3 teams or a heavy team, I again would ask where the rest of the platoon is. If the firepower and maneuverability afforded by 3 teams is necessary, then you might want to reconsider whether the men are embarking upon a mission appropriate for a squad. More often than not, I think the answer would be no. For that less frequent occasion when the answer is yes, a temporary task organization to plus up the squad seems more prudent than changing the MTOE for the less frequent occasions.

I'm just a fan of simplicity for the squad leader and two similar teams seems a good mix of simple and appropriate. He has enough weight upon his shoulders already.

[goesh]

I'd want at least one kid who raised himself up and out of a ghetto carrying a Thompson if it's an urban environment and a hillbilly carrying the Thompson in a heavy bush environment. Heavy lead and the distinct bark of a Thompson can really anchor and center a crew with killing on their mind.