Squad organization

[Centurian52]

I just created a thread in the CMCW forum hoping to coax people into posting more interesting Cold War era training films. But one thing that interested me about the video I posted was that the squad in the video was clearly using the 11 man format used from 1956-1963 (when one man was dropped, resulting in two asymmetric teams of five and four men, plus a squad leader) and from 1973 to 1984 (in the light infantry, while the mechanized infantry used 9 men). That got me interested in having a discussion about historical squad organizations (or changes to any layer of organization, such as platoon or company if you have something interesting to say on those), but I felt that such a discussion deserved its own thread so here we are.

Numerous studies in the 50's and 60's seemed to keep concluding that the optimal squad format was the 11 man squad of two balanced five man fireteams plus a squad leader, with a light machinegun on each team. The reasons were: 11 men can absorb casualties better than any smaller squad (it was concluded that the squad should anticipate operating at 25% below its authorized strength), two teams is better than no teams since the squad needs to be able to conduct its own fire and maneuver (rather than having to depend on the fire and maneuver capabilities of the platoon), two teams is easier to control than three, about five men was the most that a single leader could reasonably control, and a light machinegun will significantly increase each team's firepower (and was more effective than having to request machinegun support from the platoon).

It saddens me that we never got the squad format that was recommended by these studies. We've had 11 man squads. And we have squads with a light machinegun on each team. But we've never had 11 man squads with a light machinegun on each team. In the periods during which we had 11 man squads the lightest machinegun available was the M60, which was belt-fed and as such was considered to be most effective when operated with a crew of three. As such it was believed that assigning an M60 to the fireteams would hinder their mobility too much, and the M60s were kept in the platoon weapons squad (although apparently it didn't hinder mobility so much that the mechanized infantry couldn't carry an M60 in the squad). When the M249 entered service we finally had a machinegun that was considered light enough to put on every fireteam, but by then we had dropped to the 9 man squad (both the move from 11 men to 10 in 1963, and the move from 11 to 9 in 1984 were motivated by a need to economize on manpower to fill out enough divisions (also in 1984 mechanized infantry were becoming more common, and designing an APC/IFV that can fit 11 men in the back isn't easy, and there are argument's that it would be putting too many eggs in one basket anyway if that APC/IFV were destroyed)).

My source for most of what I know about post WW2 US Army squad organization: https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA293440.pdf