Military unit size question: company

[Cap'n Nick]

I used to have this information, but I don't anymore and I've been looking but to no avail. How large is an average company-sized unit? I'm asking on the rifts board because I know mercenaries has this information and so do some other books probably. Just a general idea of size would work. Thanks in advance.


nic

[Dustin Fireblade]

Here is a good link for some stuff..

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ ... /intro.htm

[Ice Dragon]

TO&E Company (any)
HQ Section/Squad
Supply Section/Squad
4 Platoons

[Mack]

I use a simple system. It's not representative of any military, but it's easy to remember and use.

A unit consists of 3 units of the next smaller size, plus a leadership element of that's two steps smaller. The leadership portion has the commander, first sergeant, comm tech, supply, etc...

-- A Fireteam equals 3 Riflemen, plus a PFC or Corporal leader. 4 total people.

-- A Squad equals 3 FireTeams, plus a single Squad Leader (a Corporal or Sergeant). 13 total people.

-- A Platoon equals 3 Squads, and a leadership FireTeam (a Lt, Sgt, and a couple of Corporals). 43 total people.

-- So a Company equals 3 Platoons, and a leadership Squad (a Capt, Lt, senior NCO, comm techs, support personell...). 142 total people.

And you can continue to build this system up as far as you want. It makes tactics simple, as you can easily adopt several formations with the 3 subunits. Also, the little bit of extra personell in the leadership units can be used to fill in gaps in the subunits as casualities occur (a Corp on the Company Leadership team fills in as a Squad leader, or whatever, as needed).

For mechanized forces, a suit of power armor equals 2 or 4 troops, and a Robot/Tank equals a Fireteam or Squad of infanty, depending on the vehicle. That makes it simple to just replace X troops with Y robots.

This ignores a lot of the support structure of a modern army, so at higher levels I'll just throw in an addition subunit of support personnel as needed.

[Jefffar]

In some militaries a company will also have a weapons platoon carrying the heavier weapons like ATGW or medium/heavy machineguns or light mortars and similar.

[Athos]

I used to have this information, but I don't anymore and I've been looking but to no avail. How large is an average company-sized unit? I'm asking on the rifts board because I know mercenaries has this information and so do some other books probably. Just a general idea of size would work. Thanks in advance.


nic

A company is usually 100-120 soldiers.

[Mack]

nice Mack..
it also gets rid of all that excess paperwork -creating the support structure- you dont need unless you really want to delve into it..

Right.

We want to game, not become a planner in the Pentagon.

[Jefffar]

Speak for yourself. I applied for a job at the Department of National Defence's Policy Division.


Didn't get it, but I tried.