Mark Richter, PM Marine Expeditionary Rifle Squad (MERS) outlined the USMC view of the enhanced rifle infantry squad, a combat formation reduced from a complex 13-man unit to a more maneuverable, streamlined eight men formation. Richter also discussed the rapid fielding of new equipment, including the fielding of night vision devices, personal role radio for all squad members, equipping commanders at various levels with additional computing devices. The concept of "platoon in a box" was also discussed, outlining some innovative logistical solutions enabling the support and deployment of such flexible concepts. "The squad as a system" is the USMC approach to future warrior systems. Richter regards power to be the most critical issue.

The future concept is the Enhanced / Distributed Operations. Enabling the marine unit to control and dominate a larger area – placing more experienced Non Commissioned Officers (NCO) in key positions in the squad and platoon, embedding intelligence cells at Forward Operating Bases (FOB) and company or platoon formations, issuing four digital cameras to each squad, enabling troops to collect intelligence while on routine missions and process it on image enhancement gear while at the FOB. The cameras are quiet and effective even in darkness, as images can be enhanced to show details invisible on regular mode. 200 digital cameras in the battalion become a powerful visual intelligence asset that must be managed effectively.

The units are being equipped with the Thales MBITR which operates with both JTRS and legacy systems. These radios operate effectively in open terrain, heavy vegetation and urban environments. Individual radios are also being replaced, with IISR raios replacing the older Personnel Role Radios. In total, 704 units will be provided to each battalion. Using personnel role radios proved problematic when utilized in voice operatiod transmit (VOX) mode, as the radio would automatically burst into transmission during firefights, rendering actual voice messages incomprehensible. A solution to this problem was provided by the QuietPro headset system fielded in 2006, which controls two radios simultaneously while providing hearing protectin.

The future operating concept highlights Enhanced / Distributed Operations capability, enabling the marine unit to control and dominate a larger area. To support enhanced capabilities the corps is considering deploying units with flexible logistic systems known as "platoon in a box", containerized, mission configurable logistics and supply package that can sustain the unit for long periods, with minimum additional support.

Richter considers placing more experienced Non Commissioned Officers (NCO) in key positions in the squad and platoon as essential to meet the new capability. Embedding intelligence cells at Forward Operating Bases (FOB) and company or platoon formations is also necessary to generate more targets and facilitate area dominance. Such activities are already underway using simple and available means, such as the deployment of four digital cameras to each squad, enabling troops to collect intelligence while on routine missions and process it on image enhancement gear while at the FOB.

Patrols carry such 'point and shoot' cameras, or more advanced digital SLR cameras, capturing snapshots of routine scenes or more specific images of potential objectives, all could provide intelligence value. Images are taken under any lighting conditions, even inside dark rooms, and are later enhanced to extract relevant data. "200 digital cameras in the battalion become a powerful visual intelligence asset that must be managed effectively" adds Richter.

With the growing dependence in electronic equipment, power becomes the most critical issue in combat planning, representing a significant load factor for the dismounted marine. "The corps will not reduce weight in the near future, but can certainly improve ergonomics so that carrying the weight will be more comfortable." said Richter. The US Marines do not consider excessive weight as a problem, since there is not much room to reduce weight loads, they are looking at ergonomic solutions to improve the distribution of load over the warfighter's body.

"Historically, weight has been a percentage of body weight. However, usually those limits are exceeded." Said Richter. He said that the Marines are planning to evaluate a new method of weight objectives, based on weight and ergonomics needs to be used. The study will determine what weights and issues are affecting the soldier's accomplishments of various combat tasks, as well as evaluating how new or conceptual equipment and ergonomics (such as location of equipment, use of solid or flexible armor etc.) could mitigate weight problems. "Besides weight, the volumetric issue is also important, as it affects the soldier's performance in confined spaces, such as indoors, inside a vehicle or aircraft" Richter added.

My personal take on this:

Back in the eighties the Corps went to an Army light infantry squad of 11 (squad leader + 2 five man fire teams) which led to disasterous results so they changed back. Sure our units operated from humvees in Iraq but thats open country. What happens when the next one is in forests, mountains or back in the jungles?

Also back in the eighties the Army went to a nine man squad so they could fit them all into one Bradley Infantry Fighting Vehicle. The real truth was that it was cheaper to manufacture and maintain smaller vehicles than larger ones so they adjusted their troop structures accordingly. No disrespect to the Army but we see how useful their heavy formations are in built up closed in areas of Iraq.

This whole train of thought is what happens when you build your units based on your equipment instead of basing your equipment on your units.

Will the wizards at HQMC ever wake up and learn from the past or are they always going to keep reinventing the wheel??? If it ain't broke - DON'T FIX IT!

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Deanosaur,

I'm assuming they are going to test this concept out first. If it works it works if it doesn't then hopefully they'll scrap it. The army uses the 9 man squad and it seems to work out pretty well.

No matter what (and this will sound totally moto-tastic) the Marines will adapt and overcome the changes and make it work. I always tried to remember that no matter how dumb something was or how it was being run it always some how seemed to work in the end. I'm sure that this will be the same way as well.

This has been tried before and it always come down to one question: when are we going to stop fixing what ain't broke? The Army has had to totally revamp their entire system and it's cost them dearly. Why should we take ourselves thru this same process? It will work to a point but combat is about boots on the ground and firepower sent down range. Less troops equals less firepower no matter what the engineers or book says.

The smaller squad size seems like a pretty good idea right now as far as Iraq is concerned. I can't ever remember operating in anything close to a 13 man squad. In Iraq grunts are operating either in platoon sized elements doing long mounted patrols in the desert, or are sitting in the cities on TCPs doing dismounted urban patrols.

When it comes to guys doing vehicle ops in the countryside, the 13 man squad doesn't work. It doesn't work because after removing the gunners,drivers, and VCs required to man the vehicles, most of the small platoons/sections working alone in the desert don't even have 13 dismounts. And, even if there is a large enough element to field the proper number, due to vehicle dispersion and sectors of fire, a dismounting squad will find itself spread literally hundreds of meters apart along open terrain. Its idiotic on a raid to wait five minutes for your assault element to form up before hitting a house. How about at night or in a sandstorm?. To combat this my platoon ditched the old ways and split into 3 vehicle sections with 6-9 dismounts under one section leader. This gave us the flexibiltiy and mobility to hit the multiple houses/villages simualtaneously in a target area that we couldn't have done with a larger squad. This also allowed us to patrol a much larger area and mess with the bad guys by switching up patrol schedules to catch them in the act.Yes we were more vulnerable, but our crew-served weapons filled in the gaps. I saw this type of setup all over the place in Marine and Army units. It would be nice if official Marine Corps doctrine could cover this type of organization better.

As my SOI instructors always used to say, the 13 man squad and its formations were designed for vietnam. Since hitting the fleet the only time I've ever been organized into a 13 man squad was for administrative purposes in the rear. Operationally my platoon has always been flexible and organized itself as the situation dictated. I couldn't give you an accurate number, but I bet that at least half of all straight leg units are now doing mounted ops. When you add in LAR BNs and arty and tanks who seem to trade in their heavy **** for humvees and MRAPS, jungle style organization is proably now the exception.

For the rest of the guys who are doing patrols from JCCs and TCPs in the city I can't really comment. I remember seeing patrols in Haditha moving down roads in good old staggered columns though. The old set up is proably still effective there. Maybe someone else who operated in the city can offer insight.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Ignoranceisbliss,

13 man squad? What's that? I've ever seen that in my battalion. Oh wait, that's because in the nearly 3 years I've been here we haven't been T/O once. We work in 8-9 man squads not onl because it's tactically smarter, but because we have to.

13 man squads came into existence based on the Raider Battalion’s experiences of World War II and have been highly successful since first used on Iwo Jima when three full divisions were chewed up simultaneously. This includes Okinawa (jungle) Korea (forest/open hills), Vietnam (jungle), Beirut (city), Kuwait (desert), Haiti (jungle), Somalia (desert), Bosnia (forest hills) and initially in Afghanistan and Iraq. Notice these are all dismounted combat operations regardless of terrain type.

With all due respect to all of your efforts which I truly admire, you have been extremely blessed that your enemy is not well organized nor mounting a concerted effort against you. By this point in Vietnam alone our casualty rates were ten times yours’ and our helicopters were much faster and better armed than your humvees. Do not make the critical mistake of believing you’re going to continue to fight everyone else based on your mounted experiences in one geographical location.

Technology is fine and a great tool, but it’s rifles, grenade launchers and crew serves putting lead on targets while seizing objectives that win wars. Before this one started there were growing questions whether infantry was even viable given the so called successes of air power in the Balkans during the mid-late nineties. Tragically no one would listen to us until you all had to go in, get hurt and do the job.

Sadly this is only one war in one area so don’t get comfortable because our chances of being this lucky are slim to none in the next one. God bless you all, stay safe and get home to us in one piece.

Semper Fi,
Dino

I agree that the 13 man squad has worked great throughout history. That is how I trained and also that's how I fought. When dismounted it is very nice to have that extra fire team. But the 9 man concept that the army uses also works out very well. So basically neither is broken.

I'm sure before the Marine Corps makes a 9 man squad standard I'm sure they'll war game it and test it out. It sounds like it's already being used and it sounds like its working pretty well. I agree that more boots on the ground in one place means a more powerfull force. Once of the 9 principles of warfare is Mass of force. Maybe they'll keep the same amount of Marines in a platoon only instead there will be four squads instead of three.

I know that Stryker platoons have 4 vehicles per platoon and in each vehicle there is 9 dismounts. Basically their platoon has four squads and this works out really well.

Your very correct in that we wont always be fighting in a MOUT environment in Iraq, but I'm sure a 9 man squad in Korea would work just as well as it currently does in Iraq. I understand your being critical of this. As Marines we have a history of being slow to accept changes as something that works better. This sounds like the Marines adapted pretty quickly to what works best. If the above Marines say that the two fireteam thing works best then I'll believe them, after all their definately pros.

Semper Fi

My experience deployed was about 80% of the patrols done were done dismounted in a urban environment. We would do raids, ambushes, and security patrols, all foot-mobile. The Squads were that for a loose organization and we were broken up into assault, support, security, and hq elements as the 5-Para. order dictated.

If the Marine Corps changed from:
3 squads of 13 = 39 Marines
to
5 squads of 8 = 40 Marines

I wouldnt see anything wrong with that. If anything it give's the PL more units to locate, close, fire, and manuever with. If they do change to these squads then they should also change the t/o weapons for the squad. The new weaponry that is being issued out could be given permanent position, such as the shotgun and m32, instead of being blanket issued to the squads and having to have the Marine carry out both a m16 and a m32.

I don't really care what size we operate in. I'm sure our chain of command or AO will dictate what works best. My beef was with the fact that we couldn't work with 13-man squads even if we wanted to..

Just because the 13 man squad is associated with Vietnam-era doctrine/tactics doesn't necessarily mean it should be scrapped nowadays imo.

Multiple smaller subdivisions of the platoon size element is the frequent operational status quo right now for mounted/footmobile ops in theater but there is no guarantee it will stay that way in the future. I know it is a commonly cliched refrain that the Iraq/Afghanistan wars are the wave of the future, this is the kind of fight we will see more and more, etc. Probably so, but not the ONLY type of fight. You just never know what could happen, and to completely overhaul squad organization along with gear, training, TTP's, doctrine, etc so that it works better with the conflict we have now, sounds a little shortsighted to me. I could certainly see maybe for instance formally adopting and ironing out a set of standardized doctrine for using these multiple smaller-squad elements in Iraq type ops since they have after all proven more effective and practical in those settings, but making it a permanent and sweeping change to the rifle squad Marine Corps wide is very premature.

In a nutshell the MERS sounds like it would be the height of specialization, and the more you specialize, the more vulnerable you are to threats that hit you in ways you aren't ready for. It sounds very high speed to have your people, T/O, tech, and training all neatly wrapped up in a "modular" package ("Modular" strikes me as one of those Rumsfeldian words that gives armchair strategists boners) but specific theory is a long way from universal application.

I'll say this and only this...wanna' know how to piss off a platoon of grunts? Spend 6 months of a training workup sitting in the defense and assaulting hilltops/entrenched positions.

Ignoranceisbliss, motarded, purebrutality, all you Returnees, you're good Marines getting the job done and I totally respect your views because you made allowences based on your enemy and AO. Thats as good as it gets Devils, outstanding work.

Funkymustafa is totally correct when he writes that everyone believes our current fight is the wave of the future and of course it isn't because everyone in the world will study and learn from this one. Never forget there are still a lot of senior foreign officers out there who were trained by the Soviets back in the eighties. While they'll make allowances too, they're going to attack in echelon where they'll continually hit us wave after wave after attacking wave whether we're vehicular mounted or foot mobile, on the move or in stationary positions.

Look at the Chinese for example. They're smart, tough, well trained, well led and manpower rich. At Chosin they attacked 1st Mar Div with 12 full divisions and we were forced to withdraw no matter how history paints it as a success. They and other countries like them who subscribe to attacking in echelon are no one to play short because they'll come highly organized and in extremely concentrated numbers.

At the end of the day, a 13 man squad will be lucky to field 7 and replacements won't always be available. What will we do then? Remember, it takes 3 attackers for every 1 defender at the point of breach in conventional operations and theres still a lot of standing militaries out there who want a piece of us in a big way.

A Marine once joked asking why he should be afriad of an enemy who shot at him with arrows when he carried a rifle. The experienced men told him that was exactly why he should be afraid. You're lives are much too important to waste because we came in manpower light and technology based.

Ignoranceisbliss, motarded, purebrutality, Funkymustafa, all of you outstanding Devils - stay safe out there Brothers. We're with you every step of the way.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Deanosaur,

I remember in the USMC in the 80s we always improvised, adapted, & overcame. That was the whole purpose of the (Rein) and the + or - behind unit designations. We were always attaching or unattaching elements as needed for the mission/exercise...especially in a BLT or RLT Comm. Plt.

Exactly. We didn't permanently change our force structure, we temporarily modified it for whatever task was at hand.

We did a lot of mounted patrols through our AO in Ramadi. And while we were there you were not allowed to leave the wire without anything smaller than 3 vehicles with a driver, turret gunner and a vehicle commander. The Squad leader was in Victor 1 and the two team leaders would be in Vic 2 and 3. We had 10 guys in our squad so one Vic would have one dismount, and that T/O worked out well for us.

For Dismounted Patrols we would split the squad into two fire teams and just satellite patrol through the streets. The squad leader would usually go with the fire team with the most junior guys. It worked out good too, because the PRC 153s we got are a real good piece of gear.

I think that a 9 man squad is probably as small as we need to get. Because its hard in a platoon FOB where you do fixed site security to have a dedicated QRF element all the time. Your Marines are going to get worn out. When we first got in country, one of our squads took contact from insurgents on a roof. My squad was just off our post rotation and sleeping when we were woken up by the COG screaming for QRF. We said fu ck blouses and threw our flaks over our skivy shits looking like Animal Mother from FMJ, launched a six man patrol to cut off their avenues of escape and cornered them on a rooftop and let the IPs go in and get them. Which was just a fiasco, but a hilarious one at that.

Satellite patrols =

Since the last time I was there was in 2004 I really shouldn't run my suck because alot has changed since then. I'll just agree with AHill. Never left the wire short of three vehicles etc. I'm not advocating staying at a 13 man squad or going to a 9 man squad. I'm just saying do what works. If 9 men work better than use it. We shouldn't hold ourselves to petty little things such as squad numbers just because we don't want to "copy the Army" in their squads TO&E. If it works use it. If it doesn't then just forget about it and move on.

Hill and CWU, you just proved the merit of a 13 man squad thru your very actions. The beauty of the 13 man design - you field a SL and three 3 man teams as a norm because it's designed to maintain combat effectiveness after taking casualties. It's built in and expected which is why it's worked so well for so long. No one is ever full up at 13 after the first couple of weeks unless you man up for an operation where it's perceived you'll take heavy casualties.

The whole purpose is to provide a base of fire element to force hostile into a defensive mode while your two maneuver elements aggressively take it to them. Add a gun team and whatever your 51's team is using for rockets ensures your tactical momentum based on concentrated direct fires with maneuver as well as calling up company mortars for indirect fire support. If one maneuver team boggs down you still have another one pressing the advantage.

Anything less will provide a normal beefed up base of fire element but you'll only have one maneuver element for Hostile to counter which simplifies their job in killing you. Two elements forces them to split their fires thus reduces their overall effectiveness as they grapple to deal with two threats from two directions. It all comes down to the mathematics of war which is why each of your fire teams carry an M203 and a SAW.

Technology is great for targeting and communicating but accurately placed superior firepower always wins the day because you kill Hostile before he kills you.

You keep talking CW because it's how we learn from each other. Anything less and we're no longer contributing to the next Devil who takes his turn in harm's way. One Corps Brother, past - present - future. It's what keeps us strong and defines us as Marines.

I have no issue with the 13 man squad, as people said earlier, it obviously has proved successful in the past. I just believe that with Iraq there should be a bit more "official" training and or doctrine on operating in small units (6-9 men).

Deanosaur you cite a bunch of previous wars...Iwo, Vietnam, Korea etc. etc. where the 13 man doctrine has been successful. The difference between thoose conflicts and parts of Iraq today is the size of the supporting units. In the conflicts you cited units operated in company and battalion sized elements(not counting patrols here). When a unit was on an operation they looked to the their left and their right and had other squads/platoons covering their flanks. In Iraq I went into villages that had two or three dozen houses with three vehicles and six dismounts. When doing this we were absolutely alone....sometimes 20 or 30 klicks away from the closest coalition forces. We looked to the left and to the right and saw nothing but open desert. Hill mentioned in a previous post that in Ramadi theres exactly one battalion controlling the entire city! I understand entirely that doing something like this would have been suicidal in past conflicts, but Iraq is a low intensity war and doing this is neccessary. We have a handful of troops covering an armful of territory.

You also mentioned how its rifles, grenade launchers, and crew serves throwing lead on target that wins war. Unfortunately doing that does not win this war. In fact its our incredible propensity and competence at doing just that which is why were fighting like we are today. The enemy knows just how effective we are at putting rounds downrange so they have adjusted their tactics around this. We now have to (and have been) adjusting our own tactics to meet the new threat. We need to stop relying solely on the ingenuity of NCOs and junior officers in country, and start teaching these ideas in school and training in these different force structures long before we get in country. But, we CANNOT do this at the expense of a centuries worth of hard lessons.

Note: Deanosaur don't take this as an attack on what you were saying earlier. Everything you said was completely right, its just not right for Iraq. When I first thought about this 9 man squad I just figured it could be a permenant change, after reading your arguments I've changed my stance and believe it should just be temporary, with the Marine Corps main focus still being on the 13 man squad. Thanks.

Oh yeah, and by the way, Hand Grenades aren't even issued in country anymore, just HEDPs for the 203s...and the 41s left their tubes at the FOB and patrolled with everyone else.

Good post man.

quote:

Originally posted by Ignoranceisbliss:
Oh yeah, and by the way, Hand Grenades aren't even issued in country anymore, just HEDPs for the 203s...and the 41s left their tubes at the FOB and patrolled with everyone else.

They took our frags, AT-4s, SMAWs, and Mortars away after our first month or two in country. I carried 6 HEDPs and 2 Star Cluster rounds for my 203 though.

Iraq won't be won with just bullets, its an ideaological tug of war, and in the middle are the Iraqi Civillians. They can either go two different ways, our way or AQIZ's way. From my experience in Ramadi, they are tired of Al Qeada and want nothing to do with them. And so far we have been winning them over and progress has been made. But it doesn't show up on the 5 o'clock news.