l33telboi wrote:
Also, I'm getting the feeling that some of you are intentionally trying to make this as difficult sounding as possible. Like a scientist a little too proud for his own good throwing out scientific terms and other complexities when talking to a 'simpler' person, even though he could just as easily say something everybody understands and can relate to. Operating in a squad isn't rocket science, it's a combination of theory (where i served there was almost no theory though) and your own common sense.
You admit little to no therory taught to you and yet you think those that do are over complicating it?
Certainly some stuff like weapon emplacement might require one to know at least the basics of said weapon and its usage, but the other stuff is just pure logic. You don't go dig a hole and place the MG at the bottom of it, it's not something that 'civilians' are incapable of figuring out without training.
Infantry tactics and combined arms have long ago stopped being 'knuckledragger' work. Training gun crews on enfilade fire or various other ways to engage a target depending on various sets of factors to best utilized the weapons beaten zone is a little more than 'aim the gun at them'. Let alone leading those gun crews and squads deciding which weapon to utilized to cover what avenue of approach and assigning FPL's and PDF's, let alone covering dead space.
Like I said, you admit you had little in the way of 'therory' and yet thin we over complicate infantry tactics and modern doctrine. If it were really that easy, Iraqi insurgents would own American troops in stand up fights with their supposed numerical superiority.
Let's put this into an example.
Say we see a squad of any given Sci-Fi show advance through a forrested area. They know there are enemies nearby and that they are supposed to defeat them. Now then, what makes a person who's had either basic combat training or NCO training better equipped to analyse this when compared to a war-crazy civilian who's taken it upon himself to learn whatever he can about the topic?
First off, a trained NCO would have had prep before going on a patrol, his squad would have had their immeadiate action drills rehearsed before step off. Also a trained NCO would have had their orders given and then relayed to the his/her troops, including fire support and comm. , let alone friendly troops in the area and their freqs.
In his orders, and if missing he/she'd make a point to find the info from the S2 shoppe, would have a SALUTE report of some sort in it, so he/she could leave conteplating various tactics to employ on contact knowing, or presuming, enemy strengths and weakness's.
Once on scene, and per prep, he/she'd have various check points and presumably a ORP by where they thought the enemy was, for final prep. Once in the forest, and presumably after a terrain change, the trained NCO would redeploy his troops into other fireteam formations inside the squad formation.
All that would depend entirerly on the actual terrain and possilbe locations of the enemy. In a heavily wooded area you'd want to run flankers for security, weather they were a whole team or if you split two man unit off for em, is up to the actual terrain inside the woods and possible enemy locations.
I wouldn't recomend a 'ranger file', maybe a loose squad V spread out a bit, keeping the teams on the side of 'possible enemy contact' and/or possible amush points or avenue's of approach in a echelon formation to maximize firepower on that particular side. Keep the point in a wedge though, unless the foilage is too thick, then I might actually run two colums, perhaps a twenty to fifty meters apart.
As for the boom part, as always that all depends on information you didn't provide and information I'd have in that situation.