Bradley Squads

[voltigeur]

I was on GlobalSecurity.org looking at FM 3-21.71 Bradley Platoon.

There is an organization chrt that shows a platoon consist of 3 squads of 9 men equalinig 27 dismounted troopers. If I remember the stats on the bradly it only carries 6 dismounted troopers per carrier giving the platoon only seats for 24 troopers!

Is there anyone that has been in a Bradly unit that can shed some light on this?

Also the FM states that a mission is to engage enemy armor with TOW and Javlin fire but there are no Javlins on the org chart. I can understand that given the current war we are in but not having a platoon head count that exceeds the carrying capacity of the vehicles.

I mounted my bradley infantry for Cold War aand will have to dig out the print outs to see what FM I used to get that organization.

[voltigeur]

I mounted my infantry per FM7-7J.

[Mk 1]

There is an organization chrt that shows a platoon consist of 3 squads of 9 men equalinig 27 dismounted troopers. If I remember the stats on the bradly it only carries 6 dismounted troopers per carrier giving the platoon only seats for 24 troopers!

Is there anyone that has been in a Bradly unit that can shed some light on this?

Volt:

Never been in a Bradley Plt, but I might be able to shed some light.

I believe that the squad leader also serves as the track commander. He is counted in the 3rd crew seat, rather than in among the 6 dismount seats. When the squad dismounts, the TC may (or may not) dismount as well. The gunner then acts as TC while the squad is dismounted.

This provides 27 dismounts (24 troopers and 3 squad leaders) from four tracks. The fourth track's TC is the PLT leader, who also may or may not dismount as circumstances warrant.

Or so I understand it.

[redleg]

I was the FSO for a mech battalion in 2003 and we debating this very subject for some time. The PL was the TC of one Brad, but he would dismount with the grunts and a jump TC would take his place. The other 3 TCs would stay with the Brads (one of the TCs was the PSG and he was responsible for directing the fire of the Brads while the PL maneuvered the dismounted squads). When you add a medic and a 2-man FO team to the platoon there is no way to fit three 9-man squads and attachments into 4 Brads.

three 9-man squads + two FO + one jump TC = 30
7 seats x four Brads = 28

Not sure who came up with this new doctrine. In the end we didn’t have that many bodies so we only fielded two full 9-man dismounted squads per platoon. We typically didn’t use Javelins that often either, as the Brads would provide AT and suppressive fires and the dismounts could assault with small arms.

*Disclaimer* Each unit is free to develop their own SOP. Others may have had a different experience.

[voltigeur]

Thanks for the info! Still kinda shaking my head. Again you guys are a great resource.

[jb]

I don't know how true it is, but I was told that the Soviet Union had a requirement that Tank crews must be no taller than 5'6" or 167.6 cm.
Maybe we started to get shorter mech infantry

[Timothy OConnor]

A friend who has served on Bradleys said the 7th seat isn't really useful given its location (waaaay too cramped to fit a soldier wearing armor and carrying a weapon). He also said that consistently understrength squads don't need the seat anyway.

And it seems that different squads really do use their own version of the organization. In a recent memoir on Iraq the author keeps refering to his bradley platoon's weapons squad and implies an organization of 2x rifles squads and 1x weapons squad with the weapons squad being composed of a couple of machine gun teams.

I'm working on a homegrown set of platoon-level rules (1 stand = 2-3 soldiers) and it really makes me appreciate the abstraction and simplicity of higher level rules (1 stand = 1 platoon)