Need a full squad to fit in APC's

[Johnson11B2P 3]

My immersion is ruined due to the fact that the APC splits up my squad. Hitler explains my frustration better than me.

[OutSyder 0]

I have to side with Hitler on this one.

[da12thMonkey 1943]

Depends what you consider to be a full squad. Not everybody uses 9 man squads like the US Army.

Ironically I think the Wehrmacht actually used 10-man squads, so Hitler would be even less pleased

British and other commonwealth armies (Aus, NZ, Canada) use 8-man sections (two 4-man fireteams; 1 headed up by a Section Commander and the other by a 2IC)

French use 7-man sections as do many of their former colonies (1 Section Commander and two teams of 3; 1 to assault and the other to suppress)

Danish use 6-man sections IIRC (similar organisation as the UK but with 1 less man per FT)

USMC squads have a whopping 12 men in a squad (3, 4-man fireteams)

I think the Germans have 7 or 8 men in a modern mechanised squad now that they're using Boxer

The dismount capacity of the Arma 3 vehicles probably matches the average size of the various 'Groups' available in the editor

for that Faction. They're not necessarily based on the US Army's TO&E.

If you want to fit 9 blokes in the Panther you may as well boot the vehicle commander out and use their position as a dismount's seat, since the commander's position currently has fixed sights, making it useless to command the vehicle from anyway. It's easier to command the vehicle from the gunner's station.

[zimms 22]

Or you could draw straws who has to take the quad :D

[shay_gman 272]

The link is funny as hell.

But let me tell you from my experience the Namer APC or as it called in A3 Panther holds 8 mans and 3 crew.

[Johnson11B2P 3]

How can you have a Squad with unequal fire teams? A platoon usually consists of 4 APC's. 2 per section with one for the Platoon Leader and one for the Platoon Sgt/Section Leader(s**t hot E-6). If one section needs to break off using the current template the squad is leaving one man out. Let's get tactical for a minute. A Squad is a equal number of fire teams with one 1 squad leader, like the 9 man squad or 13 man squad. I did testing for the Army's GCV which mainly we focused on the capacity issue not the vehicle itself and we proved time and time again that having all of our squad in one track was the best, but I guess having 8 men in the back is a plus from the Bradley 7 man capacity in the back.

[Rolling 1]

Don't Bradleys only hold 6 people? Maybe this vehicle is supposed to have a similar role (though it's weapons are kinda shit in comparison)

[da12thMonkey 1943]

having all of our squad in one track was the best, but I guess having 8 men in the back is a plus from the Bradley 7 man capacity in the back.

Our Warriors have 7 seats in the back for dismounts too.

Here an 'Armoured Infantry' platoon is organised such that you have 4 vehicles per platoon - one vehicle per section. A platoon is made up of three rifle sections and a HQ section. The three rifle sections have a Warrior ISV each; with the seven dismounts, and the vehicle acting as the 8th man in the section. The section/vehicle commander either dismounts with the rest of the rifle section (and subs with a deputy vehicle commander who normally sits in the back and listens to the crew) or stays and fights from the vehicle. The result is still usually that one fire team per section is a man shorter than in a Mechanised or Light-Role Infantry section.

HQ section have their own vehicle which contains the Platoon Commander, Platoon Sergeant, the Platoon Radio Operator and a bloke with a light mortar. So theoretically you could carry a couple of extra blokes who'd dismount from the HQ section vehicle and join the rifle sections to bring them up to 8 dismounts - but as you say, splitting up fireteams across vehicles like that isn't practical.

Our APCs (Mastiff) have enough seats to dismount an entire 8-man rifle section though, in fact our older generation APCs like Saxon and FV432/Bulldog can actually carry 10 blokes because the British Army used to have 10 men per section up until the mid/late 1980s. That's down to the doctrinal difference between Mechanised Infantry with APCs and Armoured Infantry with IFVs; being that APCs don't manoeuvre with the dismounting Mechanised Infantry during an assault.

I suppose the Panther is in a weird niche. Its got the crew number, capacity and armour to act as an IFV for a 9-man Armoured Infantry squad, but sort or lacks a proper IFV armament (a big fucking cannon). However, it has one crew member too many for what you'd normally expect of an APC that carriers an 8 man Mechanised Infantry section, and it feels a bit odd using that extra crew slot for a dismount to form a 9-man squad because the vehicle is so big and heavy - and would ideally need 3 crew members to operate safely.

Edited July 18, 2013 by da12thMonkey

[Johnson11B2P 3]

I understand that little bit more da12thMonkey. You should know all to well if the vehicle fits 12, 30 jokers will fit somehow.

[Dunn 10]

My personal hope is that they will fix the crew seating soon. From what I understand, the AMV has already been reported for having a faulty crew capacity (there's a slot for a gunner and a slot for a driver, but there are three hatches). I hope that they will release an ICV version of the thing soon, much like the Stryker M1126 ICV, possibly even with an RWS rather than a turret. This should comply with the need of having at least one extra infantryman in the back, as the relative large 40mm rounds won't have to be stored somewhere.

As for the Bradley IFV: all the previous version of the Bradley (M2A1 and M2A2) hold a six-men cargo, the added Operation Desert Storm (ODS) modifications of the M2A2 and the M2A3 hold seven men. I guess for now we're gonna have to make-do with a modified TO&E of a Bradley Mechanized Infantry - four IFVs with three rifle squads (check FM 3-21.71). Whenever I think of the Bradley, I always chuckle a little bit and think of that epic scene from that movie, Pentagon Wars:

It's just that I wonder what BIS is basing a lot of their implementations of from? I mean, the current rifle squad (in the Beta), has a squad leader (I guess a section leader really), a fire team leader (I guess an assistant section leader), three automatic riflemen, a grenadier and a rifleman. They have leniency in the sense that the setting is 2035, and that anything can change within the setting's military doctrines. But it does all feel quite a bit random. It's not just the IFVs by the way. I've noticed that every vehicle has a cargo capacity that is a multitude of four (Mohawk has sixteen, Ghosthawk has eight, Hunter, you name it). I guess BIS' vision of future NATO unit compositions is going to be a very generic European-militaries based TO&E.

[PantherAl 11]

The Panther's Niche makes a lot of sense though: While we can argue over ideal squad size, the fact that the Namer (AKA Panther) could be argued to be slightly over gunned for its role. IFV's as we know them are pretty much a evolutionary dead end: Better than a box on tracks granted, but they all try to do to many things at once. The Brad for example, the crew has to serve as an APC, as a light tank, as a Recce Vehicle, and as a Tank Destroyer. They can't do all of the above at maximum effectiveness. An old joke in the my old regiment is that the scouts Brads could be easy to find: look for the smoke pillars from where they got into more trouble than their armour would let them get out of (Which is why in my troop the scouts was the M1A2's, while the Brads provided over watch - The M1 was quieter, a lower profile, and had better optics.) The BTR-K? Very much over gunned. It either has less room for dismounts (Say only 4), significantly less armour (likely, it is based off of the ZSU-30-2 hull after all), underpowered, or a mix of all of the above. Something has to give to get all the firepower that it has.

As it is, what you see when an assault on say a town happens, is that any attached armour assets take up a position outside the town to provide a support by fire role from a good over watch position - and if not tanks, then a section of IFV's will do the job. Arty - be it morts or tube - will pound away to mixed success - and mainly suppressing the defenders. At that point, by about everyone's doctrine, the IFV's push into the town to bring the infantry to the dismount point.

All well and good, but the problem is, as the Israeli's found out the hard way, the Russians, and later the US Army, when assaulting an area you *never* suppress the OPFOR fully. Usually what happens is you beat them down sure, but when you lift your fire to let the IFV's in, they pop back up, and at point blank range, man portable AT assets will do serious damage to the lightly armoured IFV's - with the expected results to the infantry riding in them.

So, you would think, send in the tanks right? That doesn't work very well either. While they have the armour to laugh off the final protective fires of the OPFOR AT assets, they can't bring troops up (With the exception of the Merkava, and even then, only a section at best), the firepower they do have doesn't have the flexibility to engage targets on rooftops, and a main gun has a habit of not only wrecking the room you are shooting into, but everything around it regardless. Which can be a bad thing if you have friendlies in the building or room next door.

So, you have the APC-H concept. Basically a box on tracks granted: they have MBT levels of armour, allowing it to behave like a tank on the approach, and the passenger capacity to push forward a proper squad into the target area in safety. Add in a RWS (or three as some of the original T55 based Achzarit's was capable of taking) with a GPMG, HMG, or GMG, you have the flexibility and the firepower to provide direct fire support to the squad - even if they are in the next room over - and still hit things on roof tops.

Just my 3 cents. :)

[ravenholme 50]

And latest devbranch update has given the Marshall and the Kamysh a commander slot