Assigning correct rank?

[Doolittle 0]

As you know, there's PRIVATE, CORPORAL, SERGEANT, LIEUTENANT, CAPTAIN, MAJOR, and COLONEL.

And the military realism question is: when I make my missions, what ranks should I assign to people to keep it realistic?

If a mission had a group of say 6 guys going in at night to blow something up, what rank would the leader be? What rank would the others be (in real life)?

If I was leading a tank platoon, what would my rank be? What would the other tanks be (compared to real life)?

What rank do you think the players should be in a CTI game where they command so many different units (compared to real life)? What ranks should the units be?

I had thought this question wouldn't matter... but I found out it matters to a lot of people.. which surprised me.

Please help. Thanks!

Doolittle

[ColonelSandersLite 0]

Infantry In general:

General = Division Commander

Colonel = Brigade Commander

Major = Battalion Commander

Captain = Company commander

Lieutenant = Platoon leader

Seargent = Squad leader Or aide for an officer depending on the exact flavor of seargent.

corporal = Fire team leader but not always

Private = Doesn't lead anything unless everyone else is dead.

Note these functions aren't set in stone. You'll see a rank above or below what generally fills a slot taking on that role, depending on available personal and such.

Hope that helps

[Doolittle 0]

Thanks!

[Taurus 20]

As we are all perfectionists regarding realism

ColonelSandersLite

Do you know how many people there are in a platoon, Company etc?

Ofc they differ from country to country, but still its US forces we speak of so there must be a preset number, or?

example

4 Abrams = 1 Squad?

Then the commander of the first tank should then be Sergeant, and the remaining 8 will be of ranks lower than him, according to what you wrote?

Then how many Abrams squads will make one Platoon,

3 or 4?

And infantry?

These things would be of interest too

So we could say

Quote[/b] ]

Mom!

I killed a whole regiment today!

-That's good my son, now.. eh, you did what?

It could probably be goggled if only I knew what to search for to get relevant hits.

[Beagle 684]

No.

Four Abrams MBT form a tank platoon.

The platoon commander is a Lieutenant.

The tank commanders will be Sergeants one of them beeing the platoon sergeant (a Master Sergeant for example)

The gunners can be anything from Private to corporal. Same goes for the drivers. In general the gunners will have the second highest rank per tank.

The loaders will always be privates, but there are no loaders in ArmA.

Spec OPs will always be at least Sergeants and higher, in rare cases a corporal per team.

[ColonelSandersLite 0]

Well, more like 3-5 abrams form a platoon depending on availability, conditions, and such.

It must be noted though that as in all things us mil, it can vary. Infantry are especially bad about this though. Before you even get to the battlefield, you have to think about what the units job is. If you compare infantry that's integrated with strykers and infantry that's integrated with bradleys, the squad size is different simply because the carrying capacity of the vehicles is different. Every unit type has different equipment arrangements depending on what can practically be done given their role. Then, you have to consider casualties in a battlefield application...

Basic US ARMY infantry from the text book should look like this though (note that marines are different):

A Rifle platoon consists of 4 9 man squads, one of which is a weapons squad. During maneuver, they break into 2 fire teams of 4 and the squad leader goes wherever his job take him. Note that you can actually place these groups in the mission editor and they are loosely correct in composition.

A company consists of 3 infantry platoons and a weapons platoon. The weapons platoon is divided into sections with various support weapons including mortars, heavy AT weapons, heavy machine guns, etc. The exact composition of the weapons platoon varies greatly. Often, there is a special assault squad attached to the weapons platoon that is focused on breaching hardpoints, raids, close quarters work, etc.

A infantry batallion consists of a headquarters unit with command staff, a mortar platoon, and a reconassance platoon. In adition, between 3 and 5 Infantry companies labled A-Z. Note though that batallions are known to intermix to form batallion task forces. Also, the army is reorganising so, mechanised infantry and armor batallions no longer exist, but are combined into "Combined Arms Battalions" consisting of a headquarters company, two mechanized infantry companies, two armor companies, an engineer company, and a forward support company.

An armor company is typically 3 armor platoons and a command element.

That's also as high as I'm going to go here, since larger scale engagements in arma are unlikely .

Also yes, as Beagle said, SF are different too. Corporals are usually new to the team, everyone else is seargent or officer. SF squad leaders are lieutenants, SF platoon leaders are Captains, etc. This is said to be because SF units require more experience to correctly lead.

And, to reiterate his point about US armor, here is a chart showing all the positions of the typical US armor platoon.