Re: [DS and SG] Regiments of the Crown

Thomas Barclay wrote:

> > regular Canadian army all together makes up about one modern
mechanized
> > division).
> 
> I quibble with the word Modern.....

Yeah, that requires tanks which don't have stress fractures in the
turret armor. . . :)

> I know I read somewhere that a US Division was way bigger (unless
> I've got it backwards) than a PACT division. (Was it 10,000 to
> 4-6,000 or something like that?) Maybe I've got it backwards. I
> know the Russians liked numbers.

Well, a US division has (depending on when in the past 20 years you are
talking about, how fully manned, which permutation on which TO&E you
want) about 15K men.  Russians have something like 8K.	Part of this is
that while the US division has a full-up logistical train, the Russian
division does away with nonessentials like hospitals, kitchens, trucks
to transport rations, etc.  Basically they are set up to supply fuel and
ammo and nothing else.	

> Of course, in WWII, it was 50,000 rounds per KIA. In Vietnam,
> 200,000. Volume of fire isn't necessarily an improvement, but not

Not that fighting in triple-canopy jungle with untrained undisciplined
conscripts had anything to do with combat effectiveness.  Coupled, of
course, with the fact that this was before the US really understood and
trained for the implications of assault rifles being the standard
infantry weapon.

> And 1 Company of Snipers, if anyone learned anything from the 20th
> century... probably deployed 1 Pltn per Inf Battalion with maybe 1
> Pltn for independent ops.

I don't use a lot of snipers in my TOs.  For one thing, you can't really
just hand a guy a gun with a scope and say "PFC Smythe, you are now a
sniper.  Go forth and kill."  It just doesn't work that way.  To make a
GOOD sniper (and a bad one isn't enough of a threat to make the cost of
the scope worthwhile) takes some expensive training and a fair bit of
talent.

John M. Atkinson