RE: Scouts out. . . NAC style

Possible Scout Missions:

1. Find'em (Basic "Where are they now?")
2. Flank guard (Enough fire power to by time)
3. Guide ("Just follow me to your Battle position")
4. Diversionary force (Make enough noise/Fire/etc to be mistaken for a
larger 
force)
5. Rapid reaction force ("Plug the Line!!", needs enough firepower to
make a 
difference)
6. Commander's guard (Yes, this has been a use for scouts)
7. Route Recon (including all that Engineer stuff)
8. Rear Guard (see flank guard)

1,3,7 needs lots of eyes/mobility (hence 10 Hummers) 2,4,5,8 needs the
ability 
to FIGHT (hence Bradleys/AC).  FM 17-95 (Cavalry) has more detail.

Michael Brown

-----Original Message-----
From:	John Atkinson
Sent:	Wednesday, August 07, 2002 4:57 PM
To:	gzg-l@csua.berkeley.edu
Subject:	Scouts out. . . NAC style

I've noticed that there's a really high-speed writeup
of a NAC light infantry batallion up on Stargrunt.ca.
I've been considering writing up a NAC mechanized
batallion in the same level of detail.

Most things are pretty simple.	I mean, every
precursor service (CF, USA, British Army) has 3 rifle
companies of 3 platoons.  Everyone has a mortar
platoon, everyone has a batallion staff, everyone has
weapons assets (although that will require some
fiddling to make me happy).

The Scouts are driving me nuts, though.  Everyone
pretty much agrees a mechanized batallion needs a
scout platoon.	No one agrees on what capabilities or
organization it should have.

Old US was 6 Bradleys with 4 dismounts each.

New US is 10 HMMWVs with 2 dismounts each.

Brits have some light tanks (6??  I don't recall).

Canadians have Lynxs (9, IIRC).

Older organizations include a wide variety of jeeps,
light tanks, armored cars, recoiless rifles on jeeps,
APCs, halftracks, medium tanks, and whatever else
happened to be handy.

So, what should it be and why?

Keeping in mind the missions of the batallion scout
platoon, let me know what you think.  I'll take the
best responses and try and synthesize some workable
MTOE.

John

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