Quote:
Originally Posted by Adm.Lee
I once found a RAND study of LRRP operations in Vietnam (it blew my mind that I would just find it sitting on the shelf of my small callege library). It found that 6 was just about the optimum number of a team. I immediately thought that would work out great for RPGs. Of course, that was for jungle reconnaissance, which didn't mean sniping very often. That number allowed them enough manpower to set watches and ambushes, while being able to watch all around them.
The 6-person model works rather well if you swap in a light MG's 2-man crew for the sniper pair, as well.
Now that I think on it, I've almost never had anyone play the spotter in a game. Usually, someone will want the sniper rifle, but they rarely set up to do anything special with it.
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Back to scout teams, you don't really want to integrate a sniper team into your scout team if you have the choice. Or a machinegun team. That's not the purpose of a scout team.
If you make contact as a scout, you don't want to do the Navy SEAL thing and just shoot and shoot and shoot and shoot and shoot and shoot...well, you get the drift. You want to break contact and put terrain between you and the people shooting at you. Call in arty or mortars. Maybe some CCA. That was how we did it back in my enlisted days. Whatever it is, you want to shoot other peoples' bullets first, though.
For team makeup, you want a Team Leader, an Assistant team leader, an RTO, a Senior Observer and then two other observers. In all truthfulness though, the observers could really be renamed security. That's the role they normally fill.
Your heaviest weapons should be grenade launchers. Anything else, and you just weigh yourself down and make it harder to break contact.
Caveat: This is for infantry scouts. Cav Scouts do their own thing and I don't profess to fathom or agree/disagree with it.