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Old 07-20-2009, 10:07 PM
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Legbreaker Legbreaker is offline
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Location: Tasmania, Australia
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I tend to agree that the larger units would exist in name only as the war dragged on. An infantry battalion with a prewar paper strength of say 750 men (four infantry companies, support company consisting or mortars, assault pioneers/engineers, antiarmour, etc, and all the supply, intel, motorpool, HQ elements) is likely to have barely a third of that by 2000 - maybe 250 men.

An infantry company (Australian model) has a paper strength of approximately 110 men in three plattoons plus heavy weapons section and HQ. With only a third of that strength the unit is almost totally combat non-effective (as a Company organisation). I have personal experience of this level of strength and confirm that 3 man sections (normally 9 or 10) do not work even for a short period of time (such as a single attack).

Therefore, it makes much more sense to consolidate the available personnel into pre-existing command structures - Company becomes Plattoon, Battalion becomes Company, Brigade becomes Battalion and so forth. Obviously the Battalion commander (for example) would likely remain in that position rather than effectively be demoted (and loose all that valuable experience and skill) with the possible surplus of officers being shifted into other roles.

I doubt however that there would be a surplus of officers - just because a HQ is not on the front lines, doesn't mean it hasn't been mortared, bombed, nuked, etc. Also, soliders are suceptible to disease possibly even more than the average civilian (although they do have access to better medical attention on the whole), so the rear eschelons are likely to have suffered significantly during the course of the war with correspondingly high casualties in the aftermath of the nukes.
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