Bloat certainly happens. I think the place to worry about it, though, is in the staff and services areas. Company, battalion, and brigade staffs are like gas giants—drawing in troops who would be better used somewhere else. Freeing soldiers from the gravity well of staffs requires some real effort. The US Army has slimmed down the support tail vis-Ă*-vis the combat teeth a bit with the modular reorganization, which is a step in the right direction.
As for the sniper teams, the six-man team makes me think of a guy who went to Iraq with me. He had just come from a LRS unit with the 101st. He may have been with us for four months before we were mobilized for OIF3. When I was active duty in the 90’s, LRS was strictly surveillance—at least according to doctrine. My new compatriot told that at least in the 101st the role was changing. LRS was supposed to attack targets of opportunity and perform other non-surveillance actions. The thinking for this goes to flexibility, I believe. Six men striking from the shadows can do some things that might not otherwise be possible so economically. Of course, there are counterarguments for keeping LRS confined to surveillance missions. A six-man sniper team has a bigger footprint but more options, it seems to me.
Webstral
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