A doubt about Engineers / Sappers

[pmulcahy11b]

Originally Posted by cavtroop

According to this paper:

http://www-cgsc.army.mil/carl/downlo...grath_op23.pdf

"The Long War Occasional Series Paper 23, The Other End of the Spear: The Tooth-to-Tail Ratio (T3R) in Modern Military Operations"

The T3R ratio in Iraq in 2005 is 1 : 2.5 - MUCH less than I thought. Numbers could be misleading though, as it doesn't seem to take into account non-theater forces, most of which are non-combat arms, I'd imagine. This is a fascinating topic to me, perhaps we should split this off to a separate thread?

EDIT: 1 :4 ratio, when you include in-theater contractors....

Does it also take into account that most REMFs these days are...well, not really REMFs anymore? The Army's come a long way from the days when REMFs didn't know one end of an M-16 from the other and looked at Claymore mines in complete confusion.