The Army flip-flopped on whether they wanted to call these platoons "Recon/Recce" or "Scout" platoons, and whether the squadrons should be "RSTA" or "Recon" so I wouldn't think too hard about it lol. Generally speaking in current day, they're Scout Platoons and Cavalry Squadrons. BFSBs, ACRs (as a unique non-BCT organization), and LRS Companies no longer exist. Also because of the sheer scope of this video with like 10 different platoon designs covered, I just stuck with what the TO&E and doctrine called for. In my deep dive videos where I cover just one specific type of unit in greater detail, I talk more about unit SOPs with feedback from people that were actually in those units. I cut out a section me listing off caveats because it's boring, but I fully expect veterans in the comments giving feedback on how their units deviated from this generic doctrine. If you want to read about how the Army got from these Scout Platoon designs (particularly the brigade-level Cav ones) to what they have today with the 36-scout platoon: www.moore.army.mil/armor/earmor/content/issues/2014/jul_sep/Lowry.html Some issues with the platoon designs covered in this video were: 1. Humvees in the HBCT platoon limited its ability to fight for information 2. Deploying dismounted patrols required combining sections to man long-duration OPs and led to minimal crewing of vehicles (2-man crew for Bradleys, whereas they'd ideally have 3) 3. The brigade platoon designs were unstandardized If you'd like to learn more about Army aerial reconnaissance, I've done very in-depth videos on: 1. Helicopter-Based Reconnaissance Units: ruclips.net/video/iIZzExeV278/видео.html 2. Drone-Based Surveillance Units: ruclips.net/video/oD6UsPjwF5A/видео.html
The army kept flip flopping what they wanted the mission to be. A recon platoon and a scout platoon have different priorities/missions, and are staffed with different types of soldiers. A recon platoon is made up of infantry, usually the best guys in a battalion. A scout platoon is…just made up of regular cav scouts. When a force reorganize between scout/infantry happens it basically deletes that platoon. The cav scouts generally fail out of infantry school, and the infantry refuse to reclass.
Love your content, man. Very well research and informative. Especially like all the info and episodes re: the use of Cavalry in the Vietnam days, and the old DIVCAV formations. I've transitioned from the "old days" of DIVCAV and large-scale combat, to the COIN years, and now back to LSCO (retired KW aviator). Good stuff you're doing.
Reminds me of when I tried to decipher the nuances of the Wehrmacht use of Aufklärung (recon) and Späh (scout). It seemed like Aufklärung generally referred to mounted and sometimes armoured units, while Späh was more infantry and ad hoc focused. But then they also labelled their heavy armoured cars as Panzerspähwagen just to increase confusion. I believe that distinction is still used in some Germanic militaries today. At least where I’m from, we still have light recon mounted in armoured cars (basically humvees), while the cold war equivalent mounted in jeeps were called scouts, and we also had some recon tank units back then too.
I was in an IBCT Cav. squadron. We were almost never used for scout/recon missions, and we also had a number of armor officers who tried to use us like an anti-tank platoon.
I never realized before just how important a *caveat would be for explaining stuff. I served 03-06 in a heavy Cav unit (3/7) as a 19D and nothing in this video is exactly how our occasion was setup but I can see now just how fluid structure was
Yeah that was one of those periods where everything was changing. For what it's worth though, the armored DIVCAV scout platoon unmodified from back before modular force was at least meant to be like the ACR platoon referenced here with 6 Bradleys and 30 Scouts
@@BattleOrder I definitely appreciate you doing this video though because I can see now after watching it how and why some of the structure was the way it was. We were pretty close to what you described. But we actually ran with 12 vehicles. 6 Bradley's and 6 Humvees. And at our greatest strength we never had more than 21 soldiers in our platoon. Though it was supposed to be 30 we deployed with 19. Our 6 Humvees had a 240B each though we often had to cannibalize the 240C's off the Bradley's in order to send one Bravo on each Humvee when we went out the gate. We never went out with a mix. It was either only Brad's or only Humvees though initially we trained stateside to take a mix out. After arriving in Iraq we realized that combining them into a mission meant that our mission had ALL of the weaknesses of using Humvees and ALL of the weaknesses of using Bradley's while being unable to fully realize the best of each. So we just based our vehicle decision of each mission then prepped to go out with that. If we needed speed and agility then we took Humvees. If not then we took Bradley's for the greater protection. Another unique thing we did was three way we cannibalized our vehicles for dismounts. Frequently we ran the front and rear Humvee with just a driver and gunner and the middle Humvees with just a driver to move along with every dismount that we could put together. But because we were often so understrength we often asked for and got volunteers from fobits to drive for us while our drivers also dismounted.
I served the same time and same job. Trained in A Trp 5/15 then went to 1/4 US Cav. I was very curious on why they got rid of the 6 M3's Plt. Seemed to work for that job's role plus during our deployment hot-seating was all too common not to mention cannabalization.
@@billyteflon1322 Trained in A Trp 5/15 2004. Went to 101st and never saw any of this. I wish they would teach this during OSUT. A lot of things would make more sense.
I LOLed @0:33 '03 to '0...?. the doctrine was "makin' shit up as we go..." TO&E and doctrine rarely ever matched reality. Units were chronically understrength and most units fell in on whomever's equipment they were relieving. It didn't matter what your notional unit was or even your MOS most people found themselves doing light cavalry roles. Patrolling, route recon, convoy escort, ect. For example: We were a heavy cav troop of a HBCT on paper, We trained up as light cav, but no one got reclassed, and we did not do M1 or Brad gunnery certification. We we got to Baghdad, someone "found" an extra platoon of ratty tanks. We then "borrowed" them for six months before someone came looking for them. After than, even us mechanics were out driving around and getting blown up.
I can’t imagine trying to gather lessons learned and adopt new methods across this many different recon organizations during wartime! I’m interested to know if the veterans out there think this level of complexity optimized for the fight or just made it harder to train?
We do at the platoon level. Granted, I was only in for 3.5 years as a 19D. But toward the end of my contract, we had a bunch of ideas floating around. I was of the opinion, and still am, that 19D either needs to be heavy, ie Brads, or go drone. Ukraine and other conflicts of the time had shown that drones made a lot of the foot-work of what I had learned irrelevant. It was made even more plain when in my last FTX we were issued black hornets. Crystal clear camera's, easy id of position, and a minute turn-around to drop 120mm mortars on that position with a 10 digit grid reference with our integrated fires at the troop level. Going on foot toward an NAI is straight up deadly with a near-peer opponent who will have thermals and drones like we have. Why have PV2 Snuffy low crawl across a forest floor for 500m when he'll get spotted, targeted, and evaporated, within the first 100m's? Many in my platoon felt the British Deep Fire doctrine was the most logical. Which, hilariously, we learned about from this channel because it was super popular with our PSG and Section Sergeant to have us learn the principles of army organization and tactics to be able to build our own SOP. Some of these ideas we tested and found they had mixed results. We tried two platoons mounted and one dismounted. Which basically meant we had scouts doing footwork while the other platoons acted as taxi's and fire support. This was good in concept, but it often resulted in the dismounted platoon getting screwed over because the taxi's weren't there when we needed them, got spotted and intercepted, or it just wore out the dismounts too fast. As I recall, we had a lot of guys in our platoon become heat cats or cold cats. Along with the usual shin-splints, exhaustion, and foot problems associated with doing constant foot movements. That said, we also got clapped pretty hard at JRTC while fully mounted. Though I didn't attend that one as it was toward the end of my contract. But that could be chalked up to poor command and control as we had a very inexperienced company commander at the time who ended up getting relieved. Also the fact that no one actually "wins" in JRTC. It is kind of built like the Star Trek simulator battle where you're supposed to lose and find out your strengths. In other words, it's a gut punch meant to solidify training.
I was a 19D in the early 2000s and assigned to one of the first Stryker RSTA Squadrons. You left out the Medic that would ride in the PSG's vehicle, and would dismount with the Scouts. Bringing the PSGs vehicle to 4 dismounts. I will say this was only on deployment, or when training. Which was damn near all the time back then lol. Also just a side note, we would operate as two separate sections more often than not. With the two E-6 section leaders (vehicles 2 and 3) leading the sections. The "2 Truck" being the Senior Scout's vehicle.
Yeah I left out attachments and support because with all the platoons covered there was no way I was going to get feedback from someone who was in every type of platoon lol. When I do my deeper videos covering just one unit type and can get specific servicemember feedbaxk I include that type of stuff
Good info. A few little things were missed, but nothing major. I spent my years in an infantry battalion scout/sniper platoon, we had to try out because we only had one E5 per squad instead of two like regular infantry squads. We had javelin missiles and we used the CLU for observation tasks. We also had all the sniper equipment because they made up our 4th squad. I wish more people could see this because I can't count the times I've been called a liar for saying I was an 11B scout.
I was a Cavalry officer (in an ABCT) from 2017-2021 and our organization was 6x Bradleys, with around 3x dismounts per Bradley, so wildly different from this video. It was funny, however, because we would often find or accidentally reference old doctrine which had those hunter-killer scout teams of paired Humvees and Bradleys, and the old-timers used to talk about it a lot. They really didn't like that concept beause there was always animosity between the three (Humvee crew vs Bradley crew vs dismounts) and the workload wasn't evenly shared, and the NCO responsibilities weren't equal etc etc. It's interesting to see how the formations have changed over time, and continue to change. My beloved old Cavalry SQDN is gonna be deactivated (probably) with the upcoming Army 2030 changes.
Yeah in ~2016 they switched it from 3 Bradleys and 5 Humvees to 6 Bradleys in ABCTs, and converted the Bradleys from M3s to M2s so they could have 3 dismounts per Bradley to achieve 36 scouts
9:54 Sheesh, that Detachment Leader qualification list reads like job postings today: "Entry Level position requiring 15 years experience." Like, is that LT supposed to do nothing but schools for 3 years?
They were TOE’d as a Lieutenant but if they had all those qualifications doctrine actually expected them to be a Captain. Similarly the company commander was TOE’d as a captain but they believed Major was preferable
@BattleOrder I can see that. No officer gets that much school time unless they're SOF or Aviation. Sounds more like post-command captains as opposed to senior 1LTs. Coincidentally, it's probably what all Infantry Battalion commanders wish their LTs could have. Unfortunately for them, quad stacked, ranger tabbed company grade 11As are unicorns. They should be glad they have enough 11As to fill their billets to begin with.
@@SirCheezersIIImy thought was it’d need to be a Green to Gold type deal? Ranger Bat NCO with tons of schools who goes commissioned. Not a likely situation to happen though!
@@bpdp379 Probably the only way in my mind to get that. Not really setting yourself up for success when your requirements for officers are the Army's equivalent of "I'm saving myself for my soulmate." Perfect is the enemy of good enough.
Going back a little before this time period, in the 90s there were also Separate Armored Brigades (SAB) in the National Guard, each having a Bde Cavalry Troop as its organic reconnaissance unit. These were organized like the 3ACR TO&E you described (2x6veh M3 Scout plts/2x4veh M1 tank plts) with the addition of a 2 tube 120mm mortar section and organic resupply, maintenance, and recovery assets. Additionally, each maneuver battalion in the brigade (2 tank, 1 mech infantry) had its own Scout platoon, those for the tank Bns mounted in Bradleys and the ones for the infantry Bn in Hmmwvs. Interesting stuff, thanks for putting this out there.
Oct. 2004 til Sept 2005 I was there in mech brigade 2/156, LaANG. Our area initially was NW of Baghdad, and for a while we ran a dismounted platoon supplemented by mech sections. We ran a 4 1014 Hmmwv. Mk19 were not mounted since supposedly it had to have division Clearance to employ. We used M2/M240 for vehicle crew served. I was a gunner (M2) and the dismount on my truck had a M249. We later relieved Geronimo in the Khadimia district. Operating out Al adala of Camp Justice.
As someone who served in an IBCT DRT (2018-22) you absolutely nailed the recon platoon org. The only thing I would add is that it was habitual for us to have a 13F FO attached to each team from the FA battalion. Most of the contribution we did to the brigade fight at JRTC was calling fire missions on Geronimo
I'm in a ABCT right now as a 15W (UAS Operator) We're about to go to the field and experiment with SUAS integration with cav scouts, we didn't get more vehicles either so we have quite a few more people dismounted than what I think makes sense since they had to trade in one of the humvee's for a LMTV to carry everyone
I was a Calvary scout in Iraq during 2008-2009. I had a unique experience. I was specific (raven operator) the unit eyes out in the JSS-2 Mansour district. 3 clicks south of BI-OP (Bagdad international airport) I sat on our house at night. It was old Iraq general house. flew a small UAV (raven) around the area in a two mile diameter to watch for insurgents; (specifically placing IED’s on MSR sword) I was the commanders driver; so I had ISR operating equipment in the truck to fly reconnaissance before hitting specific HVT targets. But the point I’m making; our scout unit. Was… a mix of missions. From being MP’s for arresting; infantrymen maneuvering for contact, interrogation, and ISR. We also lived with Iraq army on one side of us; and the national police on other side. So we were considered (mortar city) not JSS-2 😂 It’s weird how different some units were in same military, same area.
Id be interested to see some coverage of South Korean armor units that employ K2 Black Panther, with anything you could find out about the tactical employment of KSTAM
… I Absolutely Despise All This Meaningless Indecisive Confusing Bad Unit Design Thank You for Your Suffering in Making This Great Work Incredible Effort My Head Hurt’s and I Love Unit Structures
Minor clarification for the video: The Stryker Reconnaissance Squadron was called a "RSTA Squadron". Reconnaissance, Surveillance, and Target Acquisition.
I've been watching his videos for a while and don't know his full name or what he looks like, but I suspect he's for sure well under 50, which would make sense for someone who's this good at building a RUclips channel off of nothing more than good research on a somewhat obscure segment of military science, smooth narration and masterfully designed visuals. Makes sense for someone like that to be into memes and videogames considering they each require a degree of intelligence and knowledge to properly make use of in a video joke segment.
We seriously were not set up this way. We used four humvees with five soldiers per vehicle. Sometimes (six). But that’s the commander and second lieutenant from HQ for on ground eyes. Our commander and Second LT were a ranger. (SOP) We would have on mission or contact, two dismounts and TC get out to form ground teams, driver-gunner stay in vehicles for support by fire positions. Easy to move vehicles for supporting fire. Then stay in position moving vehicles till the infantry came with the strikers. And we handed off contact then continued our route reconnaissance.
I've been trying to research the inner workings of army recon units for quite some time, so thank you for this video. If I could suggest a future video topic, I would be interested in the Army 2030 Light Reconnaissance Company's structure, as I can't find details on it anywhere (it might not be public domain yet, but idk). Thank you again for this information!
The last email I got about it they hadn't made a decision about it, although that was last year now. They were considering it to be similar to a motorized scout platoon design in broad strokes but otherwise I don't know
Thank you for the quick response. My guess is 3x standard motorized or footmobile recon platoons & a company headquarters, maybe with more mechanized and artillery support or suas assets, but I don't know enough to say. Thank you for all of your videos!
I'd love to see some CBRN related content. I was a PL for a mounted CBRN recon platoon. I thought it was one of the coolest jobs you could do in the chemical corps. I will say that current CBRN companies use 1 mounted recon plt (with 4 m1135 NBCRVs), 2 dismounted recon/decontamination platoons, and a maintenance section
I asked my DS in OSUT when they got rid of Pathfinder Detachments. He said they turned them into LRS Detachments, but those don't exist anymore, partly because the commander relied on them so much and their op tempo was incredibly high
I was in the 504th BfSB, part of 163rd MI on it's last deployment under the BfSB designation. We understood the utility of the total brigade as a unit: deploy as the all-seeing eye into the footprint of a line BCT, find everything, and assist in getting all targets prosecuted before moving on. Big Army *never* used them according to doctrine, ever. We weren't a combat brigade, and our capabilities were much more arcane and classified than most people understood (because 90% of the damn brigade had to have a security clearance for their job). Hell, III Corps ran a simulation to see if the LRSU could be used as line infantry, which they failed, and then declared the unit unnecessary. The 38th Cavalry was a damn good unit and needed to be used to its strengths, but this was during the drawdown era and people didn't see the use of such a specialized unit. Same timeframe that the divisional pathfinder compared were being shut down.
holy shit. i just realized i have a 163rd MI coin. ‘Blue Watch’ knowledge is power. still says BfSB on the coin so i must have gotten it around 2010ish.
Even though the Long-Range Recon Detachment is a unique concept it being disbanded makes sense with all of the other forces (sniper teams, infantry scouts, cav scouts, Ranger Recon, SEAL Recon, Army SOF, USMC SOF, and the Air Force Special Ops units), that are in theory designed to do (relatively) the same mission.
I don't know, I probably wouldn't expect regular infantry/cav scouts to do what they could do and I wouldn't expect Rangers/SOF to be available to a division or corps commander in a big war
@@BattleOrder I don’t exactly disagree with you. My argument is the US has never been in a true near peer war with the prevalence of special operations forces. The way I see it (I’m not a military planner) SOF forces would primarily be tasked with the R&S of enemy Special Operations forces /leadership on top of reconnaissance of NBC threats and recon and destruction of enemy leadership. With those missions out of the way it makes sense to me SOF would serve as a Reconnaissance Force
Point of order. 11 series does not have a scouting mos. It was just regular 11B The units had a recon platoon/ they did not have a scout platoon. The missions / doctrine was similar but not the same.
11B is plastered all over the video so I’m not sure where I said there was a dedicated scout MOS. But if the billet is called “scout” and they’re an infantryman, seems pretty reasonable to call them an infantry scout
… I Absolutely Despise All This Y Indecisive Confusing Y Unit Design Thank You for Your Y in Making This Great Work Incredible Effort My Head Hurt’s and I Love Unit Structures
@@anon2034 They're a special reconnaissance unit capable of some special operations missions so it'd probably be fair to call them a special force. They're more like the army's old long-range surveillance units than their brigade/division cavalry capabilities. USMC Light armored reconnaissance is more equivalent to the Army's cavalry
Great stuff, but then again everything you make's just excellent! A small question, though: Why was the switch from M3 to M2 needed to fit an extra dismount, when in either case the 'full' complement of 6?
Technically it was 3 crew and 2 dismounts who also reloaded the TOW. This article has some pics of the seating arrangement down-page afvdb.50megs.com/usa/pics/m3bradley/m3bradley.html Going to the M2 was so they could do 3-3
@@manjimbo9830 Ay Dude My Parents Are From Indonesia And I Want To See At Least A Video On The Indonesian Military Basic Infantry Squad Bcs Its Hard Finding A English One
The Fox was leftover Cold War gear from the 1980's NATO units. They were supposedly air-conditioned with NBC filters, decon units didn't get any because they were loaded with expensive detection equipment and the Army didn't buy a lot of them.
Given the limited dismounted scouts capacity of the post-2010 IBCT's HMMWV scout platoon, have there been any plans to replace the scout platoons' HMMWV with the larger M-ATV Assault which could carry five crewmen plus six passengers?
… I Absolutely Despise All This Y Indecisive Confusing Bad Unit Design Thank You for Your Suffering in Making This Great Work Incredible Effort My Head Hurt’s and I Love Unit Structures
BFSBs were a hot mess, but interesting. The Cav and MI leadership were always fighting with each other on a cultural front and how to allocate resources. The soldiers on the other hands largely ignored each other since they had nothing in common with each other. If one of the MI soldiers barrack room was better than the "superior" Cav Scout's, it was going to be a bad time for him. lol
Infantry scouts are an 11B who just happens to be acting as a scout. They might get additional training but there is just the one infantry MOS (except for mortars). Cav Scouts are a whole MOS (19D)
Jesus! We went through all of this before and decided it was more beneficial to have one mtoe for each type of unit. Scout platoons Heavy 6 M3 30 personnel, light 10 hmmwv 30 personnel. The cav units were 2 sct 2 tank platoons. Went from 2 ACR to 1-4 CAV then desert storm. No tanks in the div cav got changed real quick. All this crap they are deciding now just proves that nobody has a clue about the R/S mission and play politics with the structure.
… I Absolutely Despise All This Meaningless Indecisive Confusing Bad Unit Design Thank You for Your Suffering in Making This Great Work Incredible Effort My Head Hurt’s and I Love Unit Structures
The Army flip-flopped on whether they wanted to call these platoons "Recon/Recce" or "Scout" platoons, and whether the squadrons should be "RSTA" or "Recon" so I wouldn't think too hard about it lol. Generally speaking in current day, they're Scout Platoons and Cavalry Squadrons. BFSBs, ACRs (as a unique non-BCT organization), and LRS Companies no longer exist.
Also because of the sheer scope of this video with like 10 different platoon designs covered, I just stuck with what the TO&E and doctrine called for. In my deep dive videos where I cover just one specific type of unit in greater detail, I talk more about unit SOPs with feedback from people that were actually in those units. I cut out a section me listing off caveats because it's boring, but I fully expect veterans in the comments giving feedback on how their units deviated from this generic doctrine.
If you want to read about how the Army got from these Scout Platoon designs (particularly the brigade-level Cav ones) to what they have today with the 36-scout platoon: www.moore.army.mil/armor/earmor/content/issues/2014/jul_sep/Lowry.html
Some issues with the platoon designs covered in this video were:
1. Humvees in the HBCT platoon limited its ability to fight for information
2. Deploying dismounted patrols required combining sections to man long-duration OPs and led to minimal crewing of vehicles (2-man crew for Bradleys, whereas they'd ideally have 3)
3. The brigade platoon designs were unstandardized
If you'd like to learn more about Army aerial reconnaissance, I've done very in-depth videos on:
1. Helicopter-Based Reconnaissance Units: ruclips.net/video/iIZzExeV278/видео.html
2. Drone-Based Surveillance Units: ruclips.net/video/oD6UsPjwF5A/видео.html
The army kept flip flopping what they wanted the mission to be. A recon platoon and a scout platoon have different priorities/missions, and are staffed with different types of soldiers.
A recon platoon is made up of infantry, usually the best guys in a battalion.
A scout platoon is…just made up of regular cav scouts.
When a force reorganize between scout/infantry happens it basically deletes that platoon.
The cav scouts generally fail out of infantry school, and the infantry refuse to reclass.
Love your content, man. Very well research and informative. Especially like all the info and episodes re: the use of Cavalry in the Vietnam days, and the old DIVCAV formations.
I've transitioned from the "old days" of DIVCAV and large-scale combat, to the COIN years, and now back to LSCO (retired KW aviator). Good stuff you're doing.
@@BarundusThanks mate!
Reminds me of when I tried to decipher the nuances of the Wehrmacht use of Aufklärung (recon) and Späh (scout). It seemed like Aufklärung generally referred to mounted and sometimes armoured units, while Späh was more infantry and ad hoc focused. But then they also labelled their heavy armoured cars as Panzerspähwagen just to increase confusion. I believe that distinction is still used in some Germanic militaries today. At least where I’m from, we still have light recon mounted in armoured cars (basically humvees), while the cold war equivalent mounted in jeeps were called scouts, and we also had some recon tank units back then too.
I was in an IBCT Cav. squadron. We were almost never used for scout/recon missions, and we also had a number of armor officers who tried to use us like an anti-tank platoon.
“War thunder forum level clearance” is hilarious
even has a proper acronym "WTF"
War Thunder shall shape the battlefield for years to come
Basically classified in name only.
@@josephahner3031 it's "unclassified information"
you can't convince me otherwise that WarThunder is an FSB-project to milk western militaries of their equipments' classified documents.
I never realized before just how important a *caveat would be for explaining stuff.
I served 03-06 in a heavy Cav unit (3/7) as a 19D and nothing in this video is exactly how our occasion was setup but I can see now just how fluid structure was
Yeah that was one of those periods where everything was changing. For what it's worth though, the armored DIVCAV scout platoon unmodified from back before modular force was at least meant to be like the ACR platoon referenced here with 6 Bradleys and 30 Scouts
@@BattleOrder I definitely appreciate you doing this video though because I can see now after watching it how and why some of the structure was the way it was. We were pretty close to what you described. But we actually ran with 12 vehicles. 6 Bradley's and 6 Humvees. And at our greatest strength we never had more than 21 soldiers in our platoon. Though it was supposed to be 30 we deployed with 19. Our 6 Humvees had a 240B each though we often had to cannibalize the 240C's off the Bradley's in order to send one Bravo on each Humvee when we went out the gate.
We never went out with a mix. It was either only Brad's or only Humvees though initially we trained stateside to take a mix out. After arriving in Iraq we realized that combining them into a mission meant that our mission had ALL of the weaknesses of using Humvees and ALL of the weaknesses of using Bradley's while being unable to fully realize the best of each. So we just based our vehicle decision of each mission then prepped to go out with that. If we needed speed and agility then we took Humvees. If not then we took Bradley's for the greater protection.
Another unique thing we did was three way we cannibalized our vehicles for dismounts. Frequently we ran the front and rear Humvee with just a driver and gunner and the middle Humvees with just a driver to move along with every dismount that we could put together. But because we were often so understrength we often asked for and got volunteers from fobits to drive for us while our drivers also dismounted.
I served the same time and same job. Trained in A Trp 5/15 then went to 1/4 US Cav. I was very curious on why they got rid of the 6 M3's Plt. Seemed to work for that job's role plus during our deployment hot-seating was all too common not to mention cannabalization.
@@billyteflon1322 Trained in A Trp 5/15 2004. Went to 101st and never saw any of this. I wish they would teach this during OSUT. A lot of things would make more sense.
I LOLed @0:33
'03 to '0...?. the doctrine was "makin' shit up as we go..." TO&E and doctrine rarely ever matched reality. Units were chronically understrength and most units fell in on whomever's equipment they were relieving. It didn't matter what your notional unit was or even your MOS most people found themselves doing light cavalry roles. Patrolling, route recon, convoy escort, ect.
For example:
We were a heavy cav troop of a HBCT on paper, We trained up as light cav, but no one got reclassed, and we did not do M1 or Brad gunnery certification. We we got to Baghdad, someone "found" an extra platoon of ratty tanks. We then "borrowed" them for six months before someone came looking for them. After than, even us mechanics were out driving around and getting blown up.
I can’t imagine trying to gather lessons learned and adopt new methods across this many different recon organizations during wartime! I’m interested to know if the veterans out there think this level of complexity optimized for the fight or just made it harder to train?
We do at the platoon level. Granted, I was only in for 3.5 years as a 19D. But toward the end of my contract, we had a bunch of ideas floating around. I was of the opinion, and still am, that 19D either needs to be heavy, ie Brads, or go drone. Ukraine and other conflicts of the time had shown that drones made a lot of the foot-work of what I had learned irrelevant. It was made even more plain when in my last FTX we were issued black hornets. Crystal clear camera's, easy id of position, and a minute turn-around to drop 120mm mortars on that position with a 10 digit grid reference with our integrated fires at the troop level. Going on foot toward an NAI is straight up deadly with a near-peer opponent who will have thermals and drones like we have. Why have PV2 Snuffy low crawl across a forest floor for 500m when he'll get spotted, targeted, and evaporated, within the first 100m's? Many in my platoon felt the British Deep Fire doctrine was the most logical. Which, hilariously, we learned about from this channel because it was super popular with our PSG and Section Sergeant to have us learn the principles of army organization and tactics to be able to build our own SOP.
Some of these ideas we tested and found they had mixed results. We tried two platoons mounted and one dismounted. Which basically meant we had scouts doing footwork while the other platoons acted as taxi's and fire support. This was good in concept, but it often resulted in the dismounted platoon getting screwed over because the taxi's weren't there when we needed them, got spotted and intercepted, or it just wore out the dismounts too fast. As I recall, we had a lot of guys in our platoon become heat cats or cold cats. Along with the usual shin-splints, exhaustion, and foot problems associated with doing constant foot movements. That said, we also got clapped pretty hard at JRTC while fully mounted. Though I didn't attend that one as it was toward the end of my contract. But that could be chalked up to poor command and control as we had a very inexperienced company commander at the time who ended up getting relieved. Also the fact that no one actually "wins" in JRTC. It is kind of built like the Star Trek simulator battle where you're supposed to lose and find out your strengths. In other words, it's a gut punch meant to solidify training.
Russians and Ukrainians do it on a daily basis, it’s crazy
@@Thrainite If ya gonna go drone just hope your opponent is incompetent in EW...
I was a 19D in the early 2000s and assigned to one of the first Stryker RSTA Squadrons. You left out the Medic that would ride in the PSG's vehicle, and would dismount with the Scouts. Bringing the PSGs vehicle to 4 dismounts. I will say this was only on deployment, or when training. Which was damn near all the time back then lol.
Also just a side note, we would operate as two separate sections more often than not. With the two E-6 section leaders (vehicles 2 and 3) leading the sections. The "2 Truck" being the Senior Scout's vehicle.
Yeah I left out attachments and support because with all the platoons covered there was no way I was going to get feedback from someone who was in every type of platoon lol. When I do my deeper videos covering just one unit type and can get specific servicemember feedbaxk I include that type of stuff
Good info. A few little things were missed, but nothing major. I spent my years in an infantry battalion scout/sniper platoon, we had to try out because we only had one E5 per squad instead of two like regular infantry squads. We had javelin missiles and we used the CLU for observation tasks. We also had all the sniper equipment because they made up our 4th squad. I wish more people could see this because I can't count the times I've been called a liar for saying I was an 11B scout.
I was a Cavalry officer (in an ABCT) from 2017-2021 and our organization was 6x Bradleys, with around 3x dismounts per Bradley, so wildly different from this video. It was funny, however, because we would often find or accidentally reference old doctrine which had those hunter-killer scout teams of paired Humvees and Bradleys, and the old-timers used to talk about it a lot. They really didn't like that concept beause there was always animosity between the three (Humvee crew vs Bradley crew vs dismounts) and the workload wasn't evenly shared, and the NCO responsibilities weren't equal etc etc. It's interesting to see how the formations have changed over time, and continue to change. My beloved old Cavalry SQDN is gonna be deactivated (probably) with the upcoming Army 2030 changes.
Yeah in ~2016 they switched it from 3 Bradleys and 5 Humvees to 6 Bradleys in ABCTs, and converted the Bradleys from M3s to M2s so they could have 3 dismounts per Bradley to achieve 36 scouts
9:54 Sheesh, that Detachment Leader qualification list reads like job postings today:
"Entry Level position requiring 15 years experience."
Like, is that LT supposed to do nothing but schools for 3 years?
They were TOE’d as a Lieutenant but if they had all those qualifications doctrine actually expected them to be a Captain. Similarly the company commander was TOE’d as a captain but they believed Major was preferable
@BattleOrder I can see that. No officer gets that much school time unless they're SOF or Aviation. Sounds more like post-command captains as opposed to senior 1LTs. Coincidentally, it's probably what all Infantry Battalion commanders wish their LTs could have. Unfortunately for them, quad stacked, ranger tabbed company grade 11As are unicorns. They should be glad they have enough 11As to fill their billets to begin with.
@@SirCheezersIIImy thought was it’d need to be a Green to Gold type deal? Ranger Bat NCO with tons of schools who goes commissioned. Not a likely situation to happen though!
@@bpdp379 Probably the only way in my mind to get that. Not really setting yourself up for success when your requirements for officers are the Army's equivalent of "I'm saving myself for my soulmate." Perfect is the enemy of good enough.
No info is totally safe from the War Thunder forums
Profile Pic checks out
real
Going back a little before this time period, in the 90s there were also Separate Armored Brigades (SAB) in the National Guard, each having a Bde Cavalry Troop as its organic reconnaissance unit. These were organized like the 3ACR TO&E you described (2x6veh M3 Scout plts/2x4veh M1 tank plts) with the addition of a 2 tube 120mm mortar section and organic resupply, maintenance, and recovery assets. Additionally, each maneuver battalion in the brigade (2 tank, 1 mech infantry) had its own Scout platoon, those for the tank Bns mounted in Bradleys and the ones for the infantry Bn in Hmmwvs. Interesting stuff, thanks for putting this out there.
Oct. 2004 til Sept 2005 I was there in mech brigade 2/156, LaANG. Our area initially was NW of Baghdad, and for a while we ran a dismounted platoon supplemented by mech sections. We ran a 4 1014 Hmmwv. Mk19 were not mounted since supposedly it had to have division Clearance to employ. We used M2/M240 for vehicle crew served. I was a gunner (M2) and the dismount on my truck had a M249. We later relieved Geronimo in the Khadimia district. Operating out Al adala of Camp Justice.
As someone who served in an IBCT DRT (2018-22) you absolutely nailed the recon platoon org. The only thing I would add is that it was habitual for us to have a 13F FO attached to each team from the FA battalion. Most of the contribution we did to the brigade fight at JRTC was calling fire missions on Geronimo
I would love to see a follow-up for the Australian infantry video awhile back. Really like you videos btw 👍
I'm in a ABCT right now as a 15W (UAS Operator) We're about to go to the field and experiment with SUAS integration with cav scouts, we didn't get more vehicles either so we have quite a few more people dismounted than what I think makes sense since they had to trade in one of the humvee's for a LMTV to carry everyone
Awesome video! As usual, packed full of interesting details. Scouts out!
I was a Calvary scout in Iraq during 2008-2009. I had a unique experience.
I was specific (raven operator) the unit eyes out in the JSS-2 Mansour district. 3 clicks south of BI-OP (Bagdad international airport)
I sat on our house at night. It was old Iraq general house. flew a small UAV (raven) around the area in a two mile diameter to watch for insurgents; (specifically placing IED’s on MSR sword)
I was the commanders driver; so I had ISR operating equipment in the truck to fly reconnaissance before hitting specific HVT targets.
But the point I’m making; our scout unit. Was… a mix of missions. From being MP’s for arresting; infantrymen maneuvering for contact, interrogation, and ISR. We also lived with Iraq army on one side of us; and the national police on other side. So we were considered (mortar city) not JSS-2 😂
It’s weird how different some units were in same military, same area.
I like the MGS Snake in a card box to hide reference from 3:11. XD
Where can I get this War Thunder Forum Level security clearance? It sounds like fun 🤣
It comes with a premium account
Id be interested to see some coverage of South Korean armor units that employ K2 Black Panther, with anything you could find out about the tactical employment of KSTAM
I thought the card board box camouflage was a USMC doctrine.
That's seems true. XD
Only against new AIs.
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I Absolutely Despise All This Meaningless Indecisive Confusing Bad Unit Design
Thank You for Your Suffering in Making This Great Work
Incredible Effort
My Head Hurt’s and I Love Unit Structures
Great video. I served in an airborne RSTA (Recon) squadron 05-08. Our MTOE was wild, and we didn't follow most of the doctrinal organization.
Minor clarification for the video: The Stryker Reconnaissance Squadron was called a "RSTA Squadron". Reconnaissance, Surveillance, and Target Acquisition.
IBCT Squadrons were called that too.
Battle order adding gaming references and memes is something i was not expecting for 2024 at all
which is great
I've been watching his videos for a while and don't know his full name or what he looks like, but I suspect he's for sure well under 50, which would make sense for someone who's this good at building a RUclips channel off of nothing more than good research on a somewhat obscure segment of military science, smooth narration and masterfully designed visuals. Makes sense for someone like that to be into memes and videogames considering they each require a degree of intelligence and knowledge to properly make use of in a video joke segment.
We seriously were not set up this way.
We used four humvees with five soldiers per vehicle. Sometimes (six). But that’s the commander and second lieutenant from HQ for on ground eyes. Our commander and Second LT were a ranger.
(SOP) We would have on mission or contact, two dismounts and TC get out to form ground teams, driver-gunner stay in vehicles for support by fire positions. Easy to move vehicles for supporting fire.
Then stay in position moving vehicles till the infantry came with the strikers. And we handed off contact then continued our route reconnaissance.
i love youre videos and i would like to see you making a german mechanized infantry video
I've been trying to research the inner workings of army recon units for quite some time, so thank you for this video. If I could suggest a future video topic, I would be interested in the Army 2030 Light Reconnaissance Company's structure, as I can't find details on it anywhere (it might not be public domain yet, but idk). Thank you again for this information!
The last email I got about it they hadn't made a decision about it, although that was last year now. They were considering it to be similar to a motorized scout platoon design in broad strokes but otherwise I don't know
Thank you for the quick response. My guess is 3x standard motorized or footmobile recon platoons & a company headquarters, maybe with more mechanized and artillery support or suas assets, but I don't know enough to say. Thank you for all of your videos!
Can you do a video on Battle Order of US Marines 1st Recon Battalion during Iraq War
I'd love to see some CBRN related content. I was a PL for a mounted CBRN recon platoon. I thought it was one of the coolest jobs you could do in the chemical corps. I will say that current CBRN companies use 1 mounted recon plt (with 4 m1135 NBCRVs), 2 dismounted recon/decontamination platoons, and a maintenance section
I asked my DS in OSUT when they got rid of Pathfinder Detachments. He said they turned them into LRS Detachments, but those don't exist anymore, partly because the commander relied on them so much and their op tempo was incredibly high
pretty much.
(525th BfSB LRS)
All this fire power and still completely failed miserably
I was in the 504th BfSB, part of 163rd MI on it's last deployment under the BfSB designation. We understood the utility of the total brigade as a unit: deploy as the all-seeing eye into the footprint of a line BCT, find everything, and assist in getting all targets prosecuted before moving on.
Big Army *never* used them according to doctrine, ever. We weren't a combat brigade, and our capabilities were much more arcane and classified than most people understood (because 90% of the damn brigade had to have a security clearance for their job). Hell, III Corps ran a simulation to see if the LRSU could be used as line infantry, which they failed, and then declared the unit unnecessary. The 38th Cavalry was a damn good unit and needed to be used to its strengths, but this was during the drawdown era and people didn't see the use of such a specialized unit. Same timeframe that the divisional pathfinder compared were being shut down.
i was attached to 525th BfSB 319th MI from the LRS detachment. fun deployment, to say the least.
holy shit. i just realized i have a 163rd MI coin. ‘Blue Watch’ knowledge is power. still says BfSB on the coin so i must have gotten it around 2010ish.
Even though the Long-Range Recon Detachment is a unique concept it being disbanded makes sense with all of the other forces (sniper teams, infantry scouts, cav scouts, Ranger Recon, SEAL Recon, Army SOF, USMC SOF, and the Air Force Special Ops units), that are in theory designed to do (relatively) the same mission.
I don't know, I probably wouldn't expect regular infantry/cav scouts to do what they could do and I wouldn't expect Rangers/SOF to be available to a division or corps commander in a big war
@@BattleOrder I don’t exactly disagree with you. My argument is the US has never been in a true near peer war with the prevalence of special operations forces. The way I see it (I’m not a military planner) SOF forces would primarily be tasked with the R&S of enemy Special Operations forces /leadership on top of reconnaissance of NBC threats and recon and destruction of enemy leadership. With those missions out of the way it makes sense to me SOF would serve as a Reconnaissance Force
Can we get some LAR love for the marine side of Armor Recon
Meanwhile today Army ground recon capabilities are…umm…well shit.
Not that there’s any chance of a peer conflict soon. No chance of that.
Point of order.
11 series does not have a scouting mos. It was just regular 11B
The units had a recon platoon/ they did not have a scout platoon. The missions / doctrine was similar but not the same.
11B is plastered all over the video so I’m not sure where I said there was a dedicated scout MOS. But if the billet is called “scout” and they’re an infantryman, seems pretty reasonable to call them an infantry scout
I mean, 11B literally does everything other than mortars, so it tracks for me.
@@BattleOrder When they were called scout they were filled with cav scouts. When they were filled with 11Bs they were recon.
@@bkane573 The opposite in several cases.
Very educational
You need to be complete and detail the order of battle after the introduction of the MRAP's.
The real goal of all having all these organizations and organizational changes is to make life difficult for historians and wargame designers.
Just need to pick your favorite and only focus on that one
I served in 2 Cav when it was light Cav 97-02 and served in 2-14Cav RSTA with 1st BDE 25th ID (Stryker)
It’s a shame what’s happening to the Cavalry Squadrons across the Army with the new restructure. 19D now a gutted MOS. 😢
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I Absolutely Despise All This Y Indecisive Confusing Y Unit Design
Thank You for Your Y in Making This Great Work
Incredible Effort
My Head Hurt’s and I Love Unit Structures
I suggest to go over the new Air/Space Force changes. Don't think that's your style though.
Honestly it seems like the Bradley can do anything lol
except work in a warzone.
@babd3121 "except work in a warzone"
Nah that'd be the second army in the world 😂
@@revantiiTBF they're fighting a type of modern war the United States Army has never fought in it's history.
@@babd3121not a big history buff I take it
@@IceAxe1940and? So? Therefore?
"Generation kill" were scouts right?
Yeah they were a division recon asset, but somewhat like the Army's LRS teams in capability
@@BattleOrder So they were not somekind of a "special forces" unit?
@@anon2034 They're a special reconnaissance unit capable of some special operations missions so it'd probably be fair to call them a special force. They're more like the army's old long-range surveillance units than their brigade/division cavalry capabilities. USMC Light armored reconnaissance is more equivalent to the Army's cavalry
@@BattleOrder "old long-range surveillance units" like LRRPs from Vietnam?
@@anon2034 the LRS units succeeded the LRRPs in mission, yes
Who manned the guns on the humvee if it was just leader driver and dismount
I found this video very interesting as it comes out when US Army is cancelling calvary squadrons from IBCT and SBCTs based in continental U.S.
Great stuff, but then again everything you make's just excellent! A small question, though: Why was the switch from M3 to M2 needed to fit an extra dismount, when in either case the 'full' complement of 6?
Technically it was 3 crew and 2 dismounts who also reloaded the TOW. This article has some pics of the seating arrangement down-page afvdb.50megs.com/usa/pics/m3bradley/m3bradley.html
Going to the M2 was so they could do 3-3
OMGH WOW, also War Thunder reference.
Can You Do Indonesian Taibin?
Indonesian RUclipsrs should do it themselves, they know their own country better.
@@manjimbo9830 Ay Dude My Parents Are From Indonesia And I Want To See At Least A Video On The Indonesian Military Basic Infantry Squad Bcs Its Hard Finding A English One
Awesome video. The Army and Marines are gonna have to be able to operate drones as were seeing in Ukraine. The LRS's , they got a tab ?
Why was the Fuchs/Fox used by the early CBRN units?
The Fox was leftover Cold War gear from the 1980's NATO units. They were supposedly air-conditioned with NBC filters, decon units didn't get any because they were loaded with expensive detection equipment and the Army didn't buy a lot of them.
7:21 in french, eclairage... (dismounted centric)
Given the limited dismounted scouts capacity of the post-2010 IBCT's HMMWV scout platoon, have there been any plans to replace the scout platoons' HMMWV with the larger M-ATV Assault which could carry five crewmen plus six passengers?
Truth
Next you gotta do marine recon units
Yep, Cav Scout Platoons have way more Fire Power than an Infantry platoon
16:48 : Ist Transportpanzer Fuchs. It panzers transport.
“CUI just sounds like Unclassified with extra steps”
So true
Do you have more platoon/squad videos coming ? 😊
Fulda ACR video when???
*Smokes blunt* Ya know, this Battle Order guy sounds alot like Military-Patrick Bateman.
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I Absolutely Despise All This Y Indecisive Confusing Bad Unit Design
Thank You for Your Suffering in Making This Great Work
Incredible Effort
My Head Hurt’s and I Love Unit Structures
Hey can you make one one Indian Military Doctrine.
BFSBs were a hot mess, but interesting. The Cav and MI leadership were always fighting with each other on a cultural front and how to allocate resources. The soldiers on the other hands largely ignored each other since they had nothing in common with each other. If one of the MI soldiers barrack room was better than the "superior" Cav Scout's, it was going to be a bad time for him. lol
what's happening in the background of 9:28 lol, what's that called?
It's called SPIE en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_Patrol_Insertion/Extraction
@@BattleOrder i love you battle order
I wonder how these would've changed if the army went with a more widespread adoption of the M1117 guardian
Another unit to re-equip with M-ATVs after the M1117s got divested lol
The things that we saw while using LRAS at night in Iraq🤣🤣🤣. Scouts out front!
What happens on the screen line stays on the screen line
What's the differemce between an infantry scout and a cav scout?
Infantry scouts are an 11B who just happens to be acting as a scout. They might get additional training but there is just the one infantry MOS (except for mortars). Cav Scouts are a whole MOS (19D)
Jesus! We went through all of this before and decided it was more beneficial to have one mtoe for each type of unit. Scout platoons Heavy 6 M3 30 personnel, light 10 hmmwv 30 personnel.
The cav units were 2 sct 2 tank platoons.
Went from 2 ACR to 1-4 CAV then desert storm. No tanks in the div cav got changed real quick.
All this crap they are deciding now just proves that nobody has a clue about the R/S mission and play politics with the structure.
so wait does the 101st, 10th, 25th, and 82nd have these motorized scouts?
Until the the IBCT Cav goes away under the most recent ARSTRUC, yes
@@BattleOrder what is arstruc
Is this title based of the article by Army University Press?
No it’s based on TOEs
МЕЖДУ МНОЙ И ТОБОЙ ОСТАЕТСЯ ВЕТЕР ВЕТЕР ВЕТЕР ВЕТЕР ❤❤🧡🧡💛💛💚💚💙💙💜💜
💯 % ALERT ⚠️ 😊 🇬🇧 🇺🇸
Why putting a confused hijabi in the context of Iraqi war ?
Marine recon?
Is it just me, or is "Brigade Team" redundant redundant? Why not just say, "Brigade Combat Team Force Unit Group?"
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I Absolutely Despise All This Meaningless Indecisive Confusing Bad Unit Design
Thank You for Your Suffering in Making This Great Work
Incredible Effort
My Head Hurt’s and I Love Unit Structures
When Turkmenistan
RSTA DADDIES