 If it comes time to do the pew-pews, how many boys do you want with you? If you answered anything other than all of them, then you answered incorrectly. Hello everyone, Dylan Schumacher, Citadel Defense, and we are gonna talk about the ideal squad size, or how many guys would be the perfect number for a squad, and I'm gonna argue for 16. Before I do that, a couple of caveats here. One, I am primarily, not entirely, but primarily talking about just citizen soldiers, right? Just our us amateurs who don't do this full-time professionally, just everyday people. That being said, I do think that it would be better if the full-time military did this, but I'm not in the military, never have been, and so of course that's their decision, and they can do whatever they want over there. This 16 number comes from a lot of reading, a lot of musing, and just what I think would probably be the most effective. So if you're wondering, hey, I wanna build a crew, what would be the best number, what would be the perfect number of guys that I could have in my crew, I think that number's 16. So let's talk about why. Last thing I wanna say before I get to this is that squad sizes, of course, have changed throughout history and throughout different militaries, right? Depending on which military and which time and what technology they had, squad sizes have fluctuated, and so I think it's not a good idea to get into this mindset that it's just stuck, that number's just stuck and it should never change, but there are reasons that we should change it and there are reasons that we should add or subtract people, and that's the argument I wanna make today. So with that, all is my caveat, we're gonna base this on the buddy system, of course, because it's always a good idea to have a buddy all the time. So basing it off the buddy system, which is the basic building block of any team, we're gonna start with the buddy system, right? And then you put two of those together and that's a fire team. So four men's a fire team, right? In the United States military, usually one of these guys will be a grenadier, one'll be your saw gunner, one'll be just kind of your lowest of the chain rifleman, and then one is the fire team leader. I'd be curious to know in practicality how often in the US infantry every fire team has a grenadier and a saw gunner, but that's what all the men will say, right? So that's ideally how they would do it. For our purposes, I would still say yes, let's still do the buddy system, let's still do the fire team leader, and then we don't have access to 40 millimeter grenades, unfortunately, or four of the automatic weapons, unfortunately. So I would say one of these guys should just be your DMR guy. For this fire team, I'm gonna choose one guy of that fire team to be our DMR, our designated marksman rifle, right? He's gonna be our designated marksman. And all I really mean there is a 20 inch AR with some kind of magnified optic. If that's an ACOG, if that's a one to six variable, whatever, that's what I mean when I say the DMR guy. The reason I'm only choosing one, cause maybe you're like, well, listen to him, why not just give him all magnified optics? Wouldn't that be better? And if you wanna go down that route, I think you could, I think there's an argument for that. I totally understand that line of thinking. I'd be sympathetic to that idea. However, the reason I would only choose one is because most engagements are happening sub 100 yards, within 100 yards, and most of those are within 50. I mean, if you do any kind of reading or research and you look at typical engagement distances in combat in the last 100 years, you're gonna find that most of those engagements are much closer than you would expect and much closer than you'd probably be comfortable with. There are exceptions. Afghanistan was a pretty good exception, right? A lot of the engagements in Afghanistan, you're pushing four, five, six, 700 yards plus for engagement distances. And 16-inch AR is just gonna have a hard time reaching beyond like six or 700 yards. So I do think that there are those applications in time when it would behoove you to have a DMR guy. And that's what I would choose, right? And again, in the real US military, they're just taking a saw, a 40 mic mic and two rifles and hey, I mean, if you can do that, why not? So that's our basic building block is the fire tune. And we're really gonna replicate three of those. So we have three fire teams. I put a line above the squad leader's head so that's recognizable. And then we got three DMR guys, right? And we have three fire teams. Now in the United States Army, typically you're only gonna have two fire teams and a squad leader, and that's a squad. In the United States Army, it's nine guys. In the Marines, they're a little bit smarter. They have three fire teams in a squad and then a squad leader. The advantage of having three maneuver elements is really important. I think the US Army gets it wrong here. I think the Marines get it absolutely correct. That you need to have three maneuver elements. When you start studying attacks and tactics and different battle drills and flanking, having three maneuver elements becomes supremely important because you're able to flank and provide a base of fire and hold the reserve and or do something else with that third unit. Or you can get into attack cycles and you can have one flanking, one base of firing, one resting, and then on the next, you're rotating fire teams out as you continue to keep momentum up with the attack. And there's a lot of different things you can do with three maneuver elements. There's a reason that the United States Army doesn't break down to anything less than a platoon, typically, right? They have a platoon, it's led by an officer, and guess how many squads are in a platoon? If you guess three, you are correct because even the United States Army understands that having three maneuver elements is extremely effective and important when conducting combat operations. So we're doing that, we're just on a smaller scale here. We're gonna have three combat elements that we can use to do whatever it is that we need to do. Now, at this point, the Marines, like I said, I think they get it right, they just all flow up to one squad leader. We're gonna do things a little bit different. So you have three fire teams, each with a team leader, all three of these fire teams are gonna flow up to a squad leader. Here's where things I think get a little bit different and what I would argue be a superior system. You're gonna have a buddy with the squad leader. Now, this buddy could be one of a couple things. In your, again, citizen soldier layout here, this is probably gonna be your medic. If you are working with other citizen soldier groups or if you're in the Army, this could probably be your radio man. It's probably gonna be one of those two things that obviously can't be both for what I think should be obvious reasons. Or lastly, this could just be the bodyguard slash buddy to the squad leader. But he's probably gonna be one of those three things depending on what your next setup is gonna be. So if you've been counting, this is, we're at 14 here, so that means we have two left over. And this is what I just call your special weapons team. If this was the United States military, this would be your 308 machine gunner. That's what this would be. I'm talking about typically here what would be called a light machine gun, right? Like a M240 Bravo or something like that where it's gonna be shooting that full 762 round and everybody's gonna carry like, I don't know, 100 rounds and drop it off for the gunner. But this would typically, in the United States military, this is gonna be your machine gun team, right? So you have a gunner and assistant gunner and they'll set up and party when it comes time to do that. Just to be clear, in the real United States military, they don't usually attach machine guns at the squad level, right? That usually gets attached to the platoon level and you have special weapons squads, which is like two machine gun teams of three guys and whatever. All I'm saying here is, I think this would be a better system, right? To have the machine gun in the squad. And basically a squad is a smaller platoon with all the maneuver elements that could still do just about as much, in my opinion, as the actual platoon could. But then what would officers do, right? So for our citizen soldier needs here, this special weapons team could be a couple things. This could just be your best shooters, right? Your D-boys, Alpha Bravo Delta, right? That's how you break down your teams. This could just be your really good guys that you want to attach and move around where you need to move them in order to get stuff done. This could be your really good shooters and you give them like 308s, right? They're gonna carry AR-10s because you're really gonna try to stretch them out to that thousand yard mark when you need a team to do something like that. This could also be your medic team. So this could be a medic and his buddy and that's how you're gonna organize your medical for your team. Because I think that within the squad here, it'd be a good idea to have some kind of designated medic. And I'm not talking about just some guy who carries like a CLS, a combat lifesaver bag, right? You probably want one of those in each fire team too. However, I'm talking about like your full on kind of medic. The guy that you're gonna send to EMT school and the guy that's gonna know a little bit more here. That could be, so that team could serve as your medic team. It's really kind of open to do a couple different things based on what you're trying to accomplish or what you think you need. So based on all of that, like I said, it'll be your med team, maybe they're carrying 308s or maybe this is just your pipe hitters. And these are your real strong guys that you are the most experienced who you trust the most that you can insert into whatever area in order to get something done. Now, there is one big problem with this setup in general. And that is it does violate cognitive load theory. If you've ever read anything about that or if you follow Christopher Larson's channel, which if you don't, you probably should, you're aware of cognitive load theory. And cognitive load theory basically says that one guy can only think for or control three guys. So you have your squad leader who's in charge of three team leaders and that works, right? But then when you throw in this fourth element here, you are violating cognitive load theory, not to mention the buddy, depending on what their job is, right? If they're just the bodyguard to the squad leader, well, it really doesn't matter because they're just gonna follow the squad leader around and they'll just always hang out the squad leader. That doesn't take a lot of cognitive load. But really, once you get this fourth element that the squad leader now needs to think for, that can become a problem. You can also give this team some autonomy and independence and just kind of allow them to do whatever it is they need to do based on the squad leader's discretion. Also, within this special team here, that's probably where your second in command of the squad is gonna be. So that if something were to happen to the squad leader, someone over here will take over. That also works better if you're ever going to split elements, right? And the squad leader is gonna stay behind with two squads and you're gonna send in, you know, alpha team to flank over here and maybe you'll send in your special team with them to lead that assault in. So I think there are some different ways that you can break that down. But I like 16 because it gives you three maneuver elements. It gives you a buddy with the squad leader. All of the modern breakdowns of squads, both the Marines and the Army, do not have a buddy with the squad leader. And I think that's a miss. I think there'd be some things to be gained from having a buddy attached to the squad leader. And then it allows you to have this special team. Again, like in the full-on military, that'd be your MG team. For our purposes, it would be a little bit different. So if you're thinking about how you would organize your crew or what you would like to do, this I think is a really good thing to shoot for and it's gonna give you a lot of tactical flexibility and capability to do whatever it is that you need to do when Rendon have. Last thing of note, if you're watching this and you're like, man, I wish I had 16 guys, just start yourself with a fire team or a buddy pair. And if you just have another friend or another three friends, you're able to still practice for when you're able to find all 16 guys and you're able to actually make this thing start to jive and work. So I hope this is helpful. I hope this gives you, like I said, some vision, some goals, some bigger perspective on how to organize your small unit so that it can be as effective as we can possibly make it. We need to all be embracing our martial American heritage as much as we can. Do brave deeds and endure.