A company is the intermediate unit bridging squads and battalions. Size varies ALOT. This is b/c both the size of a unit and the number of units in the next classification can vary.
For example. I was a medical radiographer in the Army and was a member of the “tech squad” in second platoon, Charlie Company, 501st Forward Support Battalion. At times this squad only had five or six troops, the company–25-30. Some infantry squads may have more than a dozen troops, making only a couple of them as big as my entire company.
My battalion was about 400 troops but, support battalions are on the small side as they contain specialists who can provide their services to many troops. There was only one slot for a radiographer in my unit and we supported over 1200 personnel. In Bosnia I felt really important for about two days and wanted to go back to being unimportant for the next ten months.
5-9 troops – squad
4 squads – platoon
3 platoons – company
3 companys – battalion
don’t remember after that
pretty typical though if a little on the small side
Basically, I was wondering because I’m reading stories now about Regiment X and Y Battalion being activated for overseas duty. Then came the realization I’ve been hearing unit size terms in movies all my life and had no idea how to define any of them.
I’d still be curious to know how many people those units have in more typical outfits – say in general army infantry units…
Anyone else want to weigh in with their experiences?
Pretty accurate in my personal experience, except some units don’t have squads, per se. Granted during formation sometimes we’ll refer to the ranks as squads, but there was no formal designation of squads.
For example my company was broken into three platoons. IIRC they were to the effect “HQ” (us), “Tactical,” and “Control” platoons (something like that).
In my HQ platoon, the first rank would always be the administrative guys, with some of the motor pool spill-over, then the motor pool, then Communications-Electronics, with more of the motor pool spillover.
I’d gotten to un-used to the idea of squads, I’d always thought of it as something exclusive to those combat-type units.
And just to make sure we’re clear here, a “troop” is an idividual soldier, right? I’m coming from a Boy Scout background here, where a “troop” is about 30 boys plus leaders.
Oftentimes, the regiment level is skipped completely so that the chain of command goes directly from battalion to brigade. I believe it’s due to the type of unit. A “heavy” division may include 4 brigades of artillery whereas an airbone division may only contain two or three (one or more being “light”). Depending on mission, infantry, artillery and armor (plus support) may be configured into a regiment temporarily.
There was a thread about 2 weeks ago where this was also discussed and has some information about military units and designations (and information concerning regiments:
Rysdad whether a unit is “heavy” or “light” depends on what type of equipment the unit has. Thus Armor divisions (such as 2AD and 1st Cav) are “heavy” and then there are “light” Infantry division (such as the 82nd Airborne, 101st Air Assault, 10th Mountain, and 25th Infantry) are “light” because they are not mechanized.