Regimental Headquarters & Whatever Company?

[Quint]

So, I've been working on TOE's for my Imperial Army and Marines and I'm stumped on the actual, detailed makeup of a HHC at the Regimental level or higher. I'd love for a real world examples (I'm doing a poor job of finding detailed enough examples though).

If it matters, I've built a TOE that is:

Squad = 2 Fire Teams (4 person each)
Platoon = 3 Squads plus HQ Element
Company = 4 Platoons plus HQ Platoon
Battalion = 5 Companies plus HQ Group
Regiment = 4 Battalions plus HQ Company (+ Administrative Company for the Regimental Garrison)

I've decided to make (at least for the IA) to make it a combat service based on primarily on the Regimental model (for much the same reason that the British army used it during the Age of Empire) - so Brigade and higher is reserved either for combat theatres or higher Imperial organizational structures (MI, JAG, etc). The idea is that a Regiment in the field is a stand-alone unit able to be deployed alone much like the modern Brigade Combat Teams.

(The ultimate goal is to figure out the exact number of people and vehicles in order to calculate the tonnage need to move them in discrete units.)

In any case, any help would be appreciated - and I'm willing to answer any questions that might help figure out the answer!

D.

 

[Timerover51]

So, I've been working on TOE's for my Imperial Army and Marines and I'm stumped on the actual, detailed makeup of a HHC at the Regimental level or higher. I'd love for a real world examples (I'm doing a poor job of finding detailed enough examples though).

If it matters, I've built a TOE that is:

Squad = 2 Fire Teams (4 person each)
Platoon = 3 Squads plus HQ Element
Company = 4 Platoons plus HQ Platoon
Battalion = 5 Companies plus HQ Group
Regiment = 4 Battalions plus HQ Company (+ Administrative Company for the Regimental Garrison)

I've decided to make (at least for the IA) to make it a combat service based on primarily on the Regimental model (for much the same reason that the British army used it during the Age of Empire) - so Brigade and higher is reserved either for combat theatres or higher Imperial organizational structures (MI, JAG, etc). The idea is that a Regiment in the field is a stand-alone unit able to be deployed alone much like the modern Brigade Combat Teams.

(The ultimate goal is to figure out the exact number of people and vehicles in order to calculate the tonnage need to move them in discrete units.)

In any case, any help would be appreciated - and I'm willing to answer any questions that might help figure out the answer!

D.

Go to this website for the organization of US Army Ground combat troops for World War 2. http://www.history.army.mil/html/books/002/2-1/index.html

You can download the volume to read at your leisure. I also have some regimental field manuals and TO&E from World War 2 and following.

If you are using the Regiment as the primary deployed force, rather than a division, then you are going to need a combat support battalion of some sort, and a combat service support battalion.

The Combat service support battalion should have an administration and finance company, a medical company, a transportation and maintenance company, and a supply and transportation company, along with a headquarters company or detachment.

You are seriously lacking in heavy weapons. Typically, a company with have a weapons platoon, a battalion will have a heavy weapons company, and a regiment will have anti-armor, anti-air, and a heavy mortar unit assigned to it.

I will try to figure out where all of my TO&E stuff is scattered to and get back to you.

 

[aramis]

there are various squad sizes at present, ranging from 4-man special ops "squads" with 2 fire teams of two men each to as many as 18 men in a squad with no smaller subordinate unit. anything in between has been used at some point.

Also, many systems skip one or more levels. During the US Civil war, the unit sizes were squad, section (two squads + corporal), platoon (2 sections plus sergeant), company 108 man standard, but ranged from a low of 20 to a high of 160ish), regiment of 8 to 16 companies, nominally 10 or 12, and the higher units: brigade, division, corps, army, but these had no permanent established size. nominally, a brigade was 2 to 4 regiments, a division 4 to 8 regiments, possibly organized into brigades....

one artifact of the regimental system is tha, as long as an officer and a squad existed, it was the regiment, until orders disbanding it came from HQ...

 

[Xerxeskingofking]

one thing to consider is that their would be specialist elements that exist outside of the regimental system, like say high level comms units, wide area air defense, engineering units, log support, ect. these are normally attached at the brigade and higher level. they won't affect the regimental formation, but will need to be factored into the lift requirements of a higher level unit.

another comment/question is, if these regiments are intended to be discrete, self contained deployable formations, then would they have organic armoured and air support elements?

 

[Enoff]

 

[Reban]

I'm a fan of "write what you know" so for my Imperial Army I use Anglo/European TO&Es as a basis.

Things I've learned:

1. Though general organization can stay the same over a range of TLs the actual manpower required varies according to equipment and TL.

2, As you go up in TL you can actually start to fold a lot of capabilities together. For example I like to combine anti-tank and anti-air units into anti-armour unit capable of tackling flying tanks when grav tanks come into use.

3. One of your four Platoons at Company level should be a Support Platoon containing heavier weapons than the Combat Platoons. These can be held as a pool and assigned to the Combat Plts or to work in support to the rear.

4. They way you want to work it as a Regimental Combat Team means you have to assign enough ISTAR resources at HQ Levels throughout to allow them to do their own Intelligence, Surveillance, Target Acquisition, and Reconnaissance.

5. You'll probably need combat units of Company and Battalion size that you can plug into your RCT to give specialist capabilities. Don't forget Signals & EW, Engineering, and Logistics to make them truly independent. These could be assigned from Brigade or higher Army levels.

I'm not sure if you have the right concept of the British Regimental system where for example an Infantry Regiment had two battalions which had largely the same culture traditions and heritage but the battalions were rarely assigned to the same Brigade. The Battalion was the combat maneuver element and the Brigade was the command and control element with combat support and combat service support assigned to it.

I assume your Regiments are going to be multi branch with Infantry, cavalry and artillery battalions? That might make you a little light on infantry.

 

[rancke]

I thought this was all covered in GT: Ground Forces?


Hans

 

[Quint]

Go to this website for the organization of US Army Ground combat troops for World War 2. http://www.history.army.mil/html/books/002/2-1/index.html You can download the volume to read at your leisure... ...I will try to figure out where all of my TO&E stuff is scattered to and get back to you.

Thank you!

It's worth saying that, using those figures, an "Imperial Regiment" is roughly the size of modern Brigade (it's ~4200 troops) using my current thought experiment - Lift Infantry using G/Carriers or similarly adapted vehicles.

Squad Support weapons are Plasma Guns and Gauss SAWs - plus Plasma Missiles instead of LAWS. Forgetting whatever is mounted on the G/Carrier - that is a heck of a lot of firepower before we even start talking Drones and MRLs as additional organic support.

One of the things I'm trying to think through is the actual mechanics of weapons in a Traveller setting rather that simply grafting a modern day TOE onto the Imperial Army. Traveller, when it hits about TL12ish starts to become a combat of overkill. That means I'm doing a lot of questioning about both "assumed operational roles" as well as how the role and existence of both the Imperial Marines changes those assumptions for the Imperial Army, along with any other Special Operations units that are IA-specific but who answer to the Imperial High Command rather than the "normal" Regimental system (even if they end up organized as a regiment - I haven't actually decided).

D.

 

[Quint]

one thing to consider is that their would be specialist elements that exist outside of the regimental system, like say high level comms units, wide area air defense, engineering units, log support, ect. these are normally attached at the brigade and higher level. they won't affect the regimental formation, but will need to be factored into the lift requirements of a higher level unit.

another comment/question is, if these regiments are intended to be discrete, self contained deployable formations, then would they have organic armoured and air support elements?

See note, this "Imperial Regiment" is actually about the size of modern brigade.

At the moment, I'm kind of placing (in my "Lift Infantry Regiment") an MRL Section with each company (plus a 3-man Recondo Scout/Sniper element), plus a MRL Platoon attached to each Battalion HQ as well as the Regimental HQ. Rather than Armor, it's a "G/Carrier" unit, and I'm still thinking abut Drones and how they would fit in.

Some of that extra support would have to be contained within the unit, some of it I do see being outside the Regimental system and being instead part of a Corp-based "Imperial Support System" that coordinates things within a theatre.

D.

 

[Quint]

I thought this was all covered in GT: Ground Forces?


Hans

Not in anything near the level of detail I'm looking for. It's actually a decent enough resource, but not good enough for what I'm trying to do.

D.

 

[Quint]

I'm a fan of "write what you know" so for my Imperial Army I use Anglo/European TO&Es as a basis.

Things I've learned:

1. Though general organization can stay the same over a range of TLs the actual manpower required varies according to equipment and TL.

2, As you go up in TL you can actually start to fold a lot of capabilities together. For example I like to combine anti-tank and anti-air units into anti-armour unit capable of tackling flying tanks when grav tanks come into use.

3. One of your four Platoons at Company level should be a Support Platoon containing heavier weapons than the Combat Platoons. These can be held as a pool and assigned to the Combat Plts or to work in support to the rear.

4. They way you want to work it as a Regimental Combat Team means you have to assign enough ISTAR resources at HQ Levels throughout to allow them to do their own Intelligence, Surveillance, Target Acquisition, and Reconnaissance.

5. You'll probably need combat units of Company and Battalion size that you can plug into your RCT to give specialist capabilities. Don't forget Signals & EW, Engineering, and Logistics to make them truly independent. These could be assigned from Brigade or higher Army levels.

I'm not sure if you have the right concept of the British Regimental system where for example an Infantry Regiment had two battalions which had largely the same culture traditions and heritage but the battalions were rarely assigned to the same Brigade. The Battalion was the combat maneuver element and the Brigade was the command and control element with combat support and combat service support assigned to it.

I assume your Regiments are going to be multi branch with Infantry, cavalry and artillery battalions? That might make you a little light on infantry.

Yeah, it's the "how does TL" impact this? That I'm enjoying wrangling with - and looking to see how various units can be combined just like you suggest. Thank you for the thoughts!

D.

 

[Timerover51]

If you attach units from a higher-level organization to, in effect, form what in World War 2 would have been called a Regimental Combat Team and now is called a Separate Infantry Brigade by the US Army, you need to have all units under the control of the same headquarters, which means that you will need to have a command unit higher than the Regiment to coordinate all unit functions. Your Regimental commander is going to be too worried about his combat units to worry about controlling his combat support and service support.

Combat support is your artillery, attached armor units, anti-aircraft or in your case anti-air and anti-grav units, and combat engineer units. You will probably need some signal units as well. Depending on your operations, you might need some chemical and biological troops as well. The bio troops can double as infectious disease units.

Your combat service support units are your medical, administration and finance units (to include your Judge Advocate General people, as you are assuming that you are a detached force), supply and transportation units, maintenance units, and ordnance units. As you are using grav vehicles, you are going to need a fairly large number of electronics, power plant, and grav unit engineers.

Given what you are doing, assume that for every man in an infantry battalion, you are going to have one man in direct combat support and combat service support of him. That does assume a reasonably nearby higher headquarters available for supplying additional support as needed. You will likely need it.

Also remember that when you are committed to combat, roughly 80% of your losses are going to be in your infantry units, and once those units reach a level of approximately 30% losses, the unit combat effectiveness begins to decline rapidly.

You can find the TO&E for World War 2 German and Japanese Units at hyper war.org on the Internet, along with the British WW2 TO&E in PDF format, under US Army Technical Manuals.

The Combined Arms Research Library Digital Library of the US Army, located here: http://cgsc.contentdm.oclc.org also has a lot of TO&E for download. Looks under General Military History, Obsolete Manuals, and World War 2 Documents.

Lastly, if you have a fairly good library near-by, see about getting a copy of Jac Weller's Weapons and Tactics, which gives you World War 2 organization for European Units of NATO and the Warsaw Pact, and also his Fire and Movement, covering the Vietnam War with US and Asian force organization. The books are very good on weapons and also combat infantry organization from battalion on down to squad organization, which is extremely useful.

For your unit equipment, what rules are you using? Mercenary, MegaTraveller, Mongoose, or what? You look like you have primarily Directed Energy Weapons, which cannot execute indirect fire, and in reality Multiple Rocket Launchers are an area indirect fire weapon, not that great at close support. Your better option is mortars, and some form of direct-fire recoilless rifle for buildings and bunkers. Again, in reality, Direct-Fire energy weapons are going to be lousy on bunkers and building, but that is the Real World and not Traveller handwavium.

Lastly, do not ignore the rule of three infantry units and a supporting weapons unit. Rarely do you see an army get away from that in current warfare.

 

[jec10]

I thought this was all covered in GT: Ground Forces?


Hans

If you believe the military organisations of a star-spanning empire in the 57th Century closely resemble those of the US military in the late 20th Century, then yes.

 

[rancke]

If you believe the military organisations of a star-spanning empire in the 57th Century closely resemble those of the US military in the late 20th Century, then yes.

How do you believe they ought to differ?

I've seen claims that certain military principles of command and control have proven to work better than others. Is it beyond the bounds of possibility that the ones used on Earth today just happens to be the optimum?


Hans

 

[Timerover51]

If you believe the military organisations of a star-spanning empire in the 57th Century closely resemble those of the US military in the late 20th Century, then yes.

You go with what you know works. If you have a better Table of Organization and Equipment concept, then post it.

 

[aramis]

How do you believe they ought to differ?

I've seen claims that certain military principles of command and control have proven to work better than others. Is it beyond the bounds of possibility that the ones used on Earth today just happens to be the optimum?


Hans

Those being typically assumed:
Officers vs enlisted roles
2-5 subunits per unit
integrated support subunits
centralized training for initial entry phase.

What we have now isn't optimum, otherwise the US, UK, German, Russian, and Brazillian would be identical. They aren't. They're similar, but different in details. So we're near optimum on the shared principles.

 

[McPerth]

Those being typically assumed:
Officers vs enlisted roles
2-5 subunits per unit
integrated support subunits
centralized training for initial entry phase.

What we have now isn't optimum, otherwise the US, UK, German, Russian, and Brazillian would be identical. They aren't. They're similar, but different in details. So we're near optimum on the shared principles.

According MT:V&V, Vilani traditionally use 2 subunits per unit. I guess most Solomani use 3 (plus suport), as is what most armies have moved to with time, unless tactis change more tan expected.

 

[Reban]

How do you believe they ought to differ?

I've seen claims that certain military principles of command and control have proven to work better than others. Is it beyond the bounds of possibility that the ones used on Earth today just happens to be the optimum?


Hans

See there's the rub. GT: Ground Forces and a lot of Traveller sources simply lift the US organizational model of the day and paste it into the far future.

There are lots of traditions and models to draw from on Earth and in Earth history. You also need to take account of technology, communications and weaponry to see how it effects the organizational model. Not to mention doctrine and tactics.

I'm really interested to see what the OP comes up with, although I have a more European heritage for my Imperial Army and given the scale of the Imperium I think a lot of local variation will be encountered in units.

 

[rancke]

See there's the rub. GT: Ground Forces and a lot of Traveller sources simply lift the US organizational model of the day and paste it into the far future.

I'm not saying it's the way I would have done it myself, nor that something less cut-and-paste wouldn't have been better. What I'm asking is if it is a belief-suspension breaking thing, something that just can't be true. It's not for me, but then, I'm not really all that well up on present-day military organizations.

By the way, I thought Doug did make some changes, that it wasn't just a cut-and-paste job. Is that incorrect?


Hans

 

[mike wightman]

A TL15 battlefield is a very different environment to anything any army of today or yesteryear has faced. Too little effort has been spent considering just how different.

Taking a 20th century US model, sticking everyone in combat armour or battle dress will result in a lot of dead infantry.

Meson artillery destroys an area of land, any troop unit in that blast area is dead - so dispersement is key.
Computer controlled laser and fusion guns, even gauss guns, can track and fire way faster than human reaction times. So concealment and obfuscation are also key - if you are seen you are dead.

Infantry tactics on a TL15 battlefield are going to be very different, so organisation is going to be very different.