USMC im confused

[Mr Evil]

ok the usmac from the cards we have see from hiro, have fire teams of 4 men.

now i was always of the beleif that it was a 6 man fire team. am i missing somthing ?

ie 1 m429 1 with m16 with GL and rest (4) with plain m16s

[Mr Evil]

looking at sites you see that a squad is 3 fire teams of 4, but in photos you normaly see 6 ?

[Mr Evil]

maybe of interest to some

http://www.cna.org/isaac/DaveTaylor_BriefingSlides.PDF

[Megatron]

Six men is actually too big to be a fireteam. The USMC fireteam is IRC:

team leader with M203
Automatic Rifleman with M249
Assistant Automatic Rifleman
Pointman

[Mr Evil]

so why doese the shadow carry 6 men ?

[Lorcan Nagle]

IIRC the USMC squad is 11 men: 2 five-man fireteams and a Sarge who joins one team or the other.

[britneyfan97]

Last I heard, in real life land, the Marines use the FTRA 4 man fire-team.

Fire (team member w/M-249)
Team (team leader)
Ready (ready team member, can be used as point, or as team Grenadier)
Assist (assistant gunner, carries the spare barrel for the 249, and some ammo for it)

I'm not sure how the Corps does this, but when I was Army, the squad leader tended to get the M-203. But in my company that was more because he WANTED it, and we only had one per 8-10 person squad.
But on paper there was supposed to be an individual fire team member assigned the position of Grenadier

And fire teams are generally only 4. The shadow holds six because live missions arent generally accomodating to what someone envisioned on paper.

[Turtle]

The reason why the shadow holds 6 is that they wanted two shadows to be able to carry a base squad of 9, plus a support or so.

Those are game number, not real life.

[Megatron]

IIRC the USMC squad is 11 men: 2 five-man fireteams and a Sarge who joins one team or the other.

actaully it's 3 fireteams of 4 plus a sergeant.

[Lorcan Nagle]

The box set comes with 2 fireteams of 5 though.

[Mongoose Alex]

The box set comes with 2 fireteams of 5 though.

The box contains 2 fireteams of 4 plus a Sergeant.

[Paladin]

The box set comes with 2 fireteams of 5 though.

The box contains 2 fireteams of 4 plus a Sergeant.

with the option to add a 3rd fire team on the stat card.

[Lorcan Nagle]

The box set comes with 2 fireteams of 5 though.

The box contains 2 fireteams of 4 plus a Sergeant.

d'oh.

[patton]

6 is the magic number of the marine corp, its the way leadership is channeled, that your only direct supervisor to 6, i think. idk.

[Helstrom]

Actually, the magic number is three:

A fire team consists of three marines, and one team leader.

A squad consists of three fire teams, and one squad leader.

A platoon consists of three squads, and one platoon leader (and a platoon sergeant and, I believe, a couple of other "HQ" guys)

Etc.

Of course this is purely paper strength. In reality, most units will be under strength due to insufficient recruitment, fatigue, sickness, casualties, and so forth. Particularly depleted squads may be merged with others, or padded with other USMC personnel (remember, "every marine a rifleman" means even truck drivers and cooks can be frontline jarheads in a pinch) leading to all sort of odd composite units.

Depending on the mission, fire teams and squads can also be modified, for example to fit into the transport vehicles made available, as these are usually not designed with any kind of unit coherency in mind.