Problems with Traviss' article besides numbers

[Captain Seafort]

That might be it - cheap, expendable recce, although they seem to have the same brilliant cross-country mobility as K-9.

[Rochey]

Better hope the battalion only ever gets deployed to places where the terrain is nice and flat with no difficult ground, in that case. Jesus, Travis is stupid.

I can't see them being used for recon. For one, they're rather loud when they're moving about, if I remember right. You'd be far better off just taking the wheels and engines out, shoving some sensor units into it in place of those, and then just scattering them around the perimeter to watch out for people sneaking up to your position.
Of course, all this could just be acomplished by dedicated sensor units, so even that idea is pretty pointless.

[Palantas]

Yeah, maybe. They are quite small, though they don't seem to be all that mobile. But I guess R2 didn't seem all that mobile until Episode II.

Come to think of it, what's the smallest droid observed in Star Wars? Extremely small recon droids would be less detectable to visual/thermal scans. Think that little gold ball Harry Potter chases flying around the battlefield taking pictures.

[Rochey]

Yeah, maybe. They are quite small, though they don't seem to be all that mobile. But I guess R2 didn't seem all that mobile until Episode II.

True, but I doubt those little mouse droids have jetpacks hidden in them.

Come to think of it, what's the smallest droid observed in Star Wars? Extremely small recon droids would be less detectable to visual/thermal scans. Think that little gold ball Harry Potter chases flying around the battlefield taking pictures.

Offhand, the smallest I can think of is that hovering patrol droid that was floating around Mos Eisley in ANH. I can't think of the name right now, but it's the one that got swatted out of the sky by an ASP droid (sorry for being so vague, I've checked Wookieepedia but I can't find the damn thing). It looked smaller than a human head and was fairly quiet, so it might be a good candidate for such operations.

[Captain Seafort]

Was it this thing by any chance?

[Rochey]

Ah, yes. That's the one.

[Kartr_Kana]

I don't know what real life military you're looking at Pel, but Platoon's don't have an H&S element. Unless you count the Platoon Commander and Platoon Sgt. A company has a dedicated H&S platoon, but that's the smallest unit to do so.

Also I want to know where she got this 9 man squad from. Did she pull it out of her ass? I don't know how it is in other country's but in the USMC a team is 4 men and a squad is 12. You've got your point man, team leader/203 gunner, Saw Gunner and Ammo Man. Three teams and there's your squad, 3 squads and there's your platoon, 3 line platoons + weapons platoon and a small H&S platoon and you have a line company. 3 line companies, plus a weapons company and a H&S company and you have a battalion. Three is the number to multiply by, because that gives you someone to assault, someone to support and someone to set security/suppress the target.

[Captain Seafort]

I don't know what real life military you're looking at Pel, but Platoon's don't have an H&S element. Unless you count the Platoon Commander and Platoon Sgt. A company has a dedicated H&S platoon, but that's the smallest unit to do so.

I think that's what he's refering to - going by Traviss' orbat, the commander Sgt would be part of one of the rifle sections.

Also I want to know where she got this 9 man squad from. Did she pull it out of her ass? I don't know how it is in other country's but in the USMC a team is 4 men and a squad is 12.

That, at least, isn't her fault - stormtrooper sections have been described as 9 men strong for as long as I can remember.

As for modern organisation, the British armed forces have an 8 man section - two fire teams, each with three riflemen and an LSW gunner. I'm not sure if or how UGLs (the equivalent to the M203) are distributed. After that its multiples of three.

[Kartr_Kana]

IIRC in the old EGTVV under either the Sentinal or Lambda shuttle entries it says stormtrooper squads are 8 man strong. I could be horribly mistaken though.

8 or 12 man strong doesn't really matter IMO. I think they should at least have the smallest unit be a team and that needs to be 4 man strong. There's a reason modern military's use that as their smallest unit. Even the game Republic Commando's gets that right.

[Captain Seafort]

IIRC in the old EGTVV under either the Sentinal or Lambda shuttle entries it says stormtrooper squads are 8 man strong. I could be horribly mistaken though.

'Fraid so.

The ship's troop compartment can carry six squads, for a total of fifty four soldiers.

8 or 12 man strong doesn't really matter IMO. I think they should at least have the smallest unit be a team and that needs to be 4 man strong. There's a reason modern military's use that as their smallest unit. Even the game Republic Commando's gets that right.

I think Traviss does as well - her section is two fireteams plus a Sergeant. How well that would work in practice I'm not sure.

[Kartr_Kana]

Since the Stormtroopers use nine man squads I guess there's an in universe precedent for it. I still don't see the point though. Oh well it's not as bad as the rest of her numbers.

[andrewgpaul]

You've got your point man, team leader/203 gunner, Saw Gunner and Ammo Man.

That could be it - if your SAW-equivalent is a blaster, perhaps you don't need someone to hold all the ammo.

[Palantas]

I don't know what real life military you're looking at Pel, but Platoon's don't have an H&S element. Unless you count the Platoon Commander and Platoon Sgt.

"1-64. The platoon headquarters has three permanently assigned members: the platoon leader, the platoon sergeant, and the radiotelephone operator (RTO). Depending on task organization, the platoon headquarters may receive augmentation. Two traditionally-attached assets are the fire support team, and the platoon medic."

The current FM only prescribes a single organization for the infantry platoon. The previous version detailed light infantry, infantry, air assault, airborne, and Ranger platoons. The light platoon did not have a separate weapons squad, including the machine guns in the headquarters element, pushing it up to a minimum of seven personnel.

Also I want to know where she got this 9 man squad from.

The US Army has nine-man squads. A normal fire team has a team leader, SAW guy, 203 guy, and a rifleman. A squad has two teams and a squad leader. As to where Karen got her squads, I have no idea. She obviously didn't look into any real-world military for anything else, so she probably just made up the number.

[Kartr_Kana]

Wow I had no idea how different the Army does things from the Corps. I suppose you could consider the Plt Sgt and Plt Commander to be a H&S element. Though they usually attach themselves to different squads. If the Plt Commander and his squad are killed the Plt Sgt can take over from his squad.

If you're using the T-21 with a back pack generator then you probably wouldn't need an ammo man. I don't know of any other SAW equivalents in SWs so I don't know if they'd all work like that.

[Ender]

I considered making a topic from this, but I think it's more amusing than thought-provoking, so I'll post it here. In looking up the numbers for my above post, I came across this, concerning Imperial Army battalions (which do have a headquarters/headquarters company):

Additional to these 90 Human personnel, Battalion HQ contained 145 droids, of which a hundred or more were usually MSE-6 mouse droids; the rest varied according to availability in the local sector.

Mouse droids? Mouse droids? LOL, what the hell for? At best, they can be used as couriers or navigational aids, neither of which are likely to see a lot of use. Of all the droids out there, useful as medics, comms specialists, mules, engineers, UAVs, really any support job you can think of, an Imperial Army battalion gets mouse droids. Maybe they can serve as a picket line. You'll know wookies are coming if you see mouse droids retreating towards you, screaming in terror.

Low level maintenance, cleaning, hard copy delivery, etc. There are a ton of tasks they could be useful for.

[Master of Ossus]

Come to think of it, what's the smallest droid observed in Star Wars? Extremely small recon droids would be less detectable to visual/thermal scans. Think that little gold ball Harry Potter chases flying around the battlefield taking pictures.

... Or the black seeker droids that Darth Maul used in TPM, which pwn the MSE-6 in terms of profile, mobility (it floats fast), observational capabilities (it still floats), silence, etc.

[Crazedwraith]

Mouse droids? Mouse droids? LOL, what the hell for? At best, they can be used as couriers or navigational aids, neither of which are likely to see a lot of use. Of all the droids out there, useful as medics, comms specialists, mules, engineers, UAVs, really any support job you can think of, an Imperial Army battalion gets mouse droids. Maybe they can serve as a picket line. You'll know wookies are coming if you see mouse droids retreating towards you, screaming in terror.

Let's not diss Mouse droids. If you have enough of them you can cripple SSDs...

[Palantas]

Let's not diss Mouse droids. If you have enough of them you can cripple SSDs...

Okay, I'm curious. What's the story here?

[Bounty]

Let's not diss Mouse droids. If you have enough of them you can cripple SSDs...

Okay, I'm curious. What's the story here?

They're small and everywhere - just reprogram them to fuck up the hyperdrive and disable any useful systems and voilà, your warship is now a dead husk.

[Crazedwraith]

Let's not diss Mouse droids. If you have enough of them you can cripple SSDs...

Okay, I'm curious. What's the story here?

They're small and everywhere - just reprogram them to fuck up the hyperdrive and disable any useful systems and voilà, your warship is now a dead husk.

Exactly. Which is what happened in Aaron Allston's Solo Command an intelligence operative aboard the Iron Fist used her astro mech to hijack the SSD's fleet of mouse droids, getting her eyes and ears everywhere on the ship and then they swarm all the systems at the end. Heavily disrupting the ships's systems. Though the Iron Fist does manage to get away in the end.