Arranging your Joes into a company

[1:18scale]

I want to arrange my Joes into fireteams, squads, platoons, and company. Do you have any suggestion on who should be the company commander and the platoon, squad, and fireteam leaders? Which Joes should be in which squad and fireteam, and why?

So far, I have Falcon as one of my platoon leaders, and that's it. What are your thoughts on how a company of Joes would look like?

[Scrapiron-Scavanger]

Due to the nature of the Joe side of GI Joe, it is kind of difficult to have just one classification of fireteams, squads, platoons, and company. After reading the comics and watching the cartoon. It is leaders and fireteams are mission specific. Especially sense GI Joe is a highly classified faction of Delta Force.

[ThMick]

How familiar with the TO&E of the branches? Which branch are you planning on using? How large is this company going to be? Is it straight Joes, or joe/ cobra mix, or straight Cobras? Are you using original accessories, or Marauder's sets? Are you using vehicles? How realistic are you going for? I can suggest some ideas, give you TO&E's for real life units and stuff.

[1:18scale]

Due to the nature of the Joe side of GI Joe, it is kind of difficult to have just one classification of fireteams, squads, platoons, and company. After reading the comics and watching the cartoon. It is leaders and fireteams are mission specific. Especially sense GI Joe is a highly classified faction of Delta Force.

Yes, the comic and cartoons did give them mission specific groupings, but I want to remove them from that setting and place them in a more general military organization.

When you're an outsider looking at the military, you see all these nameless soldiers who all look the same, especially when they're in military formation. Hasbro and Larry Hama has created so many individual characters that I think that it would be neat to identify specific faces (and know who these individuals are) in these formations.

[1:18scale]

How familiar with the TO&E of the branches?

Not very familiar; my military info's from wikipedia.

Which branch are you planning on using?

Army, probably.

How large is this company going to be?

A company of 4 platoons and each platoon consisting 3 to 4 squads.

Is it straight Joes, or joe/ cobra mix, or straight Cobras?

straight Joes

Are you using original accessories, or Marauder's sets?

original accessories

Are you using vehicles?

yes, I'm using vehicles, and I want the drivers to be part of the company.

How realistic are you going for?

As realistic as you can get but not too realistic. I would prefer a Joe's rank to match up with what an actual squad leader, fireteam leader, etc... should be. If it doesn't match, I guess a rank that's close to the original rank would be a good substitute .

I can suggest some ideas, give you TO&E's for real life units and stuff.

Any help would be great. Does each member of a squad or fireteam have a specific role or is everyone a jack of all trade?

[DPrime]

Due to the nature of the Joe side of GI Joe, it is kind of difficult to have just one classification of fireteams, squads, platoons, and company. After reading the comics and watching the cartoon. It is leaders and fireteams are mission specific. Especially sense GI Joe is a highly classified faction of Delta Force.

They would still be grouped into platoons and companies, or a similar sort of grouping, for administrative purposes.

[ThMick]

If we're looking for Army TO&E for an infantry division, then lets look at this:

One Company: 1 HQ platoon, 4 rifle platoons.
Rifle Platoons = 2 sections of two squads each.
squad equals = 2 fire teams, one heavy (squad automatc weapon, one light.)

-Command/ command vehicle section:
Commander-1 O3 or O4
Executive Officer-1 O2

1 each vehicle, preferably command vehicles, w/ crew. The Officers also serve as titular crew commanders, though senior gunners (E4 or E5) are de facto commanders. Drivers and observers are lower enlisted.

-Headquarters platoon-
First sergeant-E8
vehicle, w/ driver

Tactical Operations Center-1 command vehicle w/ crew(E5, E6, 2-5 e-4 and below)
Maintenance section-1 warrant or E-7, 2 E-6, 2 E-5, 4-6 E4 and below. XO is platoon leader.
Supply section-1 E-6 (May double as HQ platoon sergeant), 1 E-5, 1 E4 and below. 2-5 vehicles.
Movement section- 2-5 vehicle w/ crew, Pc's or Trucks.
Mortar section (or platoon, depending on local discretion)-2 vehicles w gun crews (1 E7, 1 E6, 2 E5, 4 E4 and below.)
Scout section (or platoon)- 1 E7, 1 E6 2 E5, 6-10 Scouts (rifle/Grenadier) 4 vehicles.
Medic Section: 1 E6 or E5, 2-4 medics
Note: Some units organize Scout/Mortars under HQ platoon, some as seperate platoons, as strictly speaking, these are not riflemen.

-Rifle Platoon(x 3 or 4)
1 O1-Platoon leader
1 E7-Platoon Seargeant
2-4 E5 or E6-Section sergeants (May also be Squad Leaders)
4 squads of 6-8 E-5 and below, including senior E-4 SAW gunner and assistant gunner, the rest being riflemen and grenadiers.

-Heavy weapon platoon may carry Mark 19 automatic grenade launcher or browning M2 heavy barrel machine guns.

For mechanized infantry, the "squads" are the crew of fighting vehicles, usually 6, with each officer (O1 and E5, 6 AND 7) serving as the commander of a vehicle, the E-6's serving as section sergeants over 2 vehicle sections, the E-5s (or senior E4's) are the Gunners of the vehicles. For "Straightleg" infantry, The vehicles are transports, PC's or trucks, with a driver and TC, but they are left behind during the fight.

For operational deployments, there will be "slice" elements attached to a company team, like an anti-air section, an engineer section, etc. They bring their own vehicles and equipment.

Overall, bear in mind that a squad is about 8 guys, a platoon about 25 guys, a company is about 200 guys. An E-5 leads a squad, an E6 leads two squads (a section), an O1 and an E7 together lead a platoon.

I'm sorry if that was long, but I laid it all out so i could say that Special Forces doesn't work that way at all. As soon as a soldier goes to SFAS, he is promoted to E5 if he is not already. As soon as he graduates, he is promoted to E7. The lowest ranking member of an SF team is an E7. Even their support units are tiered to higher ranks.

Which brings me to this. I don't think Hasbro et. al really paid any attention to real world equivalents of ranks when they assigned ranks to the Joes. Stalker's been in the Army since Vietnam, but he's still a SSG? Flint's a warrant officer, but what is his warrant? Is he a pilot? A mechanic? I don't care how hard core Hawk is, THERE ARE NO GENERALS COMMANDING ANYTHING LESS THAN A DIVISION, and they are NOT on the front lines. A division is tens of thousands of soldiers. I don't think you could do what you want to do while maintaining the ranks given on file cards. Unless you've got a Lot of green shirts. That's why Army Building is a lot easier with cobra figures, they are more anonymous.

[1:18scale]

ThMick, thank you for the great information. It looks really complicated. I'm moving my Joes away from the special forces motif and creating a new Joeverse where they're just soldiers in a regular company. After reading your post, I wouldn't know where to begin with placing the individual Joes. I have to pore over the filecards to see how each Joe would fit in.

How does the different parts of a company interact with each other? I remember in one issue of the Marvel comics where Larry Hama had some vehicle drivers working with some infantry Joes. There was a competition between the two groups. I think it was the Metal Head issue. I guess Larry was trying to show how the different parts worked together.

[ThMick]

(I'm gonna draw a diagram so it'll make more sense. I'll send it to you.)

As for the competition, it kind of runs along the lines of sibling rivalry... I can call my brother a ninny, but you'd better not. For instance, I was a Cavalry trooper, a tanker. In a cavalry troop, there are two tank platoons, and two scout platoons, plus a headquarters platoon, a mortar section and a maintenance section. The scouts teased the tankers, calling us D.A.T.s, and we teased them back, telling them they had main gun envy, we all teased the mortars, because they were infantry men and we were armor (and therefore smart enough not to walk and hump our main guns on our backs), and the mechanics, because they were lazy (we said.) We would all band together against the Armor Battalion next door, and team up with them against the marines and coasties that visited Savannah, teh nearest city to party in. And team up with THEM against the local college kids...
When it came down to brass tacks, though, we worked together daily. My two tank section would team up with a three Bradley section to maneuver. On patrols in Iraq, we swapped men back and forth to make things easier and to get things done. I rode patrols hanging out a bradley hatch, and commanded a tank with a scout hanging out my loader's hatch. Every man in a company works with every other man. He may not hang out with him all the time, but he knows his name and face and can call him a "buddy," because they've done time on detail together.

Know the difference between a Bradley CFV and a Hoover vacuum cleaner?

Ther's only one dirt bag on the Hoover.