The Army Is Looking at Changing Up the Size of Its Infantry Squads

Here’s something that doesn’t get a lot of attention but actually matters quite a bit: the Army is studying whether to change how many soldiers are in an infantry squad. For the first time in decades.

Right now, the standard rifle squad is nine soldiers. Has been that way since the 1980s, basically since the Bradley Fighting Vehicle came along and could only fit nine guys in the back. That’s it. That’s the reason. The vehicle dictated the tactics.

But the Army’s Maneuver Battle Lab at Fort Benning is now conducting what they’re calling a “squad study”—the first of its kind in many decades—to figure out if that number still makes sense given all the new technology coming down the pipeline.

Col. Alexis Rivera Espada, who heads the Maneuver Battle Lab, announced the study at a defense conference this week. They’ll be running live experiments in fiscal 2021 to test different configurations.

So why now? A few reasons.

First, there’s the Next Generation Squad Weapon (NGSW) program. The Army is replacing both the M4 carbine and the M249 SAW with new 6.8mm weapons that have extended range and better accuracy. Different weapons could mean different squad compositions.

Second, there’s IVAS—the Integrated Visual Augmentation System. It’s basically Iron Man goggles that give soldiers augmented reality navigation, targeting, communication, even facial recognition and translation. When every soldier has that much information at their fingertips, maybe you need different people doing different things.

Third, robots. The Army is developing robotic combat vehicles that could take some of the burden off human soldiers. If a robot is carrying your heavy equipment and providing fire support, does that change how many people you need in a squad?

Brig. Gen. David Hodne, the Infantry School Commandant, put some guardrails on the study though. “From our initial results through experimentation, we do know that reducing the squad to less than nine soldiers is not a good idea,” he said. So they’re not looking to shrink squads—if anything, they might get bigger.

The Marines already went through something like this. They recently shifted from 13-Marine squads to 15-Marine squads, adding a “squad systems operator” to handle all the new drones and robots, plus an assistant squad leader to manage the flood of information coming in.

For context: the optimal squad size has been debated literally for centuries. Bigger squads can absorb more casualties and carry more firepower. Smaller squads are easier to control and more maneuverable. There’s no perfect answer—it depends on your technology, your enemy, and what you’re trying to accomplish.

The Army hasn’t really touched this question since the Cold War ended. They’ve been too busy fighting counterinsurgency wars in Iraq and Afghanistan where squad tactics weren’t the main concern. But with the focus shifting back to potential conflicts with Russia and China—what the Pentagon calls “near-peer adversaries”—suddenly how you organize your basic fighting units matters a lot more.

Maj. Gen. Patrick Donahoe, commander of the Army Maneuver Center at Benning, also said the Army is looking at moving from a brigade combat team focus to a divisional structure. That’s a whole separate can of worms, but it’s part of the same fundamental question: how do you organize for the wars of the future?

This stuff is genuinely important, even if it sounds like bureaucratic inside baseball. The infantry squad is the basic building block of ground combat. Get it wrong and soldiers die. Get it right and you have a decisive advantage.

The study should wrap up sometime next year. We’ll see what they come up with.