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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Agback" data-source="post: 2892316" data-attributes="member: 5328">Yes. But if a carbuncle were blue, it would be a sapphire. In other words, you wouldn't do it that way, or more to the point, the officers you sent wouldn't do it that way. Military efficiency depends on teamwork and established ways of doing things. You say to one man 'go', and he goeth, and he takes his unit with him and they do things the way they were trained. If you strengthen a British infantry platoon with a 'machinegun in the sustained fire role' it gest a two-man MG crew attached to the platoon HQ. If you give it an MG section it ends up with three rifle sections, one MG section, a mortar crew, a radio operator, a sergeant, and a subaltern. If the subaltern disperses the 3 MGs in his attached MG section among his infantry sections, he ends up with three reinforced sections of ten men, not two of twelve.RangerWickett's suggested setup involved 48 infantry and a five-man commando team, with their fireteams and sections all chopped up. Reorganising things that way would waste time and interfere with teamwork. The military wouldn't do it that way. And if the magicians particularly wanted it done that way they would find it difficult to micromanage.Operations research during WWII found that soldiers arbitrarily attached to 'primary teams', even replacements slotted in to vacancies in teams, were about half as effective as people in their own teams and suffered nearly four times the casualty rate. Good armies (and the British army is very good) keep people with their mates as much as possible. They'll send two SAS patrols rather than a patrol and a spare man. They'll put a fireteam of infantry to guard each gun crew or missile crew, not half a fireteam. They'll send two sections, not a section and a half. Unless, of course, urgent necessity drives.Rather than send 48 men, the British Army would send two platoons. Or maybe a company. Why not? So lets have a company to defend Glastonbury, with a platoon in the town centre, a platoon at the Well, and another platoon on the Tor. Thrown in another two companies to close the roads and patrol the Levels. Why not send a whole battalion?Now that I think about it, the plane crash idea is not a good one either. It is too complicated, and it takes too long.The PCs' best bet against the army is to dash in as soon as possible, and get the thing done before the army has time to mobilise, arrive, and prepare. And the army's play against that is the old adage that 'a boy scout with a shanghai in the right place at teh right time is worth more than a brigade of artileery two hours late and thirty miles away'. The defenders have to get something, anything, into place as soon as possible. They should send a platoon of MPs on motorcycles right away, and a troop of SAS in a helo as quickly as possible. That will get them some men with Hocklers there in about half an hour, and a troop of nasty silent men within an hour and a half. A battalion of mechanised infantry can be there in, say, three or four hours.To arrange a plane crash will take much longer. You have to start by arranging a flight, which would take hours at best. Arranging a crash would take longer, and indeed it is hard to imagine what sorts of friendship in Whitehall, the Air Ministry, and the RAF would be required to issue orders to crash millions upon millions of pounds worth of warplane into the outskirts of an English country town.The bad guys move fast. They use their illusionist or other magicians to fake a terrorist outrage in Glastonbury. Their friends in Whitehall get on the blower to Major-General Lamb to secure the town right away, and to send a battalion to seal the place off as soon as possible. They also contact the lord lieutenant and the chief constable of Somerset for police and civil co-operation. Then they issue descriptions of the PCs. About the time the infantry are arriving in Glastonbury they send an order that a platoon secure the Tor and a platoon secure the Well, and send engineers to seal the Well and build a concrete box around the phantom in the Tower.The officers sent along on this mission execute it using tried-and-true methods, delegating whole platoons, sections, and fireteams to perform tasks. Micromanagement, breaking up teams, reorganising structures, etc. would only waste time, sow confusion, and invite unintended consequences.So you're going to end up with some sort of whole unit to defend the Tor. If you want to patrol the Levels, close the roads, provide anti-aircraft cover etc. that had better be a battalion. You are most likely to get mechanised infantry.A battalion of mechanised infantry gets you 27 infantry rifle sections each with two light machinguns, 64 Saxon vehicles each with a turretted GP machinegun, 24 Milan anti-tank missiles in sections of two, 8 Scimitar reconnaisance AIFVs in a recce platoon, 9 81mm mortars in three sections of three crews, 9 heavy machineguns in three sections of three crews, and a hard-bitten lieutenant-colonel in charge who will not brook interference in his regiment. If you tell him to defend the Tor and the Well he will send a platoon to do each job, and maybe reinforce it with a machinegun section from his fire support company. Tell him to patrol the Levels in depth and he will send a company or two to do that. If you ask for anti-aircraft backup to be sent you will get a Javelin battery or troop from the divisional air defence regiment. The Army will not pluck men and their weapons out of their artillery regiment and try to integrate them with an infantry platoon, especially not in the confusion of an unplanned operation. It doesn't work that way, unless you</blockquote>

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