I’m pretty sure that Battalions have Companies, but is it regiment, battalion, company, troop, soldier?
I’ve tried looking for hierarchical charts, explainer videos, nothing is clear.
In: 1
I’ll talk about the British Infantry, but keep in mind that other type of unit won’t have the same organization, but a similar structure.
Fireteam is 4 soldier.
A section is 2 fireteam (so 8 soldiers). A Corporal is the commander of the section and the first fireteam, while a lance corporal is second in command of the section and command the 2nd fireteam.
A Platoon is 3 Sections + a command element, which include the platoon CO (a Lieutenant or Second Lieutenant) and other soldier. The exact number of soldier vary. They changed a lot of details with the Army 2020 program, but the overall organization stay the same.
A Company is an HQ element and between 3 and 4 platoons. Sometime the 4th platoon is a weapon platoon with some heavier weaponry like mortar and stuff like that. The company is commanded by a captain, but some specialist company can be lead by a Major.
A Battalion is commanded by a Lt-Colonel and usually have a HQ Company, a Support Company and 3 Infantry Companies.
A Brigade is commanded by a Brigadier and it made up of an HQ, and a certain number of Battalion. By this point, you have a lot less standardization, different unit will have differnet number of battalion, some will have specialized unit, other will have reserve unit, etc.
A Division is commanded by a Major General and again the sub unit assigned to it aren’t standardized. But they will usually have 3 or 4 combat brigade, an engineer brigade, 1 or 2 logistic brigade, sometime you will see signals, medical, artillery, air defence or intelligence. It depend on their mission and how much specialized unit they need.
Now in the army you have different type of unit : infantry, armoured, cavalry, logistic, engineer, signal, medical, etc. Some of them use different names for their unit.
For Example, instead of a Infantry Brigade, Battalion, Company structure, you will have an Engineer Group, Regiment, Squadron. Or you will have Artillery Brigade, Regiment, Battery. Why they use different name is a mix of history and different need in term of size and leadership.
Now that’s just for the Army. The Navy and Air Force have their own structure with sometime different names or same name for other meanings.
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