herding cats: organization of the guerrilla forces

The guerrillas are the military forces of the resistance. The guerrillas are referred to in SF doctrine as irregular forces. This means that the troops mustered didn't come from military or police units of the State. They're civilians, mostly. The core leadership of the guerrillas will most definitely be made up of ex-State military. These ex-NCOs and officers know how to lead and train military units. They will turn civilians into soldiers and lead those soldiers in small unit operations against the enemy State in the cause of human Liberty.

The guerrilla military unit undergoes a metamorphosis as the fighting force moves through the phases of resistance. In the beginning, its just a ragtag gang of desperados. In the end, the rag tag bands will be marching in platoons, companies, and battalions. Probably sharing a common uniform now as well.

Guerrilla warfare is best thought of as being nothing more than small unit offensive operations. Small unit means just that: most guerrilla ops will be conducted with relatively small groups of force. Think along the lines of fire teams and squads. What kind of offensive operation can you pull off with a fire team or a squad? Well, think raids and ambushes and attacks on enemy systems and infrastructure. Your targets will be carefully selected to take into consideration your limited firepower on the ground and the advantages of total surprise. You'll harrass the enemy. Strike where he is weak, become invisible where he is strong.

Especially in the beginning of conflict, the guerrillas must focus on the offensive only. To be on the defensive means that you are fixed in one location, the enemy knows where you are at and they're preparing to roll over you with everything they've got. Not a good position to be in for a G-force commander. If you get forced into the defensive too much, you probably won't make it to tomorrow's battlefield. Defensive guerrillas are dead guerrillas.

The US Army Special Forces mission is to take irregular forces and organize, train, and equip them to be more like American regular forces. The goal is to always end up with a regular force out of the guerrilla force you started with. This regular force often becomes the NEW Regime's military when the enemy State is finally routed.

The guerrillas will be concerned with conducting ground combat against the enemy State. Ground combat is the realm of the infantry; therefore, the guerrillas should be organized on the ground to function as infantry formations.

The most basic infantry formation is the fire team. This formation is made up of four riflemen and a fire team leader. This is the most basic division of military ground force units. When organizing guerrillas, always think in terms of four plus leadership. From this basic unit, you can scale the forces all the way up to battalion sized formations.

The fire team is composed of four soldiers. These soldiers are:

• Team Leader (usually armed as a Rifleman)

• Automatic Rifleman (this would be a soldier with a light machine gun like a SAW)

• Grenadier (the guy toting the M203 grenade launcher bolted to the underside of the barrel of his M4 rifle)

• Rifleman (M4 packing soldier)

The infantry Squad is composed of:

• Two fire teams

• A Squad Leader (armed like a Rifleman)

The infantry Platoon is composed of:

• Three rifle squads

• One Weapons Squad organized as follows:

• 3 Machine gunners

• 3 Asst. gunners

• 3 Ammo Bearers

• 1 Squad Leader

• 1 HQ Element composed of:

• Platoon Leader

• Platoon Sergeant

• Radio operator

• Medic

SIZE: 41 soldiers.

NOTE: in the beginning, the guerrillas won't have weapons squads until they seize the belt-fed machine guns and ammo via battlefield recovery. A guerrilla platoon until then should be FOUR rifle squads.

The Infantry Company is composed of:

• 3 Rifle Platoons

• 1 Weapons Platoon (mortars and anti-armor systems)

• HQ Platoon

SIZE: 120+ soldiers.

NOTE: what is being listed here is the traditional infantry organization table and is what the guerrillas want to become someday. In the beginning, there probably won't be a lot of access to heavy weapons so a guerrilla company would be four rifle platoons. Always organize in orders of FOUR. That's the magic number and FOUR plus leadership is the basic guerrilla organizational formula.

The battalion level in broad strokes:

• 3 light infantry companies

• BN HQ Company

SIZE: 500+ soldiers.

Battalions of guerrillas probably won't even exist until late in Phase Two or into Phase Three of a classic resistance movement. For guerrillas, the battalion would be more like four light infantry companies as the purpose of a BN HQ platoon is mostly service and support for the line companies. In a guerrilla war, the auxiliary serves this purpose.

In Army Special Forces, the element of the resistance which Green Berets are most concerned with is the guerrillas. When an SF team links up with a guerrilla force, the goal is to train, equip, and organize this rag-tag force to mimic more and more the doctrinal composition of an American infantry unit. So the guerrilla unit undergoes a continuum of transformation from an irregular band of guerrillas to a bona fide regular infantry unit.

Likewise, the tactics of the guerrilla metamorphose right along with this organizational transformation. In the beginning, the guerrillas concentrate on the tactics of hit and run operations. The guerrillas are not capable of conducting force-on-force clashes with the enemy military. They don't have the weapons or the personnel to prevail in this conventional-type battle. So they conduct ambushes and raids against lightly defended enemy outposts and columns, and destroy infrastructure targeted for its criticality to the enemy's war efforts (see the CARVER matrix discussion in FM 3-05.201 pgs. 3-49 to 3-51 which is located in the UW download folder).

The guerrillas live off the war, stealing weapons and supplies from the enemies they attack and kill. Now as the guerrilla forces grow in size, sophistication and equipment, the transition from hit and run to more and more conventional infantry tactics will take place. So as the guerrillas become more and more like a real infantry unit, likewise they will begin operating as a conventional infantry unit, focusing on the goal of all infantry: taking ground and keeping it.

Organize the guerrillas starting at the most divisible infantry level: down to fire teams, and mimic the jobs above with the weapons available. This means that the guerrilla units should be based on groupings of four plus leadership. As the guerrillas seize better weapons from the battlefield, they will be able to look and operate more and more like a regular light infantry unit.

The destination for the guerrillas is to someday become a regular force that is capable in every way of conducting force-on-force engagements with the enemy State's regular forces and prevailing on the conventional battlefield. Success or failure all hinges on plain bread-and-butter infantry tactics and discipline multiplied by the will to resist, the will to win.

Again,the guerrillas live off the war itself. They steal arms, ammunition, ordnance, equipment, supplies from the enemy units they attack and overcome. They will also rely heavily upon the direct support of sympathizers within the population. This logistical support from the population is another specific arm of the resistance known as the auxiliary.

The auxiliary serves the same functions that combat service and support units do. They are the logistical support element of the guerrillas.

The organization of the auxiliary is the next topic.