Should being an Infantry Scout have its own MOS? Keep in mind, before the shitposter brigade rolls up, I'm not referring to Calvary Scouts but instead rather. The 11b's that serve within an Infantry Battalion's HHC's scout platoon. I just figure that you already have these units that already (suppose to at least) have the best Infantrymen pulled from the Battalion serving within it. Conducting reconnaissance and screening for said Battalion. I figured, why not train them to do more? As in, a modern Recondo-esque type of training to give the Battalion commander essentially, a whole platoon worth of elite™ commando style infantry teams in the style of LRRP's. Being able to not only create hides and OP/LP's to look over NAI's, but to also conduct raids and assaults by themselves. Even in context to COIN in places like Afghanistan, you could have these fuckers be like hunter-killer style non stop roving patrols. Hunting Taliban, out guerrilling the guerrillas.
>The 11b's that serve within an Infantry Battalion's HHC's scout platoon. you are a dumb motherfucker everyone in a scout platoon is a 19D, yes, when they are under strength they do sometimes get augmented by 11Bs, but those 11Bs are NOT authorized by TOE
Charles Carter
No. There is a reason that the 11H Series was rolled into the 11B's. If anything 19D should be rolled into the 11 Series as well with the introduction of Heavy Weapons Plt's being more or less the same thing.
Christian Martinez
Scout Platoons are assigned to HHC within the MTOE of Infantry. 19D see above post.
I was 11b in a hhc company and yea i was in scouts. you have the battalion tryouts and get selected. Along in HHC is mortar platoon and those were the fuckups generally.
OP scouts was awesome and i highly recommend trying out for them. The whole platoon had acogs and we got special BS here and there like LRTV. My scout platoon was divided into recon and sniper section, i was recon. It was a really cool time I enjoyed being with those who were "hooah".
To answer your question there is schooling such as RSLC though none of us went to it. I dont think they should be rolled into there own MOS because at the end of the day they are just the high speed platoon from battalion. Schooling is also prioritized to scouts, we all got our air assault wings, ranger school slots were given out (but you did have to earn it) etc... Two of our platoon went SF the others ETS or PCS mostly.
If you got questions il try my best to answer.
Chase Morgan
Well what are your thoughts on the super cool commando idea? I mean, you have this platoon already in forward positions, I believe and correct me if I'm wrong, but you are also already conducting route, zone and area recce, why not go the extra step so these fuckers can essentially be the Army Battalion equivalent to a Marine recon unit? Their in the perfect situation to not only conduct "green" ops such as reconnaissance, but also conduct "black" ops such as raids, assaults and ambushes?
Ayden Ward
What an idiot. We had our own 11b scout platoon in HHC that we used to run raids with in Iraq. Mostly PT studs of the Battalion. We never even worked with our 19D guys, they had a completely different sector
Leo Campbell
Thats basically what scout platoon was designed to do already, we were the the LTC's baby platoon and he asked us to do random shit all the time. We would set up OP's, hides, ambush sites, etc all the time. We also rolled up HVT's randomly when the opportunity would arise SWAT style. Pretty much what you are asking is already being done my man.
Cooper Brown
Oh, well fuck me then, tell me more about scout platoons because their is literally fucking nothing on the internet about them. All you ever get are cav scout shit or scout snipers from the Marines.
Oliver Morales
We did all that in Baghdad as regular line 11bs. The scout guys seemed to do less work, live on the FOB, and were sorta "glorified" 11bs for really no good reason. In fact I'd say we we're more efficient at HVT/cache raids because we spent so much time doing them and living in sector
Easton White
Alright then.
Well theres two sections: snipers and recon. there were two sniper squads and 3 recon squads. We all had pretty awesome equitment, we had plate carriers, tactical tailor shit, etc. Recon got lrtv, thermal, we had a stupid ass drone we would occasionally use( was loud as hell so we hated it, purposely crashed and destroyed it). Snipers got ghellie suits, m110, m27, and spotters and shooters got to go to sniper school. We all had out rifles painted and would occasionally paint up when we went out on to set up OP's. We all wanted to be in the platoon so it was cool to have that comradery and they were each hand selected after tryouts. Afghanistan consisted of mountaintop OP's, and setting in grape-huts just monitoring areas. We lived in abandoned building we made our COP with no electricity, bathed from a well, and generally hated our life. But it was fun, and i recommend it to everyone.
Alexander Wood
Hey man im sure that not all units operate the same way and that sucks that they were underutilized. Sorry to hear that, and honestly i heard from my unit that they also were not utilized properly in Iraq.
Sucks to hear that again though...
Christian Davis
Yah just read your story Lol. What a big difference. Don't get me wrong they went out on raids, but they'd usually come stay at our COP. I believe they did some SF cordon shit too. Besides the gear(back then only SR25 and M82) they were just sort of considered less experienced 11bs in my eyes, but yah Astan sounds like a whole different ballgame. They missed on the full totality of suck tho, filling sandbags, details between patrols, the tower guard, etc, presence patrols, etc...
Nathaniel Brooks
Forgot we also had the barret... Rarely used and a total bitch to move around but we had one. I didnt get to work with SF but when i went on rr they got to work with ranger bat so that was prolly pretty cool.
I think the problem comes down to LTC and his mission. Some want to play it safe and bring us all home, others want to get in the AO and shake things up. My LTC became a pussy after one of us got killed. After that we were pulled back from doing more aggressive missions.
Elijah Stewart
Did you guys ever do Tracking missions in Afghanistan? Where you pretty much hunted down Taliban via tracks and litter?
Nolan Baker
They were probably the ones being tracked
Elijah Green
Tracking missions?
no lol its not like only taliban live in afghanistan man, theres plenty of foot traffic from farmers, kids, etc. its not really the right environment for that.
We would set up OPs and monitor certain positions such as previous ambush locations, high likelihood of ied placement areas, etc. I remember we would watch this one area alot that was used as a medical treatment area of known combatants. basically watching an enemy medical staging area. We identified that area rummaging through the area and caught them off guard. We found syringes, gauze, prosthetic limb, shit like that.
Its hunting, just not in the textbook idea of the word. Every mission demands different tactics, mettc and all that jazz.
Charles Peterson
Your most certainly correct, we were always being monitored when on a patrol. Kids would fly kites of certain colors to indicate were in the area, some carried signaling mirrors, others would just bolt off when we came, cell phones, etc.
It is an insurgency after all.
Landon Nguyen
Did you clowns patrol in trucks? Or did you do foot patrols. Because goddamn can I not stand the overuse of mounted operations in COIN.
Jaxson Jones
Lol. Not a good feeling. Was the same in Iraq. You knew after being out for about 10 minutes, they were tracking your movement. Sitting in one location for more than 30ms usually meant trouble. People don't understand how effective an insurgency is until you've been the hunted in one. You can go out hunting but you're almost always certainly gonna be the ones reacting to contact, which is why many GWOT vets are jumpy/go into hyper vigilance so easy
Jaxon Scott
In Iraq we didn't leave the trucks unless we were hitting houses. You stand out in the open in Baghdad you're gonna get sniped, you stand in the turret while stationary you risk being sniped, hanging out vertical too much, once again sniped. Dismounted patrols were a huuuuuuge nono. We ran, never walked. From truck, to house, run leap frogging houses, and run back to trucks. That was our SOP. 2nd tour in more rural Iraq we did some dismounted stuff where trucks wouldn't manuever well, but NEVER in Baghdad. Armor is your friend, as long as you don't live in it and remain stationary
Tyler Edwards
95% dismount, cant recall any mounted missions. The terrain was mostly grape-fields, marijuana fields, and pomegranate orchards. didnt really have an option but to dismount because of the terrain and lack of roads.
James Rodriguez
I hate how simple COIN really is but due to political constraints, always ends up a clusterfuck. Just flood the areas with infantry, fucking checkpoints and cops for days. But that would of course require entire divisions. Shit no politician is ever gonna sign off on.
Chase Jones
Yep, those guys know how to communicate efficiently. When we would go on a patrol it was basically baiting them to make contact on us. After that we would find distance and direction, suppress them with crew served and 203, and finally get air on station to come for the kill.
Never went to Baghdad but from what i heard the big things were interdicting IRAM and worrying about shape charges. Iraq and trashastan seem to be two very different beasts.
Noah Parker
Graveyard of Empires user. Appalachia would be like that in the US if S ever HTF >Two very different beasts Got that right. I think alot of people don't understand that, they just sort of lump the two together. Yah EFPs were the go to IED where we were, especially being a Shiite dominated area(funded by Iran), but the threat was only on MSRs. In the neighborhoods we had to worry about RPGs and Snipers, they loved popping off RPGs at us. No CAS either, only thing you can get is Apaches on Station, but the good thing about urban is closer distances means you can close in or catch the badguys slippin from time to time. Hours upon hours of raids, sometimes blowing whole houses up that were caches. Also lots of options for cover/changing patrol routes. I wanted out after my second tour, then my unit deployed to Astan in Paktika for their 3rd tour. I was drinking heavy, going to college and felt extremely guilty about not being there. Weird how that shit works out, but you couldn't have paid me enough to stay in when I was ETSing. Still regret that I didn't do Astan, like that feeling I didn't do enough but meh fuck it I'm alive with all my limbs so I'm grateful. What division were you in?
Nolan Myers
There used to be an 11D MOS. They got rid of it (along with 11H Anti-Armor and 11M Mech Infantry) because tldr for admin reasons their NCOs were at a disadvantage for advancement.
In some most but not all battalions the snipers (who are 11B) get rolled into the scout platoon for most purposes.
There's nothing preventing a battalion from training their scouts like you mentioned, and in fact some of them do.
Aaron Lewis
Those who had gone to iraq would often talk about the pucker factor of driving down msr's i dont remember what there ao was but they were all named after baseball teams maybe you were there? Dont get the feels cause you werent there man, you lived the suck life for long enough and i assure you that your boys were happy you were living that civy life and just wanting you to be happy. I was in the 101st shit was super hooah all day erryday haha.
Jaxon Roberts
for fucks sake just let us back in 11 series al fucking ready
t. 19D
Mason Sullivan
Nigga...👌
Joseph Rodriguez
I was an 11B scout years ago. When it changed to 19D the whole platoon went to shit. Feels bad man.
