Posted: 12/28/2008 10:35:15 AM EDT
| I have heard that for EVERY trigger puller or other combat troop we have, it takes 10 supporting troops in order to support that one soldier. Is there a ratio for how many supporting personnel it takes to send one guy in space? Somewhere in the thousands? |
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I would imagine that modern logistics and force multipliers used on the modern battlefield have made the ratio of actual infantry on the ground to support people even higher.
I think that was the ratio in WWII, with modern Aviation playing such a big role, and artillery being used a lot less I would expect it to be higher. |
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During WW. II, military personnel primarily provided the support. In today’s volunteer military, civilian contractors perform much of the noncombatant support jobs. If you consider the number of people employed by KBR and other contractors supporting the military in Iraq and Afghanistan the ratio is much higher than 10 to 1. The more complex the weapon systems and fighting platforms become, the more dependant the military becomes on civilian technicians and expert outside assistance to keep the equipment up and running. Even many of the mundane support jobs are being taken over by the outside companies. That allows the military to get by with fewer enlistees. If they still used military personnel to fill all of the support jobs the volunteer military might not be able to draw enough enlistees to fill all of the ranks.
Arcane6-1 |
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Quoted:
I have heard that for EVERY trigger puller or other combat troop we have, it takes 10 supporting troops in order to support that one soldier. Is there a ratio for how many supporting personnel it takes to send one guy in space? Somewhere in the thousands? In response to your actual question, it depends on how far back you go up the chain. If you count just the guys after procurement, it's probably in the tens of thousands. If you count the manufacturing guys, it's likely in the hundreds of thousands. |
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hundreds of thousands? not hardly, for each trigger puller?
In the actual military, actually supporting an ongoing operation it's probably between 15 and 25. Depends on how you define supporting. Start at the guy that takes a crate of ammo off the shelf at the Weapons Depot, and puts it in the shipping container, some guy checks and seals the container, a truckdriver takes it to the port. 4 or 5 longshoreman get involved in the loading. Ships crew of 30 , longshoremen at other end, truck drivers, ammo dump guys, issuers, shooters. But the guys listed above are supporting hundreds or thousands so they only count as a small fraction of a people (remember we're counting per trigger puller) At the same time you have people supplying food into a similar chain, and a few more food fixers, POL guys, etc. If you start at the trigger puller and work back it seems like they get to be far too many people involved, but if you start at the other end and go forward, the farthe back you start the more people you are supporting. That container ship Master and crew, maybe 30 folks are supporting 15, 000 guys when all the cargo is finally delivered, etc Add up all the tail guys and divide by the shooters and it's going to be 15-25. Some things are far more efficient than the old days. Loading and off-loading a ship takes about 8 stevedores, one to work the crane, 3 to stack/lock containers, 4 to drive the containers up to load from the chassis, etc. In the WW2 days, it took several gangs of 20+ stevedores a few days to load a ship. and the ships ran about a third of the speed and about a tenth the cargo and about twice the crew. Plus once it gets containerized stuff theoretically doesn't need to be handled again until at the immediate support base where it gets issued from the container (over simplified a little) No longer the forklift to the truck, the truck to rail car loading, more handling, less efficient rail movement, to the port, off load from the rail car to a staging area, moved from staging to pierside, loaded to the ship, etc. |
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Quoted:
hundreds of thousands? not hardly, for each trigger puller? In the actual military, actually supporting an ongoing operation it's probably between 15 and 25. Depends on how you define supporting. Start at the guy that takes a crate of ammo off the shelf at the Weapons Depot, and puts it in the shipping container, some guy checks and seals the container, a truckdriver takes it to the port. 4 or 5 longshoreman get involved in the loading. Ships crew of 30 , longshoremen at other end, truck drivers, ammo dump guys, issuers, shooters. But the guys listed above are supporting hundreds or thousands so they only count as a small fraction of a people (remember we're counting per trigger puller) At the same time you have people supplying food into a similar chain, and a few more food fixers, POL guys, etc. If you start at the trigger puller and work back it seems like they get to be far too many people involved, but if you start at the other end and go forward, the farthe back you start the more people you are supporting. That container ship Master and crew, maybe 30 folks are supporting 15, 000 guys when all the cargo is finally delivered, etc Add up all the tail guys and divide by the shooters and it's going to be 15-25. Some things are far more efficient than the old days. Loading and off-loading a ship takes about 8 stevedores, one to work the crane, 3 to stack/lock containers, 4 to drive the containers up to load from the chassis, etc. In the WW2 days, it took several gangs of 20+ stevedores a few days to load a ship. and the ships ran about a third of the speed and about a tenth the cargo and about twice the crew. Plus once it gets containerized stuff theoretically doesn't need to be handled again until at the immediate support base where it gets issued from the container (over simplified a little) No longer the forklift to the truck, the truck to rail car loading, more handling, less efficient rail movement, to the port, off load from the rail car to a staging area, moved from staging to pierside, loaded to the ship, etc. hahaha. The question I posed has NOTHING to do with the military. All I wastrying to find out is what is the ratio for how many support personnel it takes to put up an individual in space. |