SQUAD. Two teams make up a squad, which has four to 10 soldiers. In an infantry squad, the teams divide duties: one serves as a base-of-fire element, while the other serves as the maneuver element. A staff sergeant is often in charge.
Three or four squads make up a platoon, which has 20 to 50 soldiers and is commanded by a lieutenant. Two or more platoons make up a company, which has 100 to 250 soldiers and is commanded by a captain or a major.
A 2nd lieutenant commands a platoon, which is comprised of three to four squads (18-50 soldiers).
In the US military, a squad leader is a non-commissioned officer who leads a squad of typically 9 soldiers (US Army: squad leader and two fireteams of 4 men each) or 13 Marines (US Marine Corps: squad leader and three fireteams of 4 men each) in a rifle squad, or 3 to 8 men in a crew-served weapons squad.
A battalion is a military unit, typically consisting of 300 to 1,200 soldiers commanded by a lieutenant colonel, and subdivided into a number of companies (usually each commanded by a major or a captain).
Usually commanded by a major general, divisions are made up of three or four brigades and include 10,000 to 15,000 soldiers.
The result of this demanding selection and training process is a Ranger who can lead effectively despite enormous mental and physical odds. Each Ranger Rifle battalion is authorized approximately 800 personnel, who are assigned to one of four rifle companies, a support company and a headquarters company.
Brigades can range from 3,000 to 5,000 troops, generally three-plus battalions, led by a colonel.
A regiment normally contains of around 650 soldiers depending on its role. Sometimes infantry regiments have more than one unit of this size and are referred to as a battalion. A battalion unit comprises of three or more companies of similar size.
A squad's fire teams are referred to as the Alpha Team and Bravo Team. Each fire team has four Soldiers—a fire team leader, a rifleman, an automatic rifleman, and a grenadier.
Per U.S. Army doctrine a typical fire team consists of four soldiers.
Two or more brigades may constitute a division. Brigades formed into divisions are usually infantry or armored (sometimes referred to as combined arms brigades). In addition to combat units, they may include combat support units or sub-units, such as artillery and engineers, and logistic units.
Today, a squadron might number three to ten vessels, which might be major warships, transport ships, submarines, or small craft in a larger task force or a fleet.
In the Australian Army, an infantry platoon has thirty-six soldiers organized into three eight-man sections and a twelve-man maneuver support section, with a lieutenant as platoon commander and a sergeant as platoon sergeant, accompanied by a platoon signaller and sometimes a platoon medic (full strength of forty men).
Squad – 4 to 10 soldiers (Staff Sgt.) Platoon – 3 to 4 squads: 16 to 40 soldiers (Lieutenant) • Company – 3 to 4 platoons: 100 to 200 soldiers (Captain) • Battalion – 3 to 5 companies: 500 to 600 soldiers (Lt. Col.)
COLONEL (COL)
The colonel typically commands brigade-sized units (3,000 to 5,000 Soldiers), with a command sergeant major as principal NCO assistant.
Garrison is not defined by a set number of soldiers. It is the collective term for any body of troops stationed in a particular location, originally to guard it, but now often simply using it as a home base. The garrison is usually in a city, town, fort, castle, ship or similar.
Right now each platoon has 29 trainees, and they do physical training at a platoon level in a socially distanced manner. Some learning modules from the last eight weeks of basic are front-loaded into the first two weeks because they are easy to accomplish within the new limitations.
platoon, principal subdivision of a military company, battery, or troop. Usually commanded by a lieutenant, it consists of from 25 to 50 men organized into two or more sections, or squads, led by noncommissioned officers.
In the Soviet army the battalion was smaller than its U.S. counterpart. A typical rifle battalion of a rifle division consisted of 370 officers and men organized into three 78-man rifle companies and machine-gun, artillery, mortar, and service units.
But in the 1700s, examples begin to appear in which “troop” is no longer a collective noun, in which “1,000 troops” means 1,000 men.
The 75th Ranger Regiment is the U.S. Army's premier large-scale special operations force, and it is made up of some of the most elite Soldiers in the world.
In most armies, the rank of sergeant corresponds to command of a squad (or section). In Commonwealth armies, it is a more senior rank, corresponding roughly to a platoon second-in-command. In the United States Army, sergeant is a more junior rank corresponding to a squad- (12 person) or platoon- (36 person) leader.