Some General on CNN said that we're losing a brigade a day

[StephanieMarie]

in Iraq to death and injury. So how many is a brigade? I thought 3500, but that would be an insanely high wounded rate, wouldn't it?

[gordianot]

1. That would be what DuPey would call extreme friction.

Good cause for a military coup.

[kstewart33]

2. A brigade has 1200 to 1600 men (I googled it).

[StephanieMarie]

3. Thank you

I failed in my googling. So we have like 140,000 military in Iraq, and we're losing 1% a day to death and injury. That doesn't seem like a sustainable situation, does it?

[tom swift]

4. Brigade

Usually, a brigade is between 2 to 4 battalions or 1500 to 3500 people

[ncrainbowgrrl]

5. Welcome to DU, tom swift!

:hi:

[newyawker99]

12. Hi tom swift!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[Up2Late]

6. Correcting myself, that's about 2000 to 5000 Troops

According to Wikipedia <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Military_unit>

Military units in the army Name/ Number of personnel/ Number of subordinate units/ Officer in charge

Corps 30,000+ 2 divisions Lieutenant General

Division 10,000–20,000 2/3 regiments or brigades Major General

Regiment(UK)/Brigade(USA) 2000–5000 2+ battalions Brigadier

Battalion 300–1000 2–6 companies Colonel

Company 150–300 3–6 platoons Major

Platoon 30–40 2+ squads First lieutenant or captain

Squad 8–12 2+ fireteams NCO (Sergeant)

Fireteam (Mostly USA) 4–5 n/a NCO

[Massacure]

7. 1 brigade do to death and injury?

Either he mixed up day with year or he is counting everytime someone gets a paper cut.

[grumpy old fart]

8. who was the general? That really doesn't make much sense.

1500 x 365 = 547,500 Be pretty hard to cover that up.

[RobertSeattle]

9. That doesn't seem to make sense

There are 18 brigades in Iraq right now.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/22/AR2005112202086.html

A brigade is usually considered a combat force that is large enough to completely sustain itself.

[pretzel4gore]

10. obviously he meant a 'patrol' a day

a patrol might be just a few guys, somehow i believe 10 fighting units a day are hurt bad enough to be taken outta service for a while....

[Doctor_J]

11. Your'e thinking of a batallion, IIRC

a brigade is smaller than that.

That's still alot of wounded every day though.

Edit: Oops. From our DU miliatry experts, looks like I had it backward. A batallion is commanded by a bird colonel, a brigade by a 1-star gen.

Maybe. I used to know something about this stuff.

[Big_Mike]

13. Sorry, you are still off...

A Separate Brigade, like that in Alaska or as was in Panama, would have a Brigadier General Commanding, and could have between 6000 to 8000 personnel.

A combat brigade, a subordinate part of a Division, is commanded by a Colonel, and has between 3000-4000 personnel, depending upon whether it is Mechanized, Armored, Airborne, Air Assault, or straight Light Infantry.

A Battalion has around 200-450 personnel and is commanded by a Lieutenant Colonel.

[TahitiNut]

14. The general force structure varies according to service and weaponry.

From bottom to top, it's typically (emphasizing an infantry context) ...
Squad - about 10 men (infantry) commanded by an NCO (staff sergeant) and organized into two 'fire teams.'
Platoon - usually about four squads, commanded by a lieutenant (with a sergeant as second).
Company - (called a battery for artillery and troop for cavalry) usually about four plattons, it's commanded by a captain and has an HQ section (company clerk, etc.).
Battalion - usually four or more companies and an HQ section commanded by a Lt. Colonel. Particularly at this level and above, the units comprising this level are mixed (e.g. infantry, artillery, etc.) for battle plan purposes.
Regiment - Traditionally two or more battalions, this is not a formal organizational designation in the Army any more, even though historical identifications get used.
Brigade - usually three or more battalions and an HQ section commanded by a colonel. (If you've been multiplying numbers, you'll see that the number of personnel at this level can be from as low as around 2,500 to as many as 5,000 or so.)
Division - At this level, the composition varies too much to give a rule of thumb. There are brigades that have more personnel than some divisions. This is more a tactical/adminstrative level designation than a conventional organizational designation.

Hope this helps a bit.

[Theduckno2]

15. We better hurry up and train the Iraqis, before we run out.

I know, a little sarcastic.

Although the discussion of the numbers has only served to confuse me more, it seems that given the plethora (there I used that word today) of items in the media indicating the toll the Iraq war is taking on our (U.S. and probably UK) military, the general's comments are to be expected.

I am sadly reminded of Mark Shields (PBS Newshour), who in the run up to the Iraq war, tirelessly pointed out that this was a war without apparent cost or collective sacrifice. Well America, as well as the Coalition of the Willing, the "bill" is here now.

[k_jerome]

16. i thought he said...

a brigade of highly trained iraqi's a day.