LOL, If you can find one piece of doctrine that teaches you to go out in 2 man teams that isn't from the Vietnam era, I want to see it. Pushing a 2 man surveilance team up from a hide site isn't running around in 2man teams, hell HKT's don't even use 2 men anymore.
Perfect example of 19D right there. Put them through a basic and AIT that focuses on fighting from and performing reconasaince from a vehicle, and they think they are RSLC graduates. Did you hump your LRAS up on those ridgelines? Thanks for the laugh.
He misspoke. He was attempting to describe what I described. The OPs indeed can hold 2 men minimum, depending on operational needs. We do not focus on conducting vehicle recon, and that is just a part of it. Because of the switch to the Armor branch in the 1970's, 11D became 19D. This exacerbated certain things outside of their normal, traditional role. Again, I know 11B's with more seat time in a Bradley/IFV than Scouts in a CFV and know Scouts with more time on their feet than grunts. I don't know why the Infantry seem to forget the following little tidbit: the experience of 11M, before they were morphed into the larger 11B community, is not regarded as not-Infantry, just a different mode. Same with the Scouts. The 11ACR utilized both dismounted and mounted Scouts and Infantry in Vietnam, with the 11D's being mounted on M113s. When the switch came around in the 1970's, there were still Air Mobile units, and the fellow I know who is a graduate of Sniper school from back in the day experienced his first unit riding around in Hueys, jumping off and humping it to their objective. One of my PSGs experienced his first unit as well in an Air Mobile attachment based out of Hunter Army Airfield. Also knew some old school guys who'd ridden the dirt bikes out of Ft. Ord, CA. The military has simply changed.
If one reads Clancy's non-fiction book, Armored Cav, they will see where the real break in the mounted to dismounted bit came in: 73 Easting. That experience in DS/DS coalesced competing ideas swirling around in the Armor community as to the nature/role of Scouts. The Bradley provides thermal capability and damaging firepower. A library could be written on this subject, but suffice it to say that the Armor commanders started erroneously seeing their Scouts, if they possessed Bradleys, as "baby tankers". The epithet is still thrown around to those Scouts in Bradleys by their dismounted or humvee riding brethren. Colonel HR McMaster's Scouts did something at 73 Easting that Scouts are not supposed to do: engage a technically superior fighting force without need. It was their vehicles, Bradleys, which allowed this no-no to occur and from then on the Scout was seen as a shock force who also sent back recon info. Bad. Not our job. Leave that to the Marines or whomever.
Slowly, the Army has been correcting this and as we see in the standing up of the various Squadrons in 73rd Cavalry Regiment in the 82nd, the airborne/walking Scout is not a thing of the past. Perhaps one day they will even realize the need for a specific Cavalry branch, as used to be, or will merge the 19D's back into their rightful place of 11D. 91st Cavalry, also Abn and attached to the 173rd ABN, serves as an example in the European command. 61st and 33rd Cavalry in the 101st also are without Bradleys and are either hoofing it or riding in trucks like their Infantry brethren within the Division. In 4ID a Squadron of 61st Cavalry is in the 4BCT, the light brigade for the 4ID. All these units, from 73rd on, have 11B's filling the ranks or acting in Infantry roles for their troops. Personally, I found the 19D-saturated Squadron of 4-10Cav to be distasteful. 300+ Scouts are simply not going to do Scout work unless acting as Div Recon, like 3/7 Cav did for 3ID. We became land owners and I could see no difference in effectiveness from Infantry or Tankers who were given trucks. Such a role is simply not the bread and butter of the Scout.
An LRAS3 atop a ridgeline is doable and has been done, though I don't know about combat. Whatever the TF is in the 11ACR OPFOR, TF Angel?, they would be flown in to ridges at NTC and do "dismounted" OP's utilizing LRAS3. It was absolutely brutal on BLUFOR. Since Astan is more in line with such a method, I assume it can be done there. Personally, I would not wish to hump the thing up a mountain with all that goes with it, but if you're being dropped on top of a ridge that is virtually inaccessible by foot I see no issue. At that time only indirect fires would be a problem. Scouts do have other tools at their disposal and those tools, while not the awesome sauce of the LRAS3, can be and are effective if used correctly.
Jon I'm pretty sure spending time in a hide site with you would have been enjoyable. Too bad our paths never crossed while you were still in, you would have fit into the Infanty quite well.
Plus you wouldn't have had to wear that ghey stetson. ;-)
I suffered a spur ride for that Stetson and the Spurs to go with it. Tons of history there, but that's another topic. I will say that my team on the spur ride had our 11A- Ranger-tabbed new PL on it. He'd had time as a PL in the Infantry already and becoming the Scout PL was a promotion for future assignment as a Captain. He ended up going to Selection instead of staying 11A and I believe he made it if memory serves. At one point near the end I asked him what he thought of the spur ride. His response was that it was a lot tougher than he thought it would be and it reminded him of a few of the harder days in Ranger School. One of the spur holders conducting the ride was an 11C who'd earned his spurs in the 82nd. The only one who quit the ride with a complaint about a sandy orifice was an 11B. Anecdotal, surely, but food for thought. I'll keep the Stetson.
*tips brim*
They never understood why we would ask to go do missions in the desert with the OPFOR instead of sitting in the baracks. It's just what Scouts like to do... I remember telling my recruiter that "I want to shoot machine guns and blow stuff up" and he said he had just the MOS for me... 
