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So, Esli left a rather wonderful comment on the last post on callsigns, which prompted me to think that perhaps I should give a little explanation on “fixed” call signs at company and below level.

There’s three types of rifle company, light (to include Airborne, Air Assault, and Ranger), Stryker, and Bradley mounted mechanized.

In a light company, there are three platoons of three squads and a weapon squad, and a company headquarters. 

In the Stryker and Bradley companies, each company has three platoons and a headquarters. Importantly, the platoons are each organized around four vehicles each.

As Esli noted in his comment, call signs at the company level tend to be color coded. We’ll use my last company, A Co., 1-12IN as an example. Company headquarters call signs were Black. So the company commander was Black 6. The XO Black 5, and the 1st Sergeant Black 7.

At the platoon level, things were a little different. The platoon leader in a Bradley platoon is also a Bradley Commander, when mounted. And since there are four Bradleys in the platoon, each Brad has its own call sign, 1 through 4.  Our first platoon was color coded Blue (2nd Platoon was Red, and 3rd Platoon was White).  And so, the platoon leader was Blue 1. The platoon sergeant was likewise a Bradley Commander when mounted. And so, the platoon sergeant was Blue 4. The second Bradley in the platoon is Blue 2, and generally acts as the wingman for Blue 1. The third Bradley is, of course, Blue 3,and acts as the wingman of Blue 4.

The gunner of a Bradley uses “Golf” as an appendage to the call sign, and similarly, the driver uses “Delta.” For instance, if the platoon leader is dismounted, he retains his Blue 1 call sign, and people wanting to talk to the vehicle would simply call Blue 1 Golf.

There are two dismount rifle squads in a Bradley platoon,* and their call signs are typically 5 and 6. And each squad had two fire teams. Accordingly, my time as a Team Leader came with the call sign Blue 5 Bravo. That is, I was the team leader of the second fire team in the first dismount squad. The other team was, of course, Blue 5 Alpha, and the squad leader simply Blue 5.

During my time in a light infantry unit, the unit was really rather disciplined about actually using the random alphanumeric call signs dictated by the Signal Operating Instructions.  As a backup, however, we did have a color coded fixed call sign scheme. It differed from a mounted platoon structure. For instance, 1st Platoon A Co. 1-27IN was “Red” with the platoon leader being Red 6, the platoon sergeant Red 7, and the rifle squads being Red 1 through 3, and the weapons squad Red 4. Second platoon was White,  Third platoon was Blue, and again, the company headquarters was Black.

The reason we were supposed to use the random alphanumeric call signs was to make it harder for any enemy listening in to our communications to build an accurate order of battle through traffic analysis.  With todays encrypted, frequency hopping radios, that’s much harder to do, and so a fixed call sign isn’t the operational security violation it once was.

 

 

*Ideally. Quite often, we were so short of people, we only had enough to constitute one dismount squad.