"It was very confusing, at least at the platoon level," he said.
Do we want President Bush down at the platoon level, determining fields of fire and ammunition loads?
The general finds that "at the platoon level and below, Colonel Tunnell's... philosophy had minimal impact on the soldiers".
Matthew Brandt, the Marines' project manager for G.P.S., said the corps had purchased only about 5,400 of the units and generally deployed them at the platoon level.
But he then goes on to explain, "Upon further investigation, one would find that many of the incidents were not reported above platoon level".
Officials said they are now increasing the readiness standards at the platoon level and working on a plan that would require the guard divisions to be combat ready within 150 days.
Gen. John P. Abizaid, the top American officer in the Middle East, has ordered that 500 experienced former Iraqi officers be recruited and placed in American units in Iraq, down to the platoon level, to gain experience to take back to their Iraqi units.
Horizon's commander-in-chief is Protais Mpiranya, who was chief of Rwanda's presidential guard under the late Juvenal Habyarimana; all the other commanders, from brigade to platoon level, are ex-members of the old Rwandan army.Rwanda's government says it would like the Interahamwe to lay down their arms and come home.
It is being replaced by the Puma, a development of the Pointer with more-advanced sensors, by the RQ-11 Raven, a scaled-down version of the Puma, and by the Wasp, a tiny vehicle weighing about 1 pound (less than half a kilogram) with a wingspan of 2 feet 4.5 inches (72 cm); the last is being issued to air force ground combat control teams as well as marines down to the platoon level.
