Onto the big change re: squads and fireteams: I'd be lying if I said I was on board or liked the idea, but that's me. I sorta get where it's coming from, but I feel like FTL is a pretty integral part of the arma milsim experience and that sense of being part of a larger force. The scale of arma is part of the atmosphere or immersion or cool factor or whatever you want to call it that makes it worth playing. I doubt that even the most run and gun, action-oriented members of the group are playing arma for it's riveting gunplay. Anyone can go play a coop military game and it isn't gonna be the same as being a part of a chain that functions together (I have like 2 years of evidence to support this lol).

    Honestly it just seems that the platoon at that point would be a 3 or 4 fireteam squad with the word platoon slapped over it. SL would essentially be FTL and PL would essentially be SL. It seems like a solution for low pop ops that doesn't really contribute very heavily to high pop ones. Sure you'll have a Charlie and a Delta and no one will really notice other than the SLs at that point. The manpower remains roughly the same (especially since FTLs and even SLs are already a part of the action usually) except there's more markers on the map which could be accomplished by giving FTLs BFT (Alpha 1, Alpha 2, etc). Also, while on one hand I like SLs being able to have their own style, I feel like that's already more or less supported. I think letting it be free-form to the degree you mentioned is just going to lead to inconsistency as well as people thinking they know how to run the squad better than their SL.

    I do think there needs to be some sort of change for weekday lowpop ops, because as it stands, it's a very frequent occurrence that we have just enough people for one full fireteam and then one half-fireteam, and that feels sloppy and ineffective to be a part of.  Personally, I would suggest looking into having separate policies / structures for certain amounts of people, for example having people slot a singular squad rather than the whole structure if a certain number isn't reached. This gets suggested every time we have low numbers but it's always "we can't because rules", not because it's a bad idea, and it happens during patrol or second ops from time to time. We already know people can adhere to number-threshold type policies because people have been begrudgingly slotting ASLs even on extremely low pop days. Does that throw late-joiners under the bus? Potentially, depending on how it gets implemented, but do we really want to pander to late-joiners at the cost of the enjoyment of those who show up on time? Either way, I think playing with that idea could have some beneficial results that wouldn't impact weekend ops, which I personally think are fine on leader:grunt ratio and play very well).

    That being said, I definitely agree with tweaking the amount of members in fireteams and trading in grenadiers for flex roles. I think it'd add a lot of flexibility and fun to the mix and you already know my thoughts on the amount of grenadiers in our current squad setup. I'm also VERY supportive of the return of the AAR role, it makes splitting a fireteam into buddy pairs simpler and AAR is a fun role that is very much the definition of the sort of team play that people (or myself, at least) play Arma for. I'd rather have the flex roles just be base riflemen rather than having 3 AT per squad by default, as I feel like that sort of makes the LAT role feel unimportant. Not to mention we already have plenty of ops where we don't need even a single tube (also, weight). That being said, I definitely think additional LAT soldiers should be one of the options for the flex role, just not by default. Dedicated weapons teams are also a very welcome return. I find them to be more fun and more effective than a specialized fireteam where half the guys are still just standard grunts. Better to have a specialized team with a specific purpose than a fireteam that is now split between fulfilling their specialized role as well as their squad's objectives.