Military Forces in the 6th World, Force Composition Discussion Options

[General Ripper]

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Being the inquisitive person that I am, I've often wondered how armies in the 6th world are structured from a practical standpoint. The modern battlefield has physical, matrix-based, and magical components that, if not addressed, could be significantly exploited.

Carrying over from a previous thread, the discussion is natural, where does these special assets come from?

I've got a couple of theories I wanted to float out there and get some feedback.

THEORY 1: US Army 1990's (pre-BCT) model. Mages and matrix personnel are composed into their own battalions or possibly even brigades based on specialization (hearkening back to the DIVARTY, or division artillery, assets of the '90's) and then assigned battlespace or called in appropriately (i.e., a squad of hackers are told they have Matrix jurisdiction for a certain infantry company)

THEORY 2: US Army current (BCT era) model. Essentially, there are fewer concentrations of specialists, but more overall specialists, distributed at the Brigade Combat Team level. One BCT would have, say, a platoon of mages to distribute as they saw fit and a company of hackers for protection.

THEORY 3: British SAS model. Every man on the team/squad has an individual specialty, but is also a combat badass. This seems an unlikely model outside of Special Forces/Special Operations communities due to the purported scarcity of mages and the difficulty of getting a guy immersed in the matrix to perform other options seems a stretch at best, since VR would definitely be preferable over AR

THEORY 4: Platoon or Company-level assets model. Basically, every company gets a mage. Every platoon gets a hacker. This seems somewhat probable on a practical standpoint (Theory 2 would inevitably lead to this under most commanders) but unlikely from an organizational standpoint, even though as I've said previously, it's harmful to keep a bunch of prime movers and shakers (particularly mages) sequestered away from the guys they're going to be fighting with.

Now, besides the issue of support troops, I wanted to address from a more ceremonial standpoint, what Military Occupational Specialty does one receive if they are magically attuned?

I've already assumed that hackers and riggers will be Signal, since that's who currently handles information operations and system maintenance.

But for mages, here's my personal belief: Heavily combat-based mages would probably be branched Infantry, with most other mages having their entirely own branch: Magical Operations.

Interested in your thoughts on all of this. I know this post has a potential to be overly-jargony, and for that, I apologize, but am more than willing to explain anything within the post.