I am not from the USA and have no military background so forgive me if this is a silly question.
This year I have seen two TV series produced in the USA (one alternative universe and one complete fantasy) where military trainees have been grouped into small squads of three or four and rated as a group (to the extent in fantasy one where the squad member who didn't really want to be there screwed up to such an extent that he was dismissed from the service and his squad-mates were discharged with him).
My question is, is this just a figment of the screenwriters' imagination designed to provide a source of conflict and dramatic tension or do militaries (anywhere in the world, it's just that the USA is the source of these programmes) actually do this sort of thing? Perhaps a bit to encourage cooperation in the squad but it's been exaggerated?
I don't know about the squad thing, but from a young age dad and I watched full metal jacket and he was always like "yup. Thats exactly how it was if you had THAT guy. I definitely had THAT guy. I bet he's left over from korean war". because by the vietnam era you weren't SUPPOSED to be pulling that stuff but...
Space above and beyond was another show he said had it dead right.
Every depiction of military basic training that I have ever seen had more trainees in the group than I could count easily. A squad of 3 or 4 seems very unlikely if not downright impossible.
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Wikipedia suggests that four is the minimum group American soldiers are to work in. So I assume they spend some time training at that level. A movie or show would certainly focus on that time.
I think OP may have been getting at "peer corrective punishment." It happens. There are harsh penalties if an instructor hits a student, but smaller ones if he allows the peers to hits a student. So he assigns three motivated students with an unmotivated one. When the group starts to fail, the motivated ones will do anything to succeed. If it comes to a "They said, He said," theres three of them to say the unmotivated one fell. Unethical, but there's no rules in war.