I haven't had too much trouble with the one-player fireteam, although they could definetly be better. In Socom II they seemed to be pretty good, but now their aim is pretty sad sometimes since they seem to spray a lot. Just do Riposte's Primer and see what they do when they try and hit the snipers on top of the containers and the one building.
Usually I just go by the defaults and just improve what they have set up. For example, in Heart of the Fist(last South Asia level) the default gun for Chopper is a plain AW, so I just add a High Scope. Sometimes I'll change it up if I want to use a sniper or whatever and I'll give the default sniper an assault rifle.
Earlier today I was playing single player and was impressed at how Deadpan did with an SR, which I guess makes sense since he's one of the members with an Expert Marksman rating.
As for the other things they tell you, I don't think they're that important, I always just figured they were there just to make it more interesting.
There have been a few occasions where the team has helped out, but they do best when they are on the turrets. I guess this is because you have to drive(there are a few parts where they will drive, but usually they just go nuts and do stuff like run over surrenderring enemies) and can't really help them out.
One thing I find fun to do is to try and split up into 2 vehicles like how they did in the first level. Bravo will crash into everything and have a hard time keeping up. Once they even took a truck off a sort of jump and right into a river.
