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Along with the section officer up to four men can take SMGs in Airborne infantry sections. So I'm wondering what people think of them. Are they best run in a full size unit, giving better short range firepower without completely losing the longer range rifles, run in small units with pure SMGs, or not used at all? I'm going with a historical accuracy theme in my force but I still want to see how tactically viable they are.

Any advice you may have is greatly appreciated. Thanks for reading.

I'd give them to my NCO's.
So for me running 7 man sections it'd be:
Corporal: Sten.
Lance Corporal: Sten.
Bren Team (2 men).
Lance Corporal: Sten.
Riflemen (2 men).

This might be a bit of a ramble, but hopefully you can salvage something from this.

SMG's increase the amount of shots you have overall in your squad, so more dice for you during your shooting!

Here is an example of my Polish army and it's weapon options:
1 NCO and 9 Regular infantry = 100pts
1 NCO and 9 regular infantry + 1 bar = 105pts
HOWEVER...
1 NCO and 9 inexperienced infantry = 70pts
1 NCO and 9 inexperienced infantry + bar = 75pts

Weaker units, but less points spent for more rolls. If I wanted to add more units I could, but obviously I only get to add one bar.

So what the heck am I even on about?
Regardless of whether your troops are inexperienced, regular, or veteran, you can compensate for lower numbers by adding an automatic weapon to increase the amount of dice rolled. Obviously you want more models for inexperienced groups, but you can see what I mean when it comes to elite groups

Hopefully that helps. Veteran troops are awesome, but make sure they can hit as hard as possible! Because of that, I would say field as many SMG's as you can, simply because you can use cheaper infantry groups to take the main fire while your smaller groups can flank the enemy with some serious damage. Of course, these upgrades aren't exactly expensive, so you can always add upgrades to your cannon fodder too. It really is up to you.

it will all depend on your play-style of course.

Sorry if that makes no sense, but maybe that helps

If you are trying to build an "assault squad" or a squad of guys whose role is to advance on the enemy and engage in short range fire fights and assaults, you want as many SMGs as possible.

Assaults in Bolt Action represent both point blank fighting and hand to hand and is meant to be incredibility decisive, so its really important to win your Assault if you launch one. One one hand they are high risk, and on the other hand they are one of the most reliable ways to remove an enemy squad from an important objective.

So SMGs gives you superior firepower at very short ranges, and they give you "Tough Fighter" in assault. What tough fighter does is gives you an extra attack if you wound on your first attack, this means that the more Tough Fighter attacks you have, the more likely you are to see a return on it. Also note that veterans help a lot in assault by limiting casualties against you and weakening enemy tough fighters.

What this means is that from a game play perspective you want to specialize your squads. Assault Oriented squads should focus on moving into point blank range of the enemy to take advantage of the SMGs additional shots and no move and shoot penalty. Now keep in mind you will still want some Riflemen in your assault squads! Assault oriented squads tend to need to be larger, as having bodies helps weather casualties on the way in, and you can remove rifleman before you remove the more expensive SMGs, and having more bodies means more attacks. But you should avoid taking light machine guns in an assault oriented squad.

Generally speaking outside of historical accuracy, mixing weapon types doesn't make a lot of sense, because anytime you shoot your LMGs you are wasting SMGs you are paying for, and anytime you move to get SMGs in range you are severely weakening the expensive LMGs you paid for!