Light Infantry...

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Balthagor
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Re: Light Infantry...

Post by Balthagor »

Slash78 wrote:...Didn't the Canadians pull most of their LAV IIIs out of Afghanistan after 2006 in favor for upgraded M113s (TLAV) and Leopard 1s (then Leopard 2s)?
Don't know but if someone does, please add to the conversation.
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Re: Light Infantry...

Post by michael63000 »

Balthagor wrote:
Slash78 wrote:...Didn't the Canadians pull most of their LAV IIIs out of Afghanistan after 2006 in favor for upgraded M113s (TLAV) and Leopard 1s (then Leopard 2s)?
Don't know but if someone does, please add to the conversation.
What? I've never seen anything about Canadians pulling out newer technology and replacing them with older technology... If they did they may have done it so if one vehicle is lost it's not as costly, Leopard 2 and LAV III's aren't really necessary in urban warfare and insurgent warfare anyways...
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Re: Light Infantry...

Post by dust off »

Slash78 wrote: And of course there is one last issue. How do you know what kind of terrain you're vehicles can and can't go on if you're too much of a coward to test it? Why must you assume the only good 'tank country' is where an entire Armored Division can form up on line and maneuver? I don't know, but Baghdad was much better 'tank country' then it will ever be 'light infantry country'. It's amazing how in nearly 10 years of fighting in 'armored graveyard' of Afghanistan the Soviets lost only 147 tanks, about 1.25 a month. And they were mostly older T-55s and T-62s. It was the graveyard of lightly armored, roadbound wheeled vehicles and of helicopters (were 333 were lost).
Your Afghan argument is massivley double edged because the Muj could be characterised a light infantry. I'm not goingto argue against you because I think that most of what you are saying is 'right' in a way.

But. I think that you are taking it out of context. Light forces have their weaknesses and advantages. The advantages can be at the operational and strategic level. Mobility to deploy and maintain. Economy of force.

It's combined arms that have been the battle winners since late WW2. The idea that Armor could only operate best in concentrations on plains had passed by the later part of WW2. When US or Russia attacked an urban area they would routinely use armor. When the US came accross a hard point there even instances of them bringing up 155 SP to crush them. Modern armies make the right plays when the best their oponents at integrating combined arms. Obviously on the tactical heavy formations bring a lot of that already, but effective integration is not guaranteed just because they are in the same divison. On the operational/ strategic level an all heavy army would have less tools than one that had some light assets such as airmobile, and other light formations. So I agree with you but I am getting the message that you are implying that heavy trumps light so the logic is to dump all light. False logic. Admttedly I may have misread your emphasis.

@ Cutlass. You miss the point of 5.56. First the primary prupose of 5.56 is not to kill the enemy but to win the fire fight and then supress them long enough to manouver. For that you want lots of ammo. You have more ammo with 5.56. Manouver can also include calling in other combined arms, a kind of cavalry if you like. The other combined arms drop HE on the supressed enemy. And it is HE that is the primary agent of inflicting casualties since WW2.

Light forces can bring enough to the fight with HE in the form of Javelin 40mm grenades, organic and inorganic Arty and air supremacy so that MBTs are not needed in Afghanistan. That's not saying that they would not be useful. They would. But economy of force is a key issue and light are bringing enough combined arms without them to win engagement after engagement.

My message to BG is: If you want to take the next step in realism and strategy on the military side then work a way of really giving us the value added of combined arms. The current system goes some way in doing that but majorly lets us down in stack vs stack combat.

edited: 'The Bear Went Over the Mountain' is good legitimately free analysis of Afghanistan
http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD ... tTRDoc.pdf

here's a quote:
Tanks were present, but were not too useful in mountain warfare.
Consequently, the newest tank models did not fight in Afghanistan.
Raw kill statistics often mislead.
Last edited by dust off on Oct 29 2010, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Light Infantry...

Post by tkobo »

It would be nice if more than one unit regularly engaged each other,with terrain deciding how many from each stack could engage how many from the enemy stack.
This post approved by Tkobo:Official Rabble Rouser of the United Yahoos
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Re: Light Infantry...

Post by Cutlass »

dust off wrote:
@ Cutlass. You miss the point of 5.56. First the primary prupose of 5.56 is not to kill the enemy but to win the fire fight and then supress them long enough to manouver. For that you want lots of ammo. You have more ammo with 5.56. Manouver can also include calling in other combined arms, a kind of cavalry if you like. The other combined arms drop HE on the supressed enemy. And it is HE that is the primary agent of inflicting casualties since WW2.
You, and an unfortunately high percentage of ranking military officers and government officials involved in weapons procurement in several modern industrialized nations, miss the point of what it means to actually have a viable infantry weapon.

(1) I don't care how many rounds you can fire rapidly that miss the target. All that does is to convert good money spent on weapons and ammunition into noise that will in the long run have minimal effect on the battle/war. At worst, it will rapidly run the unit using those tactics out of ammo, and God help them if they can't get resupplied fast enough with enough ammo. Without the ammo that they just shot off to no permanent effect they're going to be sitting ducks who could potentially get carved to pieces by people armed with machetes.

(2) We will now discuss those rounds that are fired which hit the target. In truth, the desired effect here is that the hit that is made on the target will incapacitate the person almost immediately. By incapacitate I mean to render the person who was hit incapable of doing much other than laying there and moaning about how badly they're hurt, assuming they can even do that much. I have several claims to infamy. One of them is that I have an M.A. in physical anthropology and at one time studied under a medical examiner. Any round/weapon combination that is capable of giving what I have defined as the desired performance level will necessarily result in a very high percentage chance that the target has just been killed when they were hit. As you attempt to decrease the power level of the cartridge/weapon that you are using so as to decrease the percentage of kills, guess what? The ability of the weapon system to immediately incapacitate the target goes out the window.

(3) For the benefit of those who may wonder about such things, we will now discuss why it is important to be able to immediately/instantly incapacitate the target with one good hit. There are several reasons for this.

(a) The most important is that the primary goal of your infantry here is to be able to prevent their opponents from carrying out their missions. It should be pointed out that for purposes of this discussion some of these "missions" are very simple and of very short duration. Among them are such things as "advance 20 feet and pull the pin on the satchel charge you're carrying so as to kill yourself and the half dozen guys with a few feet of that spot". If I as one of the troopers there see the guy advancing and put two 5.56 x 45mm NATO rounds into his chest that do not damage him badly enough to prevent him from doing just that, I and my buddies standing next to me have just lost. Not tied, lost. We were then prevented by the enemy from being able to carry out our mission. The 155mm self propelled artillery piece supporting us could have been within eyesight less than 50 yards away and it wouldn't have made any difference at all in the outcome.

I would also like to point out that more often than not, firefights are of relatively short duration. It does not take that much physical ability of the part of a reasonably trained and motivated individual to be able to lie prone and fire a modern rifle. It does not necessarily matter that the wounds that had just been inflicted on him might prove fatal several hours or days in the future, or even result in that person being crippled for life in some fashion. As long as that person can keep his weapon going, he is a threat to myself and the other members of my unit. Therefore he must be hit in such a manner that he is incapacitated almost immediately. Otherwise he may very well be able to continue in the fight and wound/cripple/kill myself or other members of my unit. Thus again it will be we who failed, as the enemy was still able to carry out his mission and prevent us from doing ours.

(b) There is also to my way of thinking an important philosophical/humanitarian element that comes into play here. I realize that it may be the sort of thing that a lot of people might simply dismiss out of hand, but that does not necessarily render it invalid. In the vast majority of cases these days, the people we are fighting do not have access to medical facilities that are anywhere near as good as what we can provide for our troops. And the wounds that are inflicted by the 5.56 x 45mm NATO (.223) can be obnoxious to try to deal with sans modern medical techniques and procedures. Thus there is a real chance that if I just wounded somebody using that round that I may very well have condemned him to a lingering pain filled death. Given that I really wouldn't want to do that to an animal, why is it any better to do that to a human being? Why shouldn't I just use a cartridge/weapon combination that would be much more likely to simply kill him outright? Wouldn't that truly be more humane in some sense? Just because you might not be asking/thinking about questions like this doesn't mean that other people aren't, and one might be unpleasantly surprised by what they may decide is a suitable means for dealing with this perceived problem.

(c) Let us also consider what happens should the person who got shot with our .223 actually survive the experience and be able to continue on in his active service doing whatever it is that he does. It should be axiomatic that even relatively stupid people can learn from their mistakes. As a wounded person convalesces they will in general have a lot of time to reflect on just what it was that went wrong that put them in that position. They will try to figure out what they should be doing differently to try to avoid that outcome in the future. Thus when I or other members of my force encounter that person after he's returned to active service, there is a higher chance that what went around is going to come around and we're the ones who are going to take the lumps now.

(d) There is also a dirty little secret that the "wound better than kill" crowd have overlooked. Either they really weren't aware of it or they were hoping that nobody would notice so they could more easily peddle inferior weapons systems. But I'll let everybody in on it now. When one studies the casualty figures for the various different forces involved in the fighting during WWI and WWII, when the combatants were by and large armed with weapons chambered for such cartridges as the 7.62 x 54 mm Russian, .303 British, 8 x 57 mm Mauser and .30-06 Springfield, all of which were quite capable of getting one shot kills on humans out to ranges of 800 yards one notices a very curious thing. THERE WERE A LOT MORE PEOPLE WOUNDED THAN KILLED ANYWAY. It was simply that the wounds in question were much more likely to put the people out of action almost instantly. But to the extent that you believe "wound" is a better option than "kill", there is still no reason to go to a lighter caliber. The old ones can do that just fine. They're also MUCH more likely to put people out of commission almost instantly and prevent them from carrying out their missions. Thus enabling "wins" for the average infantry grunt where it really matters.

(e) The wound better than kill crowd, we can arm the grunts with feather dusters because artillery does all the heavy lifting also overlook just how effective decent infantry weapons can be.
[u]American Military History, Revised Edition[/u] published by the U.S. Army Center of Military History, CMH Pub 30-1. PP 689-690 wrote:
The U.S. Army paid a high price for its long involvement in South Vietnam. American military deaths exceeded 58,000 ... Most deaths were caused by small arms fire and gunshot, but a significant portion, almost 30 percent, stemmed from mines, booby traps and grenades.
I put the emphasis in that quote, but the bottom line appears to be that we suffered 60% of our combat deaths in Vietnam as a result of enemy infantry fire/weapons and only about 30% from other causes. Before I came across that little statistic I would have thought that the situation would have the other way round.

Thus to sum up, you need a weapon/cartridge combination that can put people out of action almost instantly. Wounding them will probably do you no good at all unless they are also incapacitated. If you have a weapon/cartridge combination that can do that there is a very high percentage chance that you have just killed the person you hit. Boo hoo. As you try to ratchet down on the lethality the ability to incapacitate goes out the window and you're left with something that is then useless for its true purpose, preventing your enemy from carrying out his mission. Furthermore it may be necessary at times to use your weapon on nonhuman targets such as ground vehicles, boats, aircraft and large dangerous game animals and predators. If you find yourself in that position the last thing you want to be armed with is something that can not be expected to reliably kill a white tail deer.
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Slash78
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Re: Light Infantry...

Post by Slash78 »

Dust Off, there is a problem with your theories. The 40mm Grenade Launchers and AT-4 CS often don't give the infantry the HE firepower they need. Javelins are expensive ($75,000 per missile) and aren't everywhere at once. They are also very heavy, greatly limiting the number of reloads. In a lot of cases Air and Artillery support is slow in coming. The 'superior firepower' from artillery and aircraft fell way short in Vietnam and only has marginally improved. And in current operations there are a lot of times and a lot of places that bringing tons of bombs and artillery shells raining down is just plain counterproductive.

Yes, the Muj were light infantry. And they took a lot of casaulties too. There weren't mobile, but that was offset by the fact they could just wait for the Soviets to come by. They were successful by simply not being defeated. Not by surrounding the whole Soviet Force and destroying it.

As for M113/TLAVs in Afghanistan...
http://www.casr.ca/ft-leopard-tank.htm

It's hard to find reliable information. Most the links I found were either from the Canandian Army Discussion Board or stuff written by Mike Sparks.
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Re: Light Infantry...

Post by Hundane »

But to the extent that you believe "wound" is a better option than "kill", there is still no reason to go to a lighter caliber.
One thought on this is that it takes at least 1 person to take care of a wounded person whereas a dead soldier will just be ignored. Therefore for each person you wound during a battle is taking ay least two out of the fight.
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Re: Light Infantry...

Post by dust off »

Cutlass. Thank you for the reply, it prompted me to realise that I can make the same error of over emphasis. You are 'right', but you are woefully wrong too if your logic leads you to say drop all 5.56 becuase it doesn't have the stopping power of 7.62.

Both have advantages and weaknesses.

7.62. More stopping power, (for me more importantly) more penetration, better accuracy at range. Dowside- more wieght - less rounds less supression, less automatic fire close in. Larger weapon so cumbersome in urban and other close terrain.

5.56 Less weight, more rounds more supression. Smaller weapons better suited to urban and close terrain. And better for carrying all day with all the other stuff: body armour, water, rations, radios, ammo for team weapons.

Ammo for team weapons brings me to you missing my point. Most engagements are team things. And all else being equal it is the team that best effectively integrates combined arms that wins. Nobody would want to go out on a company assault without 7.62 GPMG or M240. Indeed these are not always the 'Ace' so they take some .50s too. Then that is supplemented with grenades, hand, under barrel launchers and grenae machine guns. But even all this does not desively win all the engagements so bigger stuff in the combined arms team call in big HE.

In support of your point, UK and I believe US have relearned old lessons and are using more sniper teams with all formations. In In Iraq this worked realitively well. In Afganistan they have found that the ranges are often longer so the UK have also introduced a weapon midway between 5.56 and sniper, which is the 7.62 sharpshooter. During the later stages of Cold War, the armies in peace went too fare with 5.56. When they were regularly in combat they re-learned old lessons and upped the firepower again. But that firepower comes in a combined team. Everybody does not need to carry the largest calibre weapon and it would be counter productive if they did.

Your Vietnam statistic does not porive your point, I'm going to leave that for now because I don't want to write war and peace.
Slash78 wrote:Dust Off, there is a problem with your theories. The 40mm Grenade Launchers and AT-4 CS often don't give the infantry the HE firepower they need. Javelins are expensive ($75,000 per missile) and aren't everywhere at once. They are also very heavy, greatly limiting the number of reloads. In a lot of cases Air and Artillery support is slow in coming. The 'superior firepower' from artillery and aircraft fell way short in Vietnam and only has marginally improved. And in current operations there are a lot of times and a lot of places that bringing tons of bombs and artillery shells raining down is just plain counterproductive.

Yes, the Muj were light infantry. And they took a lot of casaulties too. There weren't mobile, but that was offset by the fact they could just wait for the Soviets to come by. They were successful by simply not being defeated. Not by surrounding the whole Soviet Force and destroying it.

It's hard to find reliable information. Most the links I found were either from the Canandian Army Discussion Board or stuff written by Mike Sparks.
Not my theory- just synthesising and regurgitating analysis of others. Yep they often don't bring enough so they drop 1000lbs or even 2000lbs.
Yes HE has it's limits that's why armies aren't made up soley of arty and air. Combined Arms is the key. 'Unhearlded Victories' decribes how Superior Fire power won every major engagement in Nam. Top N Vietnamese General later said that the US interdiction campaign was working, but they just didn't stay the course.

The expense of Javs emphasis the issue with economy of force. Cheap Talib are costing us a lot to fight. However the £$ cost is less significant than body bag cost in this period of time. The full consequences of the £$ cost remain to be seen.
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Re: Light Infantry...

Post by Slash78 »

dust off wrote:Not my theory- just synthesising and regurgitating analysis of others. Yep they often don't bring enough so they drop 1000lbs or even 2000lbs.
Yes HE has it's limits that's why armies aren't made up soley of arty and air. Combined Arms is the key. 'Unhearlded Victories' decribes how Superior Fire power won every major engagement in Nam. Top N Vietnamese General later said that the US interdiction campaign was working, but they just didn't stay the course.

The expense of Javs emphasis the issue with economy of force. Cheap Talib are costing us a lot to fight. However the £$ cost is less significant than body bag cost in this period of time. The full consequences of the £$ cost remain to be seen.
Maybe you should actually think for yourself instead of just regurgitating others. Funny how so many 'major victories' between US foot and air mobile units in Vietnam and the VC/NVA consisted of US light infantry stubbling into contact/ambushes, taking casaulties, calling for arty/air support and the enemy withdrawing bloodied but NOT DECISIVELY BEATEN. Nor did they practice 'combined arms'.

Mounted Combat in Vietnam http://www.history.army.mil/books/vietn ... /index.htm is about REAL combined arms in Vietnam, not the phony It's-An-Infantry-War, Anything-But-Combined-Arms less capable light infantry engagements most US units fought in Vietnam. And with the Light Infantry Divisions in the 80s you see whole divisions formed to completely reject to principals of Combined Arms. And you still see that in the new, modular light 'Infantry Brigade Combat Teams'. You see a US military in Afghanistan who is scared to death to use Combined Arms. Even though countries like Canada and Denmark who aren't affraid.
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Re: Light Infantry...

Post by Cutlass »

dust off wrote: 5.56 Less weight, more rounds more supression. Smaller weapons better suited to urban and close terrain. And better for carrying all day with all the other stuff: body armour, water, rations, radios, ammo for team weapons.
While I am not immune to the argument for a lighter round and lighter weapons, the bottom line is that the 5.56 x 45mm NATO/.223 Remington is still inadequate. However, one does not have to go all the way back up in size and weight to my beloved 7.62 x 51mm NATO/.308 Winchester to find a reasonable alternative.

As just one example: there is a round out there, currently a wildcat to the best of my knowledge at this time, but that was specifically designed to work well within an M-16 action with minimum modifications that could potentially fill the bill admirably. It is the 6.5mm Grendel. While I don't know that it has seen any real use in combat, it is nevertheless becoming quite popular with bench rest shooters due to its inherent accuracy and the high sectional density of 6.5mm bullets which give it advantages in dealing with windy conditions. Why would I suggest the use of a relatively untried wildcat? Because there is a reasonable chance that it should prove out to be at least as good if not better for use in combat as the 6.5 x 55mm Swedish Mauser. Especially when one considers the developments that have been made in powder chemistry as well as bullet design and manufacture since the Swedish Mauser was developed in 1894. Oh, I forgot to mention the kicker. You can use 6.5mm Grendel ammunition in a standard M-16 magazine. In which case a 30 round 5.56 x 45mm NATO magazine will hold 26 rounds of 6.5mm Grendel.

So the question becomes are you so wedded to a PROVEN INFERIOR cartridge that you aren't willing to sacrifice the equivalent of 4 rounds out of a 30 round magazine to get a cartridge that could actually do the job that needs to get done?
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Re: Light Infantry...

Post by dust off »

Slash78 wrote: Maybe you should actually think for yourself instead of just regurgitating others. Funny how so many 'major victories' between US foot and air mobile units in Vietnam and the VC/NVA consisted of US light infantry stubbling into contact/ambushes, taking casaulties, calling for arty/air support and the enemy withdrawing bloodied but NOT DECISIVELY BEATEN. Nor did they practice 'combined arms'.

Mounted Combat in Vietnam http://www.history.army.mil/books/vietn ... /index.htm is about REAL combined arms in Vietnam, not the phony It's-An-Infantry-War, Anything-But-Combined-Arms less capable light infantry engagements most US units fought in Vietnam. And with the Light Infantry Divisions in the 80s you see whole divisions formed to completely reject to principals of Combined Arms. And you still see that in the new, modular light 'Infantry Brigade Combat Teams'. You see a US military in Afghanistan who is scared to death to use Combined Arms. Even though countries like Canada and Denmark who aren't affraid.
Slash. When light units do not practice combined arms take a kicking because of it, it does not prove all light are so inferior that they should be done away with. Nor does it prove that combined arms is not a decisive factor.

And choosing bits of other's research and analyisis is weighter does not mean it's devoid of thinking. I don't understand how you can say the US is scared to use combined arms in Afghanistan. Are you pulling my chain now? :)
Last edited by dust off on Oct 30 2010, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Light Infantry...

Post by dust off »

Cutlass wrote: I would also like to point out that more often than not, firefights are of relatively short duration. It does not take that much physical ability of the part of a reasonably trained and motivated individual to be able to lie prone and fire a modern rifle. It does not necessarily matter that the wounds that had just been inflicted on him might prove fatal several hours or days in the future, or even result in that person being crippled for life in some fashion. As long as that person can keep his weapon going, he is a threat to myself and the other members of my unit. Therefore he must be hit in such a manner that he is incapacitated almost immediately. Otherwise he may very well be able to continue in the fight and wound/cripple/kill myself or other members of my unit. Thus again it will be we who failed, as the enemy was still able to carry out his mission and prevent us from doing ours.
I can't let this go. Dude, in combat most rounds miss, period. Yes it's not hard to fire a rifle, that's why money was spent on them at time when long bows were still more effective.
But in combat accuracy drops off exponentially. It is not the same as range shooting or dear hunting. Anxiety, adrenaline, fatigue, confusion all impact the shot and thats before you consider recoil on semi and fully auto, and the biggie- lead coming the other way. Then there's the issue of actually seeing the enemy- becuse for much of the time they don't. So my point in response to your initial one is that the Brass atthe top on all major militaries are not dunces because their soldiers assault rifle and medium MGs have smaller rounds than 7.62

You seem to have an idea that the soldier needs the best round possible so he can get one shot one kill in his singular combat with one enemy who is either at range or 20 meters away with a satchel charge. The combat generally doesn't go down like that.
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Re: Light Infantry...

Post by dust off »

I suggest that we steer the thread towards SR.

For those that concede that effective combined arms is a key aspect in winning engagements the question would be where does SR rate with this?

It has some fundimental flaws, which are even more glaring becuae of the batalion level used.

A stack of clone batalions do just as well individually as they do if they were combined in a more RL way. This lead to the problem of uber engineers, and AI armies full of them.

To my understanding a combined stack of infantry, armor, engineers, arty, and recce should usually perform better than clone stacks due to a combined arms bonus making the units better than the sum of their parts. I can't see this happening any time soon with SR because I don't see a way to implement it unless they gave us BCT 'boxes' to put batalions in. Too bad because this keeps the game more towards RTS than simulation.

You may notice Slash that this post goes some way to supporting you point. But not to the extent of 'ergo all light crap and should be dumped in favour of heavy or armor.' Armor and AFVs without dismounts are at serious risk, especially in close terrain.
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Re: Light Infantry...

Post by Slash78 »

dust off wrote:You may notice Slash that this post goes some way to supporting you point. But not to the extent of 'ergo all light crap and should be dumped in favour of heavy or armor.' Armor and AFVs without dismounts are at serious risk, especially in close terrain.
Did I say that? No. What I said that in the 80s it was a mistake to forgo the medium weight infantry divisions for the 'light infantry divisions'. If you want a specialized mountian/artic warfare division, fine. But it's going to need specialized equipment and can't rely on light infantry alone. If you want more 'elite light infantry' then a second Ranger Regiment makes more since then 4 unequipped, non-combined-arms 'light infantry divisions'. And applying the phony 'rules' of light infantry to the Airborne was a mistake. They were the last 'LID' to give up their tank battalion (3/73rd Armor) and they don't did that when the M8 was cancelled in 1996.

And all the time they were neglecting the 9th "Motorized" Infantry division. They were given Humvees as placeholders and somewhere along the line it was forgotten that they were nothing more then that.
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Re: Light Infantry...

Post by Cutlass »

dust off wrote:I suggest that we steer the thread towards SR.

For those that concede that effective combined arms is a key aspect in winning engagements the question would be where does SR rate with this?

It has some fundimental flaws, which are even more glaring becuae of the batalion level used.

A stack of clone batalions do just as well individually as they do if they were combined in a more RL way. This lead to the problem of uber engineers, and AI armies full of them.

To my understanding a combined stack of infantry, armor, engineers, arty, and recce should usually perform better than clone stacks due to a combined arms bonus making the units better than the sum of their parts. I can't see this happening any time soon with SR because I don't see a way to implement it unless they gave us BCT 'boxes' to put batalions in. Too bad because this keeps the game more towards RTS than simulation.

You may notice Slash that this post goes some way to supporting you point. But not to the extent of 'ergo all light crap and should be dumped in favour of heavy or armor.' Armor and AFVs without dismounts are at serious risk, especially in close terrain.
The other part of the problem potentially is the size of the hexes that are being used. From a pure gaming standpoint, having one's artillery to be able to damage all of the units in one hex makes sense. From a real world standpoint, I'd like to have artillery units that could damage ALL of the enemy units in an area 16 KM across :-)

That problem aside I'm not sure how the game system decides the order in which units in a hex are damaged as they attack and defend with "regular" weaponry in various different kinds of terrain. All I know is that if I send a combined arms stack to assault a city hex that the tank battalions are going to get rather heavily damaged for no obvious increase in combat power, whereas if the attack is made by a stack composed only of good quality mechanized infantry it works out better in game play. Perhaps if there were some sort of system such that when a stack of diverse units was in combat those units with the highest defensive values for that terrain type were the ones that got damaged first it might help. On the other side of the issue one has to make the attacks by a diverse stack of units more effective in game terms. The idea of adding in a "combined arms bonus" for putting the right mix of units into a stack makes sense, but if that is implemented it should be well documented in the game materials.

The other potential solution is to go to smaller hexes. The game gives us all sorts of information on the effective ranges of the weaponry of the various units involved, but in point of fact that's almost meaningless. A unit with weaponry that has a 1 km range can effectively engage a unit with weaponry that has an 8 km range because all units can hit units in an adjacent hex. If one were to drop the hex size down to 2 km or 4 km from 16 km then one could arrange one's units such that those tank units which have weaponry with a 4km or 8 km range could support infantry attacking a city without themselves getting close enough to be engaged by the forces garrisoning that city. Granted, altering hex size like that would entail some pretty significant changes to the map as well as having other impacts as well and could potentialy be something of a programming nightmare. So I'm not sure how viable a solution that is given the amount of work that would have to be done.
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