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JasonC

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Everything posted by JasonC

  1. First, thanks to all for the kind comments. And my apologies to combatintman for being snippy earlier. Second, I don't need to give a cite for the maneuver warfare tweats because they are all mine; I can write such things as fast as I can type. The principles involved are as ingrained as how to breath, I don't need to think about them, only a tiny bit about how to say them. I propose a slightly different way of proceeding, not wall of text and not tweats. Instead, experimental, a course of study. I will lay out what you should do in games of CM to learn this stuff and have it at your own command.
  2. If you can see the field the enemy sees and understand his problems, you can think his thoughts. If you can think the enemy's thoughts, you can figure out where he is and what he is doing before the scouts report in. Nothing will ever be faster than an accurate guess.
  3. In combat, accurate intelligence is power. In combat, inaccurate intelligence is also power. It's just the other guy's power. Scouts can tell you where the enemy is. They also tell the enemy where they are.
  4. Combat would be easy if you commanded both sides and could tell the enemy where to stand. You'd tell him to stand in the worst spots, where you could win just by firing, or to walk him into a prison cell. If anyone's reactions to new info are completely predictable, and you can control what he learns, you can command *his* forces.
  5. In a firefight, a decision made an hour ago but only getting executed now has no chance of being correct. The newest info hasn't had time to change moves and positions and doesn't matter yet. The oldest info isn't true anymore and doesn't matter any more. Only accurate recent past information matters.
  6. An enemy who doesn't know where to move is as immobile as one that can't move without loss. An enemy who moves to poor locations without purpose doesn't improve his firefight match ups. The enemy won't know where to move if he has no idea what is happening.
  7. Fire and assault, rather than an extended prison sentence, only needs to be applied here and there. Pick the spots to apply with an eye to freeing up guards and to moving more freely. And, of course, with an eye to wrapping more chains of tracers around new inmates.
  8. Killing an immobile isolated enemy is merely a matter of reaching into the combined arms kit for the appropriate tool. If there isn't another efficient counter, way more than enough of whatever the enemy has will serve. Many on few is the fall back combined arms tool.
  9. The principle that the immobile are already dead can be cashed by fire and assault, or banked for later by leaving up the cage walls. The benefit of fire and assault is it frees up the jailers for their next mission.
  10. If we can wrap lines of tracers into open ground around any enemy, he can't move without loss. If he can't move, he's toast. Do the math.
  11. Lines of troops wrapped around the enemy work just as well as chains. Tactically, lines of tracers into ground without cover work just as well as lines of troops.
  12. If we can make it so the enemy can't move, various good things will follow. We can decide not to fight him by moving away. We can decide to fight him by moving toward him. He can't decide diddly. Come to think of it, he's toast.
  13. If the enemy is winning the war by shooting us right here, we should probably move. If the enemy has to move or lose, it'd be great if he couldn't move. He'd lose.
  14. If we can win the war by shooting from right here, we probably just should. If we can't win the war from right here, somebody must move. If somebody must move, they should move.
  15. BHL Hart said "go around"; it fits in a tweat, certainly. Does it suffice to learn maneuver warfare tactics? It may be doubted. There, that's a nice bite sized chunk that fits in a tweat.
  16. Bil - I like to vary my method and to learn more than one. I tend to use a method suited to my force. I find the attrition style underrated and quite effective when applied consistently, so I tend to talk about it more. I think at its peak, the maneuver method is more effective, but that it requires considerably greater skill to apply, and more goes wrong, less retrievably, when it is applied badly. I therefore think people should learn the attrition method first as a base they can rely on, and add the maneuver warfare methods after they have that base. I am well aware that most modern armies, including the US army, avoid confusing students with mix doctrines and just teach the maneuver method. I think that is a mistake, but I understand why they do it that way.
  17. Combatintman - gratitude isn't your strong point, is it, or did you want me to never bother trying to help anyone understand tactical systems again? Why not ask a coherent question? That was about the worst imaginable response I could have dreamed up. It looks like you just saw the length of the post, read nothing, made up a complaint, reposted it, and asked to understand WWII combat inside a twitter tweat because your brain can't take in more. Hint, this is not the way to get a constructive response. You only have to read it. I had to write it, and before that to know it and understand what was required to explain it pretty rapidly. And your complaint is that reading it is too hard? Trust me, you won't ever learn tactical methods with that amount of focus and attention span. Don't bother trying, if this is as hard as you can try.
  18. Christian - it is already up, under "German attack doctrine in CM". An initial post at least, feel free to ask questions there, and other experts on the matter, weigh in as you like, etc.
  19. In the thread on Russian doctrine in CM, we went through how the Russian attack, especially their Rifle formation branch. That method applies the principles of attrition warfare, depth, firepower, relentlessness, last man standing stuff. German doctrine on infantry attacks was entirely different. SlowLarry asked about it in the previous thread, and rather than bury an answer there, I am moving that part of the discussion to its own thread, here. Elements of German attack doctrine apply to panzer forces as well, but the focus here will be on infantry division attacks. Which may include StuG support or similar, generally divisional artillery FOs, battalion and company mortars - and squad infantry up at the pointy end. Obviously there are some requirements of overall odds, suitable terrain, fire support, and enemy strength that are needed for infantry formations to attack successfully. But the German doctrine uses everything differently, because the focus of their attack doctrine is positioning and articulation of forces - maneuver warfare stuff - not primarily force ratios and losses and attrition thinking. In the German doctrine, the chief element of the offense is surprise. The idea is always to hit where and when one isn't expected, to catch the enemy napping, unprepared, with the wrong dispositions to deal with your chosen point and method of attack. To achieve that, the focus is on information on the one hand, and adaptation on the other. Adaptation includes mobility, heightening your own safe, feasible shifts of forces and weights, and restricting those of the defender. Those can then all be used to arrange many on few fights at chosen points, which once won, further disarticulate the enemy force. His elements are supposed to become less able to help each other, to find their proper combined arms targets, or to have the conditions of terrain and range and such they need to fight effectively. Some local advantages may be "cashed in" for dead enemy to move the overall forces in your favor, but most will be focused instead on continually reducing the enemy's options and moves. In the ideal case, this ends with a surrounded and trapped enemy unable to move an inch without taking murderous fire. Fire lanes into open ground wrapped around an enemy position are like ropes binding his legs. Once all sides are covered around a given enemy this way, his "movement allowance" has been reduced to zero. His ability to pick what firefights he will engage in has therefore disappeared. You can decide whether to engage him, and he can't make an equivalent decision. By fire and movement principles, that is as good as a kill. An artillery barrage can then be laid on that immobilized enemy to destroy him at leisure. In short, the idea is to surprise the defender, hogtie him, and fight the remainder of the battle with him in that condition. Needless to say, this places considerable greater demands on the attacking commander than the comparative straightforward methods described in the Russian doctrine thread, and it can readily be screwed up, and will fail if it is screwed up. The German approach in the matter was to take risks and generate chances for lopsided wins, and expect enough of those to pay off, to defeat the overall enemy more efficiently than the attrition method. The Germans don't ever want to fight fair - meaning no even engagements of like arm vs like arm without a big edge in their favor from one factor or another. If there isn't yet such an edge, maneuver for one before engaging too closely. That difference in approach is easily stated, but what does it mean in practice for infantry attack methods? Three ways, really, each with some variations and subject to mixing with the others, at different distance, time, and force scales. The three ways are (1) broad front, recon pull, aiming at envelopment (envelopment for short), (2) the coup de main, which is effectively trench raid tactics on a grander scale, and (3) infiltration tactics proper, which stresses getting well into the enemy defended zone, by slow and stealthy processes, before the main engagement occurs. Broad front recon pull means that a skirmish line of infantry sweeps forward like a single wave, and finds *all* the enemy positions. Not just one or two of them to chew on, but locating the entire enemy front line. Weak outposts are driven in by this wave to find the real enemy positions, the ones with enough strength to stop a single thin infantry wave. Besides finding the enemy, this leading wave is expected to pin him in place, to "find and fix". That works by not pressing hard anywhere, sitting down in the cover nearest the enemy but not physically held by him. Then reaching out by fire - from the LMGs the squad infantry brings forward, first of all - to cut up the enemy side of the field with fire lanes, around each body of cover on his side of the field. The goal is to freeze in place as much of the enemy force as possible, by making lateral movement far too risky, several hundreds yards deep into his own positions. Then a reserve and assault group, which has been kept back out of that leading wave, picks targets found and isolated by it. The goal is to find gaps in the defenses already, and to widen promising fissures by destroying specific bits of the defense, to get deeper into it. The reserve maneuvers in the German "backfield", sheltered by the leading wave and the knowledge it has provided as to which locations are clear of the enemy, which routes already traversed drew no enemy fire, and the like. It sets up opposite its chosen targets. It brings with it heavier weapons - StuGs, FOs, 81mm mortars - and infantry weight in numbers. These supplement the fire of the elements of the scouting wave nearest the chosen target, and "escalate" the pressure on those chosen enemies. Meanwhile the rest of the battlefield is being ignored. The scouting wave is just waiting in the ground they took and preventing easy lateral movement by the enemy, to help the position chosen for the point of attack. The overloaded point is thus destroyed. Now a new wave spreads from that point, into the deeper parts of the enemy defense. The scouts nearest follow in the wake of the now leading reserve, and form a new reserve behind the entry point. The new spreading wave finds the new enemy positions, and the process is repeated. The goal is to roll up the enemy defenses or break through them, always fighting only the new few that matter for the moves the attack is making next. But the attacker lets enemy weakness dictate where those points of attack should be. Always, hitting where they ain't, and trying to get into them before help can come from either side, or from the enemy rear and reserves. Speed matters in this, because the enemy learns where the main point of attack is, as it gets going, and he will try to adapt. The attack wants to adapt too, faster, with better information. The scouting wave is also a counter-recon screen blinding the enemy as to one's own deployments. If a reserve is arriving at A, the point of main effort wants to already be over at B by the time they get to the front. Think of a running back making the defensive linebackers miss - it requires anticipation of enemy moves, faster reaction to new information. It helps if ranged weapons can also disrupt enemy movements - StuGs get missions like interdicting all movement across a certain road, pairs of HMGs put down fire lanes with a similar intent, an FO may plaster the only cover point that allows movement from the east side of the map to the west side. In other words, the role of fire is as much or more to restrict enemy movements as it is to hurt him directly. Every area of open ground on the enemy side of the field is analyzed for its usefulness on cutting up enemy moves, and locations that can see each are determined, heavy weapons teams maneuvered to such positions long before the attacker knows he will need them. Enemy moves are systematically taken off the board by firepower threats into such open ground areas. Frequently the scouting wave may start with a bias or direction, too. E.g. as a wing attack on the left 2/3rds of the field, with the intent of turning the enemy's left flank. Such routes or plans are made with an eye to being the least expected and likely to be the least defended against, *not* on the principle of the most promising terrain or routes for the attacker. Otherwise put, since the first principle of the attack is surprise, "most promising" normally equals "least expected" - even if it means crossing dangerous ground - as long as that can be done quickly. The infiltration method can be thought of as a more extreme version of this on a wider scale and with less of an emphasis on fixing the enemy, and more on using stealth to find his gaps. Night actions, fighting in fog, use of smoke sometimes, are used along with this approach. The idea is to sneak into the enemy position. As much as possible, as deep as possible into his whole defense scheme, before first trigger pull. And after first trigger pull, the triggers are used as a distraction - look, look, over here, there are some Germans over here - while the haymaker is winding up from the other hand. The same principle of removing enemy moves by a tactically defensive stance and fire lanes to cut up enemy positions, executed by advanced wedges, is used here too, just like the scouting wave did in the previous method, once it went to ground. There is a critical mental shift involved in this understanding of the value of positions pushed forward. They do not need to assault straight onto enemy positions. They do not need the weight to do so. They don't need the weight to shoot down enemies in good cover, nor do they need to press home to root him out of his holes. All they need to do is prevent him from leaving his present positions, without being cut up by ranged fire into the open ground bits he has to cross, to leave that cover and get to some other body of it. Anything isolated in this sense, by having all its useful safe moves taken away, is "hogtied". No reason to run up against them or fight that at all. They are already in a prison cell, and artillery can execute them later if need be. There is also a new principle in true infiltration methods - to just bypass, wherever possible, rather than fight. Any position that can be ignored should be ignored. If there is a route that blocks LOS to that position, maybe someone watches it or at least prevents easy moves out of it, but for the rest, they might as well be on the far side of the moon. Consider anything that can't see you already defeated by poor positioning. Bypass and press deeper, all the way to the back of the defense. German infiltration attackers do not expect to keep the enemy in front of them. They expect to have enemies on all sides of them. Then blind them and pin them in place, and move between them. You can see how limited visibility conditions are critical to the full application of this method. I passed over the coup de main. It is about surprise in the purest sense. Here, instead of waiting for recon pull to tell you everything about the defense, you need to guess it. Rapid, more limited scouting may be used, and there are certainly leading half squads going first - the usual drill. But you just guess where the enemy is and isn't going to be; you pick a key point you think you can get to that will put some portion of those enemies at a disadvantage, and then you drive like hell for that key point. Faster than the enemy can react. Others are trying to pin him where he is - heavy weapons from back at the start line, e.g., or a 105mm artillery barrage that discourages anyone from getting up and walking around from over on the right side of the field. But the basic idea is just "get there first with the most", where you picked the "there". Win at that point by weight of numbers and the right combined arms brought to that fight for the enemy faced, and do so before the enemy can adapt his positions to that new info about what you are doing. The follow up can be another such adaptation, or just to exploit what was taken in more of the "fixed them, then pick the next spot to overload" method described in the first approach. Coup de main differs from the broad front recon in that it is less driven by what the scouts first discover, more by your command push decision. But you are trying to base that on a guess as to where the enemy will be weak and won't be expecting you. If your guess is wrong, you back off and try something else, don't turn it in to an attrition attack on enemy strength. The coup de main effort can be materially aided by having armor behind it, or as a second best, good approach terrain over a wide area (e.g. large continuous woods or city). It expects to win at the chosen point by getting a many on few fight there and winning that fight before the enemy can even the local odds. For that to work, it can't be the case that all the enemy weapons bear on the chosen point. You need to pick both the concentration objective and a route, such that only a modest portion of the enemy force has any chance to contest your approach, at first. Then you just want to go down that route so fast that "at first" equals "until the fight for that objective is over", because they only differ by 2 minutes (5 max, 2-3 a lot better). Now, in all of this, you still have to pay attention to combined arms, meaning having 81mm mortars around and HQs to spot for them if there is going to be an enemy gun or HMG position, and a StuG or a panzerschreck up close if there is going to be an enemy tank, and 105mm or 150mm artillery fire if there is going to be a big block of woods full of Russian tommy gunners. Or you can put HMGs on fire lanes on 3 sides of those woods and just go around them, never into or by them. Remember, if they can't see your main force, and they can't safely move to change that, they are already dead (hogtied, same thing). They just don't know it yet. I hope that helps explain the very different way German infantry attacks.
  20. SlowLarry - German infantry attack doctrine is entirely different. Deserves its own thread...
  21. T-70s - button them, follow infantry scouts if there is any cover (yours or the enemy's) and shoot what tries to interfere with your foot scouts. It is easier to see stuff that is shooting. In open, they can go ahead, but only in the open. Avoid the idea of recon by death and trying to find things be just getting them to shoot at your light armor. One, that isn't what light armor is for. Two, if you must, us a BA-64 for that, not a whole T-70. T-70s are deadly to enemy light vehicles and to infantry that doesn't have real cover. That's all they need to be deadly toward. One T-70 suppresses one enemy shooter. Actually attacking is something 3 to 5 of the things do together, not just 1.
  22. Migo - on ranges, it would be useful to have a 250 meter case as well, since we have yet to see the rifles and MGs "catch up" to the SMGs. You might just use 50, 150, 250, without the 100 meter case. On light wounds, don't worry about them, just consider those not hit. On tracking bullets used, just record the reduction in ammo. You can record it as such, with percent of the squad hit, and we can readily "correct" for ammo lost to men hit if we really need to. On timing, it is fine to end after a set interval, and it doesn't really need to be even as long as 5 minutes. 3 would suffice. Only a final morale state might be of interest, no need to record them along the way. As for a next interest case to try, the cover differential being in favor of the rifles and MG would be of interest. If SMG outperformance is wide enough to counteract any practical cover differential at 100 meters (or worse, 150 meters), Houston we have a problem...
  23. Yep, test not perfect but already enough to tell us the SMGs are too strong at medium ranges. They should not be dominating the LMG and rifles at 150, and the lopsidedness seen at 100 is too much. Would like to see better cover at the same ranges, though, to see if the relationship holds. I expect it will. And then we know that any automatic is way stronger than any rifle, even to range - too much so.
  24. What a PTAB strike looks like in reality, as opposed to flight simulators and officer fantasies of uniform blanket destruction - https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=H_huv58MGYE For those who don't know what we are talking about, in mid 1943 the Russians startec using small antitank bombs, about 5 pounds each, with small shaped charge warheads capable of penetrating about 70mm of armor, as an air to ground munition for IL-2 attack aircraft. A single IL-2 carried 192 of then in its internal bomb racks. The idea was to raise the chance of any kind of hit on tanks and vehicles by dropping just enough to hurt one, then dropping more of them hoping that a few would hit. They proceeded to make extreme claims about their effectiveness, like destorying 10 to 20 vehicles with each squadron strike. Which if remotely true would have destroyed German AFVs as fast as IL-2s conducted sorties. Problem - the Russians made and fielded as many IL-2s as the Germans fielded tanks against them, they flew 15-25 missions each before their loss, and German tanks aren't dead that many times over. Or at all, really, from the air. The video above shows why. They are very inaccurate and their pattern coverage isn't exactly modern cluster bomb stuff...
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