cool breeze

MOUT is pretty much like any other terrain, when it comes to winning a fight. Finding enemy, fixing, (flanking - optional), finishing. The question is how to do it most efficiently. OCOKA battlefield terrain analysis still applies in MOUT.
 
Start by thinking if you actually have to clear that particular area, or you can just suppress it and bypass. If that's an objective area you have to capture, yeah, you have to clear it. Then. Expose yourself as little as possible (when approaching), while, at the same time, be ready to give back as much firepower as possible at minimal amount of time (project max DPS, if you will), to be able to win firefight. Think "combat width", from Paradox games, if you're familiar with, say, HOI3. Yours vs enemy. But here, it is multidimensional space.
 
THE best thing to do is to never allow enemy to fire at you in the first place. But that's not always possible. Total suppression is hard to achieve, and you can't suppress everything all the time.
 
Examples:
 
Enemy is in 2+ story building behind a wall. If his guys are sitting on the first floor, when you come in and breach in one point, your support assets (if positioned only behind breaching team) won't be able to fire at the enemy, that can fire at guys that breach.
 
OR, if they are in the building(or even a room) behind the building you're assaulting. Your breaching team comes inside, and gets attacked from the opposite side, and your support assets can't reach there.
 
Avoid such problematic spots. Use entry points that, upon reaching them, cannot be fired at from positions you cannot fire back at with your supporting assets, immediately.

BlackMoria,
 
Your #226 is profoundly moving and obviously heartfelt. Its soul-searing clarity and self-evident deeply personal truth speak to me in ways very little has. Thank you for these wise words born of long, terrible experiences--and their aftermath! 
 
Regards,
 
John Kettler

Looks like this thread is rapidly swirling down the drain.  Perhaps best to shove a plug in.
 
Looks, gents, war is hell.  There is nothing glamorous about it.  There is nothing moral about it.  And it is nothing to celebrate. 
 
It is really easy to point fingers at the other side and decry them as murderous bastards, fascists, commie pinkos, the great satan... pick you favorite slur.   It changes nothing in the long run.  It doesn't bring back the dead. It doesn't comfort or heal the wounded, whether those wounds are physical or psychological.
 
It just leads to another cycle of violence.  Like the saying in Star Wars - anger leads to the dark side.
 
When I was in Bosnia in '93 as a Canadian peacekeeper, two Bosnia Serb soldiers came up to me at a checkpoint.  They were two brothers from Toronto, Canada.   I asked them why they were here in Serbian military uniforms.  I then heard a story about as they were growing up, they heard from their grandparents and their parents over and over about what the Croats did to the family in WW2 and stuff post war.  They were here to defend the motherland and to settle accounts with the Croatians for something that happened to the family nearly 50 years ago.  I don't get that - they were born in Canada (their family came to Canada post war) yet they felt that this was THEIR war to fight.
 
Anger and hatred lead them here.  Instilled by the anger and hatred of their parents, perpetrated by anger and hatred from their parents.  Fighting in a war not of their making, for a cause not their own, for a homeland they have never seen.  A cycle of violence nearly 50 years in the making.
 
I have seen some of that anger expressed here and I am reminded of that time talking with the two brothers.  And I am seeing the seeds of that tragedy here.
 
I was in a very dark place for a long time after my peacekeeping tour in '93.  Some would call it PTSD.  You can only see so much of genocide up close and in your face and a part of me inside died.  There was no moral high ground for either side,  All sides did stuff terrible things that are war crimes - the Bosnians, the Croatians and the Serbs.  Yes, the bulk of the ethnic cleansing was done by the Serbs but is no excuse for the Bosnians and the Croatians to do what they did.  I saw a beautiful country in ruins, shattered lifes, mounds of civilian dead, and a land with seeming madmen running around with guns seeming to want to re-fight WW2 or address the wrongs they suffered in that conflict..
 
Chains of the past.  So many people in the world are bound by those chains.  I see the ghosts of the past conflicts playing out in the conflicts of today.  There is the real tragedy.  We seemingly can't escape our past and we poison the well for our children so they are doomed to repeat our mistakes.
 
Anger leads to the dark side.  That is true.  I lived it grappling with my PTSD and the nightmares of seeing a country gone mad in Bosnia.  I wanted to kill every ethnic cleansing son of bitch with a gun.   It took a long time but I came to accept certain things.
 
I saved lots of civilians, Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian but not enough for me.  I wanted to save all of them.  I couldn't and felt guilty for decades as a result.   War lesson 1:  In war people die, soldier and civilian alike,  War lesson 2:  You can't do anything to change lesson 1.  It took a long time for me to embrace that and that saved my sanity ultimately.
 
There is real evil in the world and real monsters.  The monsters look like us and talk to us but make no mistake, there are real monsters out there.  You only see them for what they are by what they do.  I want to Kill All The Monsters but the reality is, strike one down and another rises to take his place.  Nothing changes and we learn nothing from our history.  Hitler was struck down and Rwanda and Bosnia happened.  Deal with those and then it is Sudan. Or Cambodia.  Or Syria.  Or ISIS.  Or who ever the next Hilter wannabe is.   People who don't learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them.  
 
Chains of our past.  Everyone has this issue.   Do you allow the past to bind you and deny you a better future or do you let it go.
 
The chains of the experiences in Bosnia bound me and put me on a self destructive path to most likely a grim future.  Only by embracing what happened and learning to rise above it, to not allow the past to control my present so I can forge a new future did I finally find peace for my soul.  It was hard because the chains are thick and strong - memories, recollections and seeing stuff like the genocide in Bosnia playing out elsewhere in the world brings it all back.  But I broke free finally and the memories are not emotionally charged as they were in the past as a result.  No, the memories never go away.  But you can make peace with them and find a way to a sort of 'wholeness' again.
 
I have rambled on.  Partly to acknowledge my past and the role I played in it.   A affirmation that something in life tried to beat me down and I rose above it.
 
Partly to my brothers in arms from any side of the conflicts who are dealing the the imprint of what total war does to their soul and well being, that there is a way ahead.  Memories can become less emotionally charged and less painful. Memories do fade somewhat through time, working hard toward wholeness, and throwing off the shackles of the past and living for the future.  It is not a easy road or a fast road and not everyone can break their chains of the past but it can be done.
 
And finally, to the Croatian, Bosnian and Serb posters.  I see anger and pain in your words.  War is terrible and it will write things on your soul that will deny you a bright, happy future.  I know.  I was there.  I have lived it.   Acknowledge the past, regardless of how ugly or hurtful it is.  Realize the past is the past and is not your future unless you allow it.  Do not do what a Serb family that moved to Toronto did and poison their two sons with what happened long ago in a land now far away that resulted in them involving themselves in killing other people, perhaps being killed themselves and exposing themselves to the horrors of war, for a cause not that shouldn't been theirs to fight and a war they shouldn't have been involved in, all over something that happened nearly 50 years ago.   Don't deny the future of your children or grandchildren by binding them in YOUR chains of the past and dooming them to fight in some future war because the last war had a negative impact on your family.
 
War is death, destruction, shattered lives and futures denied.  Don't glorify it and not rationalize it.  Your a damn fool otherwise.

Death Star Conspiracy, inside job
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cEPazLTGceI
Off topic I know But I don't post a lot of links

Panzer wrote:
 
"Contrast this to the Russian army which can give locusts a run for it's money, if locusts could rape and install puppet governments.  That's actually rather another reason I strongly dislike the Russian military, it's like having another company that does what you do, only sans morality, decency, and gloats about how it gets away with a lack of either.  Which almost loops back onto the topic, it's why I hate the Russian "victory" day parades.  They're in effect celebrating the nightmare they brought through Eastern Europe, the Stalinist oppression of thousands of innocent people, and the systematic rape and looting of anything with a correctly sized set of holes, or that could fit on a train back to Moscow.  It's like if the US Army had a "Wounded Knee Victory Parade" or the Brits held a festival to celebrate the first use of the maxim gun on indigenous people.  Then pair it with being a celebration of a return to Russian militarism and it just honestly gets sort of sick in that regard."  
 
Panzer, you just gotta look at Russia as a country that is going through the cycles that all other major countries went through 100-400 years ago (sort of, delayed evolution). What you describe, is exactly the same as what the British or the French did to their colonies. Or what the young (first founded) Americans did to the Indians or the African slaves. Russian people themselves are people who have been enslaved for hundreds of years by the Mongol-Tatars, then by the Imperialist Tsarism, then by the corrupted "freedom" of Communism, then by the Mafiosi of the 90's, and now by the current dictatorship. This, and the huge population losses of two world wars and the subsequent Stalinist repressions, has really made the people "bitter". I know its not an excuse, but Russia (well, certainly Russian mentality) has not evolved as quickly as the rest of the civilized world. You can still sort of consider it as a, maybe not 3rd world country, but definitely 2.5 world country. I feel that for my homeland to reach similar levels of Morality as is exhibited right now in the West, it will take about 50-100 or so years, and a few regime changes. 
 
HAVING SAID THAT, I believe that Russians actually need a strong Dictator leader at the present moment, because without one, the country will just return back to the 90s, with various fragments of society all vying for power through dubious means. 
 
Regarding the Victory Day parade celebrations - you got it wrong mate. Its like saying that you guys celebrate 4th of July Independence day as a celebration of all the pillaging your nation did in its birth, and then got away with it by cutting ties to "civilized" european "motherlands". Russians celebrate Victory day, because 20 or so million people died in WW2, and about 2million in WW1. The looting/raping/oppression of Eastern states is a by-product of a harsh and severe attitude that was exerted onto Russians during the Nazi advance. My Grandmother on my Father's side was raped by Fashist Poles (she is from Western ukraine). My Nanny, from when I lived in St. Petersburg in my infancy,  was captured by the Norwegians and mutilated during the 300 day blockade of Leningrad. And there are MILLIONS of stories like that. How do you think the Husbands, Fathers, Brothers of such women would react, when bitterness is deep in their soul and they are finally pushing back into the lands of the invaders? There you go. 
 
You Americans have never experienced such loss/terror/anguish, because all your wars of the last 100 years are far away from home. Don't judge Russians for their attitude, because there is A LOT of history that got them to this attitude. 
 
Of course, the flip side, is that - this was 70 years ago, Russians should move on, let go of the bitterness, forgive and forget so to say, act more "honourable" etc. like the rest of the world is, become friendly with neighbours, etc etc. I dont know. I see that the African population of certain cities in the US is definitely still bitter about certain circumstances that used to happen more than 150 years ago (before slavery was abolished in the States). I mean heck, they BUILT your country and its economy, but yet probably more than half of them live much worse off than a poor Russian family currently lives (and I have been to the States many times, so I do know what I'm talking about). 
 
So, not to take a bite at you or anything with the above, but Russians are a proud people (maybe not noble, but definitely very proud), who respect their past/history, celebrate the memory of the forefathers, like to flex their muscle (even when its made out of cardboard), think the rest of the world is out to get them (not just because of state propaganda, but because of the lessons taught by history), and will continue to do whatever the hell they want until either (a) they are knocked on the head (internally or externally), or ( throgh the years they travel west more, see how the rest of the world lives, and try to bring good moral principles back to their homeland for improvement. They definitely do not view the Americans or the States as anything that should provide them with a good moral compass (you guys have been ridiculing Russia waaay to much in the past - Hollywood et al, which just adds to the Russian's "bitterness"). They do view Germany and the UK in quite high regard, as well as Finland/Sweden.
 
Oh, almost forgot to say, regarding the behaviour of the current Russian Military - you gotta remember that the RF military has not fought alongside any of the Western militaries against a common enemy in like, ever? I think for the Russian Military, in order to act in the "morally correct" way that you describe, would need to be deployed somewhere along side Western forces, so as to learn from their behaviour, emulate it, and garner respect from their comrades in arms for emulating such behaviour. I mean, isnt this how you guys became so "polite" while waging war? Because you did it alongside the French and the Brits, who would say - Oi, you there Sir, why are you acting like that to those poor farmers? It must be a psychological thing - if you are criticized for your behaviour from the OUTSIDE, then the Russian troops are like - whatever, youre not here, dont tell us what to do and what not to do. Whereas, if your troops are next to theirs, pinned in an arty bombard, losing comrades in arms equally, and then if the Russians start abusing the residents of a village that you both have just stormed, and you say - dude, thats wrong - they may listen to you closer, because they wont want to look bad in the eyes of their comrades in arms.  

There was nothing wrong with Russian interwar doctrine - which incidentally was not copied from the west. In so e ways it was the best in the workd, particularly the understanding of the need to sequence multiple large scale operations, the logistics limits on them, what the role of new mechanized forces was going to be, and the like.n it wasn't as good as the German doctrine in tactical details, combined arms principles, and some of the German maneuver tradition going back to Moltke the elder, but nobody else had that stuff down, either. Tbey had their internal political fights over it - the party basically feared that proper modern doctrine made generals tech heroes in a manner they feared was essentially tied to fascist politics, which was both paranoid and stupid, and they destroyed the brains that had come up with it in the purges, set back training and adoption etc. but the military acadamies had taught it to a fair portion of the senior officers, especially the younger ones who would rise to top commands during the war itself.

The more basic problem on the doctrine side was that it was still just academic theory. It had not had time to reshape the army along the lines of its thinking, and where it had, it had done so in impractical ways, for lack of serious experiment and training in full scake exercises and the like. The army could not implement the mobile part of the doctrine. The officer corps in particular, its lower ranks especially, was not remotely up to the standard of the Germans or even of the professionals of the western armies. In training, education, time in grade, staff work, etc. Bravery they could do, obediance they had done, about all there was to work with. Yes that reflected the purges, but also the scale of the force and its rapid expansion to that scale, its reliance on reserve mobilization (necessary given that scale in any event), lack of wartime experience, etc. at most, a small cadre had some battle experience from Spain or the brief fight with Japan - and the party tended to distrust those with the former experience. The Finnish winter war had been a disaster and showed how unready the force was, and didn't correct that, though a few of the officers involved got started off its lessons.

The two biggest weaknesses were combat service and support (CSS, more on it below), by far the biggest, and poor combined arms handling at the tactical level, particularly all cooperation with armor. They compounded each other, with weaknesses in the former forcing departures from book doctrine on the latter, that then failed. Behind the CSS failures lay inadequate staff ability, the officer management bandwidth to conduct the mech arms orchestra flawlessly. This was made worse by overly large mech formations with an org chart that wasn't streamlined enough and put extra levels of command between the key deciders and the execution, by lots of obsolete equipment (think early 1930s era T-26s, flocks of them) in a poor state of readiness, by inadequate facilities to keep anynof it working, and by lack of realistic large scale training (as opposed to unit level training or carefully staged set pieces).

On the org aspect, a prewar mech corps had two tank divisions, each with its own brigades, and those tank heavy. It had 2000 trucks at TOE, and 600 to 1000 tanks, depending on the makes. There were dozens of these. A huge portion of the tanks were old T-26s and the types were mixed, as were the truck types. To get a formation like that to move over a limited dirt road net from point A to point B with gas for everyone where and when they needed it, without traffic jams and without roads blocked by broken down tanks, with repair and spare parts to get the fall outs moving again, and then exoecting them to arrive with all arms together and coordinated, in communication with each other across weapon types, form them up into fighting combined arms teams, and go in to a schedule to hit the enemy in a well coordinated way - all proved beyond the capacity of one schooled muckety muck and his staff of four high school graduates with a pack of index cards, a phone and a couple of pencils. I exaggerate slightly for the sake of clarity.

What actually happened is they didn't manage it, one column got stopped by a T-26 regiment running out of gas, holding up 200 trucks behind, carrying the infantry expected to be part of the show; the other tank division got a brigade of newer BTs to the jump off point and looked around for all the folks supposed to attack with them, waited three hours, finally heard they wouldn't be ready until tomorrow morning, thought "that's crazy, this battle will be over by then", and drove down the road unsupported and attacked off the line of march as best they could. After scaring the German front line infantry, lost in the defended zone, they blundered onto a gun line and lost a bunch of tanks. They try again with minimal changes an hour or two latter and the Germans are readier for them than ever, and fails. The next day, an infantry battalion detrucks and tries, but expects the BTs to lead and do things for them; the try and fail, the infantry presses, and gets killed too. Nobody has heard from the artillery, which is 20 miles away in a traffic jam.

The CSS failures are huge by western or even later war Russian standards. A third of the tanks fall out on a road march. There are not planned arrangements to pick them up and fix them. The front moves and a road is cut. A full brigade worth of tankers get out and walk, in retreat, leaving their broken down hulks just sitting there. Another brigade follows the wrong dirt track, runs out of gas, and the trucks with the gas went someplace else, and by the time it is even sorted out whar did happen - let alone what has to happen next - there are Germans across the intersection between them.

Up at the operational level, a full mech corps hits the German lines, two days of confusion are reported, the corps is now a brigade, and the Germans resume their march. The Russian officers report losing their tanks to swamps (the swamp monster, I call it, because it appears over and over in these excuses). It fiesn't help that the Luftwaffe is strafing the columns making traffic jams worse, and German signals intel locates every radio with a range of more than a few miles and has told the Luftwaffe and army artillery where the Russian HQs are within hours, whenever they switch the set on. So soon the officers are trying to coordinate this sprawling mess with dispatch riders, who do or don't arrive with orders hours old that were issued without a clear picture of everything in the first place, and were nonsense on stilts two hours later. Then every muckety muck tries to clear it all up with their own orders, and the regiment commander has one order from brigade and another from division and a third (12 hours okd) from the original corps plan, but his (tiny) staff is telling him he can't physically do that anyway, because support X hasn't cone up and route Y is clogged and there is only enough gas to reach Z.

Now decide. You have five minutes.

It all goes pear shaped pretty quickly.

Some of this clears up as the decreipt T-26s drop out of the force. Some as the screwiest commanders ger killed. Sone as people learn their jobs better. But above all, the army reduces its ambitions and goes to tank brigades and gets thise working, the recreates division sized tank corps with a much flatter structure only after those are working. The types get more uniform, with the reliable and cross country capable T-34 becoming the workhorse. They only go back to trying to run tank armies after all those are working properly, and they use thise only with a lot more planning, and only a handful of them (with lots of independent division scale tank corps working for combined arms armies instead). The staffs get bigger and much more professional, and it all gets real and realistic. Just, a ,ot of poor slobs get killed in the meantime.

FWIW.

Aured - Did the Russians use the same fire and maneuver tactics with typical triangle tasking used by the US in WW II?  No they did not.
 
Did they understand the basic principles of fire and maneuver, sure.  But the whole army was organized differently, tasked differently, placed less reliance on close coordination with artillery fires, wasn't based on small probes by limited infantry elements to discover the enemy and subject him to more of those fires, etc.  Basically there are a whole host of army-specific optimizations in US tactics that just don't apply.
 
The Russian force is divided into its mechanized arm and the rifle arm (called "combined arms" at the army level, but still distinct from mech).  Each had its own specific mix of standard tactics.  There are some common elements between them, but you should basically think of them as two distinct doctrines, each tailored to the force types and operational roles that type had.  Conceptually, the mech arm is the arm of maneuver and decision and exploitation, while the rifle arm is the arm of holding ground, creating breakthroughs / assault, and general pressure.  The mech arm is numerically only about a tenth of the force, but is far better armed and equipped, and controls more like 2/3rds of the armor.
 
The Front is the first element of the force structure that does not respect this distinction and is entirely above it, and Fronts are not uniform in composition, but always contain forces of both types (just sometimes only limited amounts of the mech type).  From the army level down to the brigade level, the distinction applies at one level or another.  Below that level it still applies but cross attachments may blur somewhat, but normally at all lower levels one has clearly either the mech or the rifle force type and uses the tactics appropriate to that type.
 
The army level is the principle control level for supporting elements and attachments - much higher than in other armies (e.g. for the Germans it was almost always the division level, with little above that level in the way of actual maneuver elements). The army commander is expected to "task" his pool of support arms formations to this or that division-scale formation within his command for a specific operation, depending on the role he has assigned to that formation.  This can easily double the organic weapons of such formations, and in the combined arms armies, is the sole way the rifle divisions get armor allocated to them.  What are we talking about here?  Independent tank brigades and regiments, SU regiments, heavy mortar regiments, rocket brigades and battalions, antitank brigades and regiments, motorcycle recon regiments and battalions, extra pioneer battalions, heavy artillery formations from regiment up to divisions in size, etc.  Basically, half of the guns and all of the armor is in the army commander's "kit bag" to dole out to his divisions depending on their role.  A rifle division tasked to lead an attack may have a full tank brigade attached, plus a 120mm mortar formation to double its firepower at the point of the intended breakthrough.  Another rifle division expected to defend on relatively open ground, suited to enemy tanks, may have an antitank artillery brigade attached, tripling its number of 76mm guns, and a pioneer battalion besides, tasked with mining all likely routes and creating anti tank ditches and other obstacles, etc.
 
Every division is given enough of the supporting arms to just barely fulfill its minimal standard role, and everything needed to do it better is pooled up in the army commander's kit bag, and doled out by him to shape the battle.  Similarly, the army commander will retain major control of artillery fires and fire plans.  Those are not a matter of a 2nd Lt with a radio calling in his target of opportunity, but of a staff of half a dozen highly trained technicians drafting a coordinated plan for days, all submitted to and approved - or torn up - by the army commander.  This highly centralized system was meant to maximize the impact of very scarce combined arms intelligence and tactical skill, which could not be expected of every green 2nd Lt.  
 
Within the rifle divisions, each level of the org chart has its own organic fire support, so that it does not need to rely on the highest muckety-muck and his determination that your sector is the critical one today.  When he does decide that, he is going to intervene in your little corner of the world with a weight of fire like a falling house; when he doesn't, you are going to make do with your assigned peashooters.
 
The divisional commander is assigning his much smaller divisional fires on the same principles, with the understanding that those smaller fires become not so small if the army commander lends him an extra 36 120mm mortars for this one.  The regimental commander may get his share of the divisional fires or he may get nothing outside what his own organic firepower arms can supply - but he gets a few 76mm infantry guns and some 120mm mortars and a few 45mm ATGs so that he can make such assignments even if he gets no help.  Frankly though the regiment adds little - it mostly assigns its battalions missions, and the regimental commander's main way of influencing the fight is the formation he assigns to those component battalions.  Formation in the very simplest sense - he has 3 on line to cover a wide front, or he has 3 in column on the same frontage to provide weight behind an attack, or the 2-1 or 1-2 versions of either of those.  It is not the case that he always uses 2-1 on all roles.  The most common defense is 2-1 and the most common offensive formation is column, all 3 one behind the other on the same frontage.  Notice, this isn't about packing the riflemen in - those will go off in waves at proper intervals front to back.  But it puts all 27 of the regiment's 82mm mortars (9 per battalion) in support behind 1 or 2 kilometers of front line.
 
The fire support principle at the battalion level is not implemented by having one of the component battalions support the others by fire from a stationary spot, with all arms.  Instead it is a combined arms thing inside each battalion.  They each have their 9 82mm mortars and their 9 Maxim heavy machineguns organized into platoons, and the "fire support plan" is based on those infantry heavy weapons.  Battalion AT ability is minimal - 2 45mm ATGs and a flock of ATRs, barely enough to hold off enemy halftracks and hopeless against whole battalions of tanks.  But that is because the higher muckety-mucks are expected to know where the enemy tanks are going to come and to have put all the army level ATG formations and their own supporting armor formations and the pioneers with their minefields and obstacles, in those spots.
 
Down inside the battalion, the same formation choices arise for the component rifle companies as appeared at battalion, and the usual formations are again 2-1 on defense and all in column on the attack.  And yes that means you sometimes get really deep columns of attack, with a division first stepping off with just a few lead companies with others behind them, and so on.  This doesn't mean packed shoulder to shoulder formations, it means normal open intervals 9 times in a row, one behind another, only one at a time stepping off into enemy fire zones.  These "depth tactics" were meant to *outlast* the enemy on the same frontage, in an attrition battle, *not* to "run him off his feet in one go", nor to outmaneuver him.  The later parts could be sidestepped to a sector that was doing better and push through from there.  The last to "pancake" to the front if the other had all failed, would not attack, but instead go over to the defensive on the original frontage and hold.  One gets reports of huge loss totals and those "justifying" the attack attempt when this happens - the commander can show that he sent 8/9ths of his formation forward but they could not break through.  It is then the fault of the muckety muck who didn't gauge the level of support he needed correctly or given him enough supporting fires etc.  If on the other hand the local commander came back with losses of only his first company or two and a remark that "it doesn't look good, we should try something else", he will be invited to try being a private as that something else, etc.
 
What is expected of the lower level commander in these tactics is that he "lay his ship alongside of the enemy", as Nelson put it before Trafalgar.  In other words, close with the enemy and fight like hell, hurt him as much as your organic forces can manage to hurt him.  Bravery, drive, ruthlessness - these are the watchwords, not cleverness or finesse or artistry.  
 
What is happening in the combined arms tactics within that rifle column attack?  The leading infantry companies are presenting the enemy a fire discipline dilemma - how close to let the advancing Russian infantry get before revealing their own positions by cutting loose.  The longer they take to do so, the close the Russian infantry gets before being driven to the ground.  Enemy fire is fully expected to drive the leading infantry waves to the ground, or even to break them or destroy them outright - at first.  But every revealed firing point in that cutting loose is then subjected to another round of prep fire by all of the organic and added fire support elements supporting the attack.  The battalion 82mm mortars, any attached tanks, and the muckety-mucks special falling skies firepower, smashes up whatever showed itself crucifying the leading wave.
 
Then the next wave goes in, just like the first, on the same frontage.  No great finesse about it, but some of the defenders already dead in the meantime.  Same dilemma for his survivors.  When they decide to hold their fire to avoid giving the mortars and Russian artillery and such, juicy new things to shoot at, the advancing infantry wave gets in among them instead.  And goes to work with grenade and tommy gun, flushing out every hole.  The grenadier is the beater and the tommy gun is the shotgun, and Germans are the quail.  Notice, the firepower of the infantry that matters in this is the short range stuff, because at longer range the killing is done by supporting artillery arms.  The rifles of the most of the infantry supplement of course, but really the LMGs and rifles are primarily there as the defensive firepower of the rifle formation, at range.
 
It is slow and it is bloody and it is inefficient - but it is relentless.  The thing being maximized is fight and predictability - that the higher muckety mucks can count on an outcome on this part of the frontage proportional to what they put into it.  Where they need to win, they put in enough and they do win - hang the cost.  It isn't pure suicide up front - the infantry go to ground when fired at and they fire back,and their supporting fires try to save them, and the next wave storms forward to help and pick up the survivors and carry them forward (and carry the wounded back).  In the meantime the men that went to ground are defending themselves as best they can and sniping what they can see;  they are not expected to stand up again and go get killed.  That is the next wave's job.  The first did its part when it presented its breast to the enemy's bullets for that first advance.  The whole rolls forward like a ratchet, the waves driven to ground holding tenaciously whatever they reached.
 
That is the rifle, combined arms army, way of fighting.
 
The mech way of fighting is quite different.  There are some common elements but again it is better to think of it like a whole different army with its own techniques.  Where the rifle arm emphasizes depth and relentlessly, the mech way emphasizes rapid decision and decisive maneuver, which is kept dead simple and formulaic, but just adaptive enough to be dangerous.
 
First understand that the standard formation carrying out the mech way of fighting is the tank corps, which consists of 3 tank and 1 rifle brigade, plus minimal attachments of motorized guns, recon, and pioneers.  The rifle brigade is 3 battalions and is normally trailing the tank brigades and holds what they take.  Sometimes it doubles their infantry weight and sometimes it has to lead for a specific mission (force a river crossing, say, or a night infiltration attack that needs stealth - things only infantry can do), but in the normal offensive case it is just driving up behind something a tank brigade took, dismounting, and manning the position to let the tank brigade go on to its next mission.  It has trucks to keep up, and the usual infantry heavy weapons of 82mm mortars and heavy MGs, but it uses them to defend ground taken.  Notionally, the rifle brigade is the tank corps' "shield" and it maneuvers it separately as such.
 
The business end of the tank corps is thus its tank brigades, which are its weapons.  Each has a rifle battalion organic that is normally physically riding on the tanks themselves, and armed mostly with tommy guns.  The armor component of each brigade is equivalent in size to a western tank battalion - 50-60 tanks at full TOE - despite the formation name.
 
I will get to the larger scale tactics of the use of the tank brigades in just a second, but first the lowest level, tactical way the tanks with riders fight must be explained.  It is a version of the fire discipline dilemma discussed earlier, but now with the critical difference that the tanks have huge firepower against enemy infantry and other dismounts, making any challenge to them by less than a full panzer battalion pretty suicidal.  What the tanks can't do is force those enemy dismounts to open fire or show themselves.  Nor can the tanks alone dig them out of their holes if they don't open fire.  That is what the riders are there to do - kill the enemy in his holes under the overwatch of the massed tanks if and only if the enemy stays low and keeps quiet and tries to just hide from the tanks.  That threat is meant to force the enemy to open fire.  When they do, the riders drop off and take cover and don't need to do anything - the tanks murder the enemy.  Riders pick their way forward carefully after that, and repeat as necessary if there are enemy left alive.  This is all meant to be delivered very rapidly as an attack - drive right at them, take fire, stop and blast for 5 or 10 minutes tops, and move forward again, repeating only a few times before being right on or over the enemy.
 
So that covers the small tactics of the mech arm on the attack.  Up a bit, though, they are maneuvering, looking for enemy weak spots, especially the weak spots in his anti tank defenses.  And that follows a standard formula of the echelon attack.  
 
Meaning, the standard formation is a kind of staggered column with the second element just right or left of the leading one, and the third off to the same side as far again.  The individual tank brigade will use this approach with its component tank companies or pairs of companies, and the whole corps will use it again with its brigades.
 
The first element of such an echelon attack heads for whatever looks like the weakest part of the enemy position - in antitank terms - and hits it as hard as it can, rapidly, no pausing for field recon.  The next in is reacting to whatever that first one experiences, but expects to wrap around one flank of whatever holds up the prior element and hit hard, again, from a slightly changing direction.  This combined hit, in rapid succession, is expected to destroy that blockage or shove it aside.  The third element following is expected to hit air, a hole made by the previous, and push straight into the interior of the enemy position and keep going.  If the others are checked, it is expected to drive clear around the enemy of the harder enemy position - it does not run onto the same enemy hit by the previous elements.  If the enemy line is long enough and strong enough to be neither flanked nor broken through by this process, well tough then.  Some other formation higher in the chain or two grids over is expected to have had better luck in the meantime.
 
There are of course minor adaptations possible in this formula.  If the lead element breaks clean through, the others shift slightly into its wake and just exploit - they don't hit any new portion of the enemy's line.  If the first hit a position that is clearly strong as well as reasonably wide, the other two elements may pivot outward looking for an open flank instead of the second hitting right where the first did, just from a different angle.  The leading element can pull up short and just screen the frontage if they encounter strong enemy armor.  Then the second still tries to find an open flank, but the third might slide into reserve between and behind the first and second.
 
The point of the whole approach is to have some adaptability and flexibility, to be designed around reinforcing success and hitting weaker flanks not just frontal slogging - all of which exploit the speed and maneuver power of the tanks within the enemy's defensive zone.  But they are also dead simple, formulas that can be learned by rote and applied mechanically.  They are fast because there is no waiting for recon pull to bring back info on where to hit.  The substance that needs to be grasped by the leader of a 2nd or 3rd element is very limited, and either he can see it himself or the previous element manages to convey it to him, or gets it up to the commander of all three and he issues the appropriate order downward.  They are all mechanically applying the same doctrine and thinking on the same page, even if out of contact at times or having different amounts of information.  The whole idea is get the power of maneuver adaptation without the delays or the confusion that can set in when you try to ask 3 or more bullheaded linemen to solve advanced calculus problems.  There is just one "play" - "you hit him head on and stand him up, then I'll hit him low and shove him aside, and Joe can run through the hole".
 
There are some additional principles on defense, the rifle formation forces specially,  where they use 2 up 1 back and all around zones and rely on stealth and field fortifications for their protection, while their heavy weapons reach out far enough to cover the ground between each "blob", and their LMGs and rifles reach out far enough to protect each blob frontally from enemy infantry.  That plus deeper artillery fires provides a "soft defense" that is expected to strip enemy infantry from any tanks, or to stop infantry only attacks on its own.  Or, at least, to make it expensive to trade through each blob in layer after layer, in the same "laying his ship alongside of the enemy", exchange-attrition sense.  Then a heavier AT "network" has to cover the same frontage but starting a bit farther back, overlapped with the second and later infantry "blobs".  The heavy AT network is based on cross fire by 45mm and 76mm ATGs, plus obstacles (watrer, ditches, mines, etc) to channel enemy tanks to the locations where those are dense.  Any available armor stays off the line in reserve and slides in front of enemy penetration attempts, hitting strength not weakness in this case, just seeking to seal off penetrations and neutralize any "differential" in odds or armor concentration along the frontage.  On defense, the mech arm operates on its own principles only at tank corps and higher scale, and does so by counterpunching with its offensive tactics, already described above.
 
That's it, in a nutshell.  I hope this helps.  

A sample force for a GMT "Panzer" scenario to show how a Russian mechanized corps force fights (as distinct from a tank corps force) - since it was asked.  Feel free to translate into Combat Mission terms.
 
Recon element - 2 BA-64 armored cars, 2 infantry half squads motorcycle mounted.
 
Main body, tanks - 3 T-34/76, 1943 model, with 3 SMG half squad riders.
Main body, motor rifle - 4 trucks carrying 4 full Rifle squads, 2 designated as also having ATR secondary weapons
 
Support, HQ element - 1 M3 Scout Car carrying infantry half squad with FO ability.  Medium artillery support (120mm mortar) with a max of 4 fire for effect missions.
Support, mortar element - 2 trucks carrying infantry half squads manning 82mm mortars
Support, ATG - 1 jeep towing 76mm divisional gun (ZIS-3)
 
You could up the recon element to a full platoon of motorcycle recon, 3 T-70s and 3 MA-64s, double or triple the tanks, and increase the motor rifle to 1-2 companies, and the weapons and supporting guns to double the figures above, for a larger scenario.  But at least in Panzer, smaller command spans make for a more playable game, hence the force design above.
 
Understand, this sort of column is what you'd expect as a single one of the elements I describe in the echelon attack "drill" discussed above - the first hit or the flankers or the exploiters, each would be a column like that.
 
Notice, half the heavy HE firepower comes from dismounted weapons rather than tanks (82mm mortars or towed 76mm guns).  There are small amounts of light armor, but most of the armor is just T-34s and they provide the armor hitting power of the whole formation.  The trucked motor rifle is about half the infantry, the rest split between SMG riders, recon, and infantry heavy weapons parts of the formation.  There is enough infantry to lead with it when the enemy and terrain calls for that, but its normal battle role is to follow hard behind the tanks, dismount just out of sight of the enemy, and mop up whatever the tanks have blasted through.  if they need to deliver a "set piece" attack rather than fighting off the column of march, then the dismounted HE tubes (guns and mortars and FO) plus the tanks form the base of fire, and the infantry steps out first under their overwatch.  The tank riders wait while that is happening, and mount to move forward with the tanks as enemy positions to neutralize are IDed.  
 
When fighting off the column of march, instead, the recon leads and just scouts for open roads; the BA-64s can suppress infantry outposts to free the recon infantry if it is fired upon.  The tanks follow and go where no enemy is encountered until they run out of undefended road, then hastily attack the easiest looking target.  The motor rifle follows behind them and drops men if needed to dig out enemies that go deep to escape the attentions of the tanks, letting the SMG riders stay with the tanks.  If a strong enemy is encountered, the recon and tanks try to bypass it, a bit of motor rifle screens it, and if needed the support element can come up and plaster it.  Normally, though, the support element only deploys when a strong enemy position that needs to be carried is encountered.  When that happens, the column piles forward and deploys to either side of its approach road, the support element and tanks form a base of fire, and the deliberate attack method described above is apply as quickly as possible.
 
FWIW...

So if I were going to make a CMRT scenario showing the mech force type in a hasty attack off the column of march, I'd use something like the following forces and arrivals.
 
At start, set up area to include a road entry point - 2 BA-64s, 5 jeeps, recon platoon HQ and 4 half squads, 1 sharpshooter.
 (HQ+SS jeep really a 3/4 ton "pick up" truck, the "jeeps" are really motorcycles).
Arriving turn 3 on the same entry road - 3 T-34/76, SMG platoon HQ and 2 SMG half squads.
Arriving turn 5 on the same entry road - 4 trucks carrying motor rifle platoon (HQ, 3 squads) plus an ATR.
Arriving turn 7 on the same road, 1 M5 halftrack carrying a company HQ plus a 120mm mortar radio FO (start of support section)
Arriving turn 8 on the same road, 4 trucks carrying platoon HQ, 3 Maxim MMGs (1 with HQ, 2 in second truck), 2 82mm mortars
Arriving turn 10 on the same road, 2 jeeps towing 2 76mm ZIS-3 divisional guns (these would really be 3/4 ton pick up trucks, but closer to jeeps than full trucks).
 
Optional larger scenario - add a second T-34 force just like that given on turn 5, bumping the arrival order of the rest back.
Also add a second motor rifle platoon, so those arrive turns 7 and 9, with the support arriving turns 11-14.
Finally, add a third motor rifle platoon at the tail of the column, arriving turn 15.
That gives 6 tanks and a full motor rifle company, but takes a bit longer to arrive etc.
 
Then have that sort of column fight against - (1) a pure infantry defense (1 75mm PAK as heavy AT), or pure infantry with just one Marder as AT support - about 2 platoons of infantry and a heavy weapons section with 2xHMG, 1x81mm would be typical for this scale, (2) A German "recon" screen force, with SPW 250/1s carrying a single recon infantry platoon, with a pair of SPW 251/9s for fire support, and like 2 PzKw IVs arriving turn 10 or so to support them, with one platoon of Pz Gdrs, or (3) A full German "panzer" force vs the larger column version, with 4 PzKw IVs and 2 platoons of PzGdrs (motorized) present from the start, plus a few HMGs.  A tougher version of (1) (e.g. vs the larger column) might have 2 PAK and 105mm artillery support, but still 2 infantry platoons and 1 heavy weapons section.
 
This variety would be enough to show how the force was meant to function, and how it defeats the most typical forces the Germans would actually need to rely on to stop it.  The recon screen version would be the least common in practice, the infantry version (with no German vehicles) the most common.  But the others are important, to show how the force could exploit through rapid blocking forces once through the front.

If they ever have a Combat Mission convention and said one of the speakers would be JasonC, I'd be getting a ticket.  

Lethaface, I agree with what you've got to say on the matter, it's just this part that I would also like to see happen but it's a bit naive to think we as humans can act that way. Still, a lot can be improved - not saying it's impossible, just very very hard to achieve. Maybe if whole world gets an outside enemy we will turn our aggression towards the attacking aliens.  
 
 
Exactly. I as a teacher can't give a negative score to my pupil in advance although I know 99,99% for sure he/she won't be able to score positively.
 
I already had similar debate about Iraq with panzersaurkrautwerfer in some other thread a while ago. This thread went way offtopic anyway already so I'm not feeling particularly guilty for popping in.
 
I think it's hard for anyone who was more or less directly or indirectly involved with Iraq or with other activities his state did/does to be totally impartial and subjective on the matter. I hold panzer in very hard regard when it comes to his views on the matter since his are a lot more down to earth then to many other people I know. BUT your counter arguments Lethaface come spot on. It's hard for someone who is claiming to operate from a higher moral ground then the other to remain seated in that position for long. In most cases, not that it's not possible. 
 
Cudos to both of you gentlemen, really. 

@Sublime:
Not is not more off-topic than the discussion about Iraq and Afgahnistan we are currently having.
 
@John:
In general i think you are taking this way to seriously, John. Just ignore them, i mean litterlly ignore them by using the "ignore" function of the forum. You wont see their posts anymore if you ignore them.
 
I do agree with you though on LukeFFs behaviour beeing inappropriate though, not because he is occasionally makeing fun of you, but because his profile says he is an official CM Beta Tester, which gives his statements and opinions influence on the general reputation of Battlefront.com. If i were Steve, i would tell LukeFF that publicly making fun of one of their customers is a big no-no because it may hurt the companys reputation.
 
At the end of the day, if the behaviour of the people you named really bothers you as much as you say, i recommend you collect their posts and as soon as you have sufficient evidence of their "bullying" write a ticket at helpdesk or send a PM to one of the Admins.

Well apart from Afghanistan and Iraq, JSOC is presumably assassinating people in countries they aren't at war with, without having brought them in front of a judge. While I agree the latter can be a little impractical and there are circumstances in which it is irresponsible to let certain individuals roam the world unhindered. But instead of debating acceptable collateral damage, I'd like to zoom out a bit.
 
If I as a state have to resort to outside of the law, large scale, (international) assassination operations to maintain national security, I'd be asking myself what I have done to make the situation so FUBAR that I'm even considering debating collateral. It's not 'normal' for a democratic state to have hitlists with several thousand people on it. While there is more to debate I think that alone is enough for me to rephrase your example of the thief and the murderer: I think it's more like the murderer confronting someone, who is both a thief and a murderer, about his thievery. 
Let me be very clear again that I'm not defending Russia at all, just a little picky on who's calling them out ;-)

Well said.
   
Agreed that it was coming regardless. However, usually a judge or jury won't let you get away with murder simply because that person would have died anyway sooner or later. ;-)
 
It is indeed arrogant of the West to assume they know what's best for everyone, apart even from having the power to let everyone have that what we think is best. While I respect people feeling moral obligation to help countries were our 'grandfathers' made a mess colonizing (for which I personally feel 0% responsibility as I wasn't there), I think the help isn't helping making things any better. Best leave everyone to fend for themselves, favoring cooperation as equals going for mutual-benefit deals over 'let us help those poor people over there'.

Exactly my experience. Although somehow I feel it's worse when something intended well ends up nasty, versus just plain being nasty. Might have well just been nasty, would have saved a lot of people with good intentions a whole lot of work

Trying to match Kettler post for post, is a difficult thing. At times he is very rational and puts forward arguments that are both relevant and interesting. In mind mind he is somewhat of an enigma, claiming to have problems which effect his ability to think and read, but yet is capable of posting enormous rambling items, with numerous links and expert use of the coding of the forum.
Someone else is doing this or he really has no cranial difficulties and uses it as a defense against some of the severe and maybe mean spirited criticism he receives here. I am sometimes intrigued by what he posts, and I am often at odds with his viewpoints, but I can never match him for pure ability to frame any argument, back it up with dozens of internet links, and make claims that sometimes are totally unverifiable. Still, he is an interesting character and adds a lot of flair to otherwise dull exchanges on military and game related matters.
 
 
You seem like an intelligent guy with a lot of in the first hand field experience with the goings on in the post cold war realm of the military. You at least also take the time to propose your point of view with no apologies, and no concern for the sensibilities of other posters. Which I am sure will rile some folks up, but is often needed for an honest discussion of things that have nothing to do with the game. The Admin folks have been fairly benevolent in allowing discussions not directly related to game play to go on, especially in the Black Sea Forum. Once an East vs West argument reaches critical mass, I'm sure they will step in a lock things up.
 
Who do you dislike (I won't say hate, too strong a word at this point) more, the Iraqis or the Russians? I'm may be one of the ones who thought that going to war in Iraq would turn out to be a good thing. I also believe that war used as a political tool is usually the cause of problems later on. Maybe if we had crushed Sadaam Husein in 1991 when we had sufficient power on the ground to enforce a surrender we could have avoided 2003. If warfare is used one side or the other must totally impose their will upon the other. The last time this happened was in 1945, look how nice the Japanese and Germans have been since then. Especially in the light of how horrible they were prior. Mutually Assured Destruction changed the ground rules of warfare we could kill each other with glee as long as it didnt get to the point where one side would drop the bomb. The age of total conventional war was ove, and all of the unresolved conflicts that we have had since have come full circle in the behavior of the Russians in the current Ukraine situation. IMO of course.

My guess it was just a lucky retreat order that happened to go into the enemies building, sounds pretty neato tho!

no offense but it sounds to me that your opponents are doing a poor job at adapting to your style.  It seems like there are a lot of better things they could have done than bringing 15 tanks in range of your javs and letting em sit there till they get killed.  If the map is big enough they could shoot from beyond the 2 km range limit.  If that's not possible scoot and shoot can still work very well against javs.  one can scoot into a keyholed fire position, blast a building or airburst a treeline, and scoot out before the jav can lock fire and land.  artillery also works very well to suppress and or kill the javs.  scoot and shoot plus artillery would be even better.  and of course there is the I think more obvious answer, not bringing a ton of tanks and instead bringing a super big ton of mechanized infantry in cheap carriers.  I think you can get about a platoon of Russian infantry in light armoured vehicles for about the price of a brad and a infantry squad or an even better ratio vs the US super cav.

The tac AI is less prone to shoot at infantry with rockets if they have less rockets on them.  So if you want your infantry to free fire rockets and grenades then you give them a lot extra from the vehicles.  If you want them to shoot the rockets less, keep more of them in the vehicles for later. 

Vincere,

Thank you, I assumed they could tell, I was female. I added it to the profile if it matters. I can be dopey sometimes, just laugh, that is why I do it. No harm intended. Humor definitely.

Was reading about something else, when I came across this Patton quote. I'm sure we've already long since understood what Patton thought needed to be done and why, so let's stipulate that. What I'd like to see discussed is his argument that if he kept going (wanted to take Prague), he could beat the Red Army in six weeks. I'm hardly a Red Army expert, but I will say several of the Russian accounts I've read talk about how utterly supply depleted the Red Army was, especially after taking Berlin. The Russians had shot their bolt and had no means of rapidly resupplying their forces, if the russian sources are to be believed. Some go so far as to state they were semistarved and deeply grateful to find a big vat of German margarine to supplement their meager rations. In light of that, I invite you to discuss the quote below, particularly since there's been an outcry dating back to CMx1 CMBO asking for the means to let us pit the Red Army vs the US, possibly with some German units under US control. 
 
“The American Army as it now exists could beat the Russians with the greatest of ease, because, while the Russians have good infantry, they are lacking in artillery, air, tanks, and in the knowledge of the use of the combined arms, whereas we excel in all three of these.”
Regards,
John Kettler
 
 

The General Discussion forum is down below.

Try this procedure:
 
http://www.wikihow.com/Block-Websites-on-Firefox
 
and enter the direct URLs to the emoticons in the block list. You can get the direct URLs to the emoticons by right clicking on them and selecting "show image" or something.

Michael you have no idea what a sacred place this forum is in this regard. On some other forums the average poster is angry, tired and drunk!
 
EDIT:
 
LukeFF upvoting your own posts in response to someone downvoting them is lame. Also i agree with Desertor. Just dont read Johns posts if you are not interested. I dont read 90% of them either.

or is it