Well, I am still at the mission, but the time limit still gets me everytime. This time I went through the front door with the 1st platoon, and through the taxiway with the second. Both met determined resistance, and both lost a Stryker in the process, even though I knew from the tries before where the rpg crews waited. I nudged a little to far into their field of fire. Both Strykers had a full squad in them. No survivors. War is hell.
The obvious lesson learned, and in fact I read it on these forums before, is when you have to draw fire, don't do it with dismounts and with at least some armor for your vehicle crew. Chances are the Stryker will survive the odd rpg, and then you know where the bad guys are, can pop smoke and get out of harm's way. If your vehicle is immobilized/on fire and the crew still lives, have another unit right behind, that can pop smoke/fire to cover their pedestrian retreat. It's a risky business, but if you have no idea where the enemy lurks, what can you do? A Stryker is more easily replaceable than a squad. Maybe not on your battlemap, but in the results, I think.
I very much guess that this is also the way they do it in real life. If you want to capture a position, you have no choice but to go in somehow and there is no way around placing yourself in the line of fire. Sounds obvious. You can't level everything always from a distance, or at least I hope so.
This is how I understand urban combat. There are the following tactics you can use to get your cannon fodder into houses and onto roofs where they belong :
1. Cover. Operate behind buildings and vehicles as much as possible, where the least number of possible hostile positions can overwatch.
2. Smoke. Extreme amounts of smoke.
3. Cover fire. Try to position as many units as possible in a way they can shoot at suspected hostile positions/houses. Everybody has to fire at something. That's a lot of volume of fire.
4. Artillery strikes or long distance 105mm/Javelin fire to flatten the building. Where the above cannot be arranged. And especially when you already know a dangerous enemy is in there.
The challenge is to coordinate it all, and being new to CM I have still my problems.
That said, I too think with the mission at the airport the key is not to muscle your way through the gate but take the other entrance. Simply because it takes too much time to do it with low casualties. From the other side of the compound you have a good view on everything, especially from the tower. From up there you can theoretically blow it all up with, what, 40 Javs at your disposal? All in all? Plus 105mm, plus artillery plus airstrikes. They key is to only blow up the approaches to your objectives, while letting the buldings which cover you from enemies behind them intact. For that you need to secure them with infantry. The good thing is that in the wide areas on the map the rpg teams reveal themselves from further away, which means that they don't hit that effectively (ie they miss), and the grenade has a low trajectory with a good chance of your side grill armor intercepting it.
You can effectively drive around the strong point at the entrance and attack parts of it from behind, as per mission objectives. In real life you would also bind them from the front, but here the enemy does not seem to move too much. The places I would try to flatten are the huge strong points in the middle of the map.
Anyway, the trick is (combined arms imo) to indeed get your infantry out into a place where they can harm the enemy. They are fragile, but they also have lots of firepower. I would go so far and say that the majority of your firepower is in the grunts. Ever got a squad of nine people on the roof and fire at will? It surely looks like more firepower than the supporting IFV in the alley with its single .50 cal. They can do the covering fire very well, they have machine guns, a surprisingly large number of 40mm grenades they can lob over, and they can take out any tank (and anything in fact ) they see with their ATGMs. Very importantly, the squad also is another unit on the ground that can see hostiles, more eyes is better. And they have thousands of rounds of ammo, easing the load on your auto grenade launchers. Don't know about you, but I always run out of ammo with those. And they can go in and flush the suckers out in close combat, using that splendid high rise for your advantage.
Lastly, when it works, dismounted infantry is fun. That airport mission is worse than Grozny.