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domfluff

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domfluff last won the day on February 22 2022

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  1. Yes, I was mistaken. The 120mm has more HE per weight of shell, so you can pack more boom into the same 1.5 ton pallet.
  2. As is ever the case, the real-life utility of these is often because they are there. To take the Soviets, and Soviet-derived forces (so, Syrians and Russians in CMSF and CMBS), the 120mm mortars are a battalion asset, so each battalion would have a battery of mortars embedded within them, and these will always be available to the paper structure of this formation. 122mm and 152mm artillery are brigade-level assets, so will be assigned to the main effort. That's often, but not always, what we're representing in CM scenarios. Call-in times will typically be longer, but not necessarily long enough to matter. 122mm and 152mm howitzers have a significantly longer range than mortars, so there will be tasks they will do which mortars are unsuitable for. A CM battle is an extremely limited perspective on a wider task. In that specific case, the roles of 152mm howitzers and 120mm mortars are very similar. They are providing the same four basic tasks that artillery carries out, destruction, suppression, obscuration and denial. The HE in a 120mm shell tends to be larger than the 155mm/152mm artillery, so bigger boom for less accuracy. This means that laying smoke for obscuration is the task which mortars are generally strictly better at, but most tasks can be done more or less equally well with either system. There will be some differences in things like the angle of incoming fire. Whether that matters will be terrain dependent. Accuracy is for the most part unimportant for suppression and denial, and only really matters when you're trying to actively destroy targets, which is a task that 152mm and 155mm artillery will be superior to 120mm mortars at... but still not ideal, since that's a task better suited for rocket artillery and more specialist munitions (sensor-fused munitions, for example), which are often not really a close support artillery role (and hence not necessarily something you'd see a lot of in CM terms). So, sure, if you want to phrase the question as "Why should I pick this system in a Quick Battle?", the answer may come down to points values, rarity and available ammunition. Mortars tend to be a little cheaper, but that will vary. If you want to phrase this question as "Why would you put this in a scenario?", the answer is (or should be) that this is something that is available to this unit, in this context. If you want to phrase the question as "How do I best use this unit?", then there's very little difference in how these are employed, they both do similar tasks to approximately the same degree of effectiveness, with minor differences.
  3. That's harder to know, because we don't know exactly how line of fire calculations work, and can't see the information picture down to that level of fidelity. Intuitively, and from what has been said, spotting calculations are done individually, so only the equipped solider can actually see. The unequipped soldiers will get the spotting information shared with them, so will be able to resolve that into spots better than they would alone, but the targets still have to be visible. You can see something like this in a game like cmbs, where us troops with night vision can pass to Ukrainian troops without. In that, the spotting information is passed, but that still may not be enough to resolve into contact.
  4. I've not seen this scenario, but it's a conversion of an existing cmbn scenario. That's interesting for the comparison, but it does mean that the weapon ranges and effects are significantly more lethal - for example, your javelin team was originally a light mortar, which is both a little more useful in this context, but decidedly less impactful when it hits. Since that was a US 60mm, it similarly lacks smoke. So, caveats aside, the core principles are the same. For any river crossing one has to establish control of the far bank as much as possible, then cross, consolidate that position, then push on. Given the tools available to you, you have to do this with direct fires. This means finding covered approaches to the rivers edge, and forming a base of fire there. In CMBN you'd have bocage to help you do this, but I imagine in a CMBS conversion this would be harder. You're probably forced into doing this by stealth. Holding fire with short arcs, and sneaking up to the hedge lines - taking advantage of the javelin thermal optics and engaging in a short, sharp and probably costly firefight. The enemy's night vision will cut into this plan, but you should still have the advantage. You do still want to isolate sections as much as possible, so focusing on a single flank is probably the plan here.
  5. You can't delay on-map artillery, that might be it.
  6. The British Army's approach for essentially all of the Cold War was defence in depth and counter-attack, with the emphasis on "depth" at all levels. This is in contrast to the German approach, which had the emphasis on the counter-attack. One of the fascinating things about Cold War doctrine is that everyone was trying to solve the same problems, but going about it differently. Active Defence wasn't about deploying in depth, but in creating depth through manoeuvre. AD had an up-front defence, with elements peeling back and rotating, creating successive kill-sacks. Counter-attack wasn't a formal part of this, and it's not clear where that element would have come from. The issue with AD is that it's very complex, and ambitious to the point of implausibility. It's also that it lacks a real theory of victory - the best an Active Defender can do is not lose, there's no real ability to win.
  7. This is doctrinal in some contexts. CVR(T) vehicles would dismount to scout. I believe in reality the driver stays, but regardless, the vehicle isn't fighting.
  8. I'm curious as to why you consider Goose Green or Wireless Ridge specifically to not be examples of flanking. For Goose Green, A company is fixing the main positions on Darwin Hill, with D and B using the dead ground around Boca House (what little there is in the area) to flank the Argentinian position. For Wireless Ridge, you have a similar story, at a higher level, with a two axis attack. Now, the Falklands is pretty barren, so you're not going to get the kind of density of terrain seen in Normandy, or even West Germany, because everything has to adapt to terrain. So... I'm not sure where this idea comes from. Clausewitz has a lot to say about flanking, and the general thrust of the thing is that there's nothing particularly magical about being on a flank, it's only relevant in the context of the enemy. This is true for all levels - you don't have to have an approach route that's a convenient line of trees to allow your assault element to close... you just need a safe route to get as close as you can, regardless of what that looks like or how close that actually is. The basic principles - attacking from two directions, with as much angular separation as you can manage between them - are as sound today as they've ever been, and even in extremely unsupportive terrain like the Falklands, it was still important enough to try to do in any way possible. It's certainly true that battlefield conditions won't match the textbook diagrams, but the purpose of that kind of thing is to teach you the core concepts, so you can apply them to rather more complex real-world situations later. You can't write a novel until you have a proper grasp of the alphabet. This definitely doesn't make the doctrinal manuals pointless or "just a guideline" - they're foundational, and foundations are what you build on. Now, a broader question that is the subject of rather more discussion is whether the manoeuvreist approach to warfare that's dominated western military thinking for decades is actually a sound one. As a theoretical basis, there are certainly more voices recently that have argued that this kind of thinking doesn't match practical experience, and instead something rather more attritional is more effective... but regardless of the evidence for that, it won't apply to the tactical level, on a CM-relevant scale.
  9. Worth mentioning that the scenario designer (GeorgeMC) spends a large amount of time finding the best sites for his AT guns - it's one of the characteristics of his scenarios. In terms of dealing with this: This is where your terrain analysis/intelligence preparation of the battlefield needs to come in. You're completely correct that you can't scout every possible piece of terrain, but good IPB is supposed to mean that you don't have to. Basic course of action analysis (so the step up from terrain analysis) looks something like this sequence: What do I need to do? What will enable me to do it? What can the enemy do to stop me? What can I do to prevent that enemy action? A good scenario designer (and GeorgeMC makes some of the very best), will place their assets in strong and logical positions. If the enemy AT guns are their key assets in your initial assessment, then you need to identify their potential positions before you begin. The above sequence would be followed one section of the battlefield at a time. For example, you might need to cross a bridge with an infantry company. "What do I need to do?" I need to get the lead company over the bridge in good order. "What will enable me to do it?" I judge that as a baseline, I should be able to do this with the organic assets of the company. Form a base of fire on the near bank with two of the platoons and the organic weapons. Send the first platoon across First platoon forms a base of fire, and one of the others crosses Final platoon crosses. "What can the enemy do to stop me?" Overlooking this crossing area is a small bunch of houses nearby, and a treeline further out to the flank, onto which I have no direct observation. The treeline would be the worst-possible position to find AT guns, and the houses could contain infantry, perhaps a forward OP. "What can I do to prevent that enemy action?" The basic plan remains intact, but I need to assign additional enablers to avoid this crossing. I determine that whilst there's no direct observation of the dangerous treeline, I can get LOS from the buildings. The plan then becomes: Form a base of fire on the near bank with two of the platoons and the organic weapons, as well as a single assault gun, set up to support an assault into the buildings. Send the first platoon across, with attached forward observer, to clear the buildings. First platoon clears the buildings, and the Forward Observer starts to call down harassing fire on the suspicious treeline When the fires start coming in, the other two platoons cross, and establish a base of fire on the opposing bank. It's entirely possible that this means that your artillery is firing on nothing. That's fine - what you've gained is the knowledge that nothing is there to fire at you, and this kind of shaping operation is really the point of artillery to begin with.
  10. If you do some testing, the speed difference is very significant, especially with the heavier guns. It means that the correct SOP is to unlimber behind a slope, then set up and push it 1-2 action spots forward into position. The time not to do this is if you don't have the terrain to conceal the carrier vehicle nearby.
  11. They've been able to do this for a long time. If you move them whilst deployed, they will move really slowly, but will manhandle the thing in a deployed state. If you tell them to limber adjacent to their carrier, they will also limber much faster.
  12. The "argument" of "I can believe the CEP should be tighter, but I'd like some data to back that up?" I have no idea why that "falls apart" or what other argument you or anyone else thinks I'm making there. The fact there is a discrepancy between the way tripod and vehicle mounted weapons are working is observable, yes. Does that mean the vehicle ones should be more accurate, or the tripod ones less accurate? Does a vehicle mount offer less support for the (considerable) recoil? These are knowable things, and "well, obviously" doesn't mean anything.
  13. From that video. I have never seen an AGL in CM be anything like this inaccurate. The AGLs in CM do what they're supposed to - they work as suppression weapons, and put out a ton of fire downrange. Should the CEP be tighter? I can believe that, but I'd like to see some actual figures to back that up, because all of the footage I've seen looks pretty similar to the effect in-game.
  14. It's certainly something that Steve had said before. It would be hard to get a consistent test for it, but it's been claimed (and there's really no reason why not - the foliage cover is a mathematical factor, so it's going to be changeable)
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