domfluff

The other thing the XO team does is take over if the HQ is killed. So, if you had: Battalion HQ + XO Company HQ Platoon HQ Then the platoon will link to the company which will link to battalion. If the Battalion HQ is eliminated, the XO team will become the battalion HQ after a few seconds (their icon will change to the HQ icon, and the C2 links will update). Since the Company HQ and Platoon HQ elements don't have an XO unit in the above organisation, there's no-one to take over once that link is severed, and the higher HQ assets have better things to do than to babysit a platoon.

So, on this point. I've convinced myself that Soviet (and therefore Russian) tactical and operational art is built on sound principles. They may not necessarily be the best solution, but I believe they're based on a sensible, logical foundation, and are a workable solution to the problems they have been faced with. Part of that is the centralisation, and part of that centralisation is the huge assumption that your centralised commander is highly competent. So much rests on their shoulders, that they can't just be good at their job, they have to be excellent. River crossings are complex - there's a reason why it's *the* classical tactical problem. I believe that leaning towards amphibious vehicles makes a huge amount of sense in the context of the operational scheme of things, but whether that translates into something actually workable in practice, when you have to involve layers of less-than-perfect leaders and corruption, is a different story. I do think that there might be an answer to John Curry's "Why Cold War Warsaw Pact Tactics Work in Wargaming" which he doesn't mention in his essay - that a wargame (professional or otherwise) is generally going to involve far fewer people than the real thing. That wargaming is inherently centralised, and that the pieces can work together extremely effectively. https://20thcenturywargaming.wordpress.com/2013/06/16/why-cold-war-warsaw-pact-tactics-work-in-wargaming/ So... yeah. I do think the Soviet/Russian focus on river crossing is really important - and you can see that in current Ukraine. What I'm less convinced is that this army (or the one who went into Georgia, or the one who went into Chechnya, and perhaps, maybe, earlier ones still) can actually perform this to any reasonable degree of success.

Oh, and CMO is fantastic for that, obviously - there's a reason why it's one of the COTS wargames that various parties have been using.

I think a better match is likely to be a map game, like this: http://www.wargaming.co/professional/details/britisharmy1956.htm CMO is great, but the focus is not on the ground stuff, and won't give you a good idea of the kind of time/motion and engineering challenges involved here, and whether it would be possible to do this kind of thing in three days. Clearly the data in the above is all derived from WW2 stuff, so it's not an exact match, but it'd be where I'd start if I wanted to get a feel for that. In terms of more commercial stuff, https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/191989/next-war-poland is probably the best/most popular at the moment.

In all of the Soviet warplans that we know of, NATO was the aggressor. They still all involve the Soviets rolling over Europe (so going on the offensive), but the stated cause was always external pressures. Whether that's purely for political reasons is another question - to steal the Falklands as something easy to work with, I'm not sure the leadership would appreciate a scenario which ran: "owing to your mismanagement of economic policy, your rule has become unpopular, so you're looking for a quick win to shore up the credibility of your regime". Point being that regardless of the real reasons why Soviet forces could rumble through Europe, the end result would look pretty similar, I think.

And no, the spread won't be shifted in the wind direction, because you're simulating humans firing the thing. Each round is fired individually, and wind speed is taken into account. The adjustment won't be perfect, but that's the reason why windage adjustment exists: (US 60mm M2 mortar) The lever/spring assembly here allows you to tilt it left and right to adjust.

To give this way more effort than it's worth: Pedantically, the wind doesn't affect "Accuracy", it affects "Precision". Accuracy is a function of the skill of the mortar team and FO - the more accurate they are, the fewer spotting rounds they'll need to be on-target. The wind will still affect this during the spotting phase, but you're not going to be able to show that as succinctly as in the above screenshots. Each round is going to be affected by the wind, which will increase its Circular Error Probability - the precision of each round will go down, and the resultant impact pattern will be much wider. This will also be affected by the skills of the operators, as well as things like the barrel temperature. Now, that's being incredibly pedantic. In normal usage, it's only really important to understand that the wind will make artillery scatter rounds over a wider area, which I think is a reasonable interpretation of the original question.

That's 100% not what they're doing here, and you know it.

That's a Junkers bomber crew for the same thing.

It's a Russian billboard celebrating their veterans. That's an American soldier. It's not really related to current events in Ukraine (it's not about May 9th 2022).

I do miss Bil's blog. It remains the best route to start taking CM seriously, and the platoon level drills aren't complete, which is a bit of a shame.

Yup, "light infantry" in this case mostly meaning "without vehicles", or at least without those being the core part of the force. The Berlin brigade (as well as the BAOR Berlin Infantry Brigade/"Berlin Field Force" in this time period), certainly had them, but they'd be performing a supporting role. I think the BAOR orbat was something like four infantry battalions to a single armoured squadron, or something similar to that. The armoured squadron was strengthened, I think, but that ratio still implies that it's a supporting asset. Yeah, the difficulties that the Soviets would have had would have been the usual ones - the lack of low-level leadership and any real light infantry would mean that you'd have all the problems that they've had in any equivalent situation (e.g., Grozny). Tons of power, but not necessarily having the ability to use it.

https://www.tankarchives.ca/2017/08/lend-lease-impressions-bazooka.html Fundamentally, ATRs and AT Guns do the job better and with less complexity at the ranges they were fighting tanks at, and in the late war (especially once you start getting into cities, and the close range started to matter a lot more) there were plenty of Panzerfausts to go around. (Ah, linked above, no matter).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin_Crisis_of_1961 In practice, probably like that. I've seen attempts at doing scenarios in Berlin before, and most of them have been light infantry based - the NVA would have some T-72s, but you'd see more T-55s than anything. A typical Berlin scenario could convert the CMRT master map, and might be an isolated light infantry force with zero-to-no artillery, holding out against a heavy, mechanised Soviet force, that will struggle to bring its full weight to bear. That's likely to be the fundamental tone of the thing on a tactical level.

The "compatibility", (which I don't think is quite the right term, but it'll do), will depend on how high up the artillery is in the organisation chain. 120mm mortars are a battalion asset, 122mm self-propelled howitzers are a regimental asset and 152mm self propelled guns are a divisional asset. You're never going to have an on-map FO with better access to divisional guns.

I do agree that this probably describes a delaying action, but that "delaying action" was also pretty much the default position in a Cold War scenario - you're just not going to be able to take on a MRR streaming towards you head-on. The interesting bit (assuming that's true - again, I've seen it nowhere else, but it's not like there's reason for him to lie) is that it implies that although all NATO powers were intent on doing a defence in depth, they were going about it in different ways. I can believe the latter though - keeping the infantry mounted for as long as possible would be sensible if your primary focus was on mobility.

An interesting and complex question, and one which really has no definitive answer. First, defining the problem. Effective small arms range is about 300m, and was ever thus. This leaves the rifleman with a fundamental problem - they'll typically be asked to attack a static enemy position, which means at some point they will need to cross that last 300m through effective small arms range themselves, exposing themselves to the maximum amount of risk. "Armoured infantry" in the WW2 sense are the equivalent of APC-born infantry. An M113 in CMCW, Strykers and FV432 in CMSF and BTRs in any of the modern titles more or less fit this mould. The Infantry Fighting Vehicle was a development of the sixties, and represents a fundamental shift in intent. Everything that applies to APCs also applies to IFVs, but the reverse is not true. I'll therefore discuss APC employment, before going into the differences in IFV doctrine. The US manuals did (and the equivalents still do) emphasis three options for when the squad dismounts: dismounting in front of the objective, dismounting on the objective, and dismounting past the objective. The US manuals were also unusually aggressive with their on-paper use of M113s, emphasising fighting from the vehicle as much as possible. How much that was put into practice is another question. British Cold War doctrinal use of the FV432 was not to use them as a fighting vehicle at all - instead to dismount the infantry, then withdraw the APCs to a safe rally point. "In front of the objective" would typically mean dismounting one terrain feature away, and proceeding on foot. The vehicle in that case was optionally able to provide suppressive fire, but that wouldn't necessarily be their primary role - the main intent of the vehicle in this case would be to get the infantry close to the target under cover and protection of armour, and then allowing them to make their own way, with the option for support. This is a sensible default position to have. It does mean that the infantry need to cover the last 300m by themselves, but it also doesn't risk losing the squad to a single AT round. It's the slowest and the most cautious, but perhaps the least likely to achieve a decisive result. "On the objective" is a lot more bold. This would involve suppressing the enemy, and driving the APCs directly onto the objective point, disgorging troops at potentially point-blank range, or fighting from the vehicle itself. The logic here is that the armour protection will help you close the 300m gap, you shorten the danger close range of the accompanying artillery, and you're likely to force a quick and decisive result from the engagement. This, clearly, involves accepting a tremendous amount of risk. It does maximise speed, particularly if you never dismount, but a single AT round can ruin your day. "Past the objective" is similar to dismounting on the target, but instead you're pushing around the objective, and attacking backwards, using the vehicles to screen. This has some similar risks to dismounting on the objective, but the intent is that you're taking advantage of the APCs mobility to flank, and then isolate the target with the resulting screen. Attacking from an unexpected direction is clearly powerful, but as with any manoeuvre like this, you'll be exposing your own flanks in the process. IFVs then. The fundamental difference with an IFV is that they are designed to be a fighting vehicle. Rather than a transport that can sometimes give supporting fires, typically to a firefight that's already underway, they are intended to be the primary source of firepower for their squad, meaning that they will inevitably be much more exposed. There was an article in Infantry magazine called "When the Squad Dismounts" (Simpkin), which discusses IFV development and differences in doctrine, comparing the US, German and Soviet approaches to the problem. In that article, he suggests that the US doctrine was for "support" - that the Bradley IFV was mostly to be used at longer ranges, dismounting before the objective and using the long range of the various weapon systems to provide support from hundreds of metres away, perhaps 1km. For Soviet doctrine, the IFV was firmly part of the squad, so if the Soviets dismounted at all, they would dismount as close as possible to the enemy. Doctrinal ranges for this were 300m, or 1km against significant AT assets, but I suspect that's an over-estimate, and the correct distance is really "as close as you can". In any case, the IFV would never stray far from the squad, and would accompany them through the depth of their attack. Then he talks about the Bundeswehr and the Marder. What he claims here is something I've been unable so far to substantiate, but I'd be really keen to do so. In that article he discusses how the Marder would be employed in a manner more similar to a light tank - i.e., that the infantry would be dismounted at range, and then the Marders and Leopards would roam ahead by themselves, creating depth by attacking into the enemy position. In this scheme, the infantry would be supporting the Marder with long-ranged fires, rather than the reverse. This does run counter to something stated on the current Bundeswehr website - that the Panzergrenadiers are "Mounted for as long as possible – dismounted for no longer than necessary.” That would imply more of a unit that would dismount on or past the objective, rather than early and in support. In terms of your direct question - recce is a thing. You might be in a situation where you have dedicated reconnaissance vehicles or other assets (e.g., snipers), but you might have to dedicate sections of your platoon or company to that task. Reconnaissance is typically best done on foot, but there's the obvious trade-off with time. Certainly blundering forward with armoured vehicles into the unknown is the wrong thing to do. In an ideal sense you don't want a platoon to be operating independently, ever, so this kind of task should really be given to the units that are designed for it.

Crew survivability tends to be a couple of things: how easily the ammo cooks off is one of them, but the other is how fast you can egress the vehicle. Neither is good for Soviet-derived armour.

Layered methods are something that's done professionally as well, but perhaps not as much as they could. I do think there's some disadvantages to that approach, which need to be worked around, but clearly this can be extremely useful - no tool does everything, so having a bunch working in concert can potentially be very powerful.

The Russian Federation was (presumably) not preparing for a war against NATO, at least not an overt one. The Soviet Union was, but the point where they would have struggled with "advanced systems" only really starts to take hold in the eighties, where semi-conductor technology became more important, and the Soviet deficiencies there really started to bite.

Interesting. That's another example of why a points-buy system like this has hard limits on how well it can reflect anything real - there's no limits on what you can attach, so even if you had an "Artillery (Berlin)" option with high rarity, then there wouldn't be anything stopping you taking a different equivalent formation. I don't know much about the Berlin Brigade (or Berlin Infantry Brigade) - I assume they weren't expected to last terribly long?

Sure, so points-buy systems are always terrible and always wrong in any implementation ever, they're just often the least-worst option available for wargame design. The major issue typically is that there's no concept of context in those values. As an extreme example, a dedicated anti-air missile system might be given a value of 100 points. That same system will be useless if the enemy have zero air assets, but it'll still cost you 100 points. Equally, if they're heavy on rotary wing support, then that 100 point vehicle might counter several thousand points of the enemy, and in each case the vehicle will have an arbitrary number attached to it. In the specific case of CM, the points will be decided by a formula (which we don't know). That's important for CM because it's going to be a priority for the system to be as hands-off as possible. Battlefront can't afford the time and manpower to do continuous "balance patches" or the like, so it's going to be important to have a system where you can set up the initial constraints and then everything else falls out automatically. The downside to that is that, since points-buy is always wrong, is that you'll always have outliers, and things which are "overcosted". In CMx1, the costs for a turreted vehicle were very high, so turretless vehicles were the most efficient option. In CMx2, that's been corrected, which leaves vehicles like the Stug III looking a lot worse, and perhaps overcosted. The main reason for this unit in context is that they exist in the TO&E. There are C2 advantages to having an FO asset at this level, and this FO asset comes with four men, who you have to pay for. Is it worth double the cost? No, probably not. If you only have a limited number of artillery assets available, then the platoon FO is probably as good or better in many situations.

MOS's excellent thread on how C2 works in-game. The main purpose (but not only purpose) of the command and control model in CM is to share spotting contacts. Existing spotting contacts help units spot faster, so you always, always should start an engagement with the maximum amount of information available to the engaging units. Essentially, spots share vertically. If you have a platoon, and squad 1 has the spot, but you need squad 3 to get it, then that information will travel: Squad 1 -> Platoon HQ, then from the Platoon HQ down to Squad 2 and Squad 3. This is "vertical", since it goes up and down the TO&E formation. Platoon HQs talk to company HQs, and company HQs talk to battalion HQs. That means the further separated you are, the longer it'll take to spread. It's also why dedicated recce elements tend to be embedded high in the org chart, so that there's minimal steps from them to the company HQs. In addition to this vertical sharing, there is horizontal sharing, where any two units will share within 4 action spots (32m). That's close audio range, so that's two unit who can talk to each other. Two units of any kind will share regardless of organisation, and taking advantage of this mechanic is what the XO teams are for, since you have a unit who has a direct line of communication with the top-level HQ unit, and can be given a direct communication to a supporting asset (typically tanks or atgm teams or whatever).

You could keep the battalion XO next to the tank platoon and do the same job, but the point of the XO is that you don't have to, and it allows you to create those connections over larger areas.

No. The HQ element is in contact with his XO. There is no direct connection between the infantry and the tanks in the above example. By keeping the XO to within 4 spaces of the tank platoon you're creating a connection from XO to tank platoon, so you're effectively appending the tank platoon onto the Infantry battalion structure, by using the XO to do it. That same role could be performed by any unit in the infantry battalion, but since each step in C2 takes time, anything that isn't an immediate step from the HQ will take longer to transmit. Because of this, this can even work inside an existing formation, short-cutting C2 steps. Simplified: