Rinaldi

Situation Threat forces are advancing south rapidly, sprinkling light forces in their wake to secure their Lines of Communication (LOC). An opening has appeared for a counterattack and command has strained every nerve to concentrate an appropriately sized force to strike the enemy in the rear, cut their LOC and severely disrupt their offensive. ---- As promised - my opponent from Sabres at Dawn and myself are back at it. I have allowed my opponent to select the scenario and sides, and he has selected NATO. This once again puts me in command of the OPFOR forces, this time on the offensive. I have a defeat to avenge so I'll be putting my back into it. Expect my METT-TC and Order of Battle analysis later today. Naturally, I template an entertaining match and an inevitable victory

First off, a good game to @BrotherSurplice - its always a pleasure doing a match with him. Suffice to say I think he has avenged our last PBEM quite well. I've taken the time to read through the AAR and everyone's responses: I agree - you fight with what you're given, and in this instance it wasn't much. Nothing to be done about that but try one's best. Command and Control was fairly decent when the platoon leader was alive and I was able to run him about. Once he panicked however (two turns before the final attack), it was all over but for the crying. As for round two...watch this space. It's my turn for a picture + post AAR shortly. I noticed there's a lot of people in the thread pointing out potential overmatch or difficulty for one side or the other - well, we like tactical problems, not ladder-style tournaments. A lot of people in our little group of PBEMers have no problem playing unbalanced matches. Our reasoning is straight forward (1) some tactical problems don't have breezy solutions in reality, (2) humans are always better opponents than an inflexible AI plan and (3) we're fine with winning or losing well, rather than the bottom line. I wouldn't take away from Surplice's victory. I'm really impressed with his performance over all. He's relatively new to the series but he's already grasped how to develop a plan of action with consideration for terrain and how to keep courses of action open - in other words, he had if not articulated a decision matrix. My only criticism is that he didn't roam far enough with his rotary-wing support. In the end it didnt matter, as my BMPs were neutralized through other means, but the fact that I was able to dash two BMPs under his very nose to potentially a dangerous position should have caused a redirection of assets. As to my dispositions: The hill was tempting but I realized my forces weren't worth a whit and holding it would have been suicidal. Given that the handful of units I placed there had to displace and were on the verge of panic after some desultory fire, I stand by that decision. The berm was the single most useful piece of terrain and I regret not arraying all my ATGMs there as a battery (something I normally do with Eastern ATGMs). As it was, the usual tactic of potshotting with ATGMs in obscure positions only exacerbated their inexperienced crews and allowed for overmatch of return fire with the Scimitars.

1000 rounds for 2 men isn't totally insane either - a bit beefy but manageable. Realistically you'd have 7-10 mags if you knew you were headed into the **** and would often carry additional rounds in stripper clips to load up empty mags. For context, 210-250 rounds per man is considered the accepted minimum. At any rate how frequently do you need to reload a marksman team? They're hardly what I call mag dumpers.

That's because 1000 rounds of 5.56 is peanuts compared to 300 rounds of .30-06. Aren't you all gun nuts on here? Not rocket science. 1000 rounds, across nominally 9 men; that's about 4 mags per man. You burn through that in a single protracted firefight if the enemy is actually able to stand and bang.

Perhaps stretching the definition of "AFV" but for me I have a soft spot in my heart for the UC/Bren Carrier. The Carrier platoon is actually my favorite formation and one of the few saving graces of the CW Infantry battalions.

We need satire after some of the "suggestions" people play straight here.

Stryker infantry conduct a dismount drill during an attack - IR blocking smoke obscures. Soviet VDV are ambushed, 1981. Both images from PBEMs done in the distant past.

I'm not entirely sure how "give more indirect fire support" translates to "hamstring their experience." Yes, the article laments the rotation - but those men remain in the army. People made the same argument with cadres in WWII.

I made no AI plans. I find it a waste of time given 4.0's current condition. H2H only.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1ObJh26eNn73_pP_ca8v4uYEEhmzwpHwf A link to the scenario. I haven't published yet because I need to see if I have to make any balance changes/scoring changes. It took forever to get Power Hour balanced (it favored the Russians too greatly) and I'd rather not have to constantly re-upload. Right now the scenario still probably favors REDFOR too much. Unfortunately, Aer0mat (who was my opponent in my last AAR), is @Saint_Fuller's opponent and doesn't have an account so he probably won't be giving us an account of the Russian attack. So crack open the scenario if you'd like to see the balance of forces.

Ha, touchè.

'Dirty trick' implying having indirect fires on call for when a firefight suddenly erupts, or would you like to just stop beating around the bush and out and out accuse the US of setting up a scenario in which they get to beat up on the Syrians and their support? We go from fingers-in-ears denial to a not so subtle conspiracy theory. I assure you, if the US wanted to do something insane, Cheeto Benito would just do it - we're talking about the dunderhead that flung tomahawks at an airfield because he wanted to. If I'm taking the piss, lord knows what you're doing. As to @IMHO and @IanL fine, fair points - but I would say its more telling that a unit attacking failed to allocate the proper amount of fire support and security measures. AIrpower I can understand - the opposition isn't expected to have it.

@kraze states a fact - a unit using Russian equipment and doctrines got their ass whooped worse than I did as a kid for giving my mom lip, and you call him a troll. I'm sensing a disturbing pattern of 'hear no evil' with you when it comes to uncomfortable truths. The alleged reaction to the leak is also eyebrow raising if it was 'mere disinformation' from the West. Normally I'd say this is all off-topic - except its not. In addition to a subtle race going on between the two sides technologically to upgrade current systems, there's a doctrinal race happening as we speak: look no further than the ARMOR article I posted a few days ago. Its all well and good to show how the material they use performs but its equally valid discussion to show how Russian and US aligned countries use these materials to fight. Someone explores this and gets dismissed out of hand, poor show.

Good God.

If you could send me a PM link as well I'd be much obliged.

The thing I find ironic is that Nazi Germany and the Soviets were in a non-aggression pact, Germany did much of their clandestine military development on Soviet territory to avoid prying eyes...yet the Soviets still had no clue whatsoever about Panzer tactics!

By Summer '44 the Germans were using wood-burning trucks so this isn't entirely surprising.

Stuff that's true is worth repeating.

1) LOS is drawn from the ground, its not an infalliable measuring tool. 2) The M8 is not a Panther; its gunner may be able to see in a situation where a Panther's gunner cannot and vice-versa. 3) The logic of "if it can shoot me, I can shoot it" is not borne out in reality. That's the textbook definition of defilade. Edit: Bil has beaten me to the punch, but his parting sentiments are mine own: we can only spitball. This seems like, as @IanL is fond of saying, a circumstance where one side got burned and the other didn't, so we're getting tunnel vision on perceived problems.

The commander can see, the gunner cannot. Easy explanations to what you want to vent about. Its time to stop thinking about the tank as a single borg-like entity (and before you say "I don't" - you just did). Also yes - it is modeled in the game, the more individuals or vehicles in a position the easier they become to spot. Hence why a 3 man FO team in a hedge may go unnoticed the entire game versus a 9 man squad. Same with vehicles. Law of averages.

Yes, and? The Russians and the US have ample experience with their current-gen MBTs in two semi-recent conventional conflicts and a smattering of low-intensity deployments each. Their main chassis have undergone or are undergoing extensive upgrades and RnD. This is (i) much more cost effective than trying quantum leaps in armor technology when the resources are lacking and (ii) much saner and realistic than re-activating museum pieces to 'cook the books' roster wise. I think you are either taking my point too literally, or deliberately failing to understand: there is an entirely fallacious circlejerk going on here about having wild amounts of armor 'in service' (despite being an outright display of ignorance, and don't take that as a personal shout @Erwin) over what the Russians can actually deploy, but the analogy was about little-deployed "super tanks" versus many "good enough tanks." At the risk of sounding like a goddamned broken record, because apparently what I type is Swahili to a select few on this forum: 1) In terms of tank fleet sizes, NATO as a whole, and US individually, outweigh the Russians ponderously in 'current-gen' or 'near-current' MBTs. @IMHO has already said this, multiple times, in various ways throughout this thread, as have others. You shouldn't be thinking in raw numbers, you should be thinking in GDP, manufacturing potential and relative fleet sizes. 2) "Operational requirements" seems to be getting tossed out as a catch-all phrase here meaning 'there isnt going to be a conventional war' - there isn't, yes. That's no excuse for either side to let their top-line equipment atrophy. We're not talking about tin-pot dictatorships who's armies are meant to merely quell and control their own domestic population. The first, middling and final 'operational requirement' of any of the armed forces being spoken about here is the ability to defeat enemy threats that are at least equal to their own. Its exactly this type of fetishizing the small-war that got both sides in a serious state of conventional decay to begin with. 3) In terms of reliability, the Abrams has both of its major conventional combat experiences in sandy hellholes. Both times it, and the logistical tether supporting it, rose to the challenge. Operational ready rates were entirely satisfactory. What exactly is the point here about fragile/over-engineered Western MBTs? It flies in face of all evidence - which is amazing given the 2003 deployment of Abrams was done on the closest thing the US army has had to a wing-and-a-prayer logistical shoestring since September 1944. Oh Goodness, totally irrelevant to the post I was responding to: someone was trotting out the notion that re-activating a bunch of museum pieces is the perfect solution to a perceived imbalance in military capability. A naive notion at best. Since you brought up the subject though, yes; the T-72B1 is what I would call a last-generation tank; hence why the Russians are scrambling to make the B3 a more universal product If I sound terse, its because I am - the constant referral to WWII in a modern conventional context has slipped from being mildly annoying to exasperating; it smacks of armchair strategist on a scale that even this forum usually doesn't produce and is comparing oranges to rotten apples.

No it's a 4 man; doesn't detract too much from your argument but a point worth correcting. In fact the Leo loader has the additional burden of tracking what round is in the breech: something a gunner on an Abrams is responsible for. Are you perhaps confusing it with the Leclerc?

Except the Allies and Soviets didn't spit out tanks 3 generations behind...they produced tanks that were more than competitive with the enemy and in certain places objectively superior. Piss poor analogy imo.

This battle already took place and I got to see @Sulomon play it 'live and in real time' - the purchase of Tunguska's is the least of Olek's questionable ADA choices, I'll say that much.

Yes The almighty dollar. Western MBTs are hard to maintain, require much more involved crew training at the first echelon to keep running and fight the tank well. They're also, let's be frank, designed around armies that have (in theory) the logistical capabilities to keep them in action: which our export clients do not possess on paper or in actuality. Finally: their threats aren't near-peer. Last time we danced this dance, you were shocked to discover from the Dev team and other people with experience in Western MBTs (myself, Panzersauer, among others) at the low resolution of Russian MBT FLIR, the fact commander's optics are slaved to the gunner on the most numerous chassis, the fact that Western tanks have driver's night sights, 480-1080p FLIR, etc etc. So don't take this the wrong way: but let's not argue from a position of ignorance again on the technological (qualitative) and quantitative advantages we hold. If you want to pose legitimate criticisms, you should attack the backwards-ass doctrine we're currently untangling ourselves from and the general atrophy of NATO member's armed forces - the Bundeswehr being the most demonstrative. We got the material, but the means remain a question mark.