How to do good recon?

[DavidFields]

Back to the OP.

The scouting, and therefore the need for patience, is the biggest adaptation I have had to go through from CM to CM2. (and I understand that is an increase in realism)

In CM, and in most tactical games I had played before, I often wanted to initially present myself, when the attacker, as a compact wall of firepower, in order to overwhelm the defender at a point.

But, in CM2, as Bill H has shown us in multiple AARs, and, again with the increased realism, that can be an error.

Coming up to hedgerow: whether you have 2 scouts, a squad, or 2 squads, if the enemy has some HE to throw at you, having 2 squads might just mean you have many more casualties when the first HE explosion occurs.

I think the difference is, compared to CM and the old non-computer games--1: your unit doesn't slowly "attrit" damage, in that something exploding in the middle of your squad could instantly kill everyone. If you have more people in the area, you just have more dead. (we could talk about the modeling of microterrain issues here, but I think the CM2 model is more accurate than CM). and 2: with the realistic modeling of metal flying around, it is not just "unit A targeting unit B", but the enemy firing at your advance team could not-so-incidentally kill units behind it or around it.

This has meant, for me, that optimum unit spacing/density is much, much lower than I was used to, and it is still something I struggle with--keep the main force back from the scouts so it is not hit be fire directed at the scouts!, in general, those with rifles are inherently spotters/scouts, not the firepower, and should be pulled out of the way and let the heavy weapons/artillery do the work.

I thought I was good at this WW2 tactical stuff until I started playing CM2. Now I realize how lousy I was, am trying to improve (again, watching Bill H in some of these AARs is astounding). I thought attack success = concentrated mass x speed. Maybe with heavy cavalry in the Middle Ages it was that simple, or with the Russians at Stalingrad, but in 1943/4 on the Western front, there seems to be so much metal flying through the air (and soldiers with only a helmet, and no body armor!--painful to think about that they only had cloth on their chest to stop a metal fragment), the need to skillfully scout, and the if-we-see-you,-you-are-dead of Modern Warfare, is more evident to me now.

As for the scouting AFVs, I think there role has not changed from their, extensively discussed, role in CM. In general (except, as noted above, in some carefully designed scenarios), they stay out of the fight, except, near the end, as mobile MGs, well back of the main line of attack, to mop up enemy stragglers, or as a long-distance poke at a small enemy resistance point.

Now, when we get to the East Front, someone is going to design a scenario where the optimum tactic is for a German infantry company in Halftracks barrels up to a town and unloads for an assault, but expect the forum to explode in controversy.

[JasonC]

I will explain how to think about recon. How to do recon mostly follows from that, though there are many small tactics one can learn after getting the big picture stuff right. But it is more important to have the big picture stuff right than to be a wizard at the small tactics stuff. Not that you can't strive for both eventually.

I restrict myself to the recon that attackers do for a real attack, since that is the issue that arises most in CM and where the right big picture goes farthest. Defenders do recon in a sense too, but have different problems; static probing where neither side has the local edge to press is again a recon-ee situation but not on point here.

The big picture starting point is what you are trying to do. And I don't mean a mission briefing or something that changes from scenario to scenario. What you are trying to do when you are attacking is destroy the enemy force. You aren't trying to get across a field or into a village, you aren't trying to locate the enemy position, you aren't trying to go around the enemy. You are trying to kill him. Everything you do, including recon, is directed to that end. After the enemy is dead you can take any crossroads or waltz across any field you please.

I point that out because, if you already knew exactly where the enemy was and the answer was right over there in those buildings, you wouldn't send 2 scouts ahead or even need to break cover. You'd just shoot the living daylights out of them from right over here where it is safe, they'd die under your superior firepower (you are the attacker, right?), and you could take a lunch break after the battle before anyone had to walk across 10 meters of open ground.

The reason you are moving in the first place is to put guns on target, and for that you need targets. Notice, this underlying objective makes it kind of pointless to find an enemy who can move off at his leisure if you aren't in a position to murder him right after you find him.

The next thing you will notice, as everyone has already commented, is that thorough and cautious, well overwatched recon takes time. And time is what turns kittens into cats. Let's the enemy move around, detect your plan, perfectly align his forces to address it, get out of the way if he likes, call for artillery, etc. So good recon needs to be fast.

What is the fastest possible recon method?

Perhaps surprisingly, the answer is - mindreading.

No, I don't mean holding seances or staring through cards with blue squares on them, I mean getting into the defending commander's head and anticipating what he already did two hours ago. Nothing will ever be faster than a flat-out guess that is dead-on correct.

Recon starts with you as the commander thinking through the enemy's own command problems, and seeing what his reasonable alternatives actually are. Then guess which he did, with the main alternatives in the back of your mind. Guess with confidence and audacity. Don't worry that you can't be sure - be fast, not sure.

The defenders do not have enough forces to be strong everywhere. You have the strength advantage, he is trying to make terrain or your movement and exposure even the odds for him. Not every spot on that map can perform those services for him. He needs to avoid your superior long range firepower -same comment. If he doesn't do these things and thus does the unexpected, it will be unexpected because it is also stupid, and you can kill him for it without too much trouble.

So he is going to be in naturally strong position A or naturally strong position B, or split between them 50 50 or 75 25, but he isn't going to be off in Timbuktu or in the middle of a field overlooked by cover on your side or any of the other stupid places.

You made a guess about where he is, his whole defensive scheme. That implies he is really weak or just not present at all at a whole bunch of other locations. Send the minimum number of eyes moving as fast as their legs can carry them to go confirm that hypothesis. Where you think the enemy isn't, it doesn't mean you don't scout. It means you scout fast and kind of reckless. You want to know if your guess was wrong as soon as humanly possible, at a minimum cost in blood and time. Sweep such unimportant areas to reduce the range of unknowns left and to turn your pretty sure guess into a known fact.

That leaves the areas where you actually expect to find enemy. The issue with those is you don't know how strong the enemy is in each of them, and which specific line he picked - this far forward, or back here, with a platoon or a whole company, etc.

And we ask again what you are trying to do, and the answer is destroy the enemy. So these are the places you want to cover with overwatch thick enough to shoot down anything there. Notice, I didn't say anything yet about sending anyone toward them. It isn't the cover where the enemy is that counts for this, it is the cover that can *see* the spots where he is. That is where your own machinegun is going to set up to cover that treeline or interdict that road.

Scouts go to those before the main shooters do. They go more carefully, but still "traveling". Meaning they are on move to contact but are not pausing to listen and watch for minutes on end, they are moving moving moving unless or until somebody shoots at them or similar.

The purpose of those scouts is to ensure your overwatch set up locations are not ambush zones, or minefields. It is also to "put out" any prying enemy eyes that might see you setting up and call for the artillery.

Still no one has moved on a position believed to be occupied by the enemy in force.

So you've verified your guess or mostly so, you've picked your overwatch set up cover, you've scouted it and sent said overwatch firepower to said cover, and now the place you think the enemy is has been covered by your gun barrels.

Next question - shock or fire?

Shock means moving at speed onto the enemy to kill him with close range firepower.

Fire means sending HE and other area effect firepower at the enemy to multiply his losses from each shell.

You shock only where the enemy is already thin. You fire anywhere you know he is thick.

No enemy believed to be there? A few scouts pass through at speed.

Enemy believed to be there but thin? Shock, run them over with 5 times what they are prepared to handle.

Enemy believed to be there and thick? Fire. Call the artillery. Area fire with the tanks at every building. Hose the treeline down with the coaxials. Bullets not bodies make the trip.

The second two each have their own recon aspects. If you are attacking by shock, the recon is a small element leading the main body, close enough for immediate firepower from the main body to hit whoever shoots at the point. But so that the point arrives at enemy cover while the main body is still far enough back that it can reach cover while replying, not get caught in the open.

If you can't see a way to manage that geometry it means you picked the wrong approach route. That is exactly what you are looking for in an avenue of advance.

With fire, on the other hand, you just want to send a few bodies to force the enemy to reveal himself, to make your ammo expended more effective. If you have more than enough ammo, you don't need to bother - just blow the heck out of the place. But that rarely happens. Instead you send a half squad, and if the enemy does not open fire the half squad sees them, and you open fire. If the enemy does open fire, oh well for your poor bloody half squad - avenge them.

Now I know what you are thinking - how can I tell whether they are thin so I should plan for shock or thick so I should plan for fire?

Mindreading. It's the fastest way.

When in doubt, plan for fire. But don't always be in doubt - have some audacity. It will catch the enemy napping sometimes, thinking they will get 5 minutes notice and a spotting round before anything really heats up over in sector two.

The most important takeaway is that recon is not trying to find every enemy position for you, or provide you as the commander with a luxurious certainty before you make a single decision. You as the commander have the job of just flat-out knowing what the enemy is going to do, and directing all your soldiers accordingly. The soldiers don't work for you to make your decisions easier. You work for them, and try to use your cleverness and insight and ability to get inside the enemy's head, to save their lives.

So recon reports are always about checking off a hypothesis as correct, or telling you that you guessed wrong and must adapt and change your plan. They are not there to tell you what you should plan, or even worse what to make a plan about. The time to make a plan for your attack is not 15 minutes after the fighting begins, but 15 minutes before, at the latest.

Sure you will be wrong about some of your guesses. So, make a flexible plan, one that has ways to adapt to likely enemy courses of action. Have a reserve, or a quick way to change the roles of elements of your force. So if the enemy main position happens to be at X instead of Y, then your force A isn't the attack group but a screening element, and group B is a flanking element instead of a reserve - or whatever.

Learn from those fast scouting expeditions which if any of your guesses were wrong, even as your plan steams ahead in the confident expectation that you guessed correctly. If you were wrong, adapt, adapt just once but violently, and in a way you had some plan for or inkling you might need. Have three or four chess combinations waiting up your sleeve for the likely ways you might be wrong.

But have a plan, believe in it, and do not wait to execute it until you are supposedly certain. Nothing is faster than mindreading.

[Bil Hardenberger]

Reconnaissance

There are different types of reconnaissance:

• there is Command Push, where you have a route of advance already in mind and send patrols on ahead of your main body to discover any enemy activity along that route. This is basically the type of recon I did at the start of the Wittmann's Demise AAR.

Personally I am not normally a fan of this type of reconnaissance because except in certain situations you will not have enough information about the enemy force at the beginning of most CM scenarios to create any sort of plan excepting what you can determine from your terrain analysis.

One other thing to be aware of is that when finalizing a plan up front, without good recon and gathering some information, can tend to make you stick to your plan much longer than you probably should have... this is what happened to GaJ in our first GL BETA AAR, he was convinced, even after the battle was over that his initial plan was still sound... he should have abandoned it early in the game and changed his tack as the enemy situation changed.

• there is also Recon Pull, in this type of reconnaissance you send out a net of recon units (I sometimes use up to a third of my force in this role) in order to discover the enemy avenues of advance, or where his defenses lie, but really you want to strive to discover his intent. I use this type of recon in most battles, for examples see my two games against GaJ. The end result is to discover where the enemy is and attack where he is weakest.

• Recon by Fire - when you fire into a terrain feature that could hold an enemy unit, in the hopes that they will fire back or be forced to move, thus giving away their position. I use this all the time, especially when approaching a terrain feature that could hold enemy units.

• Terrain analysis is a form of recon as well.. actually its a part of Intelligence Preparation of the Battlefield (IPB), but for this discussion I believe it counts as a form of recon as it can guide your recon effort and identify key terrain features that you might want to place extra emphasis on.

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My philosophy when approaching a CM battle (and I only play H2H) is to gather information before I make a plan. Sure I might have key avenues of approach identified, in fact you better have an idea on how you want your main body to maneuver, but I will not actually make a firm plan until I know something concrete about the enemy force and have an idea regarding his intentions. Even then any plan has to remain flexible and I am not afraid to totally change my approach depending on what new information is uncovered.

This is a chart that I created a few years ago when writing up a guide to tactics for another game. Note that you never stop conducting recon, estimating the situation, and issuing orders. These are components of the Decision Process that will not end until the battle does.

• Receive Mission: You start off by receiving your mission (this is given to you at the start of a scenario), insure you fully understand what is expected of you.

• Estimate the Situation: You then immediately begin to estimate the situation. This step, along with the reconnaissance and issue orders steps are ongoing processes that will not end until the battle does.

• Create a Tentative Plan: This plan is created from the situation estimate. This step will also get your major formation moving towards their likely jump off positions or defensive locations. These movements should be used to task organize and arrange your forces for the final orders, which will come later.

• Conduct Reconnaissance: The tentative plan, along with information gathered from the situation estimate will drive your reconnaissance. Your reconnaissance will add data to the situation estimate and will help finalize the plan.

• Finalize Plan: The information your reconnaissance gathers will be used to adjust your situation estimate and to finalize your plan. You can then task your reconnaissance with this final plan in mind.

• Issue Orders: As the situation changes you will need to change or adjust orders. Use your situation estimate and reconnaissance to give you enough time to be able to make these adjustments.

Hope this helps.

Bil

[JasonC]

People should use command push, but use it cleverly not mechanically - that is, not just sending a few scouts in a mechanical rigid position ahead of the route of their main body.

Bil is right that there is a separate whole style of fighting that puts the recon elements in the commander's chair, probes everywhere and reinforces success, planning little and late. I strongly advise against that method for newer CM players and relatively inexperience commanders. It dodges the main command issue - seeing the other side of the hill - and postpones decision making. It stresses the weakness parts of most commander's natural behavior - indecisiveness and delay and reactive patterns of action. At its worst, it lets the enemy dictate the actions of your side as well as his own by "painting" your scouting reports.

I understand that Bil is doing a dozen other things he isn't stressing here, that mitigate those issues. He wants to hit weakness and is willing to go deep in time commitment and delay in his planning to find it. At bottom what is letting that work for him is scores of things he knows how to do well, to stay flexible and accurately assess the signals he receives. And the average CM commander can no more expect to do that well consistently than to quit his day job to harvest money off trees.

First learn command push recon. Understand that method root and branch, not mechanically but why it works and how it works. After you have no problem doing that in your sleep, branch out to the recon pull approach if you like.

[George MC]

Now, when we get to the East Front, someone is going to design a scenario where the optimum tactic is for a German infantry company in Halftracks barrels up to a town and unloads for an assault, but expect the forum to explode in controversy.

You don't have to wait

http://www.battlefront.com/index.php?option=com_remository&Itemid=314&func=fileinfo&id=2602

I'd still recce though...

[Erwin]

Thank you for those very helpful advice posts about the concept of Recon.

A couple points regarding Recon in the CM games:

"The defenders do not have enough forces to be strong everywhere. You have the strength advantage..."

Not true in many vs AI games where the human player is very often outnumbered by the defenders - I have experienced attacks at 1:2 and even 1:3 IIRC.

I like the idea of the "fast recon" but its success depends on the designer. Some designers give the attacker hundreds of yards to traverse before you get to enemy positions. Others have your units entering a kill zone within a few meters (if you are not already in enemy LOS in your set-up positions - which also happens). Assuming one is not receiving fire immediately, my SOP has been a combination of QUICK (a couple dozen meters) and HUNT (min move possible) moves with 20-30 seconds pause before every HUNT waypoint. In the game you don't want to run your recon literally to death without the support units seeing what killed em.

"Recon Pull" - In (my) CM games a "net" of recon units spread all over the map is what seems to work best. However, I never had the balls to use as much as a third of my units like Bil does. I am too worried about diluting my attacking force into teams all over the map - especially if the recon will get sniped and so lose men all over the place. I may have two out of every three squads contribute a 2-man scout team each - so six scouts for a company of 3 platoons. When Bil says "one third" does that mean every squad of every platoon contributes one or two recon teams?

It makes sense in the game. Not sure if it's realistic though.

[Bil Hardenberger]

When Bil says "one third" does that mean every squad of every platoon contributes one or two recon teams?

How much I actually use is situation dependent... I will use more assets for recon the more obstacles or terrain features there are on a map (I try to leave no stone unturned)... if it is an open map then I will use fewer scouts, for a close terrain map (wooded, urban, etc.) I will use far more, yes up to a third in these cases.

Bil

[Erwin]

So, for max coverage, with a third in recon teams, you would break quite a few squads into two recon teams (probably of 2 and 3 men each IIRC) and have the rest of each squad stay back in cover?

Once you have the lay of the land, do you bring back the recon teams and reconstitute the fragmented squads before attacking? Or, do you leave recon where they are and bring up the larger squad "core" teams and attack as is?

[Bil Hardenberger]

So, for max coverage, with a third in recon teams, you would break quite a few squads into two recon teams (probably of 2 and 3 men each IIRC) and have the rest of each squad stay back in cover?

Once you have the lay of the land, do you bring back the recon teams and reconstitute the fragmented squads before attacking? Or, do you leave recon where they are and bring up the larger squad "core" teams and attack as is?

I think I have sufficiently explained how I operate in my numerous AARs.

I don't have time to give you a proper long answer... but the short answer is that how I apply recon is highly situation dependent... the recon teams could be out on a limb by themselves with no friendly forces in the vicinity, or they could be backed up by the rest of their squad, or more... again, it all depends on what I expect to encounter and if I am performing a movement to contact (i.e. enemy contact is expected) or if I am solely in an information gathering mode.

Regardless I live by this doctrine:

make contact with the smallest possible element

I am planning a series of posts where I hope to get into all of this in more depth (and tactics in general)... so sorry if this seems dismissive, I don't mean my response that way.

Bil

[Broadsword56]

Regardless I live by this doctrine:

make contact with the smallest possible element

Those CMBN video tutorials by the esteemed Col. Whoosis on Armchair General also make this same point quite well.

[Rocky Balboa]

Most CM scenarios don't allow enough time for the attacking player to do proper reconnaissance. I always like to add more time for this but in a campaign, you don't have the ability to alter the time constraints.

Bill, I would also be interested to hear how you construct a counter reconnaissance plan. Please consider including this in your recon series ...