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Handling US Infantry Weapons Companies


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Hello all,

As some of you may know I recently converted a large number of CMFI, CMBN, and CMFB maps to Black Sea. They've been fantastic and let me really play around with different formations. Chief among those units that I am being acquainted with is the US Infantry Battalion. Most of the elements of the battalion I'm familiar with, but I am having great difficulty effectively using the Weapons Company. I can plainly see that 4 platoons of heavy weapons mounted in Humvees is a powerful and mobile striking force, but I have no idea how to use them. I have tried establishing a base of fire with them, tried maneuvering them as sections, platoons and a company, tried dispersing them out among the infantry platoons. In each effort my results have been much less than say the Weapons Companies of the Russian or Ukrainian BTR Battalions, despite the TOW and advanced optics making the US Weapons Companies much more effective in theory.

I have tried reading the field manual - http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/policy/army/fm/3-21-12/fm3-21-12.pdf
While I get the gist of it, I'm a Canadian soldier by training so some of the doctrine is lost on me.

I would really appreciate someone breaking this down either in gameplay terms, or if anyone wants to talk shop, breaking down the key parts of the doctrine.

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3 hours ago, Artkin said:

I apologize for the off topic post, but is there a download link for the conversion? 

I am no soldier so I cannot help :P

Perhaps I will help bump the topic though

Ask  your CV9030 friend.  She probably train with US forces at a somewhat regular basis. Maybe she knows how they use the weapons Company? 

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4 hours ago, DougPhresh said:

Thank you greatly! I hope the master maps were translated the most!

1 hour ago, Armorgunner said:

Ask  your CV9030 friend.  She probably train with US forces at a somewhat regular basis. Maybe she knows how they use the weapons Company? 

Haha she is no longer with me. She had only stayed two weeks. She was in Dubai just after that. Now she is probably home :(

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I have some problems with the weapons company to, mostly on the offensive. Works quite good on the Defence, except for the bug with the AT missile launch. When the enemy get the exact position of the launcher, the moment it fires. Though it works better in bad weather. Particulary when playing as the US, Against the US that bug is fearsom. 

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I was in heavy weapons company for a while. Maybe I can provide insight, but chances are you've already tried it(or did, as I read above). You're supposed to use them the same way you use all the other infantry. Establish a base of fire, and bound forward or flank. Difference is, they have bigger guns than the light infantry(obviously), are more durable, and are much more mobile. They are very situational. In real life, you can dismount your weapons making them a lot less vulnerable to AT weapons. AFAIK, you can't do that in CMBS(except in QB setup), so they aren't as effective in game compared to reality.

Where you will probably find the most use(and not particularly useful against AI to be honest) is to quickly plug gaps in defensive lines, where you need additional firepower. Don't have enough AT weapons? Roll up some trucks with TOWs. Mass infantry advancing on you? Bring up the .50s and the Mk19s. Personally, I will occasionally use them as bait, to draw out fire in areas where I suspect/know there is a lack of AT or heavy weapons. I find that they also provide a small resupply for the crunchies.

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7 hours ago, DougPhresh said:

<Snip>  I would really appreciate someone breaking this down either in gameplay terms, or if anyone wants to talk shop, breaking down the key parts of the doctrine.

For RL doctrine someone like @panzersaurkrautwerfer, @Combatintman or @pnzrldr and a few others would be more up to date on current doctrine (what they are allowed to say about it).

For the game play part I was waiting with interest to see what people would post on the topic.  But it is a very big topic and it is hard to post a short generalization to fit all the different circumstances.  I think that is why they are holding back.  I generally do what you have tried: base of fire and dispersing them among the maneuver platoons or on many missions a combination of the two.  

On the defense I first set up heavy weapons on OpFor avenues of approach, then support them with medium weapons then use rifle platoons to build strong points around med/hvy weapons.  Also the usual OP/LPs and force security.    

On the offense I position them to support the scheme of maneuver.  I often have a base of fire which itself may maneuver to keep up with and support the maneuver platoons.  Some may be assigned to go with a maneuver platoon.  As @Firehead said the vehicles are vulnerable to AT weapons so this tends to make me use them cautiously.     

 

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13 minutes ago, Firehead said:

I was in heavy weapons company for a while. Maybe I can provide insight, but chances are you've already tried it(or did, as I read above). You're supposed to use them the same way you use all the other infantry. Establish a base of fire, and bound forward or flank. Difference is, they have bigger guns than the light infantry(obviously), are more durable, and are much more mobile. They are very situational. In real life, you can dismount your weapons making them a lot less vulnerable to AT weapons. AFAIK, you can't do that in CMBS(except in QB setup), so they aren't as effective in game compared to reality.

Where you will probably find the most use(and not particularly useful against AI to be honest) is to quickly plug gaps in defensive lines, where you need additional firepower. Don't have enough AT weapons? Roll up some trucks with TOWs. Mass infantry advancing on you? Bring up the .50s and the Mk19s. Personally, I will occasionally use them as bait, to draw out fire in areas where I suspect/know there is a lack of AT or heavy weapons. I find that they also provide a small resupply for the crunchies.

Thanks for your answer

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Very insightful guys, thanks! I'll keep playing around with them, I think part of the problem is that I'm not very good at handling Humvees. I've gotten better at keeping the vehicles from being knocked out, but those gunners drop like flies.

e: Is there a "typical" dispersion between vehicles I should be looking for?
 

Edited by DougPhresh
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It may be a mobility issue, or maybe the corporate memory has been lost, but after the Army got religion in the mid 1980s on the FA frag hazard to TOW gunners (before the M901 "Hammerhead" debuted), it rapidly came up with a Kevlar tent, if you will, over the gunner and the launcher. The tent was made up of a bunch of layers of already in the supply chain Kevlar™ blankets rigged over a simple inverted "U" set of hoops. Can't for the life of me recall the acronym. Believe, mobility issues permitting, this would be a good idea for a number of heavy weapons.

Regards,

John Kettler

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18 hours ago, DougPhresh said:

Hello all,

As some of you may know I recently converted a large number of CMFI, CMBN, and CMFB maps to Black Sea. They've been fantastic and let me really play around with different formations. Chief among those units that I am being acquainted with is the US Infantry Battalion. Most of the elements of the battalion I'm familiar with, but I am having great difficulty effectively using the Weapons Company. I can plainly see that 4 platoons of heavy weapons mounted in Humvees is a powerful and mobile striking force, but I have no idea how to use them. I have tried establishing a base of fire with them, tried maneuvering them as sections, platoons and a company, tried dispersing them out among the infantry platoons. In each effort my results have been much less than say the Weapons Companies of the Russian or Ukrainian BTR Battalions, despite the TOW and advanced optics making the US Weapons Companies much more effective in theory.

I have tried reading the field manual - http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/policy/army/fm/3-21-12/fm3-21-12.pdf
While I get the gist of it, I'm a Canadian soldier by training so some of the doctrine is lost on me.

I would really appreciate someone breaking this down either in gameplay terms, or if anyone wants to talk shop, breaking down the key parts of the doctrine.

The first thing to keep in mind is...unlike tanks...they are NOT "shoot while move" weapon systems(especially the TOW's). The 50 cals and the MK19's seem to shoot fine at low/med speeds (in game), but you will need to set the TOWs up in ambush positions to use them properly. As has been mentioned above, there are significant differences in how to employ these weapons  "in game" vs IRL.

As an example...IRL, units would almost always seek to use the TOWs at maximum range...and the plt ldr would employ "TOW decoy charges" (simulate the missile blackblast) to confuse the enemy as to the actual firing unit's location.

Here's my advice...

Depending on whether your 50 cal and Mk 19 Humvees are equipped with LRAS3(FLIR), I have found that dropping an artillery smokescreen between you and the enemy will give you the advantage in being able to fire when most Red units are unable to shoot back. TOW FLIR sights can see through smoke just fine. With proper placement, you should easily have the upper hand by the time the smoke clears! :D

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9 hours ago, cbennett88 said:

I have found that dropping an artillery smokescreen between you and the enemy will give you the advantage in being able to fire when most Red units are unable to shoot back. TOW FLIR sights can see through smoke just fine.

Hmmm. Very interesting. But could somebody tell me, don't Russian tanks have FLIR too? How about some of their other AFVs?

Michael

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1 hour ago, Michael Emrys said:

Hmmm. Very interesting. But could somebody tell me, don't Russian tanks have FLIR too? How about some of their other AFVs?

Michael

Yes...Russian tanks do have FLIR, but from my experience in the game, they suffer some percentage of degraded spotting ability through smoke. I think both "in game" and IRL, the Russian FLIR systems are at least a generation behind the West. Maybe US FLIR systems do too, but I have not experienced it in any noticeable way. The spotting advantage seems clearly on the US side...and as the game shows time and time again..."He who fires first almost always wins!" ;)

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11 hours ago, cbennett88 said:

<Snip> Depending on whether your 50 cal and Mk 19 Humvees are equipped with LRAS3(FLIR), I have found that dropping an artillery smokescreen between you and the enemy will give you the advantage in being able to fire when most Red units are unable to shoot back. TOW FLIR sights can see through smoke just fine. With proper placement, you should easily have the upper hand by the time the smoke clears! :D

NICE!!!! I like this :D.  Just remember to unbutton the Humvees so they can use their primary thermal sensor and this should work very well.  

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I used to use this tactic in playing TacOps which was depicting combat in the 1990s, before the Russians got thermals. If I was defending, which was most of the time in TacOps, I would put the smoke down in front of my positions so that the opfor would not achieve an early penetration of the smokescreen. If I were attacking, I would lay the smokescreen down in front of the opfor positions so that I would not penetrate it too early. As long as the screen held up, I was shooting fish in a barrel while invulnerable to counter fire.

Michael

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45 minutes ago, Michael Emrys said:

I used to use this tactic in playing TacOps which was depicting combat in the 1990s, before the Russians got thermals. If I was defending, which was most of the time in TacOps, I would put the smoke down in front of my positions so that the opfor would not achieve an early penetration of the smokescreen. If I were attacking, I would lay the smokescreen down in front of the opfor positions so that I would not penetrate it too early. As long as the screen held up, I was shooting fish in a barrel while invulnerable to counter fire.

Michael

I just read Steven Zaloga's Red Thrust: Attack on the Central Front, Soviet Tactics and Capabilities in the 1990s.  In his third chapter "Tank Attack: The Charge at Pressbach" NATO does exactly this - a Soviet tank battalion attacks the small village of Pressbach expected demoralized German reservists but instead run into a company of M1A1s - The T-80Bs lack thermal sights and the defenders pop obscurants to degrade the Soviet capabilities and give those Commies a good wringing! :D

So it definitely isn't a new idea - the inklings of using smoke to degrade non-thermal equipped enemies by the very least were there in 1989!

(I also admit to doing that in TacOps, too!  Though my experience there was that Zaloga was optimistic about the gap in capabilities!)

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The Heavy Weapons Company is not a "real" company.  

The idea behind it is to provide heavy weapons support to other units within the Battalion.  The doctrinal employment isn't as set in stone last I read, but normal allocation is one platoon per rifle company (although in the event a rifle company needed additional augmentation, it might receive more).  They're in a company by themselves though for "peacetime" purposes of keeping all the similar equipment, and training requirements attached to it under one roof (it's easier to send all of D Co to the range to do TOW gunnery, than sync A, B, C co's TOW gunners across the battalion given the normal tasking cycle*), and if all the "guntruck" type HMMWVs are in one Company it keeps the maintenance footprint for the otherwise "light" companies narrow.

In practice, the HMMWVs may be used as support by fire assets, firing from the vehicle.  From running missions in the simulators (which is as close as I got to an IBCT) it was often more practical to treat the vehicles as a prime mover/ammo dump for the weapons system, dismounting it to a better firing position.  When using the truck it was generally best to keep it "behind the lines" in as far as never leading with it, and allowing the infantry it was supporting to make contact first (thus engaging the enemy forces and keeping them from getting easy AT weapon shots).  Basically have a route to go from firing position to firing position that is concealed from direct observation for best results.

I tend not to play to much with light forces in CMBS, but if I was forced to at gun point, I would put my infantry forward with Javelins if available, then the TOW HMMWVs concealed at standoff.  Basically the infantry disrupts/degrades the attacking enemy forces, then once the enemy commits forces to the assault, you start putting TOWs into the fight.  Same deal with MK-19s and to a lesser degree .50 cals, I'd want the enemy to engage my smallest possible element to encourage him to underbid for the objective, then force him to adjust once his forces on the assault become engaged by heavy weapons (it is more effect to maul one of his elements, and force him to adjust than it is to have to chew through his main effort).

If you've chopped up his one attack enough, then you displace to focus on another objective again using movement out of direct line of observation (this is the real advantage to the vehicles).  It might even be best with the TOWs especially to bug out once you've put a missile into something (Tank or dirt) just to avoid it getting massed on.  

Dunno.  Prefer playing with tanks.  




*Companies are normally on "red, amber, green" stance, which determines which Company is tasked with assignments like supporting other unit's training exercises, or non-training taskings like a large scale motorpool cleaning/filling the formation out at a Division CoC.  Red meant you were the go-to company for all things, amber meant you could be tasked if the red company was buried, and green meant you were free to do whatever you needed to do (generally this corresponded to field training, or other major events).  Your miliage varies, infantry companies usually could still train pretty okay during Amber and even some Red cycles because they had a ton of people, and a lot of individual training events (like it's still beneficial to send 40-50 of your 150 dude infantry company to land nav or the rifle range, even if the other 100 are busy scrubbing the motorpool or something), but Red for us tank companies basically meant full stop for anything but slow pace maintenance (again, you take 70 people out of a rifle company you've still got 80 dudes to train or do work, you take 70 people out of a tank company, you've left behind like 15-20 dudes). 

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