did a playthru of the Ashsh al-Dababir AKA the Hornets Nest and some lessons learned about urban combat

[Halmbarte]

I just finished playing Sgt Squarehead's excellent Ashsh al-Dababir AKA the Hornets Nest scenario this morning. Up until now I've avoided scenarios that featured urban combat as I suck at it and I get a bunch of crunchies killed and lose supporting armor like crazy. I've read various write up on the forums and watched Youtube videos but it just never clicked. 

 

Then I read this post: 

which had domfluff's excellent advice for using the camera at level 1 to spot buildings that are potential have the potential to be covering your moving troops. Also in that thread was a link to this short write up about street fighting : https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/report/call/call_01-9_karagosian.htm which has this quote 

Quote

the majority of casualties in MOUT take place outside the building, where cover and concealment are least available

and then talks about the need for suppressing or obscuring buildings that have line of sight to when I need to move my troops in the open. 

 

And then it all just clicked. In the city fighting in the Hornets nest I only lost a few troopers fighting in buildings or crossing over to buildings after applying these 2 key principals:

1) Don't move in the open 

2) Smoke or suppress buildings that have LOS when you do have to move in the open

And of my losses were in the 1st few turns where I was in a firefight to get fire superiority of the rooftops. I wanted to be able to move around on the roofs to avoid moving in the streets and to be able to clear buildings from the top down whenever possible. Another learning is that even with target light the troops will burn though a lot of ammo surpassing just the buildings that have LOS. 

 

Big thanks to Sgt Squarehead for getting me going again after a bug kept crashing the game at 30 minutes remaining. 

 

I want to play thru the scenario again, this time using Syrian forces and in particular the BMP3. ISIS has their own VBIEDs but so do the Syrians with the BMP3. I imagine encouraging the troops do debus when under fire is never a problem when they are riding in a BMP3. Keeping the troops mounted and within a 100m might be a problem...

 

H

 

[Sgt.Squarehead]

T-90SA & BMP-3 would make a very reasonable alternative force for this battle, it's what the Iraqi 9th Armoured replaced their older gear (& some of the Abrams) with:

Glad you enjoyed the scenario, you have encouraged me to do a full remake for CM:SF2 at some point in the not too distant future. 

Edited November 26, 2021 by Sgt.Squarehead