How do the Russians play similarly/differently in Black Sea compared to Cold War?

[Simcoe]

With all the discussion going on around Soviet tactics in the CW forum, I thought it might be interesting to compare and contrast the Russians in Black Sea.

It seems like artillery is around the same with small numbers of units that can call support making it necessary to focus on pre planned bombardments.

at the same time, the Russians don’t have the numbers to grind down an entire battalion on a breakthrough.

[THH149]

So many differences, and I'm only a newbie, but ...

- Russian tank forces in BS cant do what they do in CW - they can't attack 13 tanks line abreast line the CW training scenarios in front of undestroyed Javelins and Abrams and US artillery. 

- Russians in BS need more use of terrain to shield their forces, deploy ATGM screens, and try to maneuver to gain advantage, use their drones while destroying US's own.

- the whole pace of an attack is much slower in BS. 

Kriegsdorf in CW would be very difficult if it was updated to BS forces. 

[Simcoe]

33 minutes ago, THH149 said:

So many differences, and I'm only a newbie, but ...

- Russian tank forces in BS cant do what they do in CW - they can't attack 13 tanks line abreast line the CW training scenarios in front of undestroyed Javelins and Abrams and US artillery. 

- Russians in BS need more use of terrain to shield their forces, deploy ATGM screens, and try to maneuver to gain advantage, use their drones while destroying US's own.

- the whole pace of an attack is much slower in BS. 

Kriegsdorf in CW would be very difficult if it was updated to BS forces. 

Thank you for the reply! I played a bit of the first Russian campaign mission and found the same. It seems like they play very similar to all the other modern armies just with less flexible artillery.

How do they differ to other modern armies?

 

[domfluff]

That's quite a layered question, with some curveballs thrown in, so bear with me:

Firstly, sourcing:
https://www.armyupress.army.mil/Portals/7/Hot Spots/Documents/Russia/2017-07-The-Russian-Way-of-War-Grau-Bartles.pdf

In some respects this is apparently (and unsurprisingly, since it's five years later) out of date by now, but it's absolutely relevant for CMBS.

In there, you can see that the majority of the fundamentals of Soviet doctrine have survived intact into the modern day - attacking on-line for maximum mass, the focus on meeting engagements, on counter-attack in the defence, etc. In this sense, CMCW lets you see those fundamentals very clearly, in their intended context, before you translate them to a new one.

First curveball - there's a large difference between Russia vs Ukraine and Russia vs the US here. The latter is significantly more asymmetric, so ends up breaking a lot of the rules or otherwise forcing you out of where you want to be. That's essentially why things like Javelin exist, of course - they're supposed to be disruptive technology, aimed at plausible opposition. Will focus on Russia vs Ukraine then, with some notes on the US at the end.

Second curveball - I'm not convinced that all Black Sea scenarios capture or represent the main tropes of hyper-modern warfare as well as they could. Arguably that's true for all CM titles, but I suspect it's inevitably a little worse for Black Sea, due to the speculative nature of everything. As an example of that, Between Two Fahrbahns in Cold War. That's scenario that's great fun to play from either side, plays well H2H, and it's perfectly competent... but isn't terribly representative of "Cold War", and doesn't really make an argument, express a concept or investigate a tactical problem of the period. The same scenario might as well have Shermans vs Panzer IVs and it would work equally well.

So, what defines Black Sea? Philip Karber has a definition of the real combat in the region as "high intensity combat on a low density battlefield", and I think that core idea should also define CMBS. As a basic rule of thumb then - it's pretty common to use a Quick Battle map that's one size larger than your force. In Black Sea I think that should really be two sizes larger by default. That same thinking can/should apply to scenarios, but it's intended as a quick representation of the idea.

The other difference in theme is that in Cold War the operational tempo is paramount. Typically the tactical battlefield is not something that needs to be taken, it's something that needs to be move through, as fast as possible. This is part of the reason why the Soviets could be (had to be) comparatively free with casualties - gaining operational freedom is the goal here, and the tactical-level losses are acceptable.

This is not true for Black Sea. The Russian army is smaller, more casualty-adverse, and isn't screaming towards the Rhine at maximum velocity. This means you'll be more interested in capturing objectives, and can't afford to take the losses. In addition, the Russian army has significantly improved equipment. Much better spotting and C2, faster call-in times for artillery, ERA and APS, drones to call in massed fires, etc. They also have pushed assets down to lower levels - not as much as the US do, but significantly more than the Soviets, meaning that small units are significantly more capable and independent. The Russian air defence is significantly better than the US, so they should have drone superiority (and the US have nothing that can shoot down Zala at all). 

So how do you marry these two ideas? Soviet fundamentals, whilst being casualty-adverse? This is perhaps the major problem to solve as the Russians, but a lot of it comes down to controlling your engagements. You still want to be attacking on-line, with maximum firepower against a subset of the enemy, but you want to be careful as and when you engage, and to control that engagement with overwhelming firepower. An actual engagement might only last a minute or two, and a battle might be a lot of sneaking and manoeuvre, followed by a brief period of devastating fires. High intensity, Low density.

The first mission of the Russian campaign in the core game is indicative, I think. This is fundamentally a Soviet doctrinal meeting engagement. This is identical in concept to Miller's training scenario from CMCW, or the first mission of the Soviet campaign in Cold War, but the differences start to become apparent.

In the Russian campaign scenario, you have all the elements of that meeting engagement - you have a recon platoon, followed by a Forward Security Element of a BMP-3 company and a tank platoon, and they should be doing the same fundamental job.

The differences really start when the follow-up to that FSE is a single tank company, and not an entire battalion. That means that you're inherently more limited in how you can approach this.

The approach I took with this was to advance with the recon platoon and get spots along the route of contact, then advance at the speed of the fireplan. The FSE wants to march into a valley, so, suppressing the high town objective on the valley's far side is what allowed the follow-on tank company to take up a base of fire on the right side hill, on-line, and dominate the valley with fires.

The FSE can then approach into the valley floor, preceded with drone-summoned fires on the central objective, and with covering fires on likely enemy positions to the flanks. This FSE can then bypass, surround and reduce the central objective, before moving on to take on the others to the conclusion.

At each stage the fundamentals are the same - your fire plan is paramount, and in each bound you're attempting to go fires-first, maximising firepower at every engagement. 

So, how about the US? Well, Abrams, Bradley and Javelin represent disruptive technology, that will do terrible things to you. The fundamentals remain identical, but you can do everything right and still lose sometimes, and anything you do wrong will be punished severely. Fighting javelins is about firepower and the terrain read - they're systems used on foot, and the modern US infantryman doesn't like mortars anymore than anyone else does, so denying potential javelin positions is as important as anything. Abrams need to be engaged from the flank where possible (ideally from two angles at once), and Bradleys are near-psychic in their spotting, so you need to engage them quickly and decisively with excellent recon - you never want to get into an engagement where you don't already have spotting contacts.

Edited February 9, 2022 by domfluff

[Stardekk]

@domfluff What about Stryker infantry ? In my experiance does guys are leaning on mass fire-support from drones, CAS, arty etc. It can be seen in the scenario "Rollin' On The River and the Stryker camapaign, where basiaclly almost every mission there you get an Apache flight. So you might want to attack as fast as possible, before all the Fire Support falls on you. And accept that if you are attacking a Stryker Troop will you lose at least 9 tanks (i.e. the amont of Javelin missiles a Company can get). 

 

 

And also, about the Drone superiority, I will have to disagree. This is very situational- you will need to have a Tunguska in your force and that the enemy force won't have MQ-1C Grey Eagles, which can take out a Tunguska very Easily, (The Tunguska can't shoot at the Drone when its obsderving, and the Drones can call "Point Target CAS or precision artillery on the Tunguska, or even, fire its own hellfires at it, I tested it a acouple times and  you can kill a Tunguska with the hellfires of the drone 80% of the time with getting hand-free if there is no other AA assets in the battlefield).

Anyway, in my Opinion to lose that Drone superiority the opponent just needs to have an MQ-1C, and if you don't want not to lose any AA, you will have to buy more than 1 Tunguska and even then its not 100% success, (I found that MANPADS are sort of inconsistant. Especially if you bring them with only 1 Missile, and they  could also be ignored if you bring Fixed-Wing air).





 

Edited February 8, 2022 by Stardekk

[domfluff]

Attacking into Javelins is one of the unsolved problems of Black Sea, and it's tough. It's also why I tried to separate out the "What about the US" from the above, because the situation is so asymmetric that it breaks most of the rules. It's not quite as bad, but it's a similar situation to CMSF - being competitive with the Syrians vs US is so far outside of "normal", that it's actually a distraction.

Along those lines, I don't accept that it's okay to expect to lose at least 9 tanks, or at least the intention has to be to do everything possible to not have that occur. How to avoid that is firmly non-trivial - again, you can do everything right and still lose, and anything you do wrong will be severely punished.

You're right about the Grey Eagle, but the US has significantly worse anti-air options in CMBS than the Russians do. You also *always* want to have air defence in a Russian force, probably down to the company level (and ideally leaning on at least medium Electronic Warfare), because these are aspects that are your advantages - it's not coincidence that both of those are central to their planning in general.

Now, again, "How to beat the US with the Russians in Black Sea" is fundamentally a different question to "How do the Russians play similarly/different in Cold War compared with Black Sea?" - the former really doesn't have any good answers in the game or real life (although is fascinating, and well worth discussing), whilst the latter has some firmer grounding, I think, and it's what the above is what I was trying to offer an answer for.

[Simcoe]

Great answers everyone! This is what I come to the forums for.

[Chip76]

Really enjoyable short read.

  A lot of important fundamentals, of playing the Russians, packed into a neat package.

Thank you all.

[Chibot Mk IX]

On 2/8/2022 at 3:55 AM, domfluff said:

The other difference in theme is that in Cold War the operational tempo is paramount. Typically the tactical battlefield is not something that needs to be taken, it's something that needs to be move through, as fast as possible. This is part of the reason why the Soviets could be (had to be) comparatively free with casualties - gaining operational freedom is the goal here, and the tactical-level losses are acceptable.

This is not true for Black Sea. The Russian army is smaller, more casualty-adverse, and isn't screaming towards the Rhine at maximum velocity. This means you'll be more interested in capturing objectives, and can't afford to take the losses.

Yes, +1. Not an expert but I think modern day Russian Army adapt to a totally different operational doctrine. It’s no longer an Army look for deep battle, but focus on border conflicts/ skirmish.

[THH149]

Russians really need to take the high ground against the US, as well as having a great, responsive artillery arm to neutralize woods lines filled with Dragons or Javelins, thats where more drones help. And then manage exposure to one 'section' of the battlefield at a time, whether thats a field or valley is up to the situation.