Tactical Conundrum - Platoon Patrol 2022

[Flibby]

I wonder if anyone has any advice for me based around this interesting small scenario. My first thoughts upon a few very unsuccessful attempts is that you have to be very fortunate in order to succeed as you don't necessarily have the tools to pull off what appears to be quite a complex breaching operation - but happy to be corrected and told that I am a complete nub!

The objective is to overcome the river obstacle using the single ford in the centre of the map, and clear the opposite bank to form a beachhead of sorts.

Our command is a single platoon with an attached Javelin squad with two rounds. Each squad has a PKM and a liberal smattering of various RPGs.

My initial overview is that the enemy will set up on the high round in cover on the opposite bank, creating a kill zone around the ford which is the obvious focus for any assault.

My terrain analysis shows some concealment on the right where the woods are located which could be used by a manoeuvre group to approach close to the bank, and some hedges in the centre which could be used to overwatch the opposite bank.

My initial plan is to strip out the PKMs from the 3 squads, along with the javelin to form a support by fire position in the centre. The remaining troops would travel down the right under suppression from the centre and breach the river.

You can see from the following image that the enemy consists of 2 HMGs (one not shown here), a 2 man sniper team and at least another couple of teams and an HQ unit. My overwatch is not in any real cover, and by the time they get into positions where they can see the enemy, they are themselves suppressed and we're stuck without the necessary fire superiority to manoeuvre anywhere.

 

Usually I would either a) use some smoke to parcel up the situation and allow me to focus fires and/or b) approach from a different angle to permit focus on the enemy in a piecemeal fashion. I neither have any arty or long range smoke, or any other options other than to use the central ford to get onto the other side. I can't see where placing the overwatch in another location, as there is no cover as such, would help here.

Has anyone any tips, advice, or guidance on how to approach this different?

Cheers  

 

[domfluff]

I've not seen this scenario, but it's a conversion of an existing cmbn scenario. That's interesting for the comparison, but it does mean that the weapon ranges and effects are significantly more lethal - for example, your javelin team was originally a light mortar, which is both a little more useful in this context, but decidedly less impactful when it hits. Since that was a US 60mm, it similarly lacks smoke.

So, caveats aside, the core principles are the same. For any river crossing one has to establish control of the far bank as much as possible, then cross, consolidate that position, then push on.

Given the tools available to you, you have to do this with direct fires. This means finding covered approaches to the rivers edge, and forming a base of fire there. In CMBN you'd have bocage to help you do this, but I imagine in a CMBS conversion this would be harder.

You're probably forced into doing this by stealth. Holding fire with short arcs, and sneaking up to the hedge lines - taking advantage of the javelin thermal optics and engaging in a short, sharp and probably costly firefight. The enemy's night vision will cut into this plan, but you should still have the advantage.

You do still want to isolate sections as much as possible, so focusing on a single flank is probably the plan here.