Maneuvering the Enemy

[Carter]

I read an old article from Armor Magazine that I couldn't get out of my mind.

The article was called "Maneuvering the Enemy" by Captain Charles D. Starbird.

It is located at: http://www.knox.army.mil/armormag/mj96/3enemy96.pdf

The article discusses ways to influence the enemy's maneuvering. This is touted as a quality found in great commanders.

I would have to agree. Manipulating the enemy to fall right into your hands is pure genius!

It's easy to see how "Maneuvering the Enemy" would be very useful on the battlefield or against human opponents in TACOPS.

Unfortunately I couldn't find any good references dedicated to the subject.

Does anybody know of a good one?

Would anyone care to discuss their experience "Maneuvering the Enemy" or being "Maneuvered by the Enemy" in TACOPS or real-life?

[minmax]

Carter,

Would be glad to put in my two cents.

1. I have read the article and it is a very sound and logical premise.

2. In my limited exposure to actual combat I was taught (more like it was drilled into my brain) that you should manuever your enemy into the terrain and situation that is to your advantage. The hardest part of this is not trying to push a situation where the enemy does not cooperate with your plan. I often got in trouble when someone blew the ambush (fired too early) or the target approached from a bad angle which was just plain bad planning on my part.

3. Like Sun-Tzu said, "Fight only on YOUR terms". It is better wait for the right situation then force the wrong situation. The hard part is having the patience and discipline to let your target walk all the way into the meat grinder. This is especially tough for boots b/c they are already scared sh*tless and don't want to get into a furball. Or you have the rambo types that fire too early. The young bull wants to run down hill, jump the fence, and pop some heifers. The old bull says walk down hill, go through the gate, and pop ALL them heifers. Sorry, its the Texan in me. Anyway, ambush is the quinticential attack; hit, kill, clear, and set up down the way. A ton of factors have to be planned for and you must trust your team to do their job and follow orders while at the same time having the initiative to pull back or open up when the time is right. Okay nuff said.

[Mike Robel]

Here is a good article to read for TTPs.

Closing with the Enemy: Company Team Manuever.

To access the article, go to http://call.army.mil/products/spc_sdy/hickey/preface.htm.

Type in "Hickey" and the article will appear. Pretty long, but good reading.

Mike Robel

[ 11-27-2001: Message edited by: Mike Robel ]</p>

[Carter]

One example of Maneuvering the Enemy that should be useful in TACOPS was performed by Daniel Bolger when he was a company commander visiting the NTC.

His company was dug in and hidden along an obvious enemy avenue-of-approach. He patiently let the OPFOR recon units pass by his concealed positions without firing on them. The OPFOR recon units came and went and assumed that that avenue-of-approach was undefended. Later, when the main OPFOR assault moved into that same position, which they thought was a defensive hole, they were very surprised and almost completely destroyed.

You could use this in TACOPS. Against the AI, I think you should hit all the recon units. But let the unit moving where you want the enemy to go penetrate the furthest. Hopefully the follow-on units will attack the area where the penetration was the deepest. If you've planned things out right, that will be the area where you are waiting for them.

I guess you've got to remain flexible, so that you can handle things if the plan doesn't work. But this is a way to exploit OPFOR tactics.

The key is knowing the enemy, and then figuring out a way to exploit your knowledge of the enemy.

[ 11-29-2001: Message edited by: Carter ]</p>

[minmax]

Yup,

The perfect plan is to let the eyes go by and hit the main body. another good trick is to have a smaller hit team kill the scouts once they hear your lighting up the main body. Also posting stingers that hit any stragglers or leakers from the ambush helps a bunch. The best weapon in that kind of situation is PANIC. force your opponent to do something stupid and don't give them the breathing space to pull it together tactically or mentally.

[Jeff Gilbert]

Personally, I have always been a big fan of giving the Recon/Scout units a fairly free ride with maybe a little harassing fire [don't want then to get too suspicious]. I do this for 2 reasons:

1 - Main Body always follows the Recon/Scouts and I need to know where my enemy wants to go.

2 - Main Body generally will follow the same path as the Recon.

Now that I know where his wants to go and I have a good idea of his intended path I try to set up a Fire-Sack or flank/rear ambush shots on him. I always try to initiate my attacks from the rear.

Anyway, that's my 2 cents worth ...

[Carter]

One time the AI maneuvered me. I don't know if it was intentional or not, but it worked.

I had a tank hiding in the woods waiting to take a shot at an enemy company that was closing in.

I got a shot or two off at the company, then kicked into reverse. I thought my tank had gotten away when an OPFOR jet appeared and destroyed my tank.

It was kinda like a Hounds-to-the-hunters tactic.

I decided to use a big artillery smokescreen whenever I could to prevent this. Some air defense would have been helpful to, but I didn't have any in that scenario.

[Redwolf]

I found that maneuvering units to show them to the opponent (as opposed to strike again him) can be a very useful tool in setting action and reaction patterns on your terms, especially on defense.

If you are numerically inferior and the enemy concentrates against you, you might distract considerable parts of the force for (useless) security missions. It may also cause slowdown the attacker cannot effort or it may cause the attacker not to stick to his original plan.

For the attacker, you may cause the defender to be too hesitant to commit his reserves, or not to open fire with all AT-<whatever you showed them> units unless those units are visible again.

In a way, the opponent's ignorance about your possession of units can be an advantage for him, mentally freeing him to allow high concentration. But destroying this illusion, you neutralize this psychological advantage and by showing up in multiple places you might even cause him to overestimate you, negating the advantage.

This works better in ww2 games than Tacops, because players usually have few heavy units especially suitable for that. A heavy tank formation, heavy artillery dropping spotting rounds or a heavy tank destroyer popping up at a place and then disappearing again will cause a considerable reaction. Actually committing these units may have few effect because heavy tanks are far from invincible and heavy artillery doesn't have enough ammunition by definition. Psychological usage may have more impact and it doesn't use the unit up.

I wonder whether tactics along this line have been used in real life. Any ideas?

[Carter]

<blockquote>quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by redwolf:

I found that maneuvering units to show them to the opponent (as opposed to strike again him) can be a very useful tool in setting action and reaction patterns on your terms, especially on defense.

I wonder whether tactics along this line have been used in real life. Any ideas?<hr></blockquote>

I know that Rommel used this tactic in North Africa.

One time he simulated a major assault from one direction, causing the British to retreat away from the decoy attack ... straight into the real attack Rommel had planned.

[Mike Robel]

Well, I am not going to give away all my secrets, but ALWAYS blind the enemy. Kill his reconaissance. A good commander will reconstitute his recon units and send them in next. KILL THEM TOO. If he does it again, why then KILL THE NEW ONES.

When the Advance Guard Company comes through, kill it.

NEVER let the recon through. For one thing, you don't know what they have seen, particularly in a two sided game. Letting them through is about the same as committing suicide.

So far as decieving the enemy about where I am coming, well, you haven't paid for those cards. Suffice it to say, showing someone a unit, then taking it back like a feather dancer can be effective. But there are many other ways of decieving the enemy with timing, direction, types of units, minefield locations, dummy markers (when a game supports such a construct to mimic the tactical level decoys that are available.) as well as verbal "abuse" of a player.

However, I firmly believe the key is to "Find the Bastard, then pile on." as we used to say in the 11th Cav. And when one is being piled on, the important thing is not to lose your cool. Surprise is an event that occurs in the mind of the commander.

Happy Hunting...

Kind Regards

Mike Robel

[Missionman]

Hey,

If i may, here's a tactic that's effective against vehicular columns.

I trick is to make a wedge or a chevron with mine 4-5 kilometers away from the "entry point" of any armored column. Many contiguous stagered "layers" of mines can be employed for a better firework! Arty should be targeted at the space between the mines where the column will eventually grind to a halt.

When that happens, it's time to rain those 155mm on top of them. Also, by positionning your AT (Anti-Tank) capability behind enemy vehicules, in the space between the "entry point" and the mine ambush, you maximise your chances of scoring damaging hits on heavy armor such as T-72 and T-80. The secret is in the timing since everything has to go relatively simultaneously. So in order to make it a "surprise" for the bad guys, keep those AT camouflaged and silenced until Opfor enters the "kill zone". All at once, let go with your arty, Tanks, Javelin, ADATS and any Air assets you may dispose of.

As those Opfor BMPs and BTRs are hit, others will start dismounting enemy units on foot. This is the time to let loose with you General Purpose Machine Gun (GPMG) and any other support weapons you have had time to position in a proper 90 degree angle across the kill zone.

If you have snipers, assign them priority targets such as enemy Machine Guns, Anti-Aircraft (A-A), grenade launchers, whatever is your priority at the time. For example, i use a lot of air units to move troops fast and to ambush armor. So in order to keep my choppers flying, i concentrate my snipers and gunners on A-A and neutralise their capabilities asap. Do not forget about the ZSUs! They will shread your helos to pieces so get them off the map fast.

Try using no more than 50-60% of your assets for the main ambush since some of the enemy will surely slip-by.

Try this and let me know how the tactic worked.

Glad to be of some help.

Cordially,

Missionman

[Redwolf]

<blockquote>quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by Missionman:

I trick is to make a wedge or a chevron with mine 4-5 kilometers away from the "entry point" of any armored column. Many contiguous stagered "layers" of mines can be employed for a better firework! Arty should be targeted at the space between the mines where the column will eventually grind to a halt.

When that happens, it's time to rain those 155mm on top of them. Also, by positionning your AT (Anti-Tank) capability behind enemy vehicules, in the space between the "entry point" and the mine ambush, you maximise your chances of scoring damaging hits on heavy armor such as T-72 and T-80.<hr></blockquote>

The only problem is that this is pretty obvious.

Places where you can stack the mines, a killing zone and ambush infantry one after another are few. So few that the enemy may afford the time to send infantry into the likely infantry ambush positions first. In that case your infantry will not be able to pull back fast enough.

Whereas, and here comes my toy again, if you can trick the enemy into suspecting way to many such zones, you can slow hom down, make him change plans and outright surrender. Well, maybe not.

[Missionman]

Good point Redwolf.

My original command was related to combat with an AI opponent. The problem is that it wasn't mentionned in my commentary that i was refering to a "computer" advesary. Against a fellow human player, this trick (The wedge) seldom applies.

I have never played against another human player. I am the only one i know who actually knows and enjoys this type of games hence my presence on Battlefront.com.

[Carter]

I thought you had a good comment Missionman.

I'm definitly thinking about trying your idea out against the computer.

I welcome any ideas, for use against the AI or human vs human.

[Carter]

I have a short list of tactics that involve "Maneuvering the enemy"

- Hounds-to-the-Hunters

- Bait-and-Switch

- Decoy-Attacks or "demonstrations"

- Feints

- Defensive Decoys