Artillery depolyed antitank/antipersonnel mines.

[John Kettler]

Oleg,

Thanks for those! Couldn't help noticing that DPICM warheads are available for that MRL. That's what the expression "cumulative and frag" means. "Cumulative" is the shortened translated Russian term for HEAT, normally rendered "warheads of cumulative effect," and "frag" needs no explanation. Thus, a system like that could, perhaps for the first time in U.S. experience, give the U.S. the kind of pain it so freely inflicts on Third World military forces as a matter of course.

[ January 09, 2006, 04:36 PM: Message edited by: John Kettler ]

[undead reindeer cavalry]

there have been lots of talk about MOUT but i get the impression that many are still a bit confused. the worst thing you can do in MOUT against US attacker is have static defences and wait for the US forces to come and get ambushed. it won't work. attacker always has tank or AFV support and if they can't for some reason use it they will call CAS and hold back till your positions are taken out. then they continue advancing, slowly systematically dissecting your defences piece by piece. there is no way you can match them frontally. all you can hope for is getting individual soldiers in buildings.

besides prepared strongpoints, snipers at rooftops etc you need to have a combined arms force that maneuvers actively. tanks, AFVs, AT-teams, indirect assets and engineers support infantry closely. move, pin, flank, hit and withdraw and move, pin, flank, hit. this negates enemy air power entirely (because it is slow and can't use weapons anywhere near friendly units - helicopters would be another matter but they can't enter urban battles where enemy side has AA assets) and it also negates their combined arms force or any technological advantage their tanks etc have. their only advantage is their communications and it won't be a big advantage in chaotic fighting like this. attacker is pinned and goes on defence, possibly partly paralyzed in fear of casulties. then you can deal with it as you see fit, the initiative is yours. don't cause individual casualties, annihilate squads and platoons. force the attacker to withdraw and have it lick its wounds wondering what the hell just happened. they will bomb the town blidnly but it is ineffective and won't eliminate your defences. the only way they can take you out is by being ready to have lots of dead soldiers and that is the only thing they can't do.

[John Kettler]

Also of interest were the mentions of preformed spherical frags and aluminum powder in the warhead of the primary rocket type. Enhanced blast with controlled fragmentation!

Regards,

John Kettler

[Peter Cairns]

undead reindeer cavalry

D-30's kept back for indirect fire would be totally ineffective. In order to put down an effective volume of fire on pre set positions you either need to have them grouped and in that case they are more than likely to have been taken out before they fire a shot, or disperse them in which case your chance of controlling them in an effective way is extremely low.

A D-30 firing a half dozen rounds a minute in to a 1km box with manouvering US forces is umlikely to hit anything, even a full battery won't slow them down much, (unless using mines).

Even if you did try to use them the US counter battery capability will make short work of them.

Unlike a tank a D-30 can be very easily concealed at a 1,000m has agood chance of getting the first shot and taking out it's target.

Even if only 1 in 10 of the D-30's disperesed in to cover hits a Striker, thats still 60 Strykers.

Static defence is only a death trap if the US can bring it's firepower to bare, and that might mean flattening whole towns, which is unlikely though possible. I have no doubt that a T-55 in a town kept in a warhouse or so room until US troops are in sight will last longer than one manouvering in the open or trying to counter attack.

I also have little doubt that a 152mm SP gun used as an assault gun, will last longer ,do more damage, and be of more use, than one kept at the rear and used as long range artillery.

Hell. Why do so many americans on this forum, insist in trying to make the Syrians fight the US as if they were Americans.

It's like having a force of tired peasant pikemen at the top of a muddy hill, and ordering them to charge down on to the hard open plain to surround a force of well trained fresh veteran lancers.

If you try to have the Syrians attempt any type of manouvering combined arms warfare even in counter attack they will get flattened.

Oh and as to holding mountains, in gereral they give you a better chance of survival and more chance to hurt the US than the open desert, and specifically if you don't hold the spine behind Damascus, you can forget about either holding damascus or escaping in to the Lebanon.

Peter.

[Drusus]

URC,

First, I don't agree that the Syrians should try to use highly mobile defence. At least in the way you are suggesting. Lets go through this...

1) Eliminating the use of enemy air force because they are slow to react and can't use weapons near friendly units.

The response of Air Forces in the area of operation could be suprisingly quick. And using weapons like the 30mm gun in A-10 can be used near friendly units and will destroy any Syrian armor in the open easily and effectively given a clear shot. Getting a clear shot isn't necessarily easy in urban enviroment, but still doable.

2) Negates their combined arms force and any technological advantage.

Would you specify _why_ that would happen? An M1 is still a lot better than T72 even if suprised. Combined forces remain to have the advantage of being a combined force even if suprised.

3) The only advatage the attacker is going to have is communications and it is not a big advantage.

First, even if I would assume that air forces, technology and combined forces would not be useful because of something, the US will still has many advantages. They are better trained. They have a lot better intelligence. That means they propably can see the large Syrian force moving in to attack. And good communications is a major advantage in a situation like this. You can call in reserves. You can understand what is happening around you. Actually without communications it is very well possible that you don't have command&control at all.

The problem the Syrians are going to have is that they should be able to make a coordinated counter attack in urban enviroment, do it quickly, without exposing themselves before the attack, and then be able to withdraw in coordination. All this should be done in reaction to what the enemy is doing. If you don't have good communications I don't believe this is possible to do at all. They should withdraw before 30min has gone from the start of the battle else they are going to be annihilated by enemy air forces. This kind of attack is also extremely hard to make in the level of command&control which isn't the strongest part of the Syrian forces.

I think you misunderstood the way I tought the Syrians should fight. Maybe I wasn't too clear about it either. But in short it is ambush, move close to the enemy and eliminate the enemy. This is done on a level of company, maybe a batallion but no more. This can also be done in part of a bigger battle, but then the risk of enemy reinforcements is high. This all should happen _inside_ urban area, not so that you fight from the village against an enemy who is 500m or more outside the village. That way US forces can use most of their advantages. But it is very, very important that the enemy doesn't know where you are defending and with how big of a force. If that happens you are doomed to lose without even causing that much of casualties. This concealement can be achieved in urban areas, most of US technological surveilance only sees that there are people in that village. But that doesn't help much, there usually are people in villages...

I must admit that these ways of defending are actually quite similar. But there are some differences. The most notable is propably that what I suggest is done on the company level. I think your counter attack would be on higher level. Don't know about that, though. Also I don't think that the Syrians should rely on high mobility. I think they should rely on infantry close by and which is prepared to fight in this way. Wire communication + some preplanned counter attack routes is enough. They might be supported by some concealed T-55s or something, but I don't know if they should move at all. High mobility means that you are easily spotted once you start moving. Not necessarily so for infantry moving short distances.

Ofcourse the thruth is that whatever the Syrians pull out of their bag of tricks, they will lose the war if the USA and NATO forces are commited to win the conventional war. The question is how quickly and how badly they will lose. The only way to victory is many years of high support from the populace and guerilla tactics. But that is not what CMSF is about.

I must admit that I don't know that much about Syrian forces or their doctrine and most of all I am not familiar with the higher levels of commanding a battle. So it might be that I am badly wrong...

[Peter Cairns]

Another issue for me is the size of the defensive footprint.

If you are defending at company level then if we assume 150,000 troops out of 15million then thats 1 in 100.

With a population density of 99 per 1km2, then 150man company would be spread over a 12km by 12km box, which is a bit daft.

If we look at Singapore, the Vatican or Hong kong we get densities for cities of about 6,000 per km2, so town with it's proportin of infantry could on this basis have a population of 15,000 to support a company and cover about 1.5km by 1.5km.

Now these figures would suggest two things, Firstly you can't defend anything smaller than 10,000 population an 1km2, and secondly that seems a lot of ground for a light company to cover.

However if you assume your are concentrating in key urban areas and that anything under say 500m across doesn't give you enough space to move, a crucial factor as you can't survive if you stand still and let the US pummel you.

So even if we assume lower population densities in rural towns and more space, I doubt if you can effectively defend small settlements especially in open country. That means that ( Iam making this up as I go along you do know that, sort of thinking out load), your probably activly only defending a third of the population at a density of somewhere between 3,000 ( smallish dispersed settlement) to 9,000 (Old Damascus) per km2.

150,000 troops defending 4.5million is 1 in 30, which on the basis of 3,000 and 9,000 be km2, gives us between 100 and 300 men.

The big question is given these kind of ratios, ( yes I know this is very rough) what kind of force can cover, or rather should cover what size of town, too few and it's going to leak like hell, you won't have the troops to delay the US , however to many troops and you end up like fish in a barrel with no sppace to fall back or reorganise.

SO the question is this, leaving out geographic position, ( yes I know thats crucial but we're not at that stage yet).

What size of yown do people feel is the smallest you would make a stand in and what would be the optimum force size and shape to do it with ( bearing in mind that you can't have all the best weapons in your town but a realistic share).

Peter.

[undead reindeer cavalry]

Peter,

i don't oppose using towed or SP arty in direct fire as such. the reason why i oppose using them in direct fire role is simply because in my opinion it is inefficient, Syrians have better equipment for that stuff and because they desperately need all the indirect fire support they can get.

US forces will systematically destroy all static defences, no question about it. it really is as simple as that. of course it would be awesome to just camp in some town with your tanks & guns and wait for the Strykers to drive to your sights, but unfortunately the enemy is not going to do it.

the only time i have written that Syrians should counter attack outside urban areas is when enemy forces are trying to break through at important key passage towards a strategical goal area and their line of advance is not going to go thru a town. it was meant to be a regiment level operation, so that ~2 battalions of infantry was holding static defences to block the key passages. once enemy makes contact to pass thru the static defences you send the scattered mechanized/armored battalion, supported with all available indirect fire (in the scenario it was along some towed batteries, a SP battery and perhaps MRL as well) and the small special forces AT teams already holding positions near the static defence, to counterattack the enemy advance. this isn't expected to be a huge success, the idea is just to hurt the enemy and stop their advance thru this important passage for now. it is not an attack, it is a counter attack to make the static defences hold at the key passage.

in defensive MOUT a combined arms group that seeks initiative thru maneuver is not going to get flattened. it has all it takes to destroy anything the enemy has, there is nothing that is going to flatten it, it chooses when & where & how to confront the enemy. the very point in having a mobile combined arms group is to NOT have a T-55 duel M1A2SEP. it is a paper-rock-scissors when you get to see enemy choise before you make yours. the exact fundamental weakness of static defences is that you end up having your T-55 duel out with a Javelin or M1A2SEP, or better yet have a D-30 duel out with a 2000 lb bomb.

[undead reindeer cavalry]

Originally posted by Drusus:

First, I don't agree that the Syrians should try to use highly mobile defence. At least in the way you are suggesting. Lets go through this...

sounds good.

1) Eliminating the use of enemy air force because they are slow to react and can't use weapons near friendly units.

The response of Air Forces in the area of operation could be suprisingly quick. And using weapons like the 30mm gun in A-10 can be used near friendly units and will destroy any Syrian armor in the open easily and effectively given a clear shot. Getting a clear shot isn't necessarily easy in urban enviroment, but still doable.

this is MOUT, Syrian armor isn't in the open. according to US experiences in Iraq fixed wing CAS is so slow to make it pretty useless against anything but very static defences. i doubt A-10 could effectively use 30mm against a moving target in urban terrain, especially when it will take AA fire, but i agree that it is doable.

2) Negates their combined arms force and any technological advantage.

Would you specify _why_ that would happen? An M1 is still a lot better than T72 even if suprised. Combined forces remain to have the advantage of being a combined force even if suprised.

it would happen precisely because you won't use T-72 against M1 (unless you are sure you are going to get a flanking or rear shot). you would use T-72 against enemy infantry positions (blow up buildings etc), to form a mobile overwatch for advancing infantry, to get rid of inconvenient walls, to waste enemy AFVs, to carry infantry and so forth. against an advancing M1 you would use engineers and AT-teams.

you are not going to surprise the enemy - he knows you defend the city. this is not a 5 minute ambush, this takes hours or days. the plan is to not just blow up a couple of vehicles or cause a handful of casulties. the plan is to hold this town/city.

you have the advantage because enemy has only three options; advance, go on defence, withdraw. you already have the place, you are the defender, he is trying to take the place, he is the attacker. when he advances you use that part of your combined arms group which is suitable for dealing with his move, or if you can't deal with it here&now then you simply withdraw and flank. if he sets up a defense you maneuver until you can hit his positions with suitable equipment. if he withdraws, well, then he withdraws. it is just basic combined arms tactics.

3) The only advatage the attacker is going to have is communications and it is not a big advantage.

First, even if I would assume that air forces, technology and combined forces would not be useful because of something, the US will still has many advantages. They are better trained. They have a lot better intelligence. That means they propably can see the large Syrian force moving in to attack. And good communications is a major advantage in a situation like this. You can call in reserves. You can understand what is happening around you. Actually without communications it is very well possible that you don't have command&control at all.

i totally agree that US has plenty of advantages. but in my opinion their only real advantage in a battle like this is better small-unit communications and to a lesser degree their better training.

their weakness is that they won't have the intelligence they are used to have. there are no UAVs circling (will get shot down) and they can't take their time and advance with care. their weakness is that they are doing their best to avoid casulties. if it gets too hot they abort the plan and withdraw. they will return but they are going to be a bit shy because they want to have their systematical surgical MOUT and they just can't have it here. this is fast stuff, the defender is not static, he is moving and seeking contact. when you go after him he withdraws and if you continue going after him you will get hit when you get around the next corner. if you don't go after him, he will flank and you are back at the starting positions.

The problem the Syrians are going to have is that they should be able to make a coordinated counter attack in urban enviroment, do it quickly, without exposing themselves before the attack, and then be able to withdraw in coordination. All this should be done in reaction to what the enemy is doing. If you don't have good communications I don't believe this is possible to do at all. They should withdraw before 30min has gone from the start of the battle else they are going to be annihilated by enemy air forces. This kind of attack is also extremely hard to make in the level of command&control which isn't the strongest part of the Syrian forces.

yes, i agree with you. the individual combined arms teams need to be small units.

I must admit that these ways of defending are actually quite similar.

yes, i agree. i was talking about two different things which was confusing. it the MOUT part all would happen within a city or town. the second scenario is a totally different scenario and not the optimal way but rather something that most likely needs to be done because enemy will try to pass hard urban defences.

But there are some differences. The most notable is propably that what I suggest is done on the company level.

yeah, individual groups maneuvering in the city/town can't be bigger than company level. i would not oppose it if they would be more like a reinforced platoon. it's important these groups function well as a team. they need to react fast like you wrote.

several combined arms teams like these would need to work together. communications would still be fine because the enemy is most likely trying to advance carefully and systematically.

there would naturally need to be a larger level organization behind these groups of teams. there would also need to be some troops having static defences besides these maneuver groups. so i think this type of defence needs at least a reinforced battalion.

Also I don't think that the Syrians should rely on high mobility.

yes, only when they are defending a city or town.

I think they should rely on infantry close by and which is prepared to fight in this way. Wire communication + some preplanned counter attack routes is enough. They might be supported by some concealed T-55s or something, but I don't know if they should move at all.

yeah, stuff like this, except that you can't stay static if you are defending. you will lose if you try to take a US attack head on. you shouldn't try to achieve surprise by hiding, because it is very hard to achieve against carefully advancing US force. it is better to counter attack than try to ambush. the counter attacking team can set up an ambush if situation makes it possible, but the idea is to move instead of sitting and waiting.

High mobility means that you are easily spotted once you start moving. Not necessarily so for infantry moving short distances.

i don't think spotting is a problem if were are still talking about urban defence. in general it is not that important because these things happen in such a low level.

it would be different if we would have battalions, regiments or worse making significant repositions (e.g. 10-100 km). even at that level it is quite possible that the information about possible spotting doesn't get to ground level units or that the interpretation of the spotting is wrong.

Ofcourse the thruth is that whatever the Syrians pull out of their bag of tricks, they will lose the war if the USA and NATO forces are commited to win the conventional war. The question is how quickly and how badly they will lose. The only way to victory is many years of high support from the populace and guerilla tactics. But that is not what CMSF is about.

yeah, i agree.

in this less realistic scenario of mine the Syrians are trying to make the war last long enough and be painful enough so that the politicians of the invading side start looking for a diplomatical solution to the conflict. i find it unlikely that they would succeed, but it is not totally impossible.

I must admit that I don't know that much about Syrian forces or their doctrine and most of all I am not familiar with the higher levels of commanding a battle. So it might be that I am badly wrong...

they are crap, but they are trying to reform their forces to be suitable for low-signature light force doctrine.

[ January 11, 2006, 03:42 PM: Message edited by: undead reindeer cavalry ]

[undead reindeer cavalry]

Peter,

very interesting post about defensive footprint.

i think 150 000 is far too small. even the active forces are larger than that and Syrians are going to have a mobilization if it seems like there's going to be confrontation.

allied air campaign shouldn't cause significant losses to the forces. air campaign will mainly target static installation, infrastructure and try to paralyze and blind the Syrian forces at the highest level. there will be losses, but not in tens of thousands. Syrians should try to prepare for the strategic level paralyzis and blindness. units should have clear missions that doesn't require large repositioning. of course this is the traditional weakness of Syrian forces - they are very rigid and commanders aren't to have own initiative. on the other hand they have been at least trying to change all this for some years now. still, Syrian forces shouldn't need to make big strategical repositionings once the war has begun.

i think smallest units setting up defences should be battalions. anything smaller would just get run over. invading forces would likely just pass these battalion sized defences, but they would tie some invading forces and would cause grief later if the invasion isn't an immediate success.

i think any serious defence aiming to actually stop enemy advance would take at least a regiment level forces. strategic victory locations would be defended by corps-sized units.

i would think Syrians wouldn't even try to hold the desert or other unimportant locations. though i don't have a detailed topographical map of Syria so it is unknown to me if for example the Syrian Desert contains terrain that offers good positions for defence.

an exception to the force sizes would be very small special forces units used to delay the attacking forces by using guerilla tactics. these would likely be scattered companies.

perhaps we should make an estimation of Syrian order of battle? then we could make wild estimations on how Syrian forces might be used.

[undead reindeer cavalry]

i just reread my above three posts and i think i emphasized a bit too much how US forces are likely to avoid casualties and i think it is easy to read it in a way which i do not mean it.

i do not mean that US forces wouldn't be prepared to fight hard for key locations, even if it would mean high number of friendly casulties. when reading Iraqi AARs especially Marines seem to be up to their reputation. tough bastards.

what i was trying to say in my above posts is that the US side is probably going to be very careful in MOUT, trying to do everything in the most safe way reasonable, and it is likely to be something that a aggressive defence is able to exploit.

[Peter Cairns]

I based 150,000 on the current front line of 250,000 or so given that at least a third won't be front line. Given the need to put some forces in areas that still need to be looked after but aren't likely to be attacked or even some kind of reserve/replenishment force, not to mention desertion, I don't think it's unreasonable.

The problem with key positions is that from what I've seen of the maps ( the Berkely (?) ones posted a while back are excellent even if they are mostly in russian) is it's not like Iraq.

There you were advancing up a narrow twin river route with obvious and necessary key bridging points where both attacker and defender knew the fighting would need to be done.

The bulk of Syria, particularly the East, like in GW1 is open flat desert where a force like the US can avoid contact and move at speed to almost at a tactical level approach from any direction.

This is in part what makes me tend to lean towards defence of larger settlements with a force with a significant footprint and size. In effect what makes something a key location is it's physical size and population rather than it's position.

Unlike europe in WW2 there aren't that many key rivers or bridgeing points, it would be much more fluid, and like GW1, the Us might penetrate miles with a Stryker force before you even knew it was there.

Peter.

[undead reindeer cavalry]

yeah, main defences should be at and around the few big cities.

in my opinion there are locations that are good for defence, even if they aren't major cities. there are only a few logistical routes coming from Iraq and some of these need to pass rivers, most seem to pass valleys at some points. Syrians should set up defences along these routes. invading force needs to clear these defences in order to have proper logistics.

yeah those Soviet maps of Syria at the Berkeley server are great. too bad they don't cover all of Syria and that they are 20 years old.

[Peter Cairns]

Yeh there are only "a few logical" routes, but to assume thats the ones the US will use is pretty dumb. In GW1 the Us thrust to cut the road to Basra wasn't obvious to the Iraqi's and it lead to them getting crushed.

The whole point of the speed and mobility of medium weight forces like Stryker is that they can avoid the obvious routes.

From my perspective the US has the option to cross and advance at from any point on the Iraqi border and the physical and logistic capability to choose any route it wants, avoiding the obvious choak points.

Therefore don't defend where you think the US will pass through, defend where you think they are going.

Peter.

[Peter Cairns]

Hell I just realised that i wrote depolyable and not deployable when i started this thread.

Peter.

[MikeyD]

"The whole point of the speed and mobility of medium weight forces like Stryker is that they can avoid the obvious routes. "

I'm reminded of when the Marines went on an extended cross-country raid to cut the road to Helmand province. It was out of Camp Rhino in Afghanistan a couple weeks before their move onto Kandahar, early 2002 I think. Humvees and LAVs driving over inhospitable terrain for days on end. Copters had to shuttle replacement shocks and tires out. Pretty much every vehicle got stuck and needed towing -multiple times! they even abandoned a couple hummers when 'big stuff' started breaking on them.

The point of this is (1:) doing 'end-runs' over unpaved country in wheeled vehicles can be fraught with problems, and (2:) its already been done successfully once before.

[undead reindeer cavalry]

US forces aren't bound to roads, but the logistical tail is. there is no question about it that US needs to control the roads. if you look at the Soviet maps you can see that it will not be easy. you have roads moving by mountain ranges and in valleys. it's perfect terrain for light special forces. even relatively small units that have modern equipment can make things damned awful.

besides, i don't see any reason why Syrians shouldn't put up resistance where ever possible. it is realistic to expect to put up resistance even at places they don't have advantages. it's their nation, they are going to defend it.

it would be nothing but stupid to not take advantage of favorable terrain. e.g. at north there are several rivers going north-south wise. it would be a bitch to cross these and still you wouldn't be anywhere near Aleppo.

judging from the Soviet maps the desert isn't all flat at least at the western end. there are mountain ranges that will channel enemy movements.

i totally agree that unexpected is to be expected from US forces. US forces have traditionally managed to achieve strategical surprise again and again. very smart thinkers.

the problem is that Syria doesn't offer that many choises. you can come from east, land from mediterranean or come from north.

north -> south move would make things hard, because you would have to take multiple large Syrian cities one after another.

mediterranean approach is hard because there terrain is perfect for defence.

simple thrust from Iraq straight to Damascus would make most sense. you could hope to finish the war quick by taking Damascus, without having to have tough battles at Aleppo, Hama and others - just one big urban battle. IF Syrians aren't willing to defend their nation.

because Syrian campaign seems so straight forward it puts some limitations to US strengths. for example airborne troops can't achieve too much. they might be most effective in the mediterranean scenario.

[Peter Cairns]

URC,

I broadly agree but as I see CM:SF module one being Strykers from the east thats what I am focusing on, in effect by concentrating on population centres not route, given Syria,s geography we are saying the same thing, as most of the poplulation is west and north with it's back to the mountains.

Give up the East except for your small SF teams and concentrate your army defending your people inthe main population centres and the rugged terrain around.

As to the North and Western Coast, well thats for CM:SF 2, Us marines , backed by the Brits, French, Spanish and Italian marines.

Peter.

[John Kettler]

Peter Cairns,

Since you started the thread, you can, if you wish, fix the typo.

Regards,

John Kettler

[ January 17, 2006, 11:35 PM: Message edited by: John Kettler ]