US Airborne TOE, Afghanistan

[Bigduke6]

Hi there CMSF fans!

I'm working on a scenario involving US Airborne forces in Afghanistan, and I thought the all-knowing Forum could help me find out the following:

1. TOE, US Airborne platoon, Afghanistan 2007 - 2008, in a forward outpost.

2. That includes vehicles especially HUMMV.

3. That includes attachments from battalion and maybe even brigade.

4. That includes Night vision capacity, laser designation capacity, radios, whatever.

I'd also be interested in what you smart people could tell me about the following, again, all concerning a US platoon-sized foward outpost set up more or less permanently say 5 - 10 km. from the company base.

- Artillery support, particularly how the paratroopers would call it in (On-site FO? Something for the platoon sergeant to worry about?)

- Potential artillery support for an outpost like that would be how many mortars, what type (I assume battalion mortar platoon), how many guns?

- Any limits to shells available?

- How about shell types available; how much of the big stuff would be spiffy stuff like DPICM, FASTCAM, Copperhead or something like it, etc.

- Assuming normal intensity of operations in the region, how fast could air get on station to support an airborne outpost like this? Assume no major contact in the scenario area and generally a stand down period for the air boys, i.e., at the moment of the scenario the chopper jocks and fast mover boys aren't out and about, but standard quick reaction forces are either in the air or waiting for the call.

Finally, and this is off the subject, I am messing around with the CMSF scenario design engine and I can make everything work except the terrain, I can't for the life of me change the height of one square without either affecting the whole map area, or a huge chunk of the map area.

Can any one direct me to a thread where creating hills and valleys and so forth in the design engine is explained? I left my disc at home so don't tell me to RTFM, I would if I could.

[Field Marshal Blücher]

On your map-making question:

Set the elevation editor to "Direct," then when you click on a tile it locks whatever elevation you have selected (you know this because the tile turns dark). If you do this to enough tiles, you can make hillls like that.

Beginning, no elevations

Stage 2, with a 30-m tall hill, but if you look closely, the elevations are all weird around it.

Stage 3, with a second elevation layer. Most of the elevations on the map should be normal now, although some cleanup may be required. Anyway, you get the idea.

[Bigduke6]

Thanks. I had got to step two and decided things weren't working. So on to step 3.

[ChrisND]

Hi Bigduke,

This is from my own experience on being in an Airborne unit at a FOB in A-Stan. Mileage from other airborne units may vary:

I'd also be interested in what you smart people could tell me about the following, again, all concerning a US platoon-sized foward outpost set up more or less permanently say 5 - 10 km. from the company base.

- Artillery support, particularly how the paratroopers would call it in (On-site FO? Something for the platoon sergeant to worry about?)

The platoon would leave the FOB with an enlisted FO. He, or the platoon RTO, would call it in. I think CMSF's platoon HQs would be more than sufficient to simulate this.

- Potential artillery support for an outpost like that would be how many mortars, what type (I assume battalion mortar platoon), how many guns?

- Any limits to shells available?

In my experience we had 60mm, 81mm, and 120mm available, one section of each. The 120mm always stayed at base. If a patrol wandered past the 120mm's effective range, a section of 60mm and/or 81mm would be deployed to cover them. I have heard of FOBs with howitzers, but I only personally saw them at the main bases like Kandahar, etc. I suppose if they were really expecting trouble they would move the 120 forward.

I'd say you could safely set shells available to full supply in the game. Although you can always simulate resupply issues, which did happen when a helicopter was the only link for resupply.

- How about shell types available; how much of the big stuff would be spiffy stuff like DPICM, FASTCAM, Copperhead or something like it, etc.

Since I never worked with any howitzers, can't say. The mortar stuff is pretty vanilla, standard HE, Illum, and willy pete.

- Assuming normal intensity of operations in the region, how fast could air get on station to support an airborne outpost like this? Assume no major contact in the scenario area and generally a stand down period for the air boys, i.e., at the moment of the scenario the chopper jocks and fast mover boys aren't out and about, but standard quick reaction forces are either in the air or waiting for the call.

In my experience, it was about 1/2 hour, but I am sure this varies from FOB to FOB. If there was even the slightest indication of trouble, though, CAS would be very close by.

Finally, and this is off the subject, I am messing around with the CMSF scenario design engine and I can make everything work except the terrain, I can't for the life of me change the height of one square without either affecting the whole map area, or a huge chunk of the map area.

Set the elevation for all of the tiles surrounding the to-be-changed tile to the ground level. That way the elevated/depressed tile can't affect any other tiles.

[Bigduke6]

Normal Dude,

Thanks, appreciate it. I knew the forum wouldn't let me down.

Several more questions if I may:

- All other things being equal, and if the goal is making an outpost defensible, is the general policy dig in (fighting positions and trenches) or build up (sandbag berms, rock sangars)? From what I have read and seen, it really looks like the policy is the latter, i.e., the troops aren't using their e-tools much. Correct?

- Along those same lines, aside from troop fighting positions, if a platoon sets up a patrol base somewhere would there be other reinforced positions constructed? I would assume there would, for instance a HQ bunker/sangar. By this I'm not talking a pillbox but rather most likely a hole with big rocks and sandbags around it, and maybe a roof. Then maybe similar constructs for non-ammo supplies, ammo.

- Then of course the next question is, how fast would this stuff get built, assuming the bad guys don't interfere but, since there are plenty of bad guys around, the platoon has to build with its own hands, or have stuff flown in. (I.e., battalion isn't about to send engineers or earth moving equipment, too early for that.)

- Assume the outpost needs CAS at night. How degraded is the CAS, both in terms of accuracy/safety, and response time? I know the advertising is that pretty much all US CAS can see in the dark, but I also know that everything is harder to do and takes longer at night, no matter what the advertising says.

- I would assume that type of CAS available would pretty much depend on what happened to be in the air at the moment, i.e., if an F-15 happens to be nearby and the platoon yells for help, the jet can be on station pretty durn fast. Likewise, I would assume that in most situations if a US airborne platoon isn't outside the wire or otherwise conducting operations, helicopters would not be in the air and ready to respond immediately if the platoon were hit, so in most cases if the platoon suddenly needed help, you would expect the fast-mover that happened to be in the area to show up first, and the gunships would take longer because the quick-response helicopters have to get from their FARP (love that term) to the platoon, and that can be some time and distance.

Correct?

- Assume the airborne platoon drives into Indian country in HUMMVes and sets up this outpost. The idea is stay there for a while but it's not been decided whether this is the start of a permanent US presence. The patrolling from the outpost will be almost all dismounted, therefore, the HUMMVes are nice for outpost defense and getting out of Dodge fast if necessary, but due to really sucky terrain they aren't useful for the patrol mission.

Would all the HUMMVes (roughly, 8 - 10 vehicles) stay with the platoon once it got to where it needed to be? Or would some of them go back to company/battalion? How many would stay?

OK, and now some more "how to use the scenario builder" questions, for any one who knows:

- How do I place a platoon-sized US force, and only a platoon-sized US force, in a scenario I'm building? The unit column lets me pick an entire battalion (unless it's a support unit, then a company or a platoon), but for the life of me I can't figure out how to put, say, a single Stryker platoon into a scenario I'm building.

Is this because you must put in an entire battalion and then edit it down (highly unlikely) or because there is an easy way to stick a single platoon into a scenario being constructed, and I haven't figured it out? (Much more likely)

- How do I give a dismounted US force, that has no vehicles, Javelins?

- Is there any way to place 60 or 81mm mortars "on board"?

Thanks ahead of time.

[George MC]

Hi Big Duke

Check out the manual in my sig. It was done for the first wave of scenarios during beta testing but most of it still holds true.

Cheers fur noo

George

[Combatintman]

Bigduke6,

A lot of your questions are situation dependant - if the ground is rocky then the obvious answer is to build sangars if the ground is suitable for digging then its a case of digging. Also it depends how long you're staying. As to building a decent position - it takes a while!

The CAS question again is a bit tricky - if trouble is expected then it will be pre-planned and therefore sorties will be allocated (if bid for). In theory therefore there will be aircraft overhead and CAS can be available immediately. If not bid for then its a case of asking for ECAS - response time therefore is linked to how far away the jet is.

As to the effectiveness at night - it depends on the delivery system. TICs or CAS on call for TICs covers pretty much any aircraft in the NATO inventory ranging from Harrier all the way up to B1. If the aircraft is not capable of dropping at night it won't be launched/be on station in the first place. In my experience in Afghanistan - as soon as the bombs are dropped the TIC is pretty much closed although I am aware of one TIC where a B1 dropped 18000lb worth of ordnance on a TIC at night before things quietened down.

[Bigduke6]

Appreciate it guys. Now to figure out how to simulate sangars in CMSF!

[tc237]

What is a Sangar?

[Combatintman]

Essentially it is British Army parlance that dates back to the days of Empire and has been adopted more widely now. In its truest form it is a small fortification/position built out of rocks. Sangars are generally built where digging in is not an option such as in mountainous areas. If you read up about the war in Oman and Dhofar you'll see plenty of references to sangars there for example.

See link:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sangar_%28fortification%29

[Bigduke6]

Here's one from 1878, sangars have been around a while. Note the happy Afridi gentlemen, this particular Pashto (well, they were called Pathans at the time) tribe was at the time more or less friendly to the British who held at least theoretical control of the Khyber pass. There were even Afridi mercenary units the British raised to go hunt the Pathans/Pashtos on the Afghanistan side of the border.

Times have changed, now the Afridis live in Pakistan right up against the Afghan border (can any one say, Northwest Territories?) and the Afridis aren't as open-minded on foreign authority as they used to be. But they still do a pretty good business on traffic passing back and forth through the Khyber region.