Is impact fuzed artillery too powerfull against trenches?

[hcrof]

I have recently purchesed a copy of 'Weapons and Tactics of the Soviet Army' by David C Isby and it is a great book, full of useful info about Soviet Style troops. It also contains a number of artillery firing tables - containing information on how effective the Soviets thought their guns were so I decided to test the artillery in CMSF.

THE TEST

1 platoon of Soviet infantry was placed in an area of 100m x 100m, each squad in a seperate trench. The infantry was regular experience and fanatic to stop them running away.

1 battery (6 guns) of D-30 122mm howitzers was ordered to fire onto the area with the orders Heavy, Short, Armour. In total, 40-50 rounds where fired (I think). 95% impacted in the 100m x 100m area which is believable because the D-30 has a probable error of 24m at 10km range.

The test was repeated 8 times

Results

Units suffered on average 35% casualties

According to the charts, to produce 30% casualties on 1ha of hastily dug in infantry with ranged guns, you would have to expend 111 rounds of impact fuzed HE in a 'shock fire' attack (Heavy fire in terms of CMSF)

Is there any chance that artillery attacks like this could be toned down a bit? I could be wrong about this and messed up the test but I am in the middle of creating something something that uses this kind of attack quite a lot and it would be nice to have a change made if you guys at Battlefront think its necessary .

[Sergei]

Apparently the Soviet human test results differ from the Battlefront.com human test results. Soviets must have been wrong.

[hcrof]

Well if you have any better information then do share it with us. I am not saying the Soviets were correct but they might have at least a ball park figure considering there was no shortage of clever mathematicians in the USSR.

I had thought that artillery was too powerful for a while but I wasn't going to say anything without some sort of proof. I have provided evidence and if Steve provides better evidence I will happily back down and accept it.

[dan/california]

But what was the definition of trench, or "dug in" in the manual? The problem in the game if there is one, is that its only model of trench is somewhere between basic and incompetent. With correctly modeled dugouts and overhead cover the casualties would be far lower. It is also true as Steve has said a number of times that that kind of truly fortified position is a viable target for the kind of sustained air and artillery strikes that are beyond CMSFs scope.

An enemy that presents a B52 worthy target and doesn't have a viable air defense system will get a visit from the Buffs. I would argue that objective Poo is such a target by the way.

You can argue , by the way, that for the game to be within a factor of two is pretty good.

For Normandy BFC has promised several grades of improved fortifications and the effectiveness of artillery is greatly reduced by period tech limitations. So it should play very differently.

[akd]

yeah, the game trenches are damn near AT trenches, and as far as I know, the only protection they offer is their actual geometry.

[Bigduke6]

Which brings us to the question, if the Americans invaded Syria, would that war never produce a situation where the Syrians were in slit trenches at least a meter deep, and the US forces had to deal with that without major air/artillery preparation?

BFI in their wisdom - and this is my interpetation of their logic - have ruled this would in fact be the case, that if the Syrians dug in to any extent, the US intell would invariably pick up such "fortifications", which in turn would be leveled by substantial and overwhelming bombardment, and so a trench were infantry can hide from artillery is outside the scope of the game, which focuses on the tactical fights where the Syrians would have a chance of hurting the Americans.

Me, I think this logic is too kind to the Americans and unfair to the Syrians. To my mind, Syrians defending their country would have a pretty good idea of US intelligence collection ablities, they have after all lived next to the Iraq war for the last decade. It would seem to me the Syrians would figure out ways to dig in and suprise the Americans, and among those surprises would be infantry dug in so that it could substantially avoid standard artillery strikes.

It is to me absolutely clear that men in trenches 1.5 meters deep, and trained or motivated to ride out an artillery strike, could do so 100 years ago and they remain able to do so today. It is true that artillery has become far more responsive and accurate over the last century, however, shells (absent the super-expensive laser-guided ones) still disperse and cover areas, and a man lying at the bottom of a trench remains quite capable of making himself extremely small, and/or pulling a solid object like a door or a sheet of metal over himself. The instinct to survive is a real motivator that way.

And I think it is incorrect to assume that, every time the Syrians created a trench deep enough for US doctrine to dictate a B-52 strike, the US would find the trench, would have B-52es or something else big and over-munitioned available to hit the trench, and would face no restrictions (proximity of civilian structures etc.) on dropping an overwhelming mass of munitions on the trench.

The issue of "natural" places to hide from artillery, particularly things like basements, drainage pipes, bathtubs, interior rooms, etc. is as nearly as I can tell pretty much not covered in CMSF. Pretty much, if a shell detonates within say 100 - 150 meters of infantry it has a chance of hurting the infantry, no matter what. There is no absolute cover from frag in CMSF, while in the real deal, I would argue there almost always is.

But like Dan said, CMNormandy will for sure fix all this, and so we need fear not, the universe will return to stability.

[Splinty]

It's not only B 52 strikes , it's MLRS using cluster munitions, and repeated loads of 155, 105, etc.

[Clevinger]

I have recently purchesed a copy of 'Weapons and Tactics of the Soviet Army' by David C Isby and it is a great book, full of useful info about Soviet Style troops. It also contains a number of artillery firing tables - containing information on how effective the Soviets thought their guns were so I decided to test the artillery in CMSF.

According to the charts, to produce 30% casualties on 1ha of hastily dug in infantry with ranged guns, you would have to expend 111 rounds of impact fuzed HE in a 'shock fire' attack (Heavy fire in terms of CMSF)

Is there any chance that artillery attacks lik

Do you think they put real infantry platoons in trenches, and bombarded them to get those charts?

[hcrof]

The thing is, preparatory barrages are exactly what I had in mind, a really big map with a large force conducting a Soviet style attack. The attacker would have scary amounts of artillery, probably a battalion at least and the defender needs a chance of surviving long enough to put up a fight!

In my opinion, red v red has turned into a very important part of the game and although Steve and co have improved it a lot, it would be nice to see a little bit more development along those lines as well as releasing the next load of western forces.

I don't know how it would be possible to fix the results, I assume that the casualties are caused by people being too close to the edge of the trench so maybe it can be fixed by making sure that people stay right down in the bottom of the trench when suppressed by artillery, even if they are well motivated. Another suggestion is to slightly increase the angle of the 'cone' of the blast so that more of the effects goes over the heads of the infantry.

I remember reading loads of stories of commanders thinking that nothing could survive an artillery strike and moving forward, only to find people coming out of the woodwork and shooting at them! Its that reason why I brought the point up.

[BlackMoria]

The Soviet artillery tables are based on data from WW2. The Soviet are not innovators, they stay with what they found worked for them. Even up until the time I took early retirement out of the military in the early 90s, their doctrine still called for placing some of their artillery literally wheel to wheel, like they did typically in WW2.

I was an artillery officer and FO/FAC in the Canadian military for 12 years. The results of your test is close to a fire power demonstration my battery did during RV85, a div level exercise.

A typical soviet company defensive position was dug out by the engineers and figure 11 cardboard targets (3/4 human silhouette, from the knees to the top of the head) were placed in the trenches and bunkers. My battery shelled the position with 6 x 105mm guns with either 10 or 12 rounds per gun(can't remember) at FFE, representing either 60 or 72 total rounds of impact fuse HE.

When we examined the site afterwards, about 1/3 of the figure 11 targets had one or more fragmentation splinters through the target's head or torso areas, representing either a serious or potentially lethal hit.

So, based on my experience from that demonstration and comparing them to your result in the CMSF test, I would say the results are extremely close.

As I said, the Soviet figures are derived from WW2 data and represent 'overkill'.

Why the difference in data? Simple, really. After one or two complete salvos of FFE, a target 'hardens' as troops tuck themselves away in the bottom of trenches, etc. Therefore, the bulk of the casualties occur in that first couple of initial salvos and then only marginal casualties after the target 'hardens'.

Therefore, 60 rounds may result in about 30% casualties and 111 rounds in 35%, so nearly twice the rounds only give you 5% more casualties, an outcome expected by continuing to fire on a hardened target. Once the target goes 'hard', you are clearly in a case of diminishing returns on casualties.

Then why go 10 rounds each gun on FFE if the fire is less effective after the initial few salvos? Simple. As the rounds rain down, the combat team is rolling to the dismount line with the tanks and ICV. Get the choreography of artillery / armour / infantry right and the ramps are dropping as the last artillery rounds have just impacted, giving the infantry time to shake out and get a toehold into the enemy position before the enemy reallizes the shelling is over.

[hcrof]

I didn't know they still did those tests these days!

But - I don't think the tests are comparable. Unless there was a way of making the cardboard targets 'harden up' then I don't feel that your demonstration can be accurate after the first few salvos because each salvo has an equal chance of penetrating a target.

In other words, I think your result shows casualties that are too high because cardboard targets cannot harden up after the first 6-12 rounds land on the position.

The reason why I chose 30% destruction is is because it is a conservative number and 35% destruction was achieved in CMSF with half the number of rounds.

[BlackMoria]

The demonstration wasn't meant to be scientific, it was a dog and pony show for visiting VIPs.

I quite agree. Figure 11 targets don't 'harden' up like real soldiers. That said, the Soviets derive their data from similar methodologies and apply some math to the issue to come up with their 'metrics'. The British do the same as I have seen Brit 'weight of scales' charts for artillery engagements as well.

The point is, the Brit and Russian tables differ. Differ methodologies, differ math. Meaning the numbers are subjective and the Russians (at least during the era before the end of the Cold War) tend to throw ammunition and weapon systems at a problem in more generous doses than western armies.

So, are western army 'weight of scale' calculations too conservative and the Soviet numbers are closer to reality? Or are western numbers just right and the Soviets are 'heavy handed'?

Another big consideration about those table - they are more meant for logistical planning for moving and positioning ammunition rather than a hard formula that states that enemy size A + number of tubes B = number of rounds that must be fired C to met desired outcome D.

It doesn't mean that if you are a company postition, you can expect exactly 111 rounds on your position. Ammunition type, weight of fire and other factors are decided by the observer at battery level and by higher artillery headquarters for battalion/regiment or higher artillery concentrations and 'weight of scales' tables rarely come into the equation anymore.

[Meach]

From experience, folks curling up in trenches tend to be buried alive in same said trenches when big shells come a'callin.

The blast and shockwave is as deadly as the shrapnel. Earth moves up and comes down. Gravity is a bitch lol

Overhead cover just adds to the grunt's tomb. A nice front door at best.

[Falconander]

Ummm...

Cardboard targets also don't stand up, they don't flee out of the trenches and when the blasts come they get knocked down flat with no damage. Blasts and non piercing debris would also inflict casualties. Ever have a .50 cal round come within an inch of your head?

I only buy the hardened target so much. These trenches have no overhead so while I undertand people are not walking around I'd say 30% kill rate is fairly accurate.

I see that I posted at the same time as Meach...so ditto to what he said....

[hcrof]

Well thanks for the replys guys - I am still not wholly convinced but at least I can see where I could be wrong. I will still wish for a compromise between the two results but at least I now know it is not a game breaker!

[JasonC]

No army in the history of the world has ever achieved average firepower performance on the battlefield as high as that shown in peacetime firing range tests. The latter are always high, by factors of 2 to 100, depending on the weapon systems and target type.

[Secondbrooks]

By Soviet doctorine in late ww2 (-44 -45) field fortificated positions needed to have 0.5 shells hitting each squaremeter to expect defenders to be outright stunned and suppressed and by that not being able to respond to attack of Soviet infantry and tanks. I'm infact not sure in which scale this is, they probably don't mean that this density is needed to take out company. More like batallion, brigade, heck maybe even division.

What is 0.5 shells per squaremeter? well it's insane.They never reached that density as far as i can tell. In Finland -44 (i think it was second worst bombardment which they unleased in ww2) they were able to fire 0.25 shells per square meter and after-action reports from Finnish units getting heaviest beating told that casualities themselves were not too high, problem was more mental sort and that weapons were filled with sand, communication wires cut etc. Defenders were basically threw out from defenceline.

I've seen some finnish statistics (could be war statistics too, they were pretty old) I don't remember how much dug-in infantry platoon had to have shells shot to it's location to have 60% causalities but it was insane number. Thousands maybe, sadly i don't recall.

Hitting infantry which has not dug-in and it's mere hundreds shells reguired for 60% casualities. 30% was much smaller number (10-20% maybe)

Again i feel urge to point out that i can't say for sure about those numbers in finnish stastics, it's year(s) i've last saw that last. But what it said was basically this: "If you wanna extend your life-time under arty fire, you should (already) be dug-in".

[hcrof]

Well according to the my book, the Soviets regarded 30% casualties as adiquate for 'suppresion'. Trying to achive more than that needs exponentially more shells so it gets to a point where they probably wouldn't fire at all.

For example, to achieve 30% casualties, apparently you need 3.28 times more shells than for 10% casualties. To achieve 60% casualties you need 14.38 times more shells per hectare (about 503-676 for well dug in infantry, depending on whether the guns are ranged in or not). Complete destruction isn't even on the charts

[Bigduke6]

Sure the US has lots of launchers, but the question is, if the US invaded Syria, especially last year, would they have had the intelligence, launchers, shells, soldiers, and rules of engagement sufficient to saturate most if not all of the Syrian prepared defensive position they encountered with an overwhelming volume of explosive? And every "natural" Syrian defensive position with quite servicable places to ride out barrages, like drainage systems, basements, cellars, never mind all the tunnels they've burrowed through the Golan and Allah knows where else.

And don't even get me started on the Damascus sewer system, I bet there are more and deeper levels of tunnels below that city there than a AD&D convention on speed, and acid.

This is a key aspect of home ground advantage, you know ahead of time where to hide from the indirect, and you know it down to hiding spots the size of an individual man.

I find it very implausible that were the US to invade Syria, Syrian prepared defenses would be overwhelmed by US firepower; as I see it, there would be too many Syrians and too little US firepower to spread around. BFI thought different, I'm dealing with it.

It's not only B 52 strikes , it's MLRS using cluster munitions, and repeated loads of 155, 105, etc.

[JonS]

Well according to the my book, the Soviets regarded 30% casualties as adiquate for 'suppresion'. Trying to achive more than that needs exponentially more shells so it gets to a point where they probably wouldn't fire at all.

30%? For "Suppressed"? Yikes.

Western doctrine tends to regard any unit that has taken 30-40% cas as "Destroyed", at least for the forseeable future. 20% cas is "Neutralised", i.e. it won't be bothering you much, if at all.

Strictly speaking, "Suppressed" doesn't required *any* cas from artillery.

[Falconander]

Jons,

You are on target like a 105 bearing down on a bunch of skinnies....

Same as bouncing betty, sniper or the like. Wounding is a far worse detriment to the moral and command of a unit. A unit suffering 30% casualties would indeed be no longer combat effective in the short term.

They could push on but they would lose additional units to support the wounded and medivac them out.

Remembered some of those great artillery scenes in Band of Brothers, whatever the case, I'd hate to be on the receiving end of an artillery barrage.

[BlackMoria]

My preferred engagement when I was a artillery observer was to fire one gun section (3 tubes) on fuse delay and one gun section with fuse VT.

The VT fuses would rain splinters down on open trench lines and firing pits.

Delay fuses would penetrate into the ground and near hits will collapse even reinforced revetted trenches and penetrate overhead cover on personnel defensive enclosures. Direct hits on bunkers and hardpoints will penetrate even 6 inches of overhead cover (sandbags), particularly if the shell is 155mm or higher. As a added bonus, the delay fused rounds will also tear up wire obstacles and seriously degrade AP minefields in the immediate vicinity of the trench works.

What can a 155mm round do on fuse delay. Consider this - I drove my jeep into a brand new 155 shell crater and covered it with a camo net and from 20 feet away, you couldn't there was a hole or anything because the net was flush with the ground and creative adding of nearby bushes and grasses by my driver make it nearly invisible.

Short of a fortification type defensive position, any hasty type defensive position is going to take a beating, even from a moderate bombardment of 3-5rounds per gun onto the position.

[YankeeDog]

It's tricky to compare CM results to "real world" data.

In addition to the issues already raised, another important thing to remember is that, in CM, a "casualty" is any pixel soldier that is rendered combat ineffective for at least the next 30-60 minutes (i.e., the rest of the scenario). So a casualty in CM doesn't necessarily mean that the soldier has a major wound, such as a hole where he shouldn't -- the injury could be a relatively mild but temporarily debilitating one, such as a KO and concussion from being hit by the overpressure wave of an explosion. Such a soldier might be ready to fight again within the day, with a bit of rest and medical care.

And if you really want to get into it, there are other types of casualties as well, harder to quantify. What about the guy who gets splattered with blood and bits of hair and fingernail when the two guys next to him get turned into hamburger by a direct hit? There's a good chance that he ends up as a "psych" casualty, at least temporarily... a comprehensive combat simulation like CM needs to take casualties like this into account, at least abstractly.

"Real World" weapons effectiveness tests can use widely varying casualty definitions. Some do count less serious injuries that take a soldier out of combat for a few minutes to hours as casualties. Some also take into account the psychological effects of heavy bombardment. But some have a much stricter definition of "casualty." For example, some tests only count targets actually hit by shrapnel or bullets as "casualties." It's important to consider this stuff.

Cheers,

YD

[Sixxkiller]

This is a very interesting topic.

I will not sully it by stating what I think and know, but keep it up guys, very few topics here keep my interest for more than a page.

[Apocal]

What about the guy who gets splattered with blood and bits of hair and fingernail when the two guys next to him get turned into hamburger by a direct hit? There's a good chance that he ends up as a "psych" casualty, at least temporarily... a comprehensive combat simulation like CM needs to take casualties like this into account, at least abstractly.

Isn't that what the yellow exclaimation point and "routing" status is used to indicate?