"How to attach with tanks" Topic

Sometimes its just interesting to set up a diffrent but quick(ish) game.

Evreybody talks about the onslaught of the Russian hords and there rapid and appatently mindless onslaught. So for a change we set up a German Lepoard 2 company vs two companies of Russian T80's. The frontage was about 2.4 km for ther Leopards which they needed with 2 alternative pre surveyed positions each. We even put the Germans in their positions on table assuming the Russians have perfect intelegence of there whereabouts. The Russians were then given free reign to attack however they pleased disregading doctrine. Ater a hour or so of trying to whedel the Germans out their losses were so high that the game was abandoned. Because it was a quick game we then had time to do it the Russian way. No messing just run straight in. Supprise, supprise using the tactical doctrine the Russians went through with acceptable losses.

Now this was a bit of a con as the Russians cam over the hill about 1.5km from the Germans negating the range advantage of the Leoparsd the have, but what it did show is once the shooting starts to get even, just sheer weight of numbers is all that really counts. It will be interesting to see what happens when the roles are reversed. It may be bad news for the Gremansas they will not be able to capitalise on there range advantage.

Comments on this issue are requested.

Defence in depth?

Tally Ho!

Modern warfare is a deadly business.

Close in, I suspect it gets very messy and the crews/side with the faster gunners and better stabilization on the move should win out, assuming they aren't too badly outnumbered.

What rules did you use for your battles?

Are you using standard Leo 2s, or some of the fancy, follow-on models, like the Leopard 2A4s, or 2A6s?

Common gunnery training scenario, the three tank threat. Engage three different targets in under 20 seconds. I've done it with M60a1's and M60a3's. Do not discount the defenders advantage and the difficulty of acquiring a target while buttoned up and on the move.

I've had similar results in my games.

If you let the Leo2s open fire at long range the Russians get toasted.

If the Russians can get within 1.5km before being shot at their numbers make all the difference.

Key to avoid the Soviet sledgehammer is: don't sit still waiting to get hit. Move!! Nothing moves better than a Leo2.

The Russians do better in bigger battles in close terrain. If they commit piecemeal in open terrain they lose.

Hope this helps,

B

Standard attack density in the 80s was for 4.5 to 1 fav the attacker..with a 11 to 1 advantage in artillery..Thats the jugernuaght youd face against not a paltry 2 to 1 ratio..The russians would get chewed up but the second echelon regiment would be able to tear up the now broken Nato unit as it tried to reconsolidate ..and there was still a 3rd attack echelon that had not yet entered battle..The russian had templates for meeting engagements attack of defenses and hasty defenses…

The Soviet's put great stock in their artillery………pre-attack and bombardment during the attack is often watered down in wargames if applied at all………….target acquisition whilst under artillery fire is obviously more difficult too…….smoke etc can negate the NATO range advantage too.

The frontal attack gamers love so much was the next to last option by the Soviets. The purpose of all their recon assets and their advance to contact doctrine is to find a way around defenses. When a by-pass was not available, they launched a hasty attack aiming for a defender's flank. When all else failed, they launched a hasty frontal attack. If that failed, their next option was a deliberate attack with an artillery preparation that would make for a lousy wargame.

A defense in depth is the key, not just with alternate firing positions, but you also need an obstacle plan to slow the attack and channel it into kill zones. Firing positions should be to the flanks of the attacker. Identifying a concealed target to the front while moving cross-country is very difficult. Finding a target to the flanks is next to impossible for a tank commander.

Training vs mass. It didn't work for the Germans in WW2. Thank goodness it was never really tested during the cold war. I think the Russians today are quite different from the Warsaw Pact days.

I agree with much of the above.

Actually, that did work for the Germans, for a while, on the Russian Front in WWII. Small, well-trained, veteran panzer units were able to rack up impressive kills in open terrain, against the Soviet hordes. Of course, eventually they were overwhelmed by better trained and equipped Russian units, but for some time they fought in what was basically a live shooting gallery.

I doubt the Soviets would even mount an attack unless they had a 3:1 advantage, and their recon forces would be looking for ways to hit you in the flanks, while simultaneously pinning you from the front.

Waves and waves of attackers.

Not sure the smoke would do much good against the thermal imagers, unless/until they got "advanced smoke" that could affect them. Don't know when/if they got that before the end of the Cold War. Anyone have info on that?

Mako 11 Our own rules Maneuover Group.

Battler Britain that was what came out of this, weight of numbers is what counts when both sides are in range. NATO needed the range advantage to get that number down. Russian artillery could in part negate that range advantage by blinding or hindering in that closing part.

Smoke is interesting even basic smoke stops the laser range finder it does not stop the FLIR. A comment to this effect is in the US manual on the Abrams available to the public.

In the Cold War the opening gambits were known to both sides, there were no real opertunities for big flanking attacks there are still only a limited number of usable routes to the west.

Smoke does block the laser range finder, but in a prepared defense, one of the first things we did was get the range of prominent landmarks we knew the thermals would pick up. Given time, we put thermal-visible markers across our kill zones. Even without knowing the exact range, we set the range to 2500 m and could count on a sabot hitting a tank up to about 2800 m.

Smoke is a double-edged sword. It blocks sight in both directions, but a vehicle emerging from smoke is a black outline on a white background, a piece of cake to see, while the vehicle is blind. We would shoot a linear smoke screen in front of the lead echelon, preferably just in front of an obstacle. We could engage the blinded lead wave at 1:1 odds as it emerged from the screen without the following waves seeing what happened. NATO's tactical advantage with smoke disappeared when the Soviets fielded thermals, but then they returned it by fielding smart smoke.

Yea, my understanding is that regular smoke doesn't block thermals, but some of the newer stuff can, and will.

Fog and rain will also degrade it considerably, depending upon the percentage of moisture in the air.

Wet weather never bothered the TTS on our M60A3s except at extreme range.

That's good to know. Thanks for the info.

If the Russians can get within 1.5km before being shot at their numbers make all the difference.

Could anyone comment on this issue with respect to 73 Easting? I know we'd be comparing Russians to Iraqis but IIRC at 73 Easting many of the engagements were at close range with US troops being outnumbered, often significantly.

In one interview on History Channel an Abrams company commander described how he authorized one of his platoons to plunge into and beyond heavy smoke from burning vehicles. The platoon disappeared into the cloud and ended up in a wild gun fight with a bunch of Iraqis at close range which they managed to win.

I've also read about similar close range engagements during the first battle of Najaf when a sand storm reduced visibility to very close range and US forces won multiple combats against Iraqi tanks despite being outnumbered.

I know that the west has a range advantage but doesn't it also have a gunnery advantage when combat gets up close and personal?

There's also the issue of using thermals to kill a known enemy target and trying to figure out if the blob of light is enemy or friendly. There were a few instances of friendly fire when green blobs thought to be enemy were actually friendlies. I wonder if doctrine has changed on how crews are authorized to fire based on visibility. What does it take to give the order with respect to certifying a target as enemy?

Yea, my understanding is that regular smoke doesn't block thermals, but some of the newer stuff can, and will.

Fog and rain will also degrade it considerably, depending upon the percentage of moisture in the air.

What about smoke from burning vehicles and clouds of sand/earth raised by wind and HE shells?

Even main gun fire raises HUGE plumes of sand/dust/dirt. Watching combat videos from Syria, Iraq, and even Chechnya it's remarkable how simply firing a main gun can blind a crew under dry conditions.

In the close quarters battles in Iraq, I'll bet crew training had a major impact on America's success there.

My guess is that our guys could get off three shots accurately, for every one of theirs.

Also, from what I've read, the Iraqi tank rounds were crap, since they didn't buy the expensive Russian ones, or weren't offered those. Basically, if the accounts I've read were accurate, the Iraqi rounds were the equivalent of Russian training rounds.

I was at 73 easting, but as an artilleryman, so have some insights if not maybe all the ones you want.

In the afternoon leading up to the big fight several things happened. One, we where told it was coming. Not sure where the intel came from but our Gunnery Sgt came by and gave everyone a quick breaf on what to expect. In the Army artillery Gunnery Sgt is a position, not a rank.

We had these V shaped white marks on all the vehicles, that where visible with thermal systems. Not sure how they worked, but they did work. Even in big sand storms. If you could see the target at all, and the aspect was right, they worked well. Of course sandstorms blocked even thermal to a large degree.

1st target we engaged that afternoon, some hours before 73 easting was an unarmored engineer company. We had trouble adjusting onto them, due to the sand I am sure. but, as soon as the first HE round got on target, they surrendered to the observer before we could go to fire for effect. That one round messed them up fairly bad, several KIA and a bunch of wounded. No idea why they did not dismount and take cover. Maybe they where still trying to move.

second target was totally engaged on thermals. it was not allied, and as we where the very front unit that wasnt a big surprise. it was determine to not be civilian, but I dont know what it was that that made the determination. Rounds where impossible to to spot no matter what we did. So no adjustment. But, the rounds where heard to be in the area, so we dumped a BN 3 rounds on them. We where a 4 battery unit, My bn plus the squadron HOWBAT, but with loses about 28 tubes. One hell of a lot of rounds of DPICM. Target was observed to catch fire. In proper CAV fashion, we bypassed and hauled ass. Never did find out what kind of company we blew up.

73 Easting itself started i a sandstorm, but when it ended it was pretty clear. It cleared up early in the fight in fact, but dont know when, time gets weird in a firefight. I dont know what the official cutoff time for the fight is, but we fired until around 10PM. I just found out last week, from a guy I have know and worked with for years but didnt know he was even in the Army much less in HOWBAT 2/2 CAV, that when that ever armored division swept around us, they cut through HOWBAT, ran over their aiming circle and even clipped a colimeter. Typical DAT crap.

Owen

Tankers have several techniques to get the first shot off accurately. A sabot or HEAT round was always loaded, depending on the biggest threat. Say your biggest potential target is a T-62, which is 1.9 m tall. We would load sabot, our best anti-armor round, and pre-set the range to what was called battlesight. The battlesight was the range where the highest point of the projectile flight path is 1.9 m. In a snap shot, instead of lasing the range, you just put the crosshairs on the base of the visible target and pulled the trigger. Odds are 95%+ the round would hit somewhere on the target. At worse, the round would hit in front of the target, distracting it while you take the time to get an aimed shot off. Western turrets have faster turning rates than most Soviet designs and the TC can quickly slew the gun onto the target without waiting for the gunner to react to commands. Superior training in live fire gunnery, target acquisition, teamwork within the crew and the unit, plus generally more intelligent and better educated crewmen all add up to a 1-2 second advantage. A well trained crew can get a battlesight shot off in 3 seconds and an aimed shot every 7 seconds. Given the lethality of our weapons, you can inflict a lot of unpleasantness in the first 30 seconds of a fight, enough to trigger panic in the crews still caught in the initial confusion.

Here is a couple of pics of a second attempt Russians Battalion Battlegroup ve Geman platoon. Thisa is a test game so no scenary. Tree in centre of first one was to allow the camera to focus sensibly. First is the start, second is part way through.

We fought this twice with variations in one evening. Who says MG is not fast play. Outcome – using the artillery to shell the german fire positions (only possible after they fired) made the difference. The short dely while the Germans moved to their alternate fire position let the Russians close the range to where superior numbers win.

Start point
link

Part way through
link

Don't you just love 1/144!